Political Quotes

“I come to the floor because a bill has just been introduced to impose vouchers on the District of Columbia. The Congress had the opportunity to impose vouchers on itself when H.R. 1 was here, the President's Leave No Child Behind bill. Instead, it defeated a voucher proposal 273 to 155; 68 Republicans joined 204 Democrats. It was not even close. Further, there have been 20 referenda on vouchers, all of them defeated, most recently in California and Michigan. Not only were they defeated overwhelmingly by almost three-quarters of the population in each State but the people of color, minorities, voted even more overwhelmingly against vouchers. In D.C. we had our own voucher vote in the 1980s: 89 percent against, 11 percent for. What we are asking for in the Nation's capital is the same choices in educating our children that each and every Member of this body has insisted upon already for her own district and in her own State; and do not get me wrong, I do not believe a child can be in the first grade but once. So I strongly believe in choices and alternatives to public schools. The District deserves applause for its efforts on choice because our own efforts far outdo the efforts of any Member of this body. Applause, not punishment, for the choices we have made. What are our alternatives? First, we have more charter schools in the District of Columbia per capita than any other district. Fourteen percent of our children go to public charter schools.”