Charles Rangel: “Let me thank my friend and my colleague from New York for bringing this important issue to the attention of our Congress…”

“Let me thank my friend and my colleague from New York for bringing this important issue to the attention of our Congress and the Nation. Mr. Speaker, it is a strange thing about those Americans who have been raised in poor communities. That is, as they grow older, it seems that God has blessed them to remember just the good things that they have enjoyed, and the misery and the pain somehow fades away; but I think that the most important thing that comes out of this is the hope for the future. Very few Americans have not witnessed in their families devastating economic impacts, but that was more than compensated for because they knew, if they had to be in any country in the world in which some of these problems could be resolved through opportunity, they would be in the United States of America. The tragic thing that we have today is that this dream appears to be fading for the poor as well as for the middle class. When that happens, I think what makes America different from so many other countries is that it is possible to have classes that are locked in frigid concrete, as used to be the case in Europe--that is dramatically changing to be more fluid as it relates to upward mobility--while it appears to us that today, if you were born in poverty, you are almost destined to remain in poverty. What a sinful, historic condition that would make. What a tragic example it would set for the rest of the world that has used us as an example as to what human beings can do.…”