Date: 1983-04-28
Speaker: DE LA GARZA (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. I submit to you the following article from the Houston Post. Houston. Tex.. in a column called "Espejo" by Richard Vara concerning the tragic plight of three families who are poor and unfortunate victims of the recession. The implications of their condition should raise serious concern in all of us. I submit this so that my colleagues in Congress are aware of these special circumstances: For Antonio Garza and his wife. for Margaret Saenz and her children. Leroy. 5. Junior. 4. and Sonya. 3: for 3yearold Chalcedany Morgan there is no more Indignity or pain in being poor. Garza. 53. shot his wife. Kay. in their car in San Antonio last year. With an empty wallet. bankruptcy papers and an empty fuel tank. Garza then turned a highpowered rifle on himself and ended his life. a life that had once included success in an Ohio aerial mapping business. Chalcedany died in Oberlin. Ohio. from starvation. Her parents did not believe in taking public assistance. Her mother and father were working on a temporary housepainting job and found her dead when they checked on their five children who were living in a station wagon. Last Christmas. the Saenz family was living in a tent after the father lost a job and could not afford rent. A small portable heater ignited the tent and only the father and an 18monthold son survived. They are the casualties in a recession that seemed relentless and is now beginning to recede. When the recession ends. it may leave some important. if bitterly learned. lessons. During the flush. full employment times. it was the collective wisdom that the unemployed and those on welfare were there because of laziness. lack of ambition. a parasitical disdain and a deformed propensity for leeching. Badmouthing food stamps and welfare checks was a common enough practice for the middle and upper class. Things have changed now. The unemployment lines have grown classier with the presence of engineers. accountants. secretarles. craftsmen and others who thought they had secure. lifelong employment. Not only was the lesson brought home of how it felt to be without a job. but how it felt to be without prospects of one. This new class of unemployed found that a good work record. technical skills. education and even a desperate desire for any kind of work resulted in nothing. For a hardworking man like Garza. it was too much to bear. After all. it was the collective wisdom that held that if a man was poor and out of work. it was his fault. "Just look at those want ads in the paper. If a man really wants to work he can find a job even if its just washing cars." goes the standard line. Perhaps those folks should explain it all to the Garzas survivors. For Chalcedanys parent. going on welfare and seeking assistance was too much to bear. After all. collective wisdom held that the people on the dole were lazy insolent dolts. The Saenz family case seems amazingly familiar to that of Houstons Tent City. Except that no one probably wants to ask Saenz If he really wanted to work or whether he really couldnt have found another homesite. About the only things that Texans can expect to result from Tent City is a law that will prohibit such embarrassments from happening again. No one advocates a blind. AliceinWonderland approach to assisting the needy. But neither is there room for a begrudging. meanspirited. cynical approach to helping those who need assistance. Yes. stories about the unprincipled who steal from public assistance are horrible. But the only thing more horrible is the mindless stories of bureaucrats following inane. nitpicking rules that deny help to the poor. the aged. the retarded. the newly widowed. If the public learns that being poor is no disgrace. that public assistance is not a disgrace reserved for bums. but a responsibility worthy of any honest. principled nation: that mechanisms for allocating to the poor should not be degrading. destructive and dehumanizing. then the deaths of the Garzas. Chalcedany and the Saenzes will not be meaningless. If this nation did not learn that. then the dead were thelucky ones.*