"Rather than focusing on the real problems facing American families, we are instead focusing on...a resolution that doesn't create a single job."

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), senior Democrat on the committee, took to the House floor this afternoon to decry H.J. Resolution 118, which would provide congressional disapproval for Obama administration proposal providing states flexibility to move more Americans from welfare to work under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. Below is a video and the text of his remarks:

Mr. Speaker, the House meets to debate a resolution that is a purely fabricated problem.  Rather than focusing on the real problems facing American families, we are instead focusing on a resolution of disapproval – a resolution  that doesn't create a single job. In July, the Administration announced a waiver process under the welfare law that would allow governors to use innovative approaches to move more welfare recipients into employment. Immediately, Washington Republicans claimed it would gut welfare reform.

But fact checker after fact checker have publically discredited attempts to characterize this as going soft on welfare requirements.

And we're still waiting for the majority to show us exactly where the Administration’s waiver proposal eliminates the work requirement. Even the Republican staff director of the Ways and Means Subcommittee at the time of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law says these claims are false.

In fact the Administration has even clarified the rules, writing that no state will get a waiver unless it shows an increase in employment of 20%.

So actually, the Republican position here is fairly consistent.

They haven't done anything to create new jobs and they're against welfare recipients getting jobs and they're against governors increasing employment opportunities by 20%.So I guess we now know in this last waning days of the session, the Republican party here is against all jobs. No matter who is standing in line for the jobs, they're against those jobs.

Even though the Republican governors have petitioned for the right to change the welfare law so they can put more people to work. And the Administration says you can do that if you put 20%, imagine put 20% more people to work, from the welfare rolls of California or new jersey or texas?

But the Republicans say “no.”

And the Republican governors and Democratic governors have asked for this authority in 2002, 2003, 2005 and the House passed much broader waiver authority trying to give the governors, if you will, state flexibility. That's what they were asking for.

But now all of a sudden, in this political year, their candidates running a little behind, and we see this as an effort to try to attack the President of the United States for doing exactly what the Republican governors and Republicans in Congress have done and voted on passed.

As President Clinton says, it takes brass to denounce something you yourself have already supported.

But the hypocrisy doesn't stop there. You've got to have a lot of hypocrisy when you're defending a candidate who believes in everything and stands for nothing.

Just weeks before the Administration announced this waiver process, the Republican Workforce Investment bill was reported out of my committee. The mantra of the Republicans all through that bill and through the consideration over the last couple of years has been state flexibility. Well, they accomplished it in this bill. It provides so much state flexibility that the state with an approved state unified training plan, at the state’s discretion eliminate all work requirements from TANF. It passed out of the Education and Workforce Committee on a partisan vote, all republicans supporting that effort to let governors eliminate all work requirements.

So this debate is a little bit behind the times and probably not dealing with the serious problem -- which is the Republican Workforce Incentive Act that has the reauthorization of that program.

What a difference a few weeks and a convention make. Here we are using the valuable time of this House before we go to adjournment to carry out a political prank of a fabricated problem, based on fabricated facts and yet still we don't see ourselves dealing with the question of middle class tax cuts. We don't see us dealing with a jobs bill that we've been asking for time and again while this Congress has been in session.

It's a sad way to end this session of the Congress of the United States; without providing the access to those jobs that this Congress could have been providing throughout this entire year, to strengthen the economy. But then again, as the Senate (minority) leader said they don't want to work with this President. They want him to fail. And for him to fail, that means the American people can't have jobs and that's the goal here.