Speech #1040031981

That means that somewhere we are going to have to find the money to make up for the $200 billion. When we put that on top of the $1.2 or so trillion deficit that we have to make up over the next seven years or so. you see that the task is monumental. to try to balance the books. When you see proposals to cut capital gains taxes which will benefit mostly those who make over $100.000. about 70 percent of the benefits will go to those who make over $100.000. you will see that it is going to be difficult to swallow having to cut a program that would make a legal immigrant who has paid taxes ineligible for services that he has already paid for. That. I think. shows a contradiction that we are going through right now. the reason I wanted to have a chance in this special order to discuss the whole issue of legal immigrants. What we have to do is come up with some reasonable approaches to fund welfare. We have to come up with things that will help us change the way we provide welfare assistance. We have to streamline. obviously. the process. We have to make it workable. so that ultimately. people will work and be off of welfare. but we have to attack the problem where the problem lies. Why go after legal immigrants who. as we can see from the studies. the empirical data. all of which show that immigrants by far contribute much more than they ever consume. Not only that. but if you are going to attack a population for purposes of welfare reform. why attack the group that is making least use of welfare? It does not make any sense. But that is the direction some of the Members of Congress would seem to want to head in. and I think that is unfortunate because what we find is that rather than have reform we are ending up with expediency. and to me that does not make the best sense. this is not the way to legislate. I believe when we have a chance to closely look at the issue. especially the issue with regard to legal immigrants. we are going to see that rather than try to dissuade or punish people who are showing industry and entrepreneurship. the American dream. that are trying to do the things that make us America. what we will see is there will be I hope a change of heart and a recognition that what we must do is tackle the problem. and with welfare that means of course making sure we put people on a program where we tell them here is the plan. you have to follow this plan. You may need some assistance now. so we are going to give you some assistance. You may need sume education. you may need some training and we are going to give you that.