Disapproving Rule Relating to Waiver and Expenditure Authority with Respect to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I'm sure America has been watching the ads. The ads say that black is white, and they say it over and over and over and over again. And they hope the American people believe that black is white.

But it's not enough for them to say it on ads, now they bring it to this floor in the last 7 hours of the session of Congress before the election. Are we dealing with jobs? No. Are we dealing with violence against women? No. Are we dealing with farmers who are in distress? No. Are we dealing with middle class tax cuts? No. Are we dealing with postal reform as the postal department goes broke? No. What are we doing? We are trying to reaffirm an ad that some people are spending tens of millions of dollars on to misrepresent the facts.

Mr. Speaker, black is not white. I can say it one time, a hundred times, a thousand times: black is black, and white is white. This action the administration has taken is to produce more jobs, more work to get more people back to work. How? To respond to Republican Governors and Democratic Governors who say, I have a better way of doing it. By the way, that's what you proposed when you were in charge and we had President Bush in office on at least the three occasions that the chairman has just mentioned.

White is not black, and black is not white.

Mr. Speaker, the bill before us today exemplifies the do-nothing Republican Congress. Once again, Republicans are choosing to focus on a political message over serious issues like jobs, middle class tax cuts, or the farm bill. Instead, we're here today discussing a Republican bill that misrepresents the facts in an attempt to simply score political points. How sad for the American people.

At issue is the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program which was created in 1996 when Republicans and Democrats worked together to achieve welfare reform. So you understand on that side of the aisle, I was a Democrat who voted for welfare reform. I was a Democrat who said we ought to expect people to work if they can work. I'm also a Democrat that says we have to help people when through no fault of their own they can't work or have lost work.

The previous speaker talked about how we weren't concerned about jobs. In the Bush administration, 4.4 million jobs were lost in the last 12 months of the Bush administration. Over the last 30 months, we've created 4.6 million jobs. I ask you, who cares about jobs? Who creates jobs? There were, of course, 22 million jobs created in the Clinton administration. We heard a lot of talk about that at our convention. I didn't hear anything about the Bush administration at the Republican convention. George Bush was not there, he was not mentioned, and the record was certainly hidden. We care about jobs. We care about people getting to work. We also care about helping people. We can do both.

Defeat this bill.

Black is not white, and white is not black.

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