Steve King Quotes

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.

I believe in a safety net. I believe one of the responsibilities of the Federal Government is a safety net.

Is our national goal to place as many people on welfare, food stamp support, as we can possibly put on that program? Is that our goal? Is that a moral vision for the United States of America, just to see how many people we can place in a situation where they're dependent on the federal government for their food?

If you're talking about the narrow issue of public assistance, I would like to see us move to a more healthy system. But until we come up with certain guarantees - for example, guaranteed jobs where mothers move off welfare - I support welfare very strongly. The worst thing we could do is impose time limits and then expect people to sink or swim once they move off welfare.

I do not want to get rid of the safety net, I want to get rid of dependency.

And I have a plan to do even better, to end welfare as we know it

Speaker Newt Gingrich says that what is wrong with the present system is not that people abuse welfare but that welfare abuses people.

Programs like food stamps, unemployment insurance, Medicaid, and job retraining help Americans get back on their feet when they are down and out and laid off through no fault of their own.

We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.

The government is becoming the family of last resort.

I knew that good people who wanted to be a part of the American dream have become trapped in dependency because the federal government and the state government had made it in their economic interest not to take a job because the benefits that they didn't work were better. I changed that.

Of course we have compassion. We just don't believe the safety net should be used as a hammock.

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.

We don’t want to turn this [social] safety net into a hammock that ends up lulling people in their lives into dependency and complacency.

Most Americans get that there is a need for a safety net in our country, and we support that safety net.

I understand welfare because I lived it. I understand the difference between a want and a need. The Republican Party promised to bring welfare change. We must deliver on this promise.

I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I'll fix it.

What we have to do is find a way to divide and conquer the people who are on assistance.

Government policies ought to encourage families to stay together and work hard to improve their lives, not punish them.

Indeed, one of the least-talked-about dangers of our ever-expanding entitlement culture is that it threatens the viability of these necessary programs for those who genuinely need and use them as a bridge to a better life.

At its core, government welfare is predicated on a false compassion.

I've been on food stamps and welfare, did anybody help me out? No. No.

The dependency on the dole, formerly limited in pre-Clinton days to 14 million women and children on AFDC, will now grow to a clear majority of the U.S. population.