Murray Says Congress Can’t See Effects Of Welfare Cuts Citizens Must Lead The Charge For Child Care And Health Care, Says Senator

Most members of Congress are out of touch with the problems facing low-income families and children harmed by welfare spending cuts approved last year, Sen. Patty Murray said Friday.

“I think part of the problem last year was that the policy-makers in the Senate and House who were voting on the welfare bill couldn’t really see the children they were going to affect with their vote,” Murray, D-Wash., said.

“They couldn’t see the children of the future - out on the street, or in a desk in a classroom or at home alone with the TV on,” she said in a speech here to the Children’s Defense Fund’s annual conference.

“I voted against the welfare bill last year because I COULD see the faces of some of the children of the past - preschool-aged children I had worked with. And I could not get those faces out of my mind,” she said.

Murray said she is the only U.S. senator in history who was a preschool teacher before she was elected to the Senate in 1992.

She said she remembers one little girl who had a painful ear infection for days but didn’t go to the doctor because her mother had no health insurance.

She remembers a little boy who told her he was upset because “last night my dad never came home.” And a young mother who picked up her children one day and told Murray she had lost her child care and would have to leave the children at home while she worked.

Because most members of Congress don’t have that experience it is up to grass-roots activists to lead the charge for child-care programs and health insurance for children, Murray said.