State of North Carolina secondary Archives: on Welfare & Poverty

Elizabeth Dole: Flexibility in welfare programs via federal block grants

Dole supports the following principles regarding welfare and poverty.
• Require welfare recipients to spend at least 40 hours a week in a combination of work and training programs.
• Continue to give states and local governments flexibility in and responsibility for welfare programs through federal block grants.

Roy Cooper: Create affordable, available housing for disaster recovery

In just the past couple of months, we've been able to repair and reopen more than 100 roads, and help hundreds of families return home or find other places to live. But nearly 600 households are still in need of permanent housing. We will not forget these families, and must keep working together to help them.

One thing that has become clear during the disaster recovery is the lack of affordable, available housing in eastern NC that has hindered relocation efforts. That's why I am asking you to work with me to restore allowing the use of federal money for housing so we can start to build our way out of this affordable housing shortage.

Thom Tillis: No government assistance for those who can help themselves

The "divide and conquer" line seems relevant. Chris Matthews noted: "The goal here politically is to get the sick people to attack the poor people."

Tillis [responded today that he] regrets using the phrase "divide and conquer" in 2011. "The frustration is that we have people that are abusing the system at the expense of us being able to do more for the people who desperately need the safety net," he said. "My point was to say we need to make it very clear, government exists to help those who cannot help themselves. And those who can need to do everything that they possibly can to let us free up those resources so that we can do better things for those who desperately need it."