Political Quotes

“let me thank the lead sponsor on this amendment, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis) and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen) who has worked closely with us to bring some hope to children who today do not have hope. Eighty percent of the kids in America go to public schools, and we are doing everything we can to help those public schools improve, and we are all hopeful that they do improve. But we also know that the problems in the D.C. schools are severe. In spite of spending over $10,000 per student, we have the worst schools in America. And what this amendment does is to say let us create a scholarship program for 2,000 of them. This debate today really should not be about the teachers unions. There is no diversion of public money here. This debate today is about one thing: the plight of poor kids who lost the lucky lottery of life in terms of who their parents were or what household they grew up in or what school that they got assigned to. How can we continue to turn our heads and look the other way when we know that children's lives are being ruined because they are consistently put in a school that is not performing? I, for one, cannot look the other way anymore.”