(Washington, DC) With regard to the welfare reform bill being debated today on the House floor, Congresswoman Corrine Brown made the following statement:

“There are two words to describe what’s wrong with this welfare bill - Rilya Wilson. Right now, there is a 5 year old child from my state missing because this Congress has decided to skirt its responsibilities to our children by under-funding our state agencies.

This situation is particularly egregious in Florida. In Florida, even though the welfare rolls have decreased, there are still 775,000 children (22%) living below the poverty line. In addition, even though 20% of Floridian children are without health insurance, Florida had to return over $30 million in federal funds for the Children’s Health Insurance Program in 1998 because the state did not spend it.

It is truly an outrage that the House of Representatives is debating how best to balance the budget by decreasing funding for our weakest and most vulnerable citizens, at the same time President Bush and the Republican party are fighting to permanently extend tax cuts for the wealthy by $500 billion in this decade and $4 trillion in the next! It is evident that our priorities are wrong when the average worker at the Department of Children and Families in my state makes less than $20,000 a year and simultaneously handles over 70 cases.

It is time that we start to think of the children first. What happened to “Leave no Child Behind”? This Republican bill does nothing to improve the state of children in this country. It does not include enough money for quality childcare, nor does it allow parents to further their education to end the cycle of poverty.”