Your Legislators: Garrett Says Welfare System 'Broken', Needs Reform

Scott Garrett on Thursday unveiled a new bill to "reform" welfare by forcing recipients of "able-bodied' food stamp recipients to take job training and continually seek work, something the conservative 5th District Republican says is a step toward personal responsibility currently lost under the welfare system.

The bill Garrett has co-sponsored (along with conservatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Tim Scott of South Carolina)–coined the Welfare Reform Act of 2011–would also force Obama's annual budget to include clear details regarding spending on government assistance programs at the federal, state and local levels, and while cutting back overall spending levels to what they were in 2007 (including inflation), when (and if) unemployment falls under 6.5 percent.

Garrett cited 77 "means-tested" federal programs that provide benefits specifically targeting poor and low-income Americans, a system borne out of the Johnson administration's "War on Poverty," that he said should be overhauled.

“The Welfare Reform Act takes the necessary step of reforming an antiquated system tainted with inefficiencies and consumed by costly government spending,” Garrett said in a press release.

“I’m proud to stand with my colleagues in supporting this important bill that streamlines our country’s welfare system and promotes self-reliance as the solution to poverty in America.”

Critics, as cited in a recent Record article, have said it's not as simple as "just finding a job."

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The Congressman, top dog on the House Financial Services Committee, also kept on the offensive in his efforts to thwart the SEC from its request to receive more money in regulating financial markets.

Garrett said although critics have charged that Republicans are "trying to starve" the SEC, he claims it's not "fiscally responsible" to provide a larger chunk of change to the agency while the national deficit runs at $1.4 trillion. Garrett said the SEC's budget has increased three-fold in a decade, so complaints of it 'starving' are wholly unwarranted.

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Garrett co-sponsored H.R 1058, the Seniors' Tax Simplification Act of 2011. The bill, which was referred to the House Ways & Means Committee, would allow seniors to fill out their federal income tax on a new form, the 1040SR.

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In another effort to reduce the size of government, budget hawk Garrett co-sponsored Texas Republican Tom Price's bill H.R. 1011, The Decrease Spending Now Act. The act requires that the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) repeal money from non-obligated balances of discretionary appropriations.

“The mismanagement of Washington’s finances, and the eagerness of Congress to throw money at every problem, has left billions of hard earned taxpayer dollars gathering dust,” said Price, the Chairman of The House Republican Policy Committee.

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A report in The Financial Times points to growing support for a bill sponsored by Garrett and New York Democrat Carolyn Maroney, which would add new "covered bonding"–popular in Europe–to the finance industry.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has supported the measure, which proponents say could help reduce the create a new market for financing mortgages that would help the $10.6 trillion U.S. mortgage market from government assistance, according to a Reuters article.