Christopher Shays: “Mr. Speaker, politicians are elected by adults to represent the children. We need to save our children from crippling…”

“Mr. Speaker, politicians are elected by adults to represent the children. We need to save our children from crippling national debt, Government debt. We need to make sure that our trust funds, like Medicare, are there for our children. And most importantly, we need to enable, we need to help our children become independent citizens of this great and magnificent country. This bill helps to transform our caretaking, social and corporate welfare state into a caring opportunity society. I extend tremendous admiration to the gentleman from Florida, [Mr. Shaw] for not giving into those who wanted to weaken the bill so that it would end up not doing anything. We have a caring bill that does this. In the final analysis, it is not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings. It ends this caretaking society and moves toward a caring society where we teach our children and the adults who raise our children how to grow the seeds, how to have the food.”