Political Quotes

“as we are moving rapidly towards reauthorization of TANF and as we continue to talk about welfare reform, and we continue to try and figure out what that really means, what is it that we are talking about? What is it that we are attempting to accomplish? Well, it seems to me that one of the pieces that is often left out of the puzzle is there is conversation about movement but not necessarily conversation about movement away from what. It seems to me that any time we talk about that issue, that we really ought to be talking about the reduction and ultimate elimination of poverty. And so we talk about these as social issues, but in reality, they are really economic issues. And often we do not talk about the economic implications. We point out all of the difficulties of disadvantagement. We point out the numbers of people, two million of them in our criminal justice system, who are locked up in the Nation's prisons and jails, or we will talk about the 40 million-plus people who do not have health insurance, or we will talk about those folk who lack decent housing, or people who live in disadvantaged areas. And when we get right down to the bottom of it, it all revolves around the issue of poverty. Who are those who have and who are those who have not. Who are those who have more than they need and others who have not enough. And so the question becomes, how do we balance the equation?”