Political Quotes

“it is unfortunate, in a sense, to begin this dialog with such a piece of legislation that my friend from Georgia has offered, which I think is not well conceived in terms of the impact it could have, if we chose to dedicate it to special education. While education may be the issue foremost in the minds of the American public, I highly doubt that the public has this legislation before us this morning in mind when they think of ways the Federal Government could be helping to improve our schools in this country. Education savings accounts, as proposed in this legislation, represent, in my view, bad education policy, bad tax policy, and a waste of valuable Federal resources that could be so helpful if directed to public schools and special education needs. In fact, the legislation offered by our friend and colleague from Georgia offers very little to public schools. Remember, there were 55 million kids in this country getting up and going to school a couple of hours ago. They went off to elementary and secondary schools this morning across the country; 5 million went to a private or parochial school; 50 million went to a public school. Even if we try to take every kid out of a public school and put them in a private school, they would not fit. The overwhelming majority of kids who went to school this morning went to a public school.”