Former U.S. Rep. J.C. Watts reiterates the importance of faith-based groups.

Former Republican congressman and football great J.C. Watts received a warm welcome from host George Martin and then a standing ovation after his speech at the Bakersfield Business Conference..

“He made a wonderful run on a different field than a football field – that’s the political field – and he made a great difference,” said Martin, who had been waiting to hear the speaker. “He was the author of President Bush’s faith-based initiative, and his name is J.C. Watts.”

Watts, who held the fourth highest position in the House of Representatives, represented Oklahoma from 1994 to 2002.

Among many other things, Watts used his time in Congress trying to improve the redevelopment of communities, strengthen education and restore American values.

Watts said he tried to advance new ways of thinking to deal with old problems.

“I think insanity is doing the same old thing the same old way but expecting different results,” said Watts. “And so I was always trying to look at the models that we were using in delivering community services and health care, Social Security, trying to create jobs … (or) education, and saying, ‘You know, why can’t we do that differently?'”

Watts said that the federal government has created all the wrong models in 40 years, especially in the area of welfare.

“(There are) only two ways that you can get ahead in America, either you save or you invest. We said to poor people, ‘If you save money, we’ll take away your benefits,'” said Watts, who encountered opposition in changing the welfare reform bill in 1995.

“You will create poverty if you allow the reward for the families that break up to be greater than the reward for the families that stay together.”

The reform bill gave people the means to climb the ladder of economic opportunity and get off welfare, he said.

“The reason you believe that there’s not compassion in what we’re doing is because you define compassion by how many people you can have on food stamps and in public housing,” Watts told one man who objected to Watts’ welfare proposal, “(but) I define compassion by how few people are on food stamps and public housing.”

As a longtime supporter of Bush’s faith-based initiative, a proposal that gave faith-based organizations a chance at government partnership, Watts believes that one way of making changes in government models is by not discriminating against faith-based organizations, but instead, working with them in restoring pride in neighborhoods that others had written off.

“Long before the (2000 presidential) election, I had talked about a new kind of conservatism – one that offered a hand-up, not just a handout,” Watts wrote in a foreword for a recently published book, “A Revolution of Compassion.”