Political Quotes

“first of all, I rise in serious and enthusiastic support of this legislation. I want to commend the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Talent) and the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Watts) for the longstanding pursuit that they have had of this legislation. I also want to take the opportunity to thank all of those committees that have been a part of processing it up to this point. I also want to thank President Clinton and Speaker Hastert for following through, following up on the commitments that they made to people as they traveled all around America, looking at communities where people had lost hope, where people had given up, where people felt that there was nothing really for them. Now we come with legislation that not only provides hope, but provides money, resources, venture capital, provides an opportunity to attract and bring new businesses to communities where there have not been any for years and years. Wage incentives, so that you can hire people who have been unemployed, opportunities for people to know that they, too, are part of America. Mr. Speaker, I know that some of my colleagues are concerned about the charitable-choice provisions of this legislation; but I tell my colleagues, all of my research indicates that this legislation breaks no new ground in that arena. There are already charitable choices in the welfare bill that we currently operate under.”