Political Quotes

“Last night we began debating a higher education bill that will significantly help students who go on to get a postsecondary education. As I stand here today, I think, what good is that bill, what good is this bill if we cannot even give an elementary or a secondary education to a kid? What good is legislation for postsecondary education if we sabotage the public school system in this country and if we undermine the future of millions of kids in this country? And this legislation is just the first step. Public schools in Washington and all over the United States face very real and serious problems. But we do not solve them by funneling money away from them. If we begin instituting voucher systems, we might as well just say, let us walk away from our public schools. And none of us are ready to do that. Let us talk about this lifeboat analogy we heard about. Imagine there is a ship that is about to sink. We know the ship is going down. We have the chance to do something about it. The Republican response is, let us make sure that we have lifeboats for 3 percent of the passengers on the ship. The rest of the passengers, let us hope they can swim.”