Political Quotes

“Thank you, Mr. President. In 2\1/2\ minutes I hope to convince my colleagues to support this afterschool amendment. The Senator from Vermont said it is not so exciting to fund new programs. This is not a new program. This is a tried and true program. This is a program that works. This is a program that we all agreed we would spend $200 million on last year. The response in the community has been overwhelmingly positive and we need to fund it at a greater level. What we do in this amendment is authorize the same amount of funding that the President has put in his budget; $600 million would accommodate over 1 million children. Look at these children, look at their faces, look at how they are involved with a mentor after school. After school programs keep children like them from getting into trouble by involving them in positive activities. We can see here, if we look at this chart, that the time when juvenile offenders commit violent crimes is during the after school hours. You do not need a degree in criminology or sociology or psychology to understand that youth offenders are more likely to commit crime or become involved in criminal activity when they are home alone or unsupervised. We see criminal activity among youth peaking here at 3 p.m., when schools let out. Gradually, as the hours move into the early evening and parents come home, the peak drops. Additionally, law enforcement supports afterschool programs. We call this particular amendment an anticrime amendment.…”