On the recordJanuary 8, 2014
Let me first thank the gentlelady from California for carrying this torch during a time that there seems to be such a lack of sensitivity to the poor. As with Lyndon Johnson, there was a concentration of those people who vote--that is, the middle class--and somehow even now, 50 years later, we have a lot of concerns, and rightly so, about the middle class, but somehow the poor have just been written off. And the gentlelady from California and our minority leader together have reminded us that we have a basic obligation here that if you want to take care of the country and our spiritual needs, the poor cannot be excluded. So in listening more recently to the words that President Johnson spoke in the joint session in 1964, it was really an act of courage to talk about something that too many people seemed to be embarrassed about, and the fact is that we had a national obligation to take care of the lesser of our brothers and sisters. Today we can take for granted Medicaid, Medicare, expansion of Social Security, incentives for our children, and earned income tax credits. All of it was done not as Blacks and Whites or northerners and southerners or Democrats and Republicans, but with a spirit that that was a part of the reason that we were sent to Congress, to make this a stronger Nation.…
