[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 117 (Friday, August 2, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S9639]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE QUALITY OF MERCY
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I ask that an excellent article about
welfare, ``The Quality of Mercy'', by James McQueeny, be printed in the
Record.
Mr. President, I had the good fortunate of benefiting from Jim
McQueeny's competence and compassion when he served as my press
secretary several years ago. These same qualities are evident in his
article, which is an eloquent statement about what it means to be on
welfare, and what the welfare reform bill will mean for real people.
I urge all my colleagues to read the article.
The article follows:
[From the New Jersey Monthly, July 1995]
The Quality of Mercy--Many New Jerseyans Believe That Welfare Is a
Waste. One Man--Now a Successful Executive--Who's Lived on It Disagrees
(By James McQueeny)
I'm not a member of any obvious minority group (being the
son of an Irish immigrant no longer counts), although these
days I might qualify as out of the mainstream because I am a
Democrat. My views on welfare seem to place me even more
squarely in the minority. And I am very concerned about what
we as a society are saying and doing about that issue.
We in New Jersey, the second richest state in the nation,
are in the best position possible to do something about
poverty and welfare reform, yet we're going about it with the
worst possible attitude. The very success of New Jersey's
post-war suburbanization has fueled what some pollsters call
the Drawbridge Mentality--the mindset of people who find
their castle and pull up the drawbridge on everybody and
everything else. And who in suburbia actually lives near
someone in poverty or on welfare? C'mon, I mean really knows
them. By face. By name.
I do. I was one of them. So I've always been aware of
poverty slights, and they're on the increase. I've cringed at
a ``progressive'' suggestion by a prominent New Jersey
business leader who told me he wants to help the poor ``get
off their asses.'' As if these people wake up every morning
looking for ways to make themselves poorer. Or the Democratic
politician who was trying to rationalize reforming welfare by
not extending benefits to additional children of welfare
mothers. As if the child had a choice of mother and
neighborhood.
As someone who has lived at the extreme ends of the
economic spectrum in New Jersey, I know firsthand the
frightening reality of life in poverty. I grew up on welfare,
in a well-off town in Bergen County, one of the wealthiest
counties in the state. I worked my way up through the ranks
of New Jersey's largest newspaper, covering every county and
the statehouse in Trenton, and eventually I became the
paper's Washington bureau chief. Later, I was a television
reporter for New Jersey Network, and I was the spokesman for
one of our United States senators. I am now the president and
an owner of a multimillion dollar company.
I point this out only to emphasize that I cobbled together
a professional life after starting out poor--and on welfare--
in New Jersey. And now, a day hardly goes by without a
personal incident or a public headline reminding me how we're
making it harder in New Jersey for the disadvantaged to
follow a similar path of opportunity. And that upsets me.
Several months ago, I was at Menlo Park Mall conducting
voter interviews with a camera team for a weekly political
commentary I do for NJN. Person after person in these opulent
surroundings railed against big government. The phrase
``welfare cheats'' was usually the caboose on their long
trains of lament, mostly about the economy.
As I stood before them, I reverted to a habit I've had
since poverty. I looked at the shoes of the people I was
talking to. Why? Probably because my four brothers and I
thought good shoes were the province of ``rich people.'' Our
``school shoes'' were worn only to school and Mass, and they
had to last until they literally disintegrated on our feet. I
can still recall going into town to a business that had an
industrial staple gun, so I could either secure the flapping
soles or repatch the holes with wads of oilcloth stapled from
the inside so no one would notice.
Instinctively, my gaze fell upon the shoes of the people
complaining about things being so bad economically in New
Jersey. Without exception, they were wearing designer shoes--
those kinds of sneakers that salespeople bring to you so
delicately you'd think they were explosives, or those spiffy
Rockport walking shoes. I was so amazed by those walking
shoes that I was compelled to go into a shoe store and price
them. One hundred and twenty dollars! On sale!
With those kinds of shoes on their feet, they're feeling
that much anger? I thought. And about the economy? They're
not complaining about what they don't have. They're
complaining that they don't have enough. Has poverty become
so trivialized that the New Downtrodden are those who can't
afford Rockports?
Unfortunately, it looks like it. I only wish that some of
these people could have learned the lessons of poverty the
way I did--through experience. Like the time I couldn't tell
my teacher I didn't have $1.50 for a science magazine
subscription because I'd be revealing that I was on welfare
in a rich town. Instead, I always said I forgot the money. He
marked me up as a wise-guy deportment case, which helped
drive my grades down.
Some teachers ridiculed my scraggly shoes in front of
classmates, unthinkingly viewing them as an issue of
cleanliness rather than pennilessness.
On one free field trip (I stayed behind in study hall for
the paid ones), I borrowed a camera from a classmate on the
bus to take a picture of some mundane highway bridge that
crossed the Passaic River, about ten miles from home. They
all had a riotous laugh when they found out I'd never been
this far from home because we never had a car.
And, yes, we were forced to ``cheat'' on welfare, too. The
``welfare lady'' visited the house at pre-arranged times to
make sure we weren't buying things that would indicate
alternative incomes of some kind. That would be cheating the
taxpayer. I had to hide any evidence of the prosperity I was
enjoying form my paper route--even the household essentials
we bought with the money I earned. My brothers' bikes, bought
second-hand, had to be hidden before the visits.
What got us into this predicament? My father lost his job.
Does it become a more acceptable welfare story when I say it
was because he contracted terminal lung cancer and took six
years to die? As opposed to being a victim of economic
cancer?
I won't insult victims of poverty or families on welfare by
fully equating my time on welfare, or being poor and white in
suburbia in the sixties, with the problems they are facing
now. The problems now are worse, meaner. And bleaker.
From my experience, and in discussions with people who
lived or live in similar circumstances, there is one profound
misunderstanding that policymakers and the public have about
poverty: You do not choose it; by and large, it chooses you.
The Democratic party meant to do well when it stitched
together the welfare safety net during the Depression. And
welfare worked well enough for a while. But as time passed,
we didn't have the political common sense to stop sewing when
it wasn't working well enough. We do need to come up with
something else.
But the latest plan being bandied about, the Contract With
America welfare-reform proposal, really boils down to turning
the program back to the states with guidelines about cutting
off benefits to the needy tomorrow, while declaring victory
today. The reason that this reform plan won't work is that
you can cut spending all you want, but the same mothers and
children will have the same food and sheltering needs at
roughly the same cost come the end of the day--no matter how
you cook the books or serve the baloney. And, yes, there will
always be some lumpen layabouts or drug-fried fools who will
rip off the system for dollars at the margins, get all the
headlines, and jump-start another sorry cycle of retribution
against the truly poor and needy.
Part of the problem is that Congress, and state
legislatures, are overstocked with affluent lawyers,
professionals, and full-time politicians who are more than
able and willing to impart their professional experiences on
tort reform, health care, or the next day's news cycle. I
know it's not fair, but I've seen what these politicians
drive to work and leave in the parking lots outside the
Congress and the state capital. Nobody's holding the mufflers
of those cars together with hanger wire, I can assure you.
All of this seems so fresh, so important to me, because I
know that welfare made it possible for me to go as far as I
have. I still have my family's welfare application, signed by
both my parents, for my sons to see. I tell them to remember
it's nothing to be ashamed about. To the contrary, it was a
safety net that scooped up seven people from our family, and
the investment in us let us re-invest our lives--and our
taxes--in America.
The shame would come from not extending our hands to
someone else. But the real shame is that that could become a
minority view in a state like New Jersey.
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