Bruce F. Vento: “we have a new predicate in terms of how we move in dealing with this issue, but not on the backs of the homeless. This…”

“we have a new predicate in terms of how we move in dealing with this issue, but not on the backs of the homeless. This particular amendment would help 100,000 people that are homeless. It is an enormously important amendment to try and provide the funding, the leverage, for the private sector, to empower those people towards self-sufficiency and out of a dependency. We do not accept the predicate that somehow these people are homeless by choice. What a choice. Some choice. To leave people in despair of that nature I think is simply not akin to our values. When we look at space station development and other programs related to man in space, and look at $5.3 billion, the homeless program is only 20 percent of that amount. Where are our priorities? If we have to make tough choices, let us not make them and take them from the poorest of the poor. I think if we look at the other subsidies, the tax breaks the private sector and others receive in terms of these types of subsidies, we have to reorganize this. We do not have enough to do it all, and we are not meeting the very basic needs of people in our society, and therefore I think we have a right and a responsibility to expect others that are engaged in this type of development of science to do it. I am a science teacher.…”