Political Quotes

“let me follow up on the comment that the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) just made, because a lot of very reasonable people, as you know, believe that this scenario you described is not accidental. It is not just a by-product of the President's strategy, but it is, indeed, the President's strategy, to turn Social Security, which is a universal benefit that the American people collectively pay into, to transform it from that world into a world, frankly, where it looks like a conventional welfare program, a program where very poor people receive a benefit from it and the rest of the population receives very little. Now, what happens to those kinds of programs? Number one, the Republicans cut them every year. They do not fare very well in this budget process. If you look at the programs that we have in this country that we fund out of our sense of charity, Section 8, walking away from it, housing, dealing with the disabled and mentally ill, all the programs that we fund out of our altruism, unfortunately, those are the programs that are getting cut. I do not believe that this is an accident, that the Republican party and President of the United States are taking this plan that has worked enormously well and refashioning it into a program where, frankly, people will have less of a stake in paying into it. The second observation, I would say to the gentleman from Florida (Mr.…”