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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you, Mr. Miller. I'll now recognize Ms. Moore of Wisconsin.
00:14I just want to thank the chairman, the ranking member, and all of the witnesses who have appeared here today.
00:21I just want to just reflect on 1995 when I was a state senator in Wisconsin, and the Honorable Governor Tommy G. Thompson ended welfare as we know it.
00:33And, of course, we know that then-President Clinton and Newt Gingrich agreed with it.
00:39They ended welfare as we know it.
00:40So for the first time since the Social Security Act was put in place, the guarantee that we gave to people five years old and six years old and three months old that, baby, no matter what the employment condition is with your parents, no matter if somebody is in jail or out of work, baby, we are not going to let you starve.
01:02We're not going to let you be outdoors.
01:04We broke that promise to babies right then.
01:08And I was at the scene of the crime when it happened.
01:10I had 100 amendments that could have fixed TANF, the successor program at that point.
01:16But, you know, it was very hard to do given the deliberate buildup of ending support to little children had started right back in the 60s.
01:28And it was all based on a big lie that Ronald Reagan pushed with a fictional character, this welfare queen who was riding the Cadillac and eating lobster dinners and had 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers, Social Security and VA benefits from four deceased fictional husbands.
01:48And didn't mention the kids.
01:50And now a days it's some white dude that's in his parents' basement playing Call of Duty all day.
01:59And so we have built the audience to treat this program like it's all waste, fraud, and abuse.
02:07Well, I'll tell you, I see that the GAO has identified areas of waste, fraud, and abuse that are here.
02:14How about the $4.5 trillion worth of tax giveaways that we're about to pass through this committee?
02:21Republicans have perpetuated these boogeyman lies, but if they really want to find the boogeyman, they ought to look at people like the former great NFL quarterback who was able to build a volleyball court based on the flexibility that we gave states.
02:41And indeed, a lot of this money, as some of my colleagues here have pointed out, have not gone into intervening in the poverty of these six-month-old babies, but it's gone into building a huge bureaucracy of people who chase poor people around and berate them all day.
03:00You know, you had a chance, as Ms. Chew indicated, to do something with closing the loop so that the Brett Favre's of the world wouldn't happen.
03:08You guys wouldn't take that up.
03:10Last week, the Trump administration fired everybody in TANF, everybody, the whole Department of Health and Human Services, including the lead staffer for TANF.
03:22How are you going to improve this program or deliver services to six-month-old Joey with no staff?
03:30Additionally, your reconciliation bill includes cutting the TANF block grant and eliminating the social services block grant.
03:39And I heard you, Ms. Summer Lott, talk about how you help seniors with this, meals on wheels.
03:45That's going to be gone.
03:47So we're not going to help six-month-old babies.
03:49We're not going to help old people.
03:52You know, we're going to talk about waste, fraud, and abuse and say that these recipients are that.
04:00Let me just say this.
04:02My time is running out, so I want to give my colleagues some credit for what they have done.
04:06They've used TANF funds and diverted it to fund anti-abortion clinics.
04:12They've had a stingy child tax credit where they left 19 million of the very, very, very, very, very, very poorest children with no assistance.
04:22Every Republican voted for a budget which requires $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid, which is the same amount we spend on Medicaid for all children.
04:35They also voted for $230 billion in cuts to SNAP, which provided an estimated $44 billion in 2016 to help families with children buy groceries.
04:45You want to know something?
04:49My time is short, and I have a lot of complaints.
04:52But I do know I joined this committee because I knew that there would be people on this committee that would get back to the primary goal of TANF is to stop, keep babies and children from starving and being outdoors.
05:07Outdoors, and now we are abandoning that purpose.
05:13And with that, Mr. Chairman, I would yield back.