[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 70 (Wednesday, April 26, 2023)] [House] [Pages H1979-H2039] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Date: 2023-04-26
Chamber: HOUSE
Mr. SMITH : I include in the Record a March 8, 2021, Politico article titled: ``Biden's welfare flip-flop,'' which points out that President Biden was once an ardent supporter of commonsense welfare reforms, including work requirements.  [From POLITICO, March 8, 2021]  West Wing Playbook--Biden's Welfare Flip-Flop  (By Alex Thompson and Theodoric Meyer with help from Allie Bice)  Joe Biden, the young senator, would be surprised at Joe Biden, the elderly president. When he first ran for president in 1988, 44-year-old Biden was one of the Democrats challenging what he called ``liberal orthodoxy'' on issues like welfare. ``Our handouts are not enough,'' Biden said at Princeton University in a May 1987 speech meant to beef up his policy profile ahead of a June campaign launch. ``Government subsidy is not the ultimate answer to the problems of the poor.'' In November 1988, he penned a column in his local Newark Post: ``We are all too familiar with the stories of welfare mothers driving luxury cars and leading lifestyles that mirror the rich and famous,'' he wrote, parroting Republican critiques of the program. ``Whether they are exaggerated or not, these stories underlie a broad social concern that the welfare system has broken down--that it only parcels out welfare checks and does nothing to help the poor find productive jobs.'' In 1996, Biden was one of 24 Democratic senators who voted for the welfare reform bill that President Bill Clinton signed, but which progressives and much of Clinton's Cabinet opposed. ``The culture of welfare must be replaced with the culture of work,'' Biden said on the Senate floor. Bruce Reed, who's now Biden's deputy chief of staff, was an architect of the legislation. He helped coin Clinton's pledge to ``end welfare as we know it.'' And yet, the first piece of major legislation Biden is poised to sign as president represents the largest expansion of the welfare state in decades. It even undoes some of the reforms Biden, the senator, helped enact. The 1996 bill, for instance, imposed time limits and work requirements on money sent to parents to support their children. Biden's American Rescue Plan would at least temporarily resume sending money directly to impoverished parents without any strings attached--and some Democrats are already pushing to make the aid permanent. The bill would also send poor and middle-class parents checks of up to $300 per child each month--a provision that the Biden team believes could dramatically cut child poverty. The legislation won't recreate the welfare system that Biden voted to reform in 1996. Instead, it will expand the existing child tax credit for poor and middle-class families alike. The credit starts phasing out at $75,000 a year for single parents and $150,000 a year for married couples. Part of Biden's evolution on welfare spending is tied to the pandemic and the massive economic hole that it has caused. But another part of it reflects the evolution the Democratic Party has undergone in recent years. Once fearful of race-baiting rhetoric on supposedly lazy ``welfare queens,'' the party now is largely unapologetic about spending money to strengthen the social safety net. ``One of the side effects of the pandemic has been to change the profile of poverty in America,'' said Robert Reich, Clinton's Labor secretary who clashed with people like Reed over the welfare reform measure. ``It's no longer just `them,' people of color, people who conservatives accuse of taking handouts. It marks a huge shift in public policy from quite punitive welfare to giving needy families money.'' White House spokesperson Michael Gwin emailed a statement saying, ``As a Senator, Joe Biden worked to make welfare reform more progressive by supporting childcare and maintaining funding for children's health and safety, and as President, Joe Biden is meeting the unique crises we face by giving children and families a financial lifeline, reopening schools safely, and securing the resources we need to defeat the virus.'' Reed declined to comment. Donald Trump, during his presidency, seemed to usher in a Republicanism that was more comfortable with spending more money on things past Republicans would have bashed as handouts. But so far Republicans in the Biden era are making a different calculation. They unanimously voted against the plan and are betting that the pandemic hasn't changed perceptions around welfare programs so completely. On the Senate floor last Friday, Sen. Mitch McConnell blasted the welfare provisions in the package for paying ``people a bonus not to go back to work when we'll be trying to rebuild our economy.'' He added that: ``There's an effort to create a brand-new, sprawling cash welfare program--not the one-time checks, but constant payments--that ignore the pro-work lessons of bipartisan welfare reform and which the White House has already stated they want to make permanent.''