Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague from New Mexico, Senator Heinrich, in introducing the Two-Generation Economic Empowerment Act of 2016. It has been a great pleasure to work together to craft this important legislation, and I commend him for his leadership. Our bipartisan bill proposes a new approach to fighting poverty, one that focuses on addressing the needs of children and their parents together--two generations--in order to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. More than 50 years after President Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty, poverty remains a troubling reality for millions of Americans who struggle to find the resources they need for the basic necessities of life. In the time since that worthy war was first declared, the Federal Government has spent trillions of dollars--taxpayer dollars--on programs to combat poverty. Yet the truth is that the poverty rate has barely budged. In 1966, the poverty rate was 14.7 percent. Just this month, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the poverty rate for 2015 was 13.5 percent. I would note that is actually 1 percentage point higher than the year before the start of the 2008 recession. The point is that despite our good intentions and despite the expenditure of trillions of taxpayer dollars, we have made very little progress in lifting families out of poverty. Every State in our Nation is impacted by poverty.…”