Rick Lazio: “The idea, Mr. Chairman, that community work or self-sufficiency is wasteful or ridiculous or foolish I think mocks the…”

“The idea, Mr. Chairman, that community work or self-sufficiency is wasteful or ridiculous or foolish I think mocks the attempts that some communities are making from Charlotte to Milwaukee to try and incorporate the sense of reconnecting people with their civic responsibility and helping out in a broad range of community service activities in their own backyard to try and better that community, better that neighborhood, better that project, even better that hall. These efforts are valid, important efforts. Their aim is not to look the other way and just to maintain people. Their efforts ought to help transform, to deal with the root causes of poverty, to give people the tools to help them build those tools that they will need to go out, to graduate from public housing and then to make their own choices about where they can live, what they can do for their family. These are important, valid initiatives.”