Jodi Rell Quotes

If you are born into a family below the national median income, we provide you with an additional $500, and for every contribution made to a child's account below the national median income, we match it dollar for dollar - the federal government will.

I was once a welfare recipient and am very aware of the successes and failures of this critical safety net. There are those that would have us believe that those receiving TANF benefits are lazy, shiftless, freeloaders who are just sitting around thinking of another way to suckle from the government teat.

Today we are ending welfare as we know it.

What is this War on Poverty? Money is going to people in Chicago who are against me.

We are tired of a welfare system which dehumanizes us and dispenses payments under procedures that are often ugly and paternalistic.

I’m really not concerned about the very poor. They have a safety net.

Even in the United States, 'you have a sort of welfare state, even if you don't want to admit it -- you don't allow people to die on the street.

I don't think you ought to walk into this country one day, and the first stop you make is the welfare office.

My mom was on welfare for the first five, six years of my life.

Some people have proposed universal basic income, UBI, basically making sure that everybody gets a certain amount of money to live off of. I think that's a wonderful idea. The problem is, we haven't been able to guarantee universal healthcare in this country.

The matter of social security and these grants is to help to address the levels of poverty in the country.

I wrote my thesis on welfare policy.

If someone believes that living on benefits is a lifestyle choice, then we need to make them think again.

I spend a fair bit of time in Los Angeles, and there is much I love about the place - the weather, the food, the beaches and the golf. And a few things I don't. Like the way an enormous number of mentally ill people seem to be forced to live on the streets with little or nothing in the way of government assistance.

Safety nets for the poor and disadvantaged are a must for any compassionate nation, but encouraging folks to go on the dole when not absolutely necessary is disgraceful.

The main purpose of Social Security is to redistribute wealth, to make an increasingly large number of Americans dependent on government for their basic needs in their retirement years.

Studies show that people that are on welfare are higher users of drugs than people not on welfare.

In my district, California 14, we have about 4,000 families who are on food stamps, but some of my colleagues have thousands and thousands more. Yet, they somehow feel like crusaders, like heroes, when they vote to cut food stamps.

My father was unemployed and I was the eldest of seven children. We were very poor. And when you ask how did we support ourselves, the only funding that we had was unemployment payments.

There was no welfare state, and people had to rely mainly on the Poor Law - that was all the state provided. It was very degrading, very humiliating. And there was a means test for receiving poor relief.

I grew up in poverty. For 25 years I was fed on aid.

It is important for women to have a choice, to have an opportunity to plan their families, because if they don't, the Republicans have said this is an ownership society. You are on your own, and they're going to begrudge that child everything, from WIC to a Pell Grant to health insurance.

I don't believe in welfare.

The issue I highlight in the book is welfare reform.

Because Social Security is specifically designed to boost the retirement income of low earners with a progressive benefit formula, the program has played an enormous and necessary role in keeping Latinas out of poverty.