Norvell Emerson: “I did not intend to speak on this amendment, but I sat in my office and watched it, and I decided that somebody needs to…”

“I did not intend to speak on this amendment, but I sat in my office and watched it, and I decided that somebody needs to come over here and talk about kids. The fastest growing number of kids in this country, or the fastest growing number of people who are contracting AIDS are young people. It is happening across the board. It does not make any difference whether you are in a rich community or a poor community or people of color or anything else, it is all over the country. In my State, when I was in the State legislature, I put in the first education money, back in 1984, in order to make money available to the education system, and in 1988 the State of Washington passed a law requiring AIDS education in all the schools and appropriated $8 million of their own money to do it. I find it extraordinarily ironical that folks who are usually up on their feet telling us that the Federal Government ought to stay out of their business and that the beltway does not know everything, are suddenly going to leap in on school districts and decide what ought to happen.”