Political Quotes

“may I thank the Senator from North Dakota, Senator Dorgan, for beginning today's debate, today's critical debate, in an open, thoughtful, fair-minded manner. Could I comment on just one particular point? The Senator raised the question of the children born out of wedlock, and he is quite right. In 1992, 1,224,876 children were born out of wedlock--in some census tracts, 80 percent of all children born. Happily, North Dakota has been spared--or spared itself. This is something altogether new to our experience. And 30 years ago, you could not have discussed it on the Senate floor. There is a maturity coming to our debates. This was a subject-- the ratio, in 1992, reached 30.1 percent. It is probably almost 33 now. It has gone up every year since 1970. In 1970, it was 10.6 percent. So it has tripled, the ratio, and the number of children have tripled. We could not talk about this. We were not sure it was happening. Was it an aberration, just the weather, something like that? There used to be theories that when there would be blackouts there would be more children conceived. That turned out not to be so. We have a social crisis of a new order--not a recession, not a drought, not a collapse of farm prices, nor an increase in mortgages, the things that have come with some periodicity and consequence to us, and which we have learned to understand pretty much and manage.”