Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker I would like to take some time here this afternoon to talk about education in furtherance of the discussion we just had and the votes we have just had on the floor of the House of Representatives. In a time when education has risen to be the number one issue in all of the polls that we see across America, everyone is trying to take credit for what is happening in education, or to blame others. In reality, I do not think there is a man or woman on either side of this Chamber who would not want to, in some way, be able to help young people with education. Mr. Speaker, I like to believe very strongly that we on the Republican side have worked very, very hard to further this purpose, just as we did on the last vote, trying to take the same amount of money and giving flexibility to the States and local districts to make the decision about how to use the money and not mandate just school construction or just reduced class size. Similarly, we have been working very hard on the funding aspects of education. Indeed, as I indicated in our discussion earlier today, in the first 5 years of the last decade, with the Democrats in charge of the House of Representatives, the increase in funding for education was 6 percent per year. Basically, it was 6 percent in the 5 years the Democrats were in charge of the House, and when the Republicans took over, the increase has been 8.2 percent a year.”