Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I take this time to talk about the child care and development block grant bill that is before us and will be before us soon. I want to congratulate my colleagues, Senator Mikulski for her leadership on this bill, and Senator Harkin, Senator Alexander, and Senator Burr. This is truly a bipartisan effort, and we very much appreciate the child care and development block grant. It is critically important. The last time we authorized this program was 1996. I know that very well because I was serving in the House of Representatives at the time and had the opportunity to be the ranking member on the Human Resources Subcommittee in the Ways and Means Committee that was considering welfare reform and childcare, and how we could reward families for work, and how our welfare system could become a transitional program rather than a permanent program that would allow people, particularly moms, to be able to get into the workforce, stay in the workforce and climb up the economic ladder. As part of welfare reform we recognized we had to do things about the major cost concerns of someone, a mom, giving up her welfare in order to go to work. One of those issues was health care. We passed transitional health care for people coming off of cash assistance. We also had to deal with childcare, because childcare is an extremely costly part of being able to get into the workforce. In 1996 we consolidated many programs that were out there. We coordinated eligibility.…”