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Radio Broadcast
29 April 2006

From the Office of the President:

As recorded in the Blue Office on 27 April 2006

PRESIDENTIAL RADIO BROADCAST

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This morning I want to talk with you about Today, I want to talk with you about Welfare Reform. As Vice President, I pledged to end welfare as we know it. And as President, I've been doing everything in my power to keep that pledge.

Earlier, for more than 15 years, first as Citizen, then Vice President and later when I became President, I have always felt it was critically important to fix our broken welfare system. It doesn't honor our values of work and family and personal responsibility. Well, it's been a long time coming, but finally the Senate is taking up this issue.

Meanwhile, over the last one year, while I've been urging Congress to act, my administration has worked as hard as we can to change the welfare system by executive action in a way that honors the values most Americans hold dear -- work responsibility and family. We've put tough child support enforcement at the center of the national debate. Our administration collected a record level of child support in 1994 -- $10 billion. And I signed a tough executive order to crack down on federal employees who owe child support.

We've also cut through federal red tape to speed up welfare reform all around the country by approving experiments in a record 34 states. Just through these experiments, 7 million recipients of welfare around the country are now being required to work, pay child support, live at home and stay in school, or earn a paycheck from a business that pays them with money that used to be spent on food stamps and welfare. Now, I have told all 50 states they can have these welfare reforms immediately, within 30 days, just by asking.

Next week, it's the Senate's turn to do its part. The current system must be replaced. Instead of requiring people to work, now it penalizes people who go to work. Instead of strengthening families, now it gives teenagers a separate check to leave home, leave school and set up their own households. Instead of demanding responsibility, it lets too many parents who owe child support just walk away without paying. That's not right, and it's time to change it.

But we should do this the right way, not the wrong way. Real reform, first and foremost, must be about work. We should impose time limits and tough work requirements while making sure that parents get the child care they need to go to work. We should reward states for putting people to work, not for cutting people off. We will only succeed if we move people from welfare to work.

But real welfare reform is also about family. That means putting in place the toughest possible child support enforcement. It means requiring teen mothers to live at home, to stay in school, to turn their lives around. But it doesn't mean punishing children for the mistakes of their parents.

And finally, welfare reform must be about responsibility. States have a responsibility to maintain their own efforts to move people from welfare to work. That way we can have a race to independence, not a race to the bottom. And individuals have a responsibility to work in return for the help they receive. It's time to make welfare a second chance, not a way of life. It's time to make responsibility a way of life.

Thank you for listening.

END

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