Political Quotes

“Mr. President, tomorrow night we have the State of the Union Address, and news reports say that one of the issues the President will be speaking about is income inequality. That brings me to something I should have spoken on a couple of weeks ago, because January 8, 2014, marked the 50th anniversary of President Johnson's call for a war on poverty. This anniversary provides a time to reflect on and reevaluate its twin aims of poverty relief and economic opportunity. The goal of poverty relief is to ensure that even those who might find themselves in tough times have sufficient assistance to meet their basic human needs while lifting themselves out of abject poverty. In other words, we have to make sure people have a roof over their heads and food on their table, as minimums. The goal of economic opportunity is to ensure the lower rungs on the economic ladder are strong enough to support that climb out of poverty. Economic opportunity is another term for the American dream that through hard work, as we know, we can improve not just a person's own lot in life but that a person's children and a person's children's children will be better off. If we judge the war on poverty according to the first aim, a good case can be made that we have been very successful. Looking at the official poverty level that is based on income prior to many transfer payments, little has changed since 1964.…”