On June 11, the House voted, 406-6, in favor of H.R. 2350, the Welfare Reform Extension Act of 2003, which would temporarily extend through September 30, 2003 the 1996 welfare reform law, giving the Senate more time to consider a larger reauthorization bill passed by the House. The House passed a welfare reauthorization bill (H.R. 4) on February 13 (see The Source, 2/14/03), but the Senate Finance Committee has yet to act. Committee Chair Charles Grassley (R-IA) has indicated that he wants to move the legislation before the August recess.
Democrats raised objections to the extension, claiming they had been excluded from crafting the language of H.R. 4. Bill sponsor Rep. Wally Herger (R-CA) addressed those concerns. “What we are renewing is updated legislation that we had some 20 hearings on in the last Congress,” said Rep. Herger. “It is legislation that is updating probably the most successful social welfare reform in our nation’s history. More than 50 percent of those who have been on welfare are now out being productive. Child poverty levels are at the lowest in history.”
Rep. Phil English (R-PA) accused Democrats of objecting to the measure for political, not ideological, reasons. “We have seen partisanship creep into the debate on welfare reform, and I think it has detracted from the seriousness of the endeavor. … This has been, if not one of the greatest social reforms of the 20th century, certainly the most successful social reform of the last 20 years of the last century. We were successful in overhauling a failed welfare system. … The results of welfare reform are hard to argue with, although some on the left are continuing to try to make that argument.”
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) took issue with Rep. English’s remarks, pointing out that the 1996 act was pushed for and signed by former President Clinton. “Under President Clinton’s administration and the 1997 Budget Act, jobs increased and opportunities increased for those welfare recipients moving off of welfare; [there was] more work, stronger families and less poverty. … What do we have now? We have the complete opposite. We have poverty growing deeper, more people in poverty and needing welfare, and no response from this Congress.”
Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI) indicated his reluctant support for the bill as written. “I will vote for this extension, but it is a sad reflection on this House and its majority, and on the majority in terms of the Senate, and surely on the administration that we have failed to renew and to really expand the basic principles of welfare reform that so many of us worked to enact.”
