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    "ocrText": "Withdrawal/Redaction Sheet\nClinton Library\nDOCUMENT NO.\nSUBJECT/TITLE\nDATE\nRESTRICTION\nAND TYPE\n001. fax\nTo Margy Waller From Deborah Vincent; RE: addresses/phone\n11/21/2000\nP6/b(6)\nnumbers/personal info [partial] (2 pages)\n002. fax\nTo Margy Waller From Deborah Vincent; RE: address/phone\n11/27/2000\nP6/b(6)\nnumber/personal info [partial] (1 page)\n003. paper\nWorking Families Real People; RE: phone number/personal info\nn.d.\nP6/b(6)\n[partial] (2 pages)\nCOLLECTION:\nClinton Presidential Records\nDomestic Policy Council\nAnna Richter\nOA/Box Number: 23737\nFOLDER TITLE:\nLegacy Documents and Drafts [binder] [3]\n2011-0638-S\nms153\nRESTRICTION CODES\nPresidential Records Act - [44 U.S.C. 2204(a)]\nFreedom of Information Act - 15 U.S.C. 552(b)]\nP1 National Security Classified Information [(a)(1) of the PRA]\nb(1) National security classified information [(b)(1) of the FOIAJ\nP2 Relating to the appointment to Federal office [(a)(2) of the PRA]\nb(2) Release would disclose internal personnel rules and practices of\nP3 Release would violate a Federal statute [(a)(3) of the PRAJ\nan agency [(b)(2) of the FOIA]\nP4 Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential commercial or\nb(3) Release would violate a Federal statute [(b)(3) of the FOIA]\nfinancial information [(a)(4) of the PRA]\nb(4) Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential or financial\nP5 Release would disclose confidential advice between the President\ninformation [(b)(4) of the FOIA]\nand his advisors, or between such advisors [a)(5) of the PRA)\nb(6) Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of\nP6 Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of\npersonal privacy [(b)(6) of the FOIA]\npersonal privacy [(a)(6) of the PRAJ\nb(7) Release would disclose information compiled for law enforcement\npurposes [(b)(7) of the FOIA]\nC. Closed in accordance with restrictions contained in donor's deed\nb(8) Release would disclose information concerning the regulation of\nof gift.\nfinancial institutions [(b)(8) of the FOIAJ\nPRM. Personal record misfile defined in accordance with 44 U.S.C.\nb(9) Release would disclose geological or geophysical information\n2201(3).\nconcerning wells [(b)(9) of the FOIA]\nRR. Document will be reviewed upon request.\nChildren & Families\nLiving w/ Grandmother\nfakawaybromwork\naboutiomiles -\nHead\n7 Alexiss Carlos\nStart\nkids 4 $16 months -\nstarted Leceving\nTANF money about a year ago\ndaycareis 5 blks from home\nabout 2 miles from work\ngrandmothers house:\nno heat - Coldin winter\nswamp cooler - Hot in Summer\nSafer neighboorhood now- gives\nwithout the Partnership\nnotable to find a stablejob now have opportunities\ninfrontot me -\nsupport gave to got confidence\n\"\nBecause of Presiden/elinton's leaderhip I we been\naste to move up helpmyself my children & w/outsthe\noffor\nwelfare\nhouring woucher, been\nask DNARETO work\nbeen ableto make IF to Workevemblan\ncurryday I maynet have\nInouldnt have you safer negenborhoud is both for my\nindy-clope which to work t\ndaycane\n11/21/2000\n11:03\nOFFICE UH SECRETARY\n94567431\nNO.845\n001\nU.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development\nOFFICE OF THE SECRETARY\nWashington, DC 20410-8000\nTel: (202) 708-0270\nFax: (202) 708-6092 or 4087\nFACSIMILE TRANSMITTAL\nDATE:\n11-21-00\nTO:\nMargy WalleR\nORGANIZATION:\nD.P.C.\nFAX: 456-2431 TELEPHONE:\nFROM: DEBORAH VINCENT. Acting Deputy Chief of Staff, for Policy\nMESSAGE: Please see what you think\nabout these Weltare-fo-Work\nSteries. infermation. I'm still getting additional\nNUMBER OF PAGES (including this page): 3\nIf you experience problems receiving this facsimile, please call (202)708-0270\nWithdrawal/Redaction Marker\nClinton Library\nDOCUMENT NO.\nSUBJECT/TITLE\nDATE\nRESTRICTION\nAND TYPE\n001. fax\nTo Margy Waller From Deborah Vincent; RE: addresses/phone\n11/21/2000\nP6/b(6)\nnumbers/personal info [partial] (2 pages)\nCOLLECTION:\nClinton Presidential Records\nDomestic Policy Council\nAnna Richter\nOA/Box Number: 23737\nFOLDER TITLE:\nLegacy Documents and Drafts [binder] [3]\n2011-0638-S\nms153\nRESTRICTION CODES\nPresidential Records Act - [44 U.S.C. 2204(a)]\nFreedom of Information Act - [5 U.S.C. 552(b)]\nP1 National Security Classified Information [(a)(1) of the PRA]\nb(1) National security classified information [(b)(1) of the FOIA]\nP2 Relating to the appointment to Federal office [(a)(2) of the PRA]\nb(2) Release would disclose internal personnel rules and practices of\nP3 Release would violate a Federal statute [(a)(3) of the PRAJ\nan agency [(b)(2) of the FOIA]\nP4 Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential commercial or\nb(3) Release would violate a Federal statute [(b)(3) of the FOIA)\nfinancial information [(a)(4) of the PRAJ\nb(4) Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential or financial\nP5 Release would disclose confidential advice between the President\ninformation |(b)(4) of the FOIA]\nand his advisors, or between such advisors [a)(5) of the PRAJ\nb(6) Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of\nP6 Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of\npersonal privacy |(b)(6) of the FOIA]\npersonal privacy [(a)(6) of the PRAJ\nb(7) Release would disclose information compiled for law enforcement\npurposes [(b)(7) of the FOIA]\nC. Closed in accordance with restrictions contained in donor's deed\nb(8) Release would disclose information concerning the regulation of\nof gift.\nfinancial institutions [(b)(8) of the FOIA]\nPRM. Personal record misfile defined in accordance with 44 U.S.C.\nb(9) Release would disclose geological or geophysical information\n2201(3).\nconcerning wells [(b)(9) of the FOIA]\nRR. Document will be reviewed upon request.\n0002/12/11\n11:03\nOFFICE OF SECRETARY + 94567431\nNO.845\n002\n[001]\nWELFARE TO WORK SUCCESS STORIES\nMs. Anna M. Lorea\nP6/(b)(6)\nPlace of Employment:\nCity of Phoenix\nThe EARN Alliance\n520 West Van Buren Street\nPhoenix, AZ 85033\n(602) 534-1093\n(602)534-1715 Fax\[email protected]\nAnna is a 20 year old single parent with two children. She was referred to the\nWelfare-to-Work program by the state TANF program. She moved into her Section\n8 apartment in July 2000. Section 8 permitted her to move to a decent, safe\napartment\nP6/(b)(6)\nThe apartment\nmoving from\nto\nis close to the city's public transportation system and is within walking distance to\nher childcare center.\nu\nAnna initially found a temporary job\nP6/(b)(6)\nP6/(b)(6)\nP6/(b)(6)\nShe is free of welfare assistance and\nts working nun time for the City of Phoenix as a Customer Service Clerk. Anna is\ntaking computer courses to allow her to be more competitive for advancement\nopportunities in the City. a spanish\nAnna credits her success to the Section 8 Welfare-to-Work program. She says, \"I\nnever would have been able to do any of this without the Welfare-to-Work voucher -\nliving in a nice apartment close to daycare and the bus to get to work.\"\nHOW old children?\nwhen on welfare.'\nworked before?\n11/21/2000\n11:03\nOFFICE UF SECRETARY\n->\n94567431\nNO.845\n903\n[001]\nMs. Lonnie Giles\nP6/(b)(6)\n(801) 487-8211 (work #)\nLonnie is a single mother with a three year old daughter. She received her Welfare-\nto-Work voucher in March. 2000.\nP6/(b)(6)\nP6/(b)(6)\nShe was able to obtain full time employment in\nJune, 2000 at Maverik Country Store\nP6/(b)(6)\nThe only\nremaining welfare assistance she receives is for childcare expenses. Lonnie is very\nenthusiastic about the Welfare-to-Work program and would be happy to share her\nexperiences and the benefits of the program from her perspective. She can be\nreached at her work number 11AM-7PM MST Monday through Friday.\n0002/17/II.\n10:11\nOFFICE OF SECRETARY\n94567431\nNO. 846\n901\nCC.\nU.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development\nOFFICE OF THE SECRETARY\nanna\nWashington, DC 20410-8000\nandrea\nTel: (202) 708-0270\nFax: (202) 708-6092 or 4087\nFACSIMILE TRANSMITTAL\nDATE:\n11/24/00\nTO:\nmargy Waller\nORGANIZATION: DPC\nFAX: 202-456-7431 TELEPHONE: 202-456-5586\nFROM: DEBORAH VINCENT. Acting Deputy Chief of Staff, for Policy\nMESSAGE: Are any ot the examples acceptable ?\nshould I continues to pursue\nfamilies ? Please advise thanks.\nNUMBER OF PAGES (Including this page): 2\nIf you experience problems receiving this facsimile, please call (202)708-0270\nWithdrawal/Redaction Marker\nClinton Library\nDOCUMENT NO.\nSUBJECT/TITLE\nDATE\nRESTRICTION\nAND TYPE\n002. fax\nTo Margy Waller From Deborah Vincent; RE: address/phone\n11/27/2000\nP6/b(6)\nnumber/personal info [partial] (1 page)\nCOLLECTION:\nClinton Presidential Records\nDomestic Policy Council\nAnna Richter\nOA/Box Number: 23737\nFOLDER TITLE:\nLegacy Documents and Drafts [binder] [3]\n2011-0638-S\nms153\nRESTRICTION CODES\nPresidential Records Act - [44 U.S.C. 2204(a)]\nFreedom of Information Act - 15 U.S.C. 552(b)]\nP1 National Security Classified Information [(a)(1) of the PRA]\nb(1) National security classified information |(b)(1) of the FOIA]\nP2 Relating to the appointment to Federal office [(a)(2) of the PRA]\nb(2) Release would disclose internal personnel rules and practices of\nP3 Release would violate a Federal statute [(a)(3) of the PRAJ\nan agency [(b)(2) of the FOIA]\nP4 Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential commercial or\nb(3) Release would violate a Federal statute ((b)(3) of the FOIA]\nfinancial information [(a)(4) of the PRA]\nb(4) Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential or financial\nP5 Release would disclose confidential advice between the President\ninformation [(b)(4) of the FOIA]\nand his advisors, or between such advisors {a)(5) of the PRA]\nb(6) Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of\nP6 Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of\npersonal privacy [(b)(6) of the FOIA]\npersonal privacy [(a)(6) of the PRAJ\nb(7) Release would disclose information compiled for law enforcement\npurposes |(b)(7) of the FOIA]\nC. Closed in accordance with restrictions contained in donor's deed\nb(8) Release would disclose information concerning the regulation of\nof gift.\nfinancial institutions |(b)(8) of the FOIA]\nPRM. Personal record misfile defined in accordance with 44 U.S.C.\nb(9) Release would disclose geological or geophysical information\n2201(3).\nconcerning wells |(b)(9) of the FOIA]\nRR. Document will be reviewed upon request.\n11/27/2000\n10:11\nOFFICE OF SECRETARY -> 94567431\nNO. 846\n002\n[002]\nPhong Le\nP6/(b)(6)\nSanta Clara County Housing Authority contact:\nSandi Douglas (408) 572-4200\nPhong is a Vietnamese immigrant who escaped adversity in his country and is now building a\nbetter life in the United States with his family. Phong, his wife and two teenage children have\n2000. used their WtW voucher to rent a house where they began to receive rental assistance in July\nWhen Phong came to the United States, he did not have skills that he could utilize in the\nAmerican workforce, and lacked English language proficiency. Phong enrolled in a community\ncollege to take ESL and electronic assembly classes and completed a series of Welfare-to-Work\nMoney Management workshops.\nSince the start of Phong's participation in the WtW voucher program, he has completed his AS\ndegree in Electronics Assembly and now has a basic command of the English language. He is no\nassembler longer receiving welfare assistance and is working full-time at Flextronics as an electronics\nP6/(b)(6)\nPhong hopes that he and his family will be able to purchase a new home within the next ten\nyears.\nWORKING FAMILIES REAL PEOPLE\nWelfare Reform\nSuccess Stories\nRhonda Costa, Salomon Smith Barney\nRhonda Costa didn't dream much when she was on welfare. She spent her days trying to pay her\nbills with a $280 a month welfare check and her nights shielding her two daughters from stray\ngunfire in a one-bedroom apartment. Rhonda decided to change her life after her oldest\ndaughter, Lakiyah, told Rhonda to get up and do something with her life. \"It really hit home\nwhen your 11-year-old daughter recognizes that you are not doing anything productive with your\nlife,\" said Rhonda. The next day, Rhonda enrolled with Wildcat Service Corporation, a New\nYork service provider that trains welfare recipients for jobs. After a 16-week training course,\nRhonda was hired by Salomon Smith Barney. Rhonda was recently promoted to office manager\nand now has an assistant of her own - a Wildcat graduate. Through Salomon Smith Barney's\ntuition reimbursement program, Rhonda is taking a class at Borough of Manhattan Community\nCollege for her business management degree. \"It's great when you have a job where you're\nexcited to get out of bed in the morning,\" she said. (Introduced POTUS at WH in 5/9798; Update\nis from WTW Partnership Summer 2000 Report)\n\"I want to thank Wildcat Services, Salomon Smith Barney and every business here, who has\ngiven someone a chance to make a better life for themselves. I have made a better life for my\ngirls and myself. Just because a person was on welfare, doesn't mean that they can't get out and\nwork. They just need a chance and I'm living proof that it can be done.' (May 27, 1998)\nLaTonya R. Stephens, Duncanville, TX\nLaTonya Stephens was determined to reach her dreams when she and her two daughters -\nRegina and Nakeisha - moved to Dallas three years ago to get a fresh start after living on public\nassistance. Her path off welfare began with GED and computer training through the Dallas\nHousing Authority, and entrance into a customized training program offered by Goodwill and\nBank of America to train people for jobs as Customer Service Representatives. LaTonya is now\na member of the top performing Call Center team at Bank of America and has won a national\naward for her work performance (and a trip to Beverly Hills). With benefits like subsidized child\ncare, medical, 401(k), life insurance and stock options, LaTonya has purchased a car and is now\nclosing in on her biggest dream - a house with a backyard. Through the Bank's Associate Home\nOwnership program, LaTonya has been working with a personal financial counselor, will take\nadvantage of an employee $5,000 principal-free loan, will qualify for a mortgage at a discounted\nrate, and begin house hunting this summer. From homeless to homeowner in two years -\nLaTonya Stephens. (Participated in POTUS WTW Town Hall in 8.99; Update is from WTW\nPartnership Summer 2000 Report) [NOTE: Would need to call to get quote.]\nMaria Mercado, Boston, MA\nMaria Mercado never graduated from high school, but now, she can't stop thinking about\ncollege. After spending nine years on welfare before landing a job with Marshalls, Maria has\nstarted college funds for her two daughters Elixmarie, 11, and Maria Ellena, 7. \"I want them tto\nhave the opportunity to follow their dreams,\" she said. For almost a decade, she dreamed of\ngetting off welfare. In the autumn of 1998, Maria entered The First Step Transition to Work\nProgram, which is a collaborative program between The TJX Companies, Inc. and Morgan\nMemorial Goodwill Industries. The program led to an internship at Marshalls, where Maria\ndiscovered her natural ability for retail. She was promoted from intern to full-time sales\nassociate to a merchandising lead sales position. Each accomplishment gave her more\nconfidence and inspired her to pursue additional responsibility. Maria is now training in TJX's\nBridges To Management program and is well on her way to becoming an Assistant Store\nManager. She is studying to earn her GED and hopes to pursue an accounting degree. \"I learned\nthat nothing is impossible,\" said Maria. (Participated in POTUS WTW Town Hall in 8.99;\nUpdate is from WTW Partnership Summer 2000 Report)\n\"I am very proud of myself that I had accomplished SO much in SO short time, and become a\ndependable person. With the support of my two beautiful daughters, my family, Goodwill,\nMarshalls, and the thanks from my bottom of my heart to TJX company. (August 3, 2000)\nBusiness Stories:\nUnited Airlines\nGerald Greenwald, Chairman Emeritus, United Airlines and Chairman of the Board, The\nWelfare to Work Partnership\nUnited Airlines is one of the five founding companies of the Welfare to Work Partnership and\nexpects to reach their goal of hiring 2,000 former welfare recipients before the end of the year.\nUnited has used the Partnership as a tool to enhance morale and a better working environment\nfor all United employees, which has resulted in nearly doubling their retention rate. One\ninnovative step this company has taken to help former welfare to work employ esrecipients\ntransition into a -their new job at United is through a volunteer mentoring program with current\nUnited employees. The mentors are there to be a friend, help with workplace questions, and to\noffer encouragement. This foundation has contributed in the company's success in hiring and\nretaining welfare to work employees.\nUnited Parcel Service of America\nJames Kelly, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, UPS\nUPS has been a leader in recruiting and hiring welfare recipients for the past 25 years and as one\nof the five founding members of the Welfare to Work Partnership, UPS has become even more\ninvolved in hiring welfare recipients and encouraging other companies to get involved since\n1997. To date, UPS has hired 2535,000 [35,000 since 1997 per the info the Partnership just sent\nme for recent POTUS letters to Rodney and Jim Kelly] welfare to work employees in 40\nlocations throughout the country including Atlanta, Camden, Chicago, Philadelphia and San\nDiego. In the Philadelphia area, Rodney Carroll (formerly Operations Division Manager, UPS\nand now, Chief Operating Executive Officer and President, The Welfare to Work Partnership)\nand UPS helped to create a bus system with SEPTA (South Eastern Philadelphia Transit\nAuthority), that allowed Rodney to personally hire more than 700 people from welfare to work at\nUPS. Transportation has been one of the major roadblocks in welfare to work success, and the\nprogram he created, which started in 1996 with 4 buses and has grown today to a total of 54\nbuses, now moves thousands of people to their jobs daily.\nLoews Hotels (Miami, FL)\nJonathan Tisch, Chief Executive Officer\nA board member of the Welfare to Work Partnership since 1997, Jonathan Tisch leads a rapidly\nexpanding chain of 15 [still?] hotels and resorts. Loews empowers individuals and communities\nby partnering with organizations to create jobs for and assist in the training of welfare recipients.\nA prime example of this welfare to work effort is in Miami, where Loews and 44 other members\nof the Greater Miami & the Beaches Hotel Association worked with Mayor Alex Penelas's\noffice, the local WAGES coalition, and service providers such as Lockheed Martin and America\nWorks, to meet the need for enthusiastic well-trained employees. To date, Loews has hired 40\n[up to date?] responsible and qualified individuals from the welfare rolls into well-paying jobs\nwith growth opportunities in their new 800-room hotel in Miami Beach. The success of this\nventure has inspired Loews to replicate this model at all of their new properties, while\nmaintaining a strong commitment to hire welfare recipients at pre-existing sites.\nCVS Corporation\nTom Ryan, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President\nSince the inception of CVS's involvement in welfare to work, the company has hired 3,788 [up\nto date?] welfare recipients with a 60 percent retention rate, double the industry standard. With\nactive welfare to work programs throughout the eastern United States, CVS has an established\nrecord of hiring harder-to-place welfare recipients, and has made internal promotion a company\npolicy. In the metropolitan D.C. area, CVS/Pharmacy and the District of Columbia\nApprenticeship Council have developed an apprenticeship program for Pharmacy Technicians.\nThis program has delivered quality employment and training opportunities.\nCitigroup\nMarjorie Magner, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer, The Global\nConsumer, a division of Citigroup\nCitigroup's welfare to work model is unique in that they have developed partnerships between\nSalomon Smith Barney and Wildcat, a New York City-based service provider. The welfare to\nwork employees are trained at Wildcat to use the specific software and computer systems at\nSalomon Smith Barney. Once this training is complete, the former welfare recipients are\nprepared and qualified to work at Salomon Smith Barney, and it has proven such a success that\nCitigroup is replicating this program at other Citigroup subsidiaries around the country and in\nEngland. The retention rate for this Partnership is 90 percent.\nSmall Businesses:\nAutomated Data Sciences (Santa Monica, CA)\nRena Burns, President\nRena Burns, a 47-year-old, small business owner, runs an information technology/software\ndevelopment firm which employs 50 people, and has been a winner of the Small Business\nAdministration's Regional Welfare to Work Entrepreneur Award. Although she did not set out\nto hire welfare recipients, Burns experienced such success with one welfare to work employee\nthat she has now hired four welfare to work employees, and is using the local One-Stop Center as\na hiring source. She believes the small business environment is a good one for welfare to work\nhires, as they are able to be more versatile in providing the personal attention, encouragement,\nand coaching which she feels are key factors to the success of these new workers. Having been\non welfare as one of five children with a single mother, Rena works hard to provide others with\nthe chances she never had growing up. She also believes that as a business owner it is her\nresponsibility to give back to the community that supports her business.\nRachel's Bus Company, Inc.\nE. Rachel Hubka, Owner and Chief Executive Officer\nRachel's Bus Company, Inc. is a contract carrier for Chicago Public Schools. Rachel is a former\nwelfare recipient who firmly believes that small businesses like hers should make a personal\ncommitment to hire qualified welfare recipients and help them maintain their employment.\nApproximately 40 percent of her 150 employees have come from a welfare background. Ms.\nHubka thinks that the welfare to work program has provided her with motivated workers, and \"In\nreturn, I have been able to help my employees improve their self-esteem and gain hope for\nthemselves and their children's futures. Because our future depends on continuing to hire from\nthe welfare rolls, my commitment is to hire and train as many qualified individuals as are\navailable.\"\nGeneral Converters and Assemblers, Inc.\nGeorge Stinson, Chairman of the Board, GCA\nGeneral Converters and Assemblers, Inc. is a contract packaging and manufacturing company\nlocated in Racine, Wisconsin. George Stinson has been hiring former welfare recipients for\nmore than thirty years, and today more than half of his employees were once welfare\nbeneficiaries. Mr. Stinson claims that, \"Welfare to work has been crucial to GCA's expansion\nover the last thirty years. We are living proof that you can help your community and improve\nyour bottom line at the same time.\" Mr. Stinson has also been active in recruiting and educating\nother companies about the Welfare to Work Partnership and has partnered with local\norganizations, such as the Workforce Investment Board and the One Stop Job Center, to provide\njob-specific training and personal mentors for welfare to work employees.\nEarned Income Tax Credit Expansion\nJessica Cupp, of Thurmont, MD, is a married mother of 2-year-old triplet girls. Her husband,\nTommy Cupp, has been working for B&J Insulators in Frederick, MD for three years. In\nSeptember 1997, Jessica and Tommy quickly went from a 2 person, 2 income earner family to a\n5 person, 1 income earner family. The Cupp triplets were born 26 weeks into Jessica's\npregnancy at very low birth weights and with several medical problems. Jessica was forced to\nstop her work at a childcare center in order to care for her own three children. In bothFor -1997\nand 1998through 1999, the Cupp family applied for and received an-Earned Income Tax Credit\nrefunds as well as a child tax credits that they would not have received had it not been for the\n1993 EITC expansion and the new child tax credit promoted by this Administration. -This\nmoney has enabled the family to pay off debt accrued when the triplets were born, to move into a\nhome more suited for raising 3 children, to trade in their 2-door vehicle for a van, and has\nallowed Jessica to stay home and care for their three growing daughters.\n\"With the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit we were able to pay off our debts,\nSO we could afford the mortgage payments to buy a home and we bought a used van that we fixed\nWithdrawal/Redaction Marker\nClinton Library\nDOCUMENT NO.\nSUBJECT/TITLE\nDATE\nRESTRICTION\nAND TYPE\n003. paper\nWorking Families Real People; RE: phone number/personal info\nn.d.\nP6/b(6)\n[partial] (2 pages)\nCOLLECTION:\nClinton Presidential Records\nDomestic Policy Council\nAnna Richter\nOA/Box Number: 23737\nFOLDER TITLE:\nLegacy Documents and Drafts [binder] [3]\n2011-0638-S\nms 153\nRESTRICTION CODES\nPresidential Records Act - [44 U.S.C. 2204(a)|\nFreedom of Information Act - [5 U.S.C. 552(b)]\nP1 National Security Classified Information |(a)(1) of the PRA]\nb(1) National security classified information [(b)(1) of the FOIA]\nP2 Relating to the appointment to Federal office |(a)(2) of the PRAJ\nb(2) Release would disclose internal personnel rules and practices of\nP3 Release would violate a Federal statute [(a)(3) of the PRA]\nan agency |(b)(2) of the FOIA]\nP4 Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential commercial or\nb(3) Release would violate a Federal statute |(b)(3) of the FOIA]\nfinancial information |(a)(4) of the PRA]\nb(4) Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential or financial\nP5 Release would disclose confidential advice between the President\ninformation [(b)(4) of the FOIA]\nand his advisors, or between such advisors |a)(5) of the PRA]\nb(6) Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of\nP6 Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of\npersonal privacy [(b)(6) of the FOIA)\npersonal privacy |(a)(6) of the PRAJ\nb(7) Release would disclose information compiled for law enforcement\npurposes [(b)(7) of the FOIA]\nC. Closed in accordance with restrictions contained in donor's deed\nb(8) Release would disclose information concerning the regulation of\nof gift.\nfinancial institutions [(b)(8) of the FOIA]\nPRM. Personal record misfile defined in accordance with 44 U.S.C.\nb(9) Release would disclose geological or geophysical information\n2201(3).\nconcerning wells [(b)(9) of the FOIA]\nRR. Document will be reviewed upon request.\n[003]\nup. The EITC was worth a mortgage payment for (1 month. That was a boost that my husband\nand / really appreciated. It kind of rewarded the hard work he put in, just when we really\nneeded it. \" (January 12, 2000)\n[NOTE: This family was featured at an event to highlight a FY2001 budget proposal to expand\nthe EITC for families with 3 children, which we did not get this year. They benefited from ETTC\nin 1997 and 1998, but as of the event were no longer eligible because of an increase in income.]\nFatherhood\nCarlos Rosas, of St. Paul, MN, is a 33 year old father from St. Paul, Minnesota, who enrolled in a\nfathers' employment and training program in October 1996 when he was not earning enough\nmoney to keep up with his child support obligation for his son, Ricardo, who is now 13 years\nold. At that time, Ricardo's mother was receiving welfare. During his time with the program\noperated by the Ramsey County Child Support office, Carlos worked hard to upgrade his skills\nand increase his earning power SO he could meet his child support responsibilities, save money to\nsend Ricardo to college, and improve his own future. In January 1999, when he introduced the\nPresident at an event on responsible fatherhood and Welfare-to-Work, Carlos was balancing a\nfull time job as a head maintenance worker with finishing his degree at a two-year Electronics\nTechnology/Computer Sciences program. In May 1999, Carlos graduated from St. Paul\nTechnical College and-started a full-time job as an In-Shop Technician at Stringer Business\nSystems. In January 2000, he was invited to join the First Lady in viewing the President's State\nof the Union Address. In July 2000, Carlos was recommended to and hired by Check\nTechnology Corporation as a Systems Technician, and he received a significant raise and great\nbenefits.\nP6/(b)(6)\n\"With the help of this [fatherhood] program 1 am proud to say that / am on my way to a\nrewarding career in électronics technology and computer science, and am again paying my child\nsupport regularly. / know that Ricardo is proud of me. and I am glad that I can be a good role\nmodel for him. I want to thank the President for supporting fathers and programs for fathers\nlike the one I am involved in. (January 25, 1999)\nCould get quotes/statments from the following people:\nJoe Jones, President\nThe Center for Fathers, Families & Workforce Development (CFWD)\nBaltimore, MD\n410-367-42465691\nJoe Jones is a nationally recognized leader in promoting responsible fatherhood, especially\namong low-income fathers or 'dead broke dads'. He has played a key role in contributing to the\ndevelopment of the Administration's policy on responsible fatherhood, including participating in\nthe 1994 Family Reunion Conference that Al and Tipper Gore held on involving men in their\nchildren's lives that is widely hailed as a pivotal point in the development of the fatherhood\nmovement. At the same time, he has implemented a successful local program in Baltimore. Joe\nwas raised by a single mother in a Baltimore housing project, and got involved in drugs as a\n[003]\nteenager. He eventually shed his addictions after he entered a rehabilitation program, and then\ndecided to enter the social services field to help others who faced similar challenges. In 1993, he\nworked with the Baltimore human services agency to found the Men's Services component of\nBaltimore's federally-funded Healthy Start Program. Today, the Center for Fathers, Families and\nWorkforce Development that he started has served more than 700 fathers, providing\nemployment, parenting classes, helping fathers meet their child support obligations, and offering\nother critical services including domestic violence counseling.\nP6/(b)(6)\nTransportation\nKK: since you don't have similar context for other people, you may not need this at all, but if\nyou do leave it in, I'd revise/update as follows\nOn February 2223, 2000 the President announced several new initiatives to help low-income\nfamilies get on the road to work and opportunity by making it easier for them to own a car or\nobtain public transportationa new regulation that enabled 150.000 individuals to own a reliable\ncar without losing eligibility for food stamps. He also called on Congress to enact three\nlegislative proposals in his FY20001 budget that will: 1) Since then, FY 2001 appropriations\nbills signed by the President will enable 245,000 more families-people to own a car and still get\nfood stamps by allowing states to use the more generous rules already put in place for their\nwelfare reform programs and will provide $100;2) double funding to $150-million for Access to\nJobs grants to support innovative, locally-designed transportation solutions. And, a final Food\nStamp regulation announced by the President on November 18th will allow over 100,000 more\nlow-income individuals to own a reliable car without losing food stamp eligibility; and 3) allow\nlow income families to use Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) to save for a car.\nMichael Alexander, from Brockton, NY, is a 24-year-old single father of two children. Mr.\nAlexander is working hard to find jobs to support his family, but because he resides in an area\nwith very limited public transportation and he did not own a car, it was very difficult for him to\nmaintain steady employment.\nP6/(b)(6)\nThrough the help of a [federally funded2Jfederally-funded, MW, you checked this with Irene,\nright? -county run program, EARNA CAR, Mr. Alexander was recently able to purchase a used\nvehicle. He attended classes about car maintenance, helped repair a donated car, and with the\nhelp of a local bank worked out a manageable loan payment. Now he is working part-time at\nDunn Tire and attending classes in computer repair at a local community college. He is in the\nprocess of moving into full-time employment, SO he can fully support his children and leave\npublic assistance [does this reflect updates you just got?]. Without this car, it would be\nextremely difficult for him to balance his responsibilities at home with his current work and\nschool schedule, much less pursue the full-time employment that would make him completely\nself-sufficient. [Introduced POTUS at 2/23/00 event - see above]\n\"Because of my new, reliable car, I now will be able to get to and maintain a full-time job I\nknow that this car will be very helpful in reaching my goal of leaving public assistance and\nsupporting my family on my own... I am glad the President understands how important it is for\npeople like me to have reliable transportation as they are working to support their families. \"\n(February 232, 2000)\nTiffany Smith, Philadelphia, PA\nUPS\n[WTW Partnership to find out if area received federal funds to improve transportation system]\nJulie T. Bosland\n11/14/2000 10:32:40 AM\nRecord Type:\nRecord\nTo:\nKarin Kullman/OPD/EOP@EOP Anna Richter/OPD/EOP@EOP\nCC:\nSubject: Fatherhood contacts\nJoe Jones, President\nThe Center for Fathers, Families & Workforce Development (CFWD)\nBaltimore, MD\n410-367-4246\nJeff Johnson, President/CEO\nNational Center for Strategic Nonprofit Planning and Community Leadership\nWashington, D.C.\n202-822-6725\nPreston Garrison, Executive Director\nNational Practitioners Network for Fathers and Families\nWashington, D.C.\n202-737-6683\nWelfare to work - - Businesses & People - Dorian calling KK today\nChildsupport:\nCenter for Law & Social Policy (CLASP)\n3285140\nJerriJensen X\n1\nFatherhood:\nJoeJones- Role of fathers emphasized\nCarlos-\nFamilies quote in that\nLexis\nThansportations:\nFood stamps\n\"98 , slater WHEVENA\nAccesstoJobs\nJuly 14 1999\nTANF Flexibility\nMichael\nLexts Teen Pregnancy:\nBrandy- - VPOTUS / POTUS (Events\nCampaign-\n-\nTobacco:\nCampaign\nLexis Housing:\n- Validators\nPage 3\n1ST DOCUMENT of Level 1 printed in FULL format.\nPublic Papers of the Presidents\nMay 20, 1997\nCITE: 33 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 744\nLENGTH: 2633 words\nHEADLINE: Remarks Launching the Welfare to Work Partnership\nBODY:\nThank you, George Stinson, for your wonderful introduction, your remarks, and\nmost importantly, for your very, very powerful example. I thank the Governors,\nTom Carper and Tommy Thompson, my former colleagues and friends, for being here\nand for the power of their example. I thank the Members of Congress, and most of\nall, I thank all the business leaders who are here, Gerry Greenwald and the\nleaders of the other companies that were with us when we just had 5, and all of\nyou who are part of our first 105 thank you all.\nAnd I want to say a special word of thanks to my friend Eli Segal. He'd be a\nlot richer man if he'd never met me. [Laughter] I have but I have made him\nAmerica's reigning expert in public startups. [Laughter] He is truly the father\nof AmeriCorps, the national service program that I love. And I can say, as I've\nbeen around the country now for nearly 4 1/2 years, more people have come up to\nme and said of AmeriCorps, that changed my life for the better than anything I\nhave done as President, except now this will be more numerous.\nBecause now you know, Eli and I were just sitting around talking one day,\nand he said, \"Now, what can I do for you now?\" And I said, \"Well, we passed this\nwelfare reform law,\" and I said, \"I really believe in it, but I mean, you know,\nthere's no way in the world we're going to get there. We've got the deficit,\nwe've got to balance the budget, and we can't possibly meet the hiring targets\nof the welfare reform law unless we can organize the private sector and maximize\nin every State all the options to give people incentives to hire people in the\nprivate sector to move people from welfare to work. Oh, we can get a little\nmoney to put into the very high unemployment areas for the community service\njobs and Congress has agreed to do that, but we've got to have the private\nsector.\" And he said, \"We can do that.\" Then he found Gerry and the other first\n4 that were here, who are here in the audience, and then there were 100, and\nsoon there will be 1,000. And I thank you all very much.\nI would like to talk about this today, a little bit, from my perspective as\nPresident, but first let me say that I respect the fact that those of you who\ncome here, come here as Americans. You come here primarily as business people.\nSome of you are Republicans; some of you are Democrats; some of you probably\nwish you had never met a politician. [Laughter] But you all recognize that this\nis not a partisan issue, that it is a moral obligation for our country. It is\nAmerica's business, and therefore, it must be the work of American business.\nHow did we get this goal of moving a million people from welfare to work by\nthe year 2000? How did you get here, to make a difference, as you can, as you\nsaw from the young women who have been introduced here, to help people to move\nPage 4\nPublic Papers of the Presidents\nfrom a lifetime of dependence to one of independence, to move from burdening\ntheir children with a legacy of despair to leaving their children with an\ninheritance of hope? Well, it all goes back to the effort we have made now as\na nation. Some of us, as you heard the Governors talking, have been involved\nwith this welfare reform issue a long time.\nBut when I became President, I was convinced that we had to change both the\neconomic policy and the social policy of the country if we wanted America to\nwork again for everyone; that we had to do something to get the deficit down and\nexpand trade and, at the same time, invest more money in education and science\nand technology and research and the things that would grow the economy; but that\nwe had to prove that America could work again in a fundamental human way. So we\nhad to deal with crime. We had to deal with our great diversity and get people\nto come together across the lines that divide us and a stronger community. We\nhad to deal with the conflicts people feel with family and work, that working\npeople are having trouble raising their kids too and meeting their obligations\nat work.\nAnd a big part of this mosaic was to change the culture of dependency that\nhad arisen around our welfare system. There was lots of evidence that nobody\nreally liked the welfare system very much, especially the people that were on\nit. There was also, frankly, a lot of evidence that, for about half the people\nthat were on it, it worked reasonably well, just because, for those people,\nyou'd have to practically throw them up against a wall to stop them from doing\nall right in life people that hit a rough patch in life, and they'd be on\npublic assistance and they'd go on. But increasingly, to the point where we\nwound up with slightly more. than half of people on welfare were long-term\ndependents who felt literally unable to come back into the mainstream of\nAmerican life.\nWell, we've seen a lot of progress in the last few years, and a lot of it's\nbeen helped by the fact that we've got the lowest unemployment rate in 24 years,\nand for the first time ever, our economy produced about 12 million jobs in a 4\nyear administration period. In that time, the welfare rolls had their biggest\nreduction ever in that short a period of time. And SO I began to think, well,\nmaybe we can make the welfare reform targets. And then I realized I asked the\nCouncil of Economic Advisers to study this, and I said \"How much of this welfare\ndecline is due to the economy doing better, and how much of it is due to the\nfact that most States now are really working hard on welfare reform with us?\nThey've gotten waivers from the Federal Government to get out from under rules\nand regulations and move people to work.\"\nAnd the study indicated that about 40 percent a little more of the\npeople moved from welfare to work because the economy got better and just the\nlabor markets got tighter. About over a third, more or less, got there because\nmost States were aggressively working with us either statewide or in parts of\ntheir States on welfare reform, and about a quarter got there for some other\nreason. But one of the reasons was that child support collections were increased\nby 50 percent in the last 4 years.\nSo then we said, \"Okay, let's change. Let's go another step. Let's tell\npeople that if they're able-bodied, they can only have 5 years of welfare over\nthe course of a lifetime and no more than 2 years at one time, and let's give\nthe States responsibility and the power and the money to design State by State a\nPage 5\nPublic Papers of the Presidents\nwelfare reform system that will work and, in effect, will have to be designed\ncommunity by community.\" That was the import of the welfare reform law. And in\nthat law, as the Congressman here will tell you, they set up very strict\ntargets. But essentially, about 40 percent of the population has to be fully\ninto this law over the next 4 years. That's how we got to this burden you're\nundertaking, because I want all of you who signed on to understand what is at\nstake here.\nNow, what that means, bottom line, is that we have to move about another\n900,000 to one million people in the work force in the next 4 years to meet the\nrequirements of the law, which will move about 2.5 million people off welfare,\nbecause the average welfare family is about 2.5, 2.6 million, something like\nthat.\nNow, if we produce another 12 million jobs, we'll get close anyway. But it\nwould be the first time in history that we ever did it 8 years in a row, since\nwe've only done it once 4 years in a row, and we just came out of that. Maybe we\ncan do it. And I'd be the last to say we couldn't. But even if we did that\nhere's the point I want to make even if we did that, if we don't have people\nlike this man and like all of you, the people who would come off would be those\nwho might make it off under any circumstances. And what we are trying to do\nhere, the import of the reform welfare law, was to change, challenge, and end\nthe culture of poverty, which means you have to find people who don't think they\ncan make it, who have no idea what a resume is, who never had to show up on time\nbefore.\nThere are people in this audience today have helped find people like that\nbefore, and I wish all of you who have actually hired people from welfare to\nwork were up here speaking today. But what this is about is saying that we are\ngoing to go beyond what the normal economy would produce; we're going to make an\nextra effort. And the Government will do its part, but it has to be led by the\nprivate sector.\nNow, in April, the Vice President and I announced that we would hire at least\n10,000 welfare recipients in the next 4 years without replacing anybody, just\nthrough job turnover, in an area where we will expand employment, which I think\nis a pretty good thing in a Federal Government that's 300,000 people smaller\nthan it was 4 years ago when I took office. We'll do 10,000. And with the help\nof Secretary Slater and some of our other Cabinet Secretaries, we're going to\nwork with our private contractors, the people that do direct business with us,\nto hire 10,000 more. And we believe we can do that.\nWhen we reached the budget agreement historic budget agreement with the\nleaders of Congress to balance the budget, it not only will give us the first\nbalanced budget in almost 30 years, it contains the elements that we agree\njointly should be a part of our contribution to your welfare reform effort. So\nlet me mention them.\nFirst, it provides, as I said earlier, $ 3 billion to help cities and States\nto create jobs and subsidize jobs, either community service jobs or subsidized\nprivate sector jobs. That money will be targeted to very high unemployment areas\nwhere you cannot reasonably expect any effort to deal with the time deadlines.\nSecond, it encourages employers to hire and retain welfare recipients by\nPage 6\nPublic Papers of the Presidents\ngiving a 50 percent tax credit over 2 years for up to $ 10,000 in wages for\nevery long-term welfare recipient hired that does not displace someone else.\nNow, these two things will help. But in addition to that, we have other big\nproblems. One of the biggest problems that we think we need to get more help\non is transportation. You heard Governor Carper talking about child care.\nThere's $ 4 billion more in the welfare reform bill for child care. But there\nwas a study that came out of Georgia recently which said that of the entry-level\njobs in the inner city in fast food establishments, for example, something like,\nI don't know, 80 percent of the jobs were held by people who were low-income\nadults. In the suburbs, just a little more than half of those jobs were held by\npeople who were low-income adults. The transportation barrier kept them from\nmaximizing their ability to move from dependence to independence.\nSo since two out of three new jobs are created in the suburbs and a\nsignificant percentage of people on welfare live in urban centers, it is very\nimportant that we do more on that. Today, we're awarding seed grants to 24\nStates to develop transportation schemes to help people go and get the jobs\nwhere the jobs are. And the legislation that we proposed in the new\ntransportation bill would provide $ 600 million to help States and local\ncommunities put these plans into action. It also was approved in the budget\nagreement, SO that's a very, very good thing.\nAnd let me just say one other thing since we've got two very innovative\nGovernors here, and Governor Thompson, you've seen, they've had a huge drop in\nWisconsin and a sizeable drop in Delaware. If you look around the country,\nthere's still a lot of unevenness in how much the welfare rolls have dropped.\nPart of it is due to underlying economic conditions. But part of it is due to\nhow comprehensive the efforts are.\nOne of the things that I think is important is that the States really do get\ntogether and steal the best ideas from each other. You should know that among\nother things, the States now have the power under this new law to take what was\nthe welfare check and give all or part of it to an employer for a period of time\nas an employment or training subsidy. And a lot of States are doing that as\nwell. There are lots of options out there.\nSo I want to say to all of you who are part of this first hundred, you have\nto work with the Governors and with the State legislators, too, and with the\nmayors and the community-based operators. We've got to have a system here that's\ncommunity-based.\nFinally, let me say that if you look at the numbers, a million people sounds\nlike a huge amount over 4 years, but in an American economy that has well over\n100 million people in the work force, that produced 12 million new jobs in the\nlast 4 years, with these extra incentives around the edges, with committed\nprivate sector employers, small, medium, and large businesses, this is not a\nproblem. This is a startup enterprise that can be stunningly successful. But as\nfar as I know, there is no exact precedent for it in our history. There has\nnever been anything quite like this, and this is something we're trying to do\ntogether. I will do my best to do my part, but I thank all of you from the\nbottom of my heart, starting with Eli and Gerry and encompassing all of you, for\ndoing your part.\nPage 7\nPublic Papers of the Presidents\nYou know, I've tried to learn about what a lot of you are doing. And Mr.\nMarriott here has this Pathways to Independence program that supports the\ntransition from welfare to work. I've seen that. Then I meet a man with a small\nbusiness, and more than half his employees are people who were on welfare. We\nwere in Kansas City not very long ago, and I met a man who stores data for the\nFederal Government, way out in Kansas City - - that's what computers do for you\nthese days -- and he had 25 people in his business, in this data storage\nbusiness, and 5 of them were people that he had hired from the welfare rolls.\nEvery time he expands now, he tries to hire somebody from welfare.\nI know we can do this. I just want to say to you, when you leave here today I\nwant you to imagine what it is you would like your country to look like when we\nenter the 21st century. There will always be people who, for one reason or\nanother, are out of work. There will always be people who, for one reason or\nanother, have a rough spot in life. And as long as we're a nation of immigrants,\nthere will always be people who start out below whatever the Federally\nestablished poverty line is. But we do not have to have a country with an\nintolerable crime rate, with an intolerable failure rate among young people in\npoverty and addiction and violence. And we do not have to have a country with a\npermanent culture of dependence. We do not have to have that.\nWe just had this service summit in Philadelphia where we said, \"We're all\ngoing to get together, without regard to party, try to give every child in\nAmerica five things, a healthy start in life, a safe place to grow up, a decent\neducation, a mentor with a caring adult, and a chance to serve and give\nsomething back, no matter how modest the child's resources are.\"\nI'll tell you, we could do more to get that done by liberating their parents\nfrom the culture of dependence than anything else. You are making the America we\nought to have for the 21st century. And I hope when you leave here today, you'll\nbe even more dedicated to it because the future of our children is riding on it.\nThank you, and God bless you.\nNOTE: The President spoke at 2:50 p.m. in the East Room at the White House.\nIn his remarks, he referred to George R. Stinson, chairman and president,\nGeneral Converters and Assemblers, Inc.; Gov. Tom Carper of Delaware; Gov. Tommy\nG. Thompson of Wisconsin; Gerald Greenwald, chief executive officer, United\nAirlines; Eli Segal, president, Welfare to Work Partnership; J. W. Marriott,\nJr., chairman, president, and chief executive officer, Marriott International,\nInc.\nLANGUAGE: ENGLISH\nLOAD-DATE: August 14, 1997\nTHE WHITE HOUSE\nOffice of the Press Secretary\nFor Immediate Release\nAugust 22, 1996\nREMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT\nAT THE SIGNING OF THE\nPERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND\nWORK OPPORTUNITY RECONCILIATION ACT\nThe Rose Garden\n11:15 A.M. EDT\nTHE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you very much.\nLillie, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vice President, to the members of the\nCabinet. All of the members of Congress who are here, thank you very\nmuch.\nI'd like to say to Congressman Castle, I'm especially glad\nto see you here, because eight years ago about this time when you were\nthe Governor of Delaware and Governor Carper was the Congressman from\nDelaware, you and I were together at a signing like this.\nThank you, Senator Long, for coming here. Thank you,\nGovernors Romer, Carper, Miller and Caperton.\nI'd also like to thank Penelope Howard and Janet Ferrel for\ncoming here. They, too, have worked their way from welfare to\nindependence and we're honored to have them here. I'd like to thank all\nof the people who worked on this bill who have been introduced from our\nstaff and Cabinet, but I'd also like to especially thank Bruce Reed, who\ndid a lot to do with working on the final compromises of this bill; I\nthank him.\nLillie Harden was up there talking, and 1 want to tell you\nhow she happens to be here today. Ten years ago, Governor Castle and I\nwere asked to cochair a Governors Task Force on Welfare Reform, and we\nwere asked together on it, and when we met at Hilton Head in South\nCarolina, we had a little panel. And 41 governors showed up to listen\nto people who were on welfare from several states.\nSo I asked Carol Rasco to find me somebody from our state\nwho had been in one of our welfare reform programs and had gone to work.\nShe found Lillie Harden and Lillie showed up at the program. And I was\nconducting this meeting and I committed a mistake that they always tell\nlawyers never to do: never ask a question you do not know the answer\nto. (Laughter.)\nBut she was doing so well talking about it, as you saw how\nwell-spoken she was today -- and I said, \"Lillie, what's the best thing\nabout being off welfare?\" And she looked me straight in the eye and\nsaid, \"When my boy goes to school and they say what does your mama do\nfor a living, he can give an answer.\" I have never forgotten that.\n(Applause.) And when I saw the success of all of her children and the\nsuccess that she's had in the past 10 years, I can tell you, you've had\na bigger impact on me than I've had on you. And I thank you for the\npower of your example, for your family's. And for all of America, thank\nyou very much. (Applause.)\nWhat we are trying to do today is to overcome the flaws of\nthe welfare system for the people who are trapped on it. We all know\nthat the typical family on welfare today is very different from the one\nthat welfare was designed to deal with 60 years ago. We all know that\nthere are a lot of good people on welfare who just get off of it in the\nordinary course of business, but that a significant number of people are\ntrapped on welfare for a very long time, exiling them from the entire\ncommunity of work that gives structure to our lives.\nNearly 30 years ago, Robert Kennedy said, \"Work is the\nmeaning of what this country is all about. We need it as individuals,\nwe need to sense it in our fellow citizens, and we need it as a society\nand as a people.\" He was right then, and it's right now.\nFrom now on, our nation's answer to this great social\nchallenge will no longer be a never-ending cycle of welfare, it will be\nthe dignity, the power and the ethic of work. Today, we are taking an\nhistoric chance to make welfare what it was meant to be: a second\nchance, not a way of life.\nThe bill I'm about to sign, as I have said many times, is\nfar from perfect, but it has come a very long way. Congress sent me two\nprevious bills that I strongly believe failed to protect our children\nand did too little to move people from welfare to work. I vetoed both\nof them. This bill had broad bipartisan support and is much, much\nbetter on both counts.\nThe new bill restores America's basic bargain of providing\nopportunity and demanding in return responsibility. It provides $14\nbillion for child care, $4 billion more than the present law does. It\nis good because without the assurance of child care it's all but\nimpossible for a mother with young children to go to work. It requires\nstates to maintain their own spending on welfare reform and gives them\npowerful performance incentives to place more people on welfare in jobs.\nIt gives states the capacity to create jobs by taking money now used for\nwelfare checks and giving it to employers as subsidies as incentives to\nhire people. This bill will help people to go to work SO they can stop\ndrawing a welfare check and start drawing a paycheck.\nIt's also better for children. It preserves the national\nsafety net of food stamps and school lunches. It drops the deep cuts\nand the devastating changes in child protection, adoption, and help for\ndisabled children. It preserves the national guarantee of health care\nfor poor children, the disabled, the elderly, and people on welfare --\nthe most important preservation of all.\nIt includes the tough child support enforcement measures\nthat, as far as I know, every member of Congress and everybody in the\nadministration and every thinking person in the country has supported\nfor more than two years.\nIt's the most sweeping crackdown on deadbeat parents in\nhistory. We have succeeded in increasing child support collection 40\npercent, but over a third of the cases where there's delinquencies,\ninvolve who cross state lines. For a lot of women and children, the\nonly reason they're on welfare today -- the only reason -- is that the\nfather up and walked away when he could have made a contribution to the\nwelfare of the children. That is wrong. If every parent paid the child\nsupport that he or she owes legally today, we could move 800,000 women\nand children off welfare immediately.\nWith this bill we say, if you don't pay the child support\nyou owe we'll garnish your wages, take away your driver's license, track\nyou across state lines; if necessary, make you work off what you pay --\nwhat you owe. It is a good thing and it will help dramatically to\nreduce welfare, increase independence, and reenforce parental\nresponsibility. (Applause.)\nAs the Vice President said, we strongly disagree with a\ncouple of provisions of this bill. We believe that the nutritional cuts\nare too deep, especially as they affect low-income working people and\nchildren. We should not be punishing people who are working for a\nliving already; we should do everything we can to lift them up and keep\nthem at work and help them to support their children. We also believe\nthat the congressional leadership insisted in cuts in programs for legal\nimmigrants that are far too deep.\nThese cuts, however, have nothing to do with the\nfundamental purpose of welfare reform. I signed this bill because this\nis an historic chance -- where Republicans and Democrats got together\nand said, we're going to take this historic chance to try to recreate\nthe nation's social bargain with the poor. We're going to try to change\nthe parameters of the debate. We're going to make it all new again and\nsee if we can't create a system of incentives which reenforce work and\nfamily and independence.\nWe can change what is wrong. We should not have passed\nthis historic opportunity to do what is right. And so I want to ask all\nof you, without regard to party, to think through the implications of\nthese other non-welfare issues on the American people and let's work\ntogether in good spirits and good faith to remedy what is wrong. We can\nbalance the budget without these cuts, but let's not obscure the\nfundamental purpose of the welfare provisions of this legislation which\nare good and solid, and which can give us at least the chance to end the\nterrible, almost physical isolation of huge numbers of poor people and\ntheir children from the rest of mainstream America. We have to do that.\n(Applause.)\nLet me also say that there's something really good about\nthis legislation. When I sign it we all have to start again. And this\nbecomes everybody's responsibility. After I sign my name to this bill,\nwelfare will no longer be a political issue. The two parties cannot\nattack each other over it. Politicians cannot attack poor people over\nit. There are no encrusted habits, systems and failures that can be\nlaid at the foot of someone else. We have to begin again. This is not\nthe end of welfare reform, this is the beginning. And we have to all\nassume responsibility. (Applause.)\nNow that we are saying with this bill we expect work, we\nhave to make sure the people have a chance to go to work. If we really\nvalue work, everybody in this society -- businesses, non-profits,\nreligious institutions, individuals, those in government -- all have a\nresponsibility to make sure the jobs are there.\nThese three women have great stories. Almost everybody on\nwelfare would like to have a story like that. And the rest of us now\nhave a responsibility to give them that story. We cannot blame the\nsystem for the jobs they don't have anymore. If it doesn't work now,\nit's everybody's fault -- mine, yours, and everybody else. There is no\nlonger a system in the way. (Applause.)\nI've worked hard over the past four years to create jobs\nand to steer investment into places where there are large numbers of\npeople on welfare because there's been no economic recovery. That's\nwhat the empowerment zone program was all about. That's what the\ncommunity development bank initiative was all about. That's what our\nurban Brownfield cleanup initiative was all about -- trying to give\npeople the means to make a living in areas that had been left behind.\nI think we have to do more here in Washington to do that,\nand I'll have more to say about that later. But let me say again, we\nhave to build a new work and family system. And this is everybody's\nresponsibility now. The people on welfare are people just like these\nthree people we honor here today and their families. They are human\nbeings. And we owe it to all of them to give them a chance to come\nback.\nI talked the other day when the Vice President and I went\ndown to Tennessee and we were working with Congressman Tanner's\ndistrict, we were working on a church that had burned. And there was a\npastor there from a church in North Carolina that brought a group of his\npeople in to work. And he started asking me about welfare reform, and I\nstarted telling him about it. And I said, \"You know what you ought to\ndo? You ought to go tell Governor Hunt that you would hire somebody on\nwelfare to work in your church if he would give you the welfare check as\na wage supplement, you'd double their pay and you'd keep them employed\nfor a year or so and see if you couldn't train them and help their\nfamilies and see if their kids were all right.\" I said, \"Would you do\nthat?\" He said, \"In a heartbeat.\"\nI think there are people all over America like that.\n(Applause.) I think there are people all over America like that.\nThat's what I want all of you to be thinking about today -- what are we\ngoing to do now? This is not over, this is just beginning. The\nCongress deserves our thanks for creating a new reality, but we have to\nfill in the blanks. The governors asked for this responsibility; now\nthey've got to live up to it. There are mayors that have\nresponsibilities, county officials that have responsibilities. Every\nemployer in this country that ever made a disparaging remark about the\nwelfare system needs to think about whether he or she should now hire\nsomebody from welfare and go to work. Go to the state and say, okay,\nyou give me the check, I'll use it as an income supplement, I'll train\nthese people, I'll help them to start their lives and we'll go forward\nfrom here.\nEvery single person needs to be thinking -- every person in\nAmerica tonight who sees a report of this who has ever said a\ndisparaging word about the welfare system should now say, \"Okay, that's\ngone. What is my responsibility to make it better?\" (Applause.)\nTwo days ago we signed a bill increasing the minimum wage\nhere and making it easier for people in small businesses to get and keep\npensions. Yesterday we signed the Kassebaum-Kennedy bill which makes\nhealth care more available to up to 25 million Americans, many of them\nin lower-income jobs where they're more vulnerable.\nThe bill I'm signing today preserves the increases in the\nearned income tax credit for working families. It is now clearly better\nto go to work than to stay on welfare -- clearly better. Because of\nactions taken by the Congress in this session, it is clearly better.\nAnd what we have to do now is to make that work a reality.\nI've said this many times, but, you know, most American\nfamilies find that the greatest challenge of their lives is how to do a\ngood job raising their kids and do a good job at work. Trying to\nbalance work and family is the challenge that most Americans in the\nworkplace face. Thankfully, that's the challenge Lillie Harden's had to\nface for the last 10 years. That's just what we want for everybody. We\nwant at least the chance to strike the right balance for everybody.\nToday, we are ending welfare as we know it. But I hope\nthis day will be remembered not for what it ended, but for what it began\n-- a new day that offers hope, honors responsibility, rewards work, and\nchanges the terms of the debate so that no one in America ever feels\nagain the need to criticize people who are poor on welfare, but instead\nfeels the responsibility to reach out to men and women and children who\nare isolated, who need opportunity, and who are willing to assume\nresponsibility, and give them to opportunity and the terms of\nresponsibility. (Applause.)\nNow, I'd like to ask Penelope Howard, Janet Ferrel, Lillie\nHarden, the governors and the members of Congress from both parties who\nare here to come up and join me as I sign the welfare reform bill.\nQ Mr. President, before you sign the bill, can you tell us\nwhether you think it's right to regulate tobacco or nicotine as a drug?\nTHE PRESIDENT: You know, Wolf, under the law, I have to\nwait until the OMB makes a recommendation to me. I think we have to\nanticipate things. I can't say more than that right now.\n(The bill is signed.)\nQ Mr. President, some of your core constituencies are\nfurious with you for signing this bill. What do you say to them?\nTHE PRESIDENT: Just what I said up there. We saved\nmedical care. We saved food stamps. We saved child care. We saved the\naid to disabled children. We saved the school lunch program. We saved\nthe framework of support. What we did was to tell the state, now you\nhave to create a system to give everyone a chance to go to work who is\nable-bodied, give everyone a chance to be independent. And we did --\nthat is the right thing to do.\nAnd now, welfare is no longer a political football to be\nkicked around. It's a personal responsibility of every American who\never criticized the welfare system to help the poor people now to move\nfrom welfare to work. That's what I say.\nThis is going to be a good thing for the country. We're\ngoing to monitor it and we're going to fix whatever is wrong with it.\nQ What guarantees are there that these things will be\nfixed, Mr. President, especially if Republicans remain in control of\nCongress?\nTHE PRESIDENT: That's what we have elections for.\nEND\n11:33 A.M. EDT\nKarin Kullman\n11/13/2000 04:43:37 PM\nRecord Type:\nRecord\nTo:\nAnna Richter/OPD/EOP@EOP\nCC:\nSubject: Quotes/stories for legacy doc\nfyi\nForwarded by Karin Kullman/OPD/EOP on 11/13/2000 04:43 PM\nMargy Waller\n11/13/2000 04:39:22 PM\nRecord Type:\nRecord\nTo:\nKarin Kullman/OPD/EOP@EOP\nCC:\nJulie T. Bosland/OPD/EOP\nSubject: Quotes/stories for legacy doc\nI'm not aware of 'real people' we already know for stories on food stamps or housing. The Center on\nBudget could be or find a validator on FS. Barbara Sard from the Center or Sheila Crowley from The\nNational Low Income Housing Coalition could be a validator on housing.\nOthers who managed these issues before me might recall stories. Do you want us to check with Eric,\nPaul, etc?\nForwarded by Margy Waller/OPD/EOP on 11/13/2000 04:36 PM\nJulie T. Bosland\n11/13/2000 04:07:30 PM\nRecord Type:\nRecord\nTo:\nKarin Kullman/OPD/EOP@EOP\nCC:\nMargy Waller/OPD/EOP@EOP\nSubject: Quotes/stories for legacy doc\nKarin:\nOkay, Andrea suggested the following:\nWelfare to work:\nDorian calling KK 11/14\nWTW Partnership report (real person)\nWTW Partnership business (validator quote)\nChild Support:\nwoman with twins who participated in the signing of the Deadbeat Dads Punishment Act; - Lookup -\nspring/summer 1998, signing in the Oval Office (real person)\nVicki Turetsky, CLASP (validator quote) - Centertor Law Andsocial Policy\npossibly Jerri Jensen from ACES for validator quote\nX\nFatherhood:\nCarlos Rosas (sp?) [she said you'd know who this was] (real person)\nJoe Jones (or Jeff Johnson) (validator quote)\nTransportation:\nMichael (not sure of last name) from February transportation event (real person) may 99\nFood Stamps:\nReal person or validator?? (checking with Margy)\nHousing:\nReal person?? (checking with Margy)\nCenter on Budget and Policy Priorities (validator quote)\nGood PHA?? (we could probably track something down)\nTeen Pregnancy:\nBrandy (not sure of last name); did several events with VPOTUS and FLOTUS (real person)\nSomeone from Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy (validator quote)\nFeel free to page her if you want to discuss further\nDRAFT\nPresident Clinton's Legacy: Strengthening American Families\nIn 1992, the economy was stagnant and middle class families were working longer for less money.\nParents juggled responsibilities and tried to balance work and family, but found they were getting no\nhelp from their government. Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act to allow parents to\ntake unpaid leave to care for a child or a sick relative only to see President Bush veto the\nlegislation twice. At the same time, welfare rolls were growing and Americans knew the system had\nto be changed. Polls showed that 75 percent of Americans agreed with raising the minimum wage in\norder to make work more attractive than welfare, and 86 percent thought that the system needed to\nbe reformed.\nImproving the Lives of America's Working Families\nPresident Clinton was elected with a commitment to put people first. From the first day on the job,\nhe worked to improve the lives of all Americans and to give Americans the opportunities they\nneeded to build strong families and a better future. He fought to reform the welfare system fairly,\nand enacted new measures to make work pay and to help parents balance work and family.\nTransformed the welfare system to one that moves Americans from welfare to work, but refused\nto do so in a way that punished children. President Clinton rejected two punitive welfare reform\nbills before signing the bipartisan 1996 Personal Responsibility Act, which removed barriers that\nkeep people trapped in the welfare system and provided incentives like job training, expanded\nchild care and increased child support enforcement to help them go to work.\nHelped families succeed on the job and at home by enacting the Family and Medical Leave Act -\n- the first law President Clinton signed in 1993. President Clinton won other important victories\nfor children and families including signing a $500 child tax credit, a $1 per hour increase in the\nminimum wage, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, enacting the largest expansion of\nhealth insurance for children ever, and creating incentives for adoption and foster care.\nImproved the access, affordability and quality of child care by nearly doubling funding for Head\nStart and enacting critical quality improvements to the program. The President has more than\ndoubled funding for child care subsidies and passed an Early Learning Fund to improve child\ncare quality.\nTook on the tobacco industry by developing and implementing the first-ever plan to protect our\nchildren from tobacco and end tobacco marketing targeted to young people.\nGave parents new tools to protect their children from media violence by enacting legislation\nrequiring the installation of anti-violence screening chips (V-chips) in all new televisions so that\nparents can screen out television programs they believe are inappropriate for their children. The\nPresident worked with the television industry to create a television ratings system, and called on\nthe FCC to enforce the rule requiring broadcasters to provide three hours of educational\nprogramming for children a day.\nThe Results: Stronger Families\nPresident Clinton's efforts to strengthen families have led to reduce welfare rolls and the lowest tax\nburden on middle class families in a generation.\nThe tax burden on middle class families has dropped to 22.8 percent, the lowest middle-class tax\nburden since 1978.\nMillions of American families have taken time off to care for a new child or sick relatives.\nTeen pregnancy rates have dropped by 20 percent to the lowest level ever recorded.\nDRAFT\nWelfare rolls have been cut in half -- from over 14 million people in 1993 to less than 7 million\ntoday - to the lowest level since 1968. The number of welfare recipients moving to work has\nincreased by 82 percent.\nChild support collections have broken new records, doubling federal and state collections from\n$8 billion in 1993 to $16 billion last year.\nThe child poverty rate has dropped by 16 percent since 1993 to the lowest rate since 1980.\nInvestments in child care have doubled and now help parents provide care for 1.5 million\nchildren.\nAdoptions increased 29 percent between 1996 and 1998.\nReal Stories Go Here\nPage 2\nLEVEL 1 - 3 OF 10 STORIES\nCopyright M2 Communications Ltd 1996\nM2 PRESSWIRE\nAugust 23, 1996\nLENGTH: 3494 words\nHEADLINE: THE WHITE HOUSE\nRemarks by President at signing of Personal Responsibility Act\nHIGHLIGHT:\nThe Rose Garden\nBODY:\nTHE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Lillie, thank you.\nThank you, Mr. Vice President, to the members of the Cabinet. All of the members\nof Congress who are here, thank you very much.\nI'd like to say to Congressman Castle, I'm especially glad to see you here,\nbecause eight years ago about this time when you were the Governor of Delaware\nand Governor Carper was the Congressman from Delaware, you and I were together\nat a signing like this.\nThank you, Senator Long, for coming here. Thank you, Governors Romer,\nCarper, Miller and Caperton.\nI'd also like to thank Penelope Howard and Janet Ferrel for coming here.\nThey, too, have worked their way from welfare to independence and we're honored\nto have them here. I'd like to thank all of the people who worked on this bill\nwho have been introduced from our staff and Cabinet, but I'd also like to\nespecially thank Bruce Reed, who did a lot to do with working on the final\ncompromises of this bill; I thank him.\nLillie Harden was up there talking, and I want to tell you how she happens\nto be here today. Ten years ago, Governor Castle and I were asked to cochair a\nGovernors Task Force on Welfare Reform, and we were asked together on it, and\nwhen we met at Hilton Head in South Carolina, we had a little panel. And 41\ngovernors showed up to listen to people who were on welfare from several states.\nSo I asked Carol Rasco to find me somebody from our state who had been in\none of our welfare reform programs and had gone to work. She found Lillie Harden\nand Lillie showed up at the program. And I was conducting this meeting and I\ncommitted a mistake that they always tell lawyers never to do: never ask a\nquestion you do not know the answer to. (Laughter.)\nBut she was doing SO well talking about it, as you saw how well-spoken she\nwas today and I said, \"Lillie, what's the best thing about being off welfare?\"\nAnd she looked me straight in the eye and said, \"When my boy goes to school and\nthey say what does your mama do for a living, he can give an answer.\" I have\nnever forgotten that. (Applause.) And when I saw the success of all of her\nchildren and the success that she's had in the past 10 years, I can tell you,\nyou've had a bigger impact on me than I've had on you. And I thank you for the\nPage 3\nM2 PRESSWIRE August 23, 1996\npower of your example, for your family's. And for all of America, thank you very\nmuch. (Applause.)\nWhat we are trying to do today is to overcome the flaws of the welfare\nsystem for the people who are trapped on it. We all know that the typical family\non welfare today is very different from the one that welfare was designed to\ndeal with 60 years ago. We all know that there are a lot of good people on\nwelfare who just get off of it in the ordinary course of business, but that a\nsignificant number of people are trapped on welfare for a very long time,\nexiling them from the entire community of work that gives structure to our\nlives.\nNearly 30 years ago, Robert Kennedy said, \"Work is the meaning of what this\ncountry is all about. We need it as individuals, we need to sense it in our\nfellow citizens, and we need it as a society and as a people.' He was right\nthen, and it's right now.\nFrom now on, our nation's answer to this great social challenge will no\nlonger be a never-ending cycle of welfare, it will be the dignity, the power and\nthe ethic of work. Today, we are taking an historic chance to make welfare what\nit was meant to be: a second chance, not a way of life.\nThe bill I'm about to sign, as I have said many times, is far from perfect,\nbut it has come a very long way. Congress sent me two previous bills that I\nstrongly believe failed to protect our children and did too little to move\npeople from welfare to work. I vetoed both of them. This bill had broad\nbipartisan support and is much, much better on both counts.\nThe new bill restores America's basic bargain of providing opportunity and\ndemanding in return responsibility. It provides $14 billion for child care, $4\nbillion more than the present law does. It is good because without the assurance\nof child care it's all but impossible for a mother with young children to go to\nwork. It requires states to maintain their own spending on welfare reform and\ngives them powerful performance incentives to place more people on welfare in\njobs. It gives states the capacity to create jobs by taking money now used for\nwelfare checks and giving it to employers as subsidies as incentives to hire\npeople. This bill will help people to go to work SO they can stop drawing a\nwelfare check and start drawing a paycheck.\nIt's also better for children. It preserves the national safety net of food\nstamps and school lunches. It drops the deep cuts and the devastating changes in\nchild protection, adoption, and help for disabled children. It preserves the\nnational guarantee of health care for poor children, the disabled, the elderly,\nand people on welfare - the most important preservation of all.\nIt includes the tough child. support enforcement measures that, as far as I\nknow, every member of Congress and everybody in the administration and every\nthinking person in the country has supported for more than two years.\nIt's the most sweeping crackdown on deadbeat parents in history. We have\nsucceeded in increasing child support collection 40 percent, but over a third of\nthe cases where there's delinquencies, involve who cross state lines. For a lot\nof women and children, the only reason they're on welfare today - the only\nreason - is that the father up and walked away when he could have made a\nPage 4\nM2 PRESSWIRE August 23, 1996\ncontribution to the welfare of the children. That is wrong. If every parent paid\nthe child support that he or she owes legally today, we could move 800,000 women\nand children off welfare immediately.\nWith this bill we say, if you don't pay the child support you owe we'll\ngarnish your wages, take away your driver's license, track you across state\nlines; if necessary, make you work off what you pay - what you owe. It is a good\nthing and it will help dramatically to reduce welfare, increase independence,\nand reenforce parental responsibility. (Applause.)\nAs the Vice President said, we strongly disagree with a couple of provisions\nof this bill. We believe that the nutritional cuts are too deep, especially as\nthey affect low-income working people and children. We should not be punishing\npeople who are working for a living already; we should do everything we can to\nlift them up and keep them at work and help them to support their children. We\nalso believe that the congressional leadership insisted in cuts in programs for\nlegal immigrants that are far too deep.\nThese cuts, however, have nothing to do with the fundamental purpose of\nwelfare reform. I signed this bill because this is an historic chance - where\nRepublicans and Democrats got together and said, we're going to take this\nhistoric chance to try to recreate the nation's social bargain with the poor.\nWe're going to try to change the parameters of the debate. We're going to make\nit all new again and see if we can't create a system of incentives which\nreenforce work and family and independence.\nWe can change what is wrong. We should not have passed this historic\nopportunity to do what is right. And SO I want to ask all of you, without regard\nto party, to think through the implications of these other non-welfare issues on\nthe American people and let's work together in good spirits and good faith to\nremedy what is wrong. We can balance the budget without these cuts, but let's\nnot obscure the fundamental purpose of the welfare provisions of this\nlegislation which are good and solid, and which can give us at least the chance\nto end the terrible, almost physical isolation of huge numbers of poor people\nand their children from the rest of mainstream America. We have to do that.\n(Applause.)\nLet me also say that there's something really good about this legislation.\nWhen I sign it we all have to start again. And this becomes everybody's\nresponsibility. After I sign my name to this bill, welfare will no longer be a\npolitical issue. The two parties cannot attack each other over it. Politicians\ncannot attack poor people over it. There are no encrusted habits, systems and\nfailures that can be laid at the foot of someone else. We have to begin again.\nThis is not the end of welfare reform, this is the beginning. And we have to all\nassume responsibility. (Applause.)\nNow that we are saying with this bill we expect work, we have to make sure\nthe people have a chance to go to work. If we really value work, everybody in\nthis society - businesses, non-profits, religious institutions, individuals,\nthose in government - all have a responsibility to make sure the jobs are there.\nThese three women have great stories. Almost everybody on welfare would like\nto have a story like that. And the rest of us now have a responsibility to give\nthem that story. We cannot blame the system for the jobs they don't have\nPage 5\nM2 PRESSWIRE August 23, 1996\nanymore. If it doesn't work now, it's everybody's fault - mine, yours, and\neverybody else. There is no longer a system in the way. (Applause.)\nI've worked hard over the past four years to create jobs and to steer\ninvestment into places where there are large numbers of people on welfare\nbecause there's been no economic recovery. That's what the empowerment zone\nprogram was all about. That's what the community development bank initiative was\nall about. That's what our urban Brownfield cleanup initiative was all about -\ntrying to give people the means to make a living in areas that had been left\nbehind.\nI think we have to do more here in Washington to do that, and I'll have more\nto say about that later. But let me say again, we have to build a new work and\nfamily system. And this is everybody's responsibility now. The people on welfare\nare people just like these three people we honor here today and their families.\nThey are human beings. And we owe it to all of them to give them a chance to\ncome back.\nI talked the other day when the Vice President and I went down to Tennessee\nand we were working with Congressman Tanner's district, we were working on a\nchurch that had burned. And there was a pastor there from a church in North\nCarolina that brought a group of his people in to work. And he started asking me\nabout welfare reform, and I started telling him about it. And I said, \"You know\nwhat you ought to do? You ought to go tell Governor Hunt that you would hire\nsomebody on welfare to work in your church if he would give you the welfare\ncheck as a wage supplement, you'd double their pay and you'd keep them employed\nfor a year or so and see if you couldn't train them and help their families and\nsee if their kids were all right.' I said, \"Would you do that?\" He said, \"In a\nheartbeat. \"\nI think there are people all over America like that. (Applause.) I think\nthere are people all over America like that. That's what I want all of you to be\nthinking about today - what are we going to do now? This is not over, this is\njust beginning. The Congress deserves our thanks for creating a new reality, but\nwe have to fill in the blanks. The governors asked for this responsibility; now\nthey've got to live up to it. There are mayors that have responsibilities,\ncounty officials that have responsibilities. Every employer in this country that\never made a disparaging remark about the welfare system needs to think about\nwhether he or she should now hire somebody from welfare and go to work. Go to\nthe state and say, okay, you give me the check, I'll use it as an income\nsupplement, I'll train these people, I'll help them to start their lives and\nwe'll go forward from here.\nEvery single person needs to be thinking - every person in America tonight\nwho sees a report of this who has ever said a disparaging word about the welfare\nsystem should now say, \"Okay, that's gone. What is my responsibility to make it\nbetter?\" (Applause.)\nTwo days ago we signed a bill increasing the minimum wage here and making it\neasier for people in small businesses to get and keep pensions. Yesterday we\nsigned the Kassebaum-Kennedy bill which makes health care more available to up\nto 25 million Americans, many of them in lower-income jobs where they're more\nvulnerable.\nPage 6\nM2 PRESSWIRE August 23, 1996\nThe bill I'm signing today preserves the increases in the earned income tax\ncredit for working families. It is now clearly better to go to work than to stay\non welfare - clearly better. Because of actions taken by the Congress in this\nsession, it is clearly better. And what we have to do now is to make that work a\nreality.\nI've said this many times, but, you know, most American families find that\nthe greatest challenge of their lives is how to do a good job raising their kids\nand do a good job at work. Trying to balance work and family is the challenge\nthat most Americans in the workplace face. Thankfully, that's the challenge\nLillie Harden's had to face for the last 10 years. That's just what we want for\neverybody. We want at least the chance to strike the right balance for\neverybody.\nToday, we are ending welfare as we know it. But I hope this day will be\nremembered not for what it ended, but for what it began - a new day that offers\nhope, honors responsibility, rewards work, and changes the terms of the debate\nso that no one in America ever feels again the need to criticize people who are\npoor on welfare, but instead feels the responsibility to reach out to men and\nwomen and children who are isolated, who need opportunity, and who are willing\nto assume responsibility, and give them to opportunity and the terms of\nresponsibility. (Applause.)\nNow, I'd like to ask Penelope Howard, Janet Ferrel, Lillie Harden, the\ngovernors and the members of Congress from both parties who are here to come up\nand join me as I sign the welfare reform bill.\nI Mr. President, before you sign the bill, can you tell us whether you think\nit's right to regulate tobacco or nicotine as a drug?\nTHE PRESIDENT: You know, Wolf, under the law, I have to wait until the OMB\nmakes a recommendation to me. I think we have to anticipate things. I can't say\nmore than that right now.\n(The bill is signed.)\nQ Mr. President, some of your core constituencies are furious with you for\nsigning this bill. What do you say to them?\nTHE PRESIDENT: Just what I said up there. We saved medical care. We saved\nfood stamps. We saved child care. We saved the aid to disabled children. We\nsaved the school lunch program. We saved the framework of support. What we did\nwas to tell the state, now you have to create a system to give everyone a chance\nto go to work who is able-bodied, give everyone a chance to be independent. And\nwe did - that is the right thing to do.\nAnd now, welfare is no longer a political football to be kicked around. It's\na personal responsibility of every American who ever criticized the welfare\nsystem to help the poor people now to move from welfare to work. That's what I\nsay.\nThis is going to be a good thing for the country. We're going to monitor it\nand we're going to fix whatever is wrong with it.\nPage 7\nM2 PRESSWIRE August 23, 1996\nQ What guarantees are there that these things will be fixed, Mr. President,\nespecially if Republicans remain in control of Congress?\nTHE PRESIDENT: That's what we have elections for.\nLANGUAGE: English\nLOAD-DATE: May 23, 1997\nPage 2\nLEVEL 1 - 1 OF 53 STORIES\nCopyright 2000 Sentinel Communications Co.\nTHE ORLANDO SENTINEL\nSeptember 17, 2000 Sunday, METRO\nSECTION: INSIGHT; Pg. G1\nLENGTH: 748 words\nHEADLINE: BIG CITIES REMAIN BIG ON WELFARE RELIANCE;\nWELFARE NUMBERS ARE DECLINING, BUT IT'S HARD TO TELL THAT BY LOOKING AT\nAMERICA'S URBAN AREAS.\nBYLINE: Amy Goldstein, Washington Post\nBODY:\nWASHINGTON -- As welfare rolls have plummeted in recent years, families that\nstill rely on government assistance are increasingly concentrated in big cities,\nwhich indicates that welfare reform is failing to ease the burden of poverty on\nurban America.\nNearly three in five people on welfare can be found in the 100 largest U.S.\ncities -- even though they contain just one-third of the nation's population - -\nbecause people there are being weaned from assistance more slowly than in most\nsuburban and rural communities.\nThose findings come from a recent study by the Brookings Institution, a\nWashington, D.C.-based liberal think tank. They provide the latest signs of how\nthe face of welfare has changed in the four years since the federal government\nreplaced the historical welfare safety net with a state-run system that pays\ntemporary benefits and steers people toward jobs.\nThe evidence that welfare recipients are becoming clustered in big cities\nfollows other recent findings that the program is becoming racially isolated,\nwith African-Americans and Hispanics accounting for a growing share of the\nfamilies who remain on the rolls.\nThe data for Florida fits with the national trend, with more than half the\nstate's welfare families subject to time limits for cash assistance living in\nMiami, Jacksonville, Tampa-St. Petersburg and Orlando. Miami's share of\nFlorida's welfare rolls leaped from 24 percent in 1996 to 39 percent in 2000, a\nmore than 50 percent increase. However, in Central Florida, Orange County, the\none with the largest urban core Orlando things are different. Orange County's\nshare of the region's welfare recipients has remained constant since 1997 36\npercent.\n\"One story emerging in welfare reform is that size does matter and the task\nis tougher,\" said Don Winstead, welfare administrator with the Florida\nDepartment of Children and Families.\nThese trends have significant implications. In two years, Congress must\ndecide what to do when the bill that overhauled the welfare system is due to\nPage 3\nOrlando Sentinel Tribune, September 17, 2000\nexpire.\nAlready, there is political pressure to curtail the amount of money the\ngovernment allots to states to help welfare recipients prepare for and keep\njobs.\nResearchers at Brookings and elsewhere, along with officials struggling with\nwelfare reform in several major cities, contend that urban communities will not\nbe able to finish the work of welfare reform without outside help from\nneighboring suburbs and from state and federal governments.\nMoving people off welfare is more difficult in many cities, these officials\nsay, because they face a shortage of entry-level jobs, poverty-ridden\nneighborhoods where education and work experience are scarce, and poor mass\ntransportation to the suburbs, where jobs tend to be more plentiful.\n\"The new jobs are inaccessible to our citizens,' said Timothy M. Kaine, the\nmayor of Richmond, Va., which has less than 3 percent of Virginia's population\nbut 11 percent of its welfare cases. Only a few weeks ago, Kaine noted, did\nlocal officials in Chesterfield County, a neighboring suburb where jobs are\nabundant, agree to start allowing city bus routes to enter the county.\nBy examining the geography of welfare reform, Brookings researchers draw a\nportrait considerably less promising than the common wisdom about what has\nhappened under welfare reform.\nAfter 1994, the year when caseloads were the highest, the number of families\non welfare fell by half, to about 2.5 million last September, according to the\nmost recent federal figures.\nBut that decline, far greater than advocates of welfare reform had hoped for,\nobscures the uneven pace of progress, according to Bruce Katz, director of\nBrookings' Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. The disproportionate burden\nof welfare on urban communities, Katz said, \"is a massive blindspot in welfare\npolicy.'\nThe findings being released by Brookings are not the first clue that certain\ncities are struggling with welfare. But the new analysis, building on two\nearlier, smaller Brookings studies, is the most comprehensive and detailed of\nits kind, calculating the growing burden of welfare on a large number of\nindividual cities and on the urban landscape as a whole.\nBetween 1994 and last year, the findings show, the proportion of the nation's\nwelfare families that live in the 100 largest cities swelled from 47 percent to\n58 percent. The study analyzed cities by looking at urban counties, which in\nsome cases included inner suburbs.\nGRAPHIC: PHOTO: Changing the system. President Clinton hugs\nformer welfare recipient Lillie Harden, of Little Rock, Ark., in the\nRose Garden of the White House, where he signed legislation\noverhauling America's welfare system in 1996.\nDENIS PAQUIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS\nLANGUAGE: ENGLISH\nPage 4\nOrlando Sentinel Tribune, September 17, 2000\nLOAD-DATE: September 18, 2000\nPage 5\nLEVEL 1 - 2 OF 53 STORIES\nCopyright 1999 N.Y.P. Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.\nThe New York Post\nAugust 4, 1999, Wednesday\nSECTION: All Editions; Pg. 031\nLENGTH: 863 words\nHEADLINE: WELFARE: IT'S NOT OVER YET\nBYLINE: Michael Kelly\nBODY:\nIT'S official: The reform of the welfare system is a great triumph of social\npolicy - so great, indeed, as to restore some legitimacy to the whole concept of\nlarge-scale social policy.\nWhen the 1996 law ending welfare as an entitlement was under consideration,\nthe Department of Health and Human Services and the nongovernmental Urban\nInstitute predicted that the proposed reform would push more than a million\nchildren into poverty. Critics warned of social catastrophe. This week, after\nstudying the data for 1998 - the first full year of data available - HHS and the\nUrban Institute have returned their verdicts: The pessimists were wrong. Welfare\nreform did not give rise to catastrophe. It did not fling a million dependent\nchildren into the streets; it did rescue from the grinding tyranny of the dole\nmillions of dependent adults.\nThe principal aim of the 1996 law was to require the states to move adults\noff the welfare rolls and into work. In 1998, the states were obliged to show\nthat 30 percent of adult welfare recipients were working at least 20 hours per\nweek. The actual results, released this week by HHS: On average, 35 percent were\nworking. In some states - Oregon, Montana, Wisconsin, Iowa and Wyoming - more\nthan 55 percent of welfare recipients were working at least half-time.\nThe Urban Institute also released a report this week. Studying women who left\nwelfare between 1995 and 1997, the institute found that a majority - 60 percent\n- were employed at the time they were interviewed. And, as President Clinton\njustifiably boasted Tuesday, the welfare rolls have been cut in half since 1993,\nshrinking from 14.1 million to 7.3 million.\nThe first question about welfare reform's success is: Why? Recall that only a\ndecade ago, the welfare system seemed frozen utterly and forever: We called it,\nin its seeming permanence, the welfare state. In the media-warped public\ndiscussion, the politics of welfare were also locked in place, with liberal\nDemocratic humanists protecting women and children from cruel Reaganite\nketchup-as-vegetable-heads How did we ever get out of this great dismal swamp?\nThe first answer is political. Here is one of those rare happy occasions when\nPage 6\nThe New York Post August 4, 1999, Wednesday\neveryone takes credit and everyone deserves credit.\nGovernors - Republicans mostly, but some Democrats too - led reform well in\nadvance of the administration and Congress, and they get credit for forcing and\ndriving the issue - and, in many states, for implementing reform so\naggressively and creatively as to outstrip the law's requirements.\nNewt Gingrich and his revolutionary Republican Congress of 1994 get credit\nfor drafting three welfare-reform bills, sticking with the cause through two\nClinton vetoes, and holding the president's feet to an election-year fire to win\nenactment the third time out.\nBill Clinton gets credit for making the governors' crusade a national\npromise, with his 1992 campaign pledge to \"end welfare as we know it,\" and for\nkeeping that pledge. It is perhaps true that he kept it reluctantly, but he kept\nit, and more. Clinton worked to undo some of the more draconian and underthought\nelements of the law, and to strongly support the reworked version. In so doing,\nas a Democratic president, Clinton legitimized the reform; he did something\ncrucial that no Republican could have done, and no other Democrat had ever dared\nto do.\nThe second answer to the question of why is one of economics, and one of\nconsiderable debate. Some - Clinton, for one - hold that the 1996 law is\nresponsible for almost all of the reform's success. Others believe the fantastic\neconomy largely did the job. Isabel Sawhill, a policy analyst at the Brookings\nInstitute, is probably right to figure that the economy accounted for half the\ngain and the other half was due to policy changes (including the 1996 bill, the\nincrease in the earned income tax credit, improvements in child care for the\npoor and the increase in the minimum wage).\nSawhill's analysis raises a last, critical point: Welfare reform's success is\nfledgling and fragile. As the Urban Institute's study shows, many of the women\nwho have left welfare are barely making it. A recession of any length could\nthreaten much of what has been accomplished.\nWhat this suggests is that we must plan for a recession, and to defeat a\nrecession. Incredibly, House Speaker Dennis Hastert thinks differently. The\nstates have been SO successful at getting people off welfare that at least $4\nbillion in unclaimed welfare block grants have piled up in Treasury accounts.\nThe states have been wisely content to leave the money there for now, as\nrainy-day cushions against recession's ability to undo the hard-won gains upon\nwhich millions of reclaimed lives depend.\nHastert has proposed that Congress glom the cash instead, and spend it on\nsomething else. It would be interesting to know what the speaker thinks is more\nimportant than the rescue of what was long thought to be a permanent underclass.\nGRAPHIC: President Clinton with Lillie Harden, a former welfare recipient who\nfound work at a supermarket deli. But is there any guarantee she won't need\nwelfare again in the future? Reuters\nLANGUAGE: ENGLISH\nPage 7\nThe New York Post August 4, 1999, Wednesday\nLOAD-DATE: August 4, 1999\nPage 6\nThe New York Post August 4, 1999, Wednesday\neveryone takes credit and everyone deserves credit.\nGovernors - Republicans mostly, but some Democrats too - led reform well in\nadvance of the administration and Congress, and they get credit for forcing and\ndriving the issue - and, in many states, for implementing reform SO\naggressively and creatively as to outstrip the law's requirements.\nNewt Gingrich and his revolutionary Republican Congress of 1994 get credit\nfor drafting three welfare-reform bills, sticking with the cause through two\nClinton vetoes, and holding the president's feet to an election-year fire to win\nenactment the third time out.\nBill Clinton gets credit for making the governors' crusade a national\npromise, with his 1992 campaign pledge to \"end welfare as we know it, and for\nkeeping that pledge. It is perhaps true that he kept it reluctantly, but he kept\nit, and more. Clinton worked to undo some of the more draconian and underthought\nelements of the law, and to strongly support the reworked version. In SO doing,\nas a Democratic president, Clinton legitimized the reform; he did something\ncrucial that no Republican could have done, and no other Democrat had ever dared\nto do.\nThe second answer to the question of why is one of economics, and one of\nconsiderable debate. Some - Clinton, for one - hold that the 1996 law is\nresponsible for almost all of the reform's success. Others believe the fantastic\neconomy largely did the job. Isabel Sawhill, a policy analyst at the Brookings\nInstitute, is probably right to figure that the economy accounted for half the\ngain and the other half was due to policy changes (including the 1996 bill, the\nincrease in the earned income tax credit, improvements in child care for the\npoor and the increase in the minimum wage).\nSawhill's analysis raises a last, critical point: Welfare reform's success is\nfledgling and fragile. As the Urban Institute's study shows, many of the women\nwho have left welfare are barely making it. A recession of any length could\nthreaten much of what has been accomplished.\nWhat this suggests is that we must plan for a recession, and to defeat a\nrecession. Incredibly, House Speaker Dennis Hastert thinks differently. The\nstates have been so successful at getting people off welfare that at least $4\nbillion in unclaimed welfare block grants have piled up in Treasury accounts.\nThe states have been wisely content to leave the money there for now, as\nrainy-day cushions against recession's ability to undo the hard-won gains upon\nwhich millions of reclaimed lives depend.\nHastert has proposed that Congress glom the cash instead, and spend it on\nsomething else. It would be interesting to know what the speaker thinks is more\nimportant than the rescue of what was long thought to be a permanent underclass.\nGRAPHIC: President Clinton with Lillie Harden, a former welfare recipient who\nfound work at a supermarket deli. But is there any guarantee she won't need\nwelfare again in the future? Reuters\nLANGUAGE: ENGLISH\nPage 7\nThe New York Post August 4, 1999, Wednesday\nLOAD-DATE: August 4, 1999\nPage 8\nLEVEL 1 - 9 OF 53 STORIES\nCopyright 1997 SOFTLINE INFORMATION, INC.\nThe Ethnic NewsWatch\nLos Angeles Sentinel\nMarch 12, 1997\nSECTION: Vol. 62; No. 50; Pg. A6\nLENGTH: 745 words\nHEADLINE: Leaving Welfare\nBYLINE: Shabazz, Betty\nBODY:\nLeaving Welfare.\nMs. Lillie Harden is one of 1.9 million Americans who have left the welfare\nrolls and headed for lives of independence since President Clinton took office.\nAnd two million fewer people are using food stamps during the same period.\nThese are more than just hard numbers. In the case of graduates from welfare\nto work, we're talking about 1.3 million more homes where bright-eyed young\nchildren will learn, many from an early age, what it means to go out and earn a\nliving. In the case of people no longer using food stamps, it's two million more\nhomes where children will learn the connection between employment and\nsustenance, from seeing at least one parent use their own money when buying\ngroceries. The important lessons in these developments cannot be underestimated\nfor this generation and the next.\nCritics should note that President Clinton is looking to make fixes in\nwelfare policy in the current term. But that intent aside, he has been working\nall along to make sure that changes in welfare policy are not happening in a\nvacuum, to make sure that welfare recipients are not pushed out like skydivers\nbeing shoved from an airplane. From day one, the president has worked to help\nbuild a parachute to soften the landing for these Americans. He has implemented\na series of economic initiatives to help working families trapped at the bottom\nof the socioeconomic ladder, and these same strategies are helping people go\nfrom welfare to work.\nFor example. Americans, like Ms. Harden, have been helped through the\ndifficult but doable transition by Clinton strategies like an expansion of the\nEarned Income Tax Credit, which has provided a tax cut to 15 million poor\nworking families; an increase in the minimum wage that amounts to an $1,800\nannual raise for the working poor; and expanded Head Start and child care\nprograms that make it easier for welfare recipients to leave home for job\ninterviews and jobs.\nBut help along the pathway to independence and success doesn't end there. As\nthese workers advance in society, hopefully moving toward the mainstream, the\npresident hopes they will be able to work and build promising new lives for\ntheir families more easily with the help of several pro-family initiatives for\nPage 9\nThe Ethnic NewsWatch, March 12, 1997\nwhich he has worked. These include the Kennedy-Kassebaum law, which protects\npeople against health insurance loss when they switch jobs; the Family and\nMedical Leave law, which protects workers' jobs when they have to take care of\na family member emergency; a variety of home ownership-boosting strategies for\nlow-and middle income families to add 8 million new homeowners by the year 2000;\nand greater pension security to protect workers' hard-earned resources for use\nin retirement.\nIn the coming years, as we navigate our way through welfare reform, our\ncountry must find room for approximately two million more Americans like Ms.\nHarden to say goodbye to welfare and hello to work; goodbye to social isolation\nand denigration and hello to richer, more satisfying lives. Economists say it\ncan be done in a 130-million plus job economy like ours.\nBut as African Americans, we cannot and must not depend on the optimism of\neconomists or help from the government alone to create these jobs. While the\neconomists are optimistic about job creation and while the president is\nproposing tax incentives and grants to help spur the hiring of workers from\nwelfare rolls, it is still up to us to make this work.\nWe must reach out-churches, community groups, entrepreneurs, fraternal and\nsorority groups, and professional organizations--and link more people in our\ncommunities to jobs and to skills development training opportunities that lead\nto employment.\nThat's what the president meant when he said during his acceptance speech at\nthe Democratic National Convention: \"There is no more 'who's to blame' on\nwelfare. Now the only question is what to do. And we all have a responsibility\nto give poor people a chance to grow and support their families.'\nAs African Americans, charting a new destiny for African American welfare\nrecipients is to know and understand these words from Dr. Martin Luther King,\nJr.: \"We are all inextricably linked. If they, welfare recipients, do well, we\ndo well. And that's how our communities will grow and prosper into the 21st\ncentury.\n(The writer, Dr. Betty Shabazz, is the widow of the late Malcolm X and was\nvice chair of the Clinton-Gore '96 presidential election campaign.)\nETHNIC-GROUP: African American/Caribbean/African\nLANGUAGE: English\nLOAD-DATE: July 3, 1997\nPage 10\nLEVEL 1 - 10 OF 53 STORIES\nCopyright 1997 The Dallas Morning News\nTHE DALLAS MORNING NEWS\nJanuary 19, 1997, Sunday, HOME FINAL EDITION\nSECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A\nLENGTH: 1623 words\nHEADLINE: Clinton's citizens;\nPresident draws on real people to focus the issues\nBYLINE: Susan Feeney, Washington Bureau of The Dallas Morning News\nDATELINE: WASHINGTON\nBODY:\nWASHINGTON - Four years ago, President Clinton's inaugural festivities\nincluded a celebrated luncheon with 53 Faces of Hope, everyday Americans he had\nmet and bonded with during his first presidential campaign.\nHe won't be paying to bring such regular Joes and Janes to Washington this\ntime. There are too many of them. In this White House, the cultivation of\n\"real people\" has become a cottage industry.\nFrom campaign encounters, the mail or even the morning newspapers, Mr.\nClinton harvests tales of American life far from the trappings of the Oval\nOffice. He has told people privately that he worries about the potential\nisolation of the White House.\nThe president latches on to these personal stories, concerns and triumphs,\naides said, retelling them in public and private, in speeches and policy\ndeliberations and drawing inspiration from them.\nOne person's saga - the New York hotel worker worried about crime, an\nArkansas woman who moved off welfare - can crystallize a national need or\nreinforce the president's resolve on policy. White House aides say they fill\nfiles with memorandums from the president that originated with someone's\npersonal experience.\nRonald Reagan told jokes and folksy yarns. George Bush wrote mountains of\npersonal notes. Bill Clinton, even as he is under fire for trading access for\ncampaign contributions, traffics in personal anecdotes.\nSometimes the president highlights individual stories as validation of his\nefforts. At a rally in Texas last fall, he met with Longview Vietnam veteran\nSteve Snider and his 12-year-old daughter, Emily. She suffers from spina bifida\nand is paralyzed from the chest down, a condition family doctors suspect is tied\nto Mr. Snider's exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam.\nPage 11\nTHE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, January 19, 1997\nWhile Mr. Clinton worked the crowd after his speech, he leaned over a rail to\nhold little Emily's face in his hands. Mr. Snider, a bulldozer operator, spoke\nwith the president about providing more financial help for veterans whose\nchildren have illnesses stemming from a parent's military service.\n\"He doesn't know about that bill we signed yesterday,\" the president said to\npersonal aide Andrew Friendly, referring to a veterans' appropriations bill.\nThe aide collected Mr. Snider's address and telephone number and promised to\nfollow up with more information - which another White House staffer did within a\nweek.\nIn later remarks, Mr. Clinton touted the Sniders as a reason he should be\nre-elected.\n\"Because of a bill I signed yesterday\nthey are finally going to get\nthe medical attention and the disability support they need,' the president said.\nSuspicious eye\nSome of Mr. Clinton's often-moving encounters with citizens are as\nserendipitous as they appear. But critics and skeptical journalists cast a\nsuspicious eye when the president comes upon someone whose experience precisely\nillustrates his point.\nIndeed, the White House most certainly already knew how to reach the Sniders.\nPeople identifying themselves as Clinton staff invited the family to the Clinton\nrally, gave them V.I.P. passes to get up front and telephoned them twice to make\nsure that they'd be attending.\nMr. Snider, a Republican who believes his family came to the administration's\nattention through Agent Orange experts, said he was honored to meet Mr. Clinton.\n\"I'm a pretty fair judge of character. I really think he was sincere in the\nemotion he was showing,\" said Mr. Snider, who declined to say how he voted. \"I\ndon't agree with him on a lot of stuff. I'm just trying to get help for my\nlittle girl.\"\nWhite House aides say they work hard to gather personal stories.\nReal life experiences are among the best ways to illustrate the country's\nchallenges and solutions, aides said.\n\"They symbolize the values that he's fighting for,\" said Bruce Reed, Mr.\nClinton's domestic policy adviser.\nSuch tales are \"a filter that the president works through on major policy,'\nsaid presidential adviser Rahm Emanuel.\nAnd people who have told their stories to Mr. Clinton - a feat that once\nseemed unimaginable to them - reject the notion that they are plants or props.\n\"It worked for me. It works for him. It works for the country.\nPage 12\nTHE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, January 19, 1997\nIt works for everybody,\" said New York City hotel waiter Dimitrios Theofanis,\nwho gets frequent presidential mention for his 1992 plea to Mr. Clinton to make\nthe streets safe for his son.\nSuch stories help to focus the president and staff, Mr. Reed said.\n\"It's good to be reminded of the people your policies affect.\nReal people are always the best to help us cut through the underbrush of what\nwe're doing, the aide said.\nRelated strategy\nA related strategy was at work at the Democratic National Convention in\nChicago in August when nonpoliticians and their stories dominated the first\nday's proceedings. Republicans employed some of the same tactics at their\nconvention in San Diego a few weeks earlier.\nBefore his inauguration four years ago, Mr. Clinton promised the Faces of\nHope:\n\"Every day I'll remember you. And I'll remember who sent us here. And I'll\nremember that this town\ndoesn't amount to a hill of beans unless we are\nspending all the money that you send us to try to help deal with your problems\nin an honest and forthright way. 11\nIn office, he has kept in close contact with the \"faces.\"\nThrough Ann Walker of the White House research staff, the Faces of Hope keep\nthe president abreast of their lives and concerns.\nNancy Henreich, director of Oval Office operations, maintains a database of\nthe president's other citizen contacts. The president has set up his own\nprivate ZIP code where old friends or special acquaintances can write him\ndirectly.\nMs. Walker sends the president detailed memos about the Faces of Hope and he\noften directs her to act on particular matters or to provide him with more\ninformation. He wants to know when any of them are in Washington and wants to\nsee them when he visits their hometowns, Ms. Walker said.\nTwo former South Central Los Angeles gang members keep Mr. Clinton up to\nspeed on their mentoring program. During one Clinton visit, they brought 10 of\ntheir charges to meet him at the foot of the stairs to Air Force One.\nDr. Patricia Wetzel, a Fort Worth physician who was infected with HIV on the\njob, said she still presses the president about the need for more AIDS\neducation. Her connection with Mr. Clinton also gives her a receptive ear at\nthe Centers for Disease Control and other federal agencies.\n\"I feel very fortunate that I have just a slight little pull, maybe, \" Dr.\nWetzel said.\nMr. Theofanis, the New York waiter, also has pressed the president about\nPage 13\nTHE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, January 19, 1997\nimproving public education. The two usually talk when Mr. Clinton is in New\nYork. The Greek immigrant and his son traveled on the president's train to the\nDemocratic convention. A framed photograph of Ricky Ray, a Florida boy who died\nof AIDS, sits on the credenza behind Mr. Clinton's desk. It was given to him by\nClifford and Louise Ray, both Faces of Hope, who have two other sons with the\ndisease.\nHealth care push\nWhat institutionalized White House efforts to find and showcase real people\nwas the 1993-94 push to pass health care reform. It was aide Julia Moffett's\nnearly full-time job to sift though a blizzard of mail to find compelling\nindividuals.\nWherever the president or first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled,\nAmericans shared their health care struggles.\nAt the White House in August, when the president signed welfare reform\nlegislation, he was joined by Lillie Harden, perhaps the longest-tenured of the\npresident's \"real people. in She worked her way off of welfare 10 years ago, when\nMr. Clinton was governor of Arkansas.\n\"I can tell you,\" the president told her at the Rose Garden signing ceremony,\n\"you've had a bigger impact on me than I've had on you.\"\nLast month, he defended his veto of a bill that would have banned certain\nlate-term abortions by recounting the traumas of several women who said they\nneeded the procedure. Those women were at his side when he vetoed the\nlegislation.\nRepublicans contend that the president exploited a family tragedy with a\ncampaign television ad last year featuring Kenneth and Rosemarie Weaver and\ntheir gravely ill daughter Melissa - who has since died. The Port Lavaca,\nTexas, family expressed gratitude for the Family and Medical Leave Act, which\nMr. Clinton signed in 1993.\nThese stories take a wide variety of routes from their source to Mr.\nClinton's ear.\nBeverly Burnett met Gene Sperling, the president's economic adviser, in line\nat the Phoenix airport last fall. She noted that her son in Iowa was grateful\nto take advantage of unpaid leave for the birth of his son.\nMr. Sperling told Paul Begala, a consultant who was helping prepare Mr.\nClinton for the presidential debate in San Diego that evening. Halfway into the\ndebate, Mr. Clinton mentioned Mrs. Burnett.\n\"Had I heard this and it wasn't me, I think I would have said, Sure, someone\nreally said that, \" laughed Mrs. Burnett, a health care administrator. \"It\ngave me a little more faith.\"\nMr. Clinton is always rooting around for stories, aides said.\nOn Christmas Day 1994, he read a story in The New York Times about Faith\nPage 14\nTHE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, January 19, 1997\nBowman, a single mother so financially strapped that she and her 8-year-old\ndaughter painted their Christmas tree on the kitchen wall. She had come into a\nwelcome $ 3,000 windfall when the Internal Revenue Service verified her\neligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit - a program Mr. Clinton has touted\nand helped to expand.\n\"I should write her a letter of encouragement, the president wrote to aides\nin his rounded longhand. \"Send a W.H. ornament for next year We can use her\nas an example of EITC! BC\"\nGRAPHIC: PHOTO (S) : (1-2 The Dallas Morning News: David Woo) 1. Fireworks\nilluminate the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument and the Capitol on\nSaturday. 2. People stand in line Saturday despite the frigid weather to enter\nthe Technology Playground on the National Mall in Washington. The playground, a\nmultimedia center created for inauguration festivities, gives visitors Internet\naccess. CHART (S) : /MAP (S) : (DMN/KRT) THE 53rd PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION. ; PHOTO\nLOCATION NOTE: Photo #2 was not archived.\nLANGUAGE: ENGLISH\nLOAD-DATE: February 20, 1997\nPage 15\nLEVEL 1 - 31 OF 53 STORIES\nCopyright 1996 The New York Times Company\nThe New York Times\nAugust 23, 1996, Friday, Late Edition - Final\nSECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 1; National Desk\nLENGTH: 1303 words\nHEADLINE: CLINTON SIGNS BILL CUTTING WELFARE; STATES IN NEW ROLE\nBYLINE: By FRANCIS X. CLINES\nDATELINE: WASHINGTON, Aug. 22\nBODY:\nIn a sweeping reversal of Federal policy, President Clinton today ended six\ndecades of guaranteed help to the nation's poorest children by signing into law\na vast welfare overhaul requiring the 50 states to deal more directly with the\nsocial burdens and the budget expense of poverty.\n\"Today we are taking a historic chance to make welfare what it was meant to\nbe: a second chance, not a way of life,\" Mr. Clinton declared in signing the\nmeasure, which will affect tens of millions of poor Americans, largely by\nmandating work requirements and imposing a five-year lifetime limit on welfare\nhelp to needy families.\nWith his signature, at a Rose Garden ceremony, the President eliminated a\npillar of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal social welfare program, delighting\nthe Republican-controlled Congress in this election year and incensing many of\nhis fellow Democrats.\nMr. Clinton, hailing the law as \"good and solid\" progress, expressed hope\nthat the partisan edge would now be eliminated from the nation's frustrations\nover welfare. But moments after the signing, the Presidential campaign of Bob\nDole commented, \"By selling out his own party, Bill Clinton has proven he is\nideologically adrift.\"\nOn the Democratic side, the enactment was decried as a \"moment of shame\" by\nMarion Wright Edelman, the president of the Children's Defense Fund and a\nlongtime friend of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was the fund's co-chairwoman\nuntil the 1992 election. Another frequent Clinton defender, Senator Paul Simon,\nDemocrat of Illinois, rued the President's signature by declaring, \"This isn't\nwelfare reform, it's welfare denial.\"\nMr. Clinton took care to have three former welfare mothers at his side in the\nsunshine as he signed the measure, praising it for restoring \"America's basic\nbargain of providing opportunity and demanding in return responsibility.\nPage 16\nThe New York Times, August 23, 1996\nHe claimed credit for gaining a $3.5 billion increase in child care from\nCongress, for a total of $14 billion to help single mothers while they seek\nwork.\nThe heart of the complex new law abolishes Aid to Families With Dependent\nChildren, the Government's welfare bulwark, which provides monthly cash benefits\nto 12.8 million people, including more than 8 million children.\nThis is to be replaced by a system of block grants and vast new authority for\nthe states, in the hope that they can fashion new work and welfare programs to\nsolve the long-intractable problem of dependence on government. Job creation\nwill be a particular state burden, since the law requires most poor adults to\nfind a job within two years of first receiving aid.\nCritics, including the nation's Roman Catholic bishops, have asked how states\nalready laboring to meet their own budget-crimping priorities can manage welfare\nbetter when the new law will provide less Federal revenue for the task, $55\nbillion less over six years.\n\"The governors,' Mr. Clinton noted, \"asked for this responsibility. Now\nthey've got to live up to it. \" He celebrated that \"there is no longer a system\nin the way. \"\nBut Representative Carrie P. Meek, a Florida Democrat with a large welfare\nconstituency, said it was more accurate to say, \"Now we'll have 50 welfare\nsystems, all doing different things. 11\nMr. Clinton, who had vetoed two earlier welfare-overhaul measures, hailed the\nfinal legislation, on balance, as a historic chance to \"re-create the nation's\nsocial bargain with the poor. He vowed to fight what he described as its\nshortcomings, particularly a six-year, $24 billion cut in food stamp help to 25\nmillion poor Americans and the barring of future legal immigrants from most\nwelfare assistance.\nThose two cuts account for most of the law's budget savings. Realistically,\nMr. Clinton's VOW to return to Congress to fight those reversals, and to\ninitiate job-creation programs for the poor, would require his leading the\nDemocrats back to power in Congress this November.\nThe President, already deep into his own re-election campaign, candidly\nadmitted that he was hoping to neutralize the risky welfare issue, which has\nhounded him since his 1992 campaign VOW to \"end welfare as we know it.\"\n\"After I sign my name to this bill, welfare will no longer be a political\nissue, he contended rather wishfully even as Republicans claimed credit for\nforcing his hand through a combination of public pressure and his own\nre-election strategy of preferring centrist compromise to ideological standoff.\n\"The two parties cannot attack each other over it,\" the President insisted\nmoments before taking pen in hand. \"The politicians cannot attack poor people\nover it. There are no encrusted habits, systems and failures that can be laid at\nthe foot of someone else. We have to begin again. This is not the end of welfare\nreform; this is the beginning. And we have to all assume responsibility.\nMr. Dole, former Senate majority leader, issued a statement welcoming the\nPage 17\nThe New York Times, August 23, 1996\nPresident's signature on a bill that the Republican challenger pronounced\nsimilar to \"my welfare reform proposal.\"\n\"When they look beyond President Clinton's election-year calculation,\" he\nsaid, \"the American people know Republican leadership delivered welfare reform.'\nThe Rose Garden ceremony was remarkable for the dearth of Democratic leaders\nin attendance and the presence of beaming Republicans. Even Senator Christopher\nJ. Dodd of Connecticut, the general chairman of the Democratic National\nCommittee, who is now busily working for the President's re-election, had\ndenounced the measure as an \"unconscionable retreat.\"\nDemocratic pickets have already begun dogging the President, notably at his\nbirthday celebration last weekend in New York, and White House officials\nprivately concede that there are likely to be some heated moments over the issue\nnext week at Mr. Clinton's re-nomination convention in Chicago.\nEven before he signed the bill, the Administration was quietly granting\nlast-minute waivers from current law to allow states to offer extensions beyond\nthe five-year lifetime limit on aid, provided recipients keep looking for work.\nRepublicans have accused the President of already trying to undermine the new\nlaw in the face of liberal counterpressure.\nSome Democrats hope this proves true. \"I'm upset about the bill, but as I\nread it I figure most states will be able to get out from under the toughest\nparts with waivers,' said Representative Patricia Schroeder of Colorado. \"After\na lot of tinkering and tuning, this all may prove nothing more than an\nelection-year brouhaha.\"\nAttending to the accusation that he was severing his party's New Deal\ntaproot, the President declared, \"The typical family on welfare today is very\ndifferent from the one that welfare was designed to deal with 60 years ago. In\ncontrast to needy Depression-era Americans, he said, modern Americans who get\naid \"are trapped on welfare for a very long time, exiling them from the entire\ncommunity of work that gives structure to our lives.\"\nAs he signed the measure, a long line of protesters stretched along the block\nnorth of the White House, out of sight of the Rose Garden, in a rally organized\nby the Children's Defense Fund, the National Organization for Women and the\nFeminist Majority. \"We intend to fix the political climate that makes the\nPresident and Congress think they can get away with writing off the poor,\"\ndeclared Patricia Ireland, president of NOW.\nMr. Clinton, to the contrary, depicted himself as delivering creatively on a\npromise. \"Today we are ending welfare as we know it,\" he insisted. \"But I hope\nthis day will be remembered not for what it ended, but for what it began: a new\nday that offers hope, honors responsibility, rewards work and changes the terms\nof the debate SO that no one in America ever feels again the need to criticize\npeople who are poor or on welfare.'\nGRAPHIC: Photos: While President Clinton signed a bill overhauling the welfare\nsystem, demonstrators on Pennsylvania Avenue protested the measure. (Paul\nHosefros/The New York Times) (pg. A22); Lillie Harden, left, and Janet Ferrel,\nformer welfare recipients, watched President Clinton sign the welfare bill\nyesterday in the Rose Garden. (Paul Hosefros/The New York Times) (pg. A1)\nPage 18\nThe New York Times, August 23, 1996\nLANGUAGE: ENGLISH\nLOAD-DATE: August 23, 1996\n****\n****\n*\n18 PAGES\n556 LINES\nJOB\n36962\n104PK2\n*\n3:02 P.M. STARTED\n3:03 P.M. ENDED\n11/02/00\n*\n****\n*\nEEEEE\nN\nN\nDDDD\n*\n*\nE\nN N\nD D\n*\n*\nE\nNN N\nD D\n*\n*\nEEE\nN N N\nD D\n*\n*\nE\nN NN\nD D\n*\n*\nE\nN N\nD D\n*\n*\nEEEEE\nN N\nDDDD\n*\nSEND TO: RICHTER, ANNA\nOPD - DOMESTIC POLICY COUNCIL\nROOM 308\nOLD EXECUTIVE OFFICE BUILDING\nWASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 20502-0308"
}