Political Quotes

“The fact is, the President, in his budget request, studied the number of applications that were coming in from the districts all across this Nation and looked at the backlog. It is amazing what we have done. Since my friend has been chairman--I need to compliment him--we went from $40 million for afterschool programs under his leadership and the leadership of the Senator from Iowa and the President to $200 million. Together we went from $40 million to $200 million, and now my friend is suggesting we go to $400 million. What I am suggesting to my friend is there are culled applications sitting at the Department of Education--Senator Kennedy pointed them out in his remarks; I refer my friend to his remarks--so we know what the backlog is. We know that 184 afterschool applications were funded and 2,000 applied. I am not suggesting that every one of those 2,000 is meritorious, but I say to my friend, out of the 2,000 that applied and only 184 were funded, we know there are a lot of good schools in Pennsylvania and California and Iowa and all over the country. What we are saying is, we could probably fund far more than the $600 million, but we believe to ratchet up the program in the right fashion, to get it done right that $600 million would be appropriate.”