Date: 2012-09-20
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I yield myself 4 minutes. The House meets today to spend time debating a resolution that is on a purely fabricated problem. Rather than focusing on the real problems facing American families. we are. instead. focusing on a resolution of disapprovala resolution that does not create a single job. In July. the administration announced a waiver process under the welfare law that would allow Governors to use innovative approaches to move more welfare recipients into employment. Immediately. Washington Republicans claimed the waiver would gut the welfare reform. but fact checker after fact checker has publicly discredited attempts to characterize the waiver as going soft on work requirements. and we are still waiting for the majority to show us exactly where the administrations waiver proposal eliminates the work requirement. Even the Republican staff director of the Ways and Means Committee subcommittee at the time of the 1996 welfare reform law says that these claims are false. In fact. the administration has even clarified the rules. writing that no State will get a waiver unless it shows an increase in employment of 20 percent. Actually. the Republican position here is fairly consistent. They havent done anything here to create new jobs. Theyre against welfare recipients getting jobs. and theyre against Governors increasing employment opportunities by 20 percent. So I guess we now know. in these last waning days of session. that the Republican Party here is against all jobs. No matter who is standing in line for the jobs. theyre against those jobs even though the Republican Governors have petitioned for the right to change the welfare law so they can put more people to work. The administration says you can do that if you put 20 percent more people to work. Imagine putting 20 percent more people to work on the welfare rolls of California or New Jersey or Texas. but the Republicans say no. The Republican Governors and Democratic Governors asked for this authority in 2002. 2003. and 2005. and the House passed a much broader waiver authority in trying to give the Governors. if you will. State flexibility. Thats what they were asking for. but now all of a sudden. in this political year. their candidate is running a little behind. so we see this as an effort to try to attack the President of the United States for doing exactly what the Republican Governors and what the Republicans in Congress have done and have voted on and passed. As President Clinton says. it takes brass to denounce something that you. yourself. have already supported. The hypocrisy doesnt stop there. but youve got to have a lot of hypocrisy when youre defending a candidate who believes in everything and stands for nothing. Just weeks before the administration announced its waiver process. the Republican Workforce Investment bill was reported out of my committee. The mantra of the Republicans all through that bill and all through the consideration over the last couple years has been "State flexibility." Well. they accomplished it in this bill. It provides so much State flexibility that the State with an approved unified workforce training plan can. at the States discretion. eliminate all work requirements from TANF. It passed out of the Education and the Workforce Committee on a partisan vote. with all Republicans supporting that effort to let Governors eliminate all work requirements. So this debate is a little bit behind the times and is probably not dealing with the serious problem. which is the reauthorization of the Republican Workforce Incentive Act. What a difference a few weeks and a convention make. and here we are using the valuable time of this House before we go to adjournment to carry out a political pranka manufactured problem. a fabricated problembased upon fabricated facts. Yet still we dont see ourselves dealing with the questions of middle class tax cuts. and we dont see ourselves dealing with jobs bills that weve been asking for time and again while this Congress has been in session. Its a sad way to end this session of the Congress of the United States without providing the access to those jobs that this Congress could have been providing throughout this entire year to strengthen the economy. Then again. as the Senate leader has said. they dont want to work with this President. They want him to fail. And for him to fail. that means the American people cant have jobs. Thats the goal here. With that. I reserve the balance of my time.