Political Quotes

On the recordOctober 9, 2013
Mr. President, the Senator from Florida, now wants to fund the Head Start Program. That is all well and good. We all recognize how invaluable the Head Start Program is. But I must say that listening to this request and the previous request and the other requests that have come up reminds me of an analogy. The Republicans, quite frankly, have torn down the wall of government, and now they want to rebuild it brick by brick, but the way they want to rebuild it is by stacking the bricks. Here is a stack of bricks here, here is another stack of bricks, and here is another stack of bricks. Anyone will tell you that if you build a wall like that, it will be very weak. It won't hold together. Our government is built from a wall of interconnected bricks. Look at a brick wall sometime. See how the bricks are interconnected. It provides strength. They all rely upon one another. They are interconnected. They provide a bulwark. If you stack those bricks one after the other, you will have a weak wall. Now what the Republicans are saying is: Well, we have torn down that wall by shutting down the government. Now we want to build it brick by brick, but we will just stack them. We will have a brick here and a brick there. This is what I am getting at with that analogy. The Senator from Florida wants to fund the Head Start Program--all well and good--but the Head Start Program is not a separate brick in that wall, it is interconnected to so many others.…
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Tom Harkin
Democratic · Iowa

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