Political Quotes

“I would like to initially congratulate the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Shaw] for his relentlessness in being able to pursue welfare reform and he deserves the lion's share of the credit, along with the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Archer], who has done an outstanding job, and although I do not see him on the floor, our very able staff director, Ron Haskins, who has probably lived with this bill for about a decade, feeling passionately about the need to reform welfare. As my colleagues know, it was pretty amazing today to watch the President of the United States come on television and say that he was going, in fact, to sign this welfare bill. The reason why it is so amazing today is that because the American people, during all of my adult lifetime, have said that they want a system that will help people who cannot help themselves, but they want a system that is going to ask the able-bodied to get out and begin to work themselves. This has been delayed and put off, with a million excuses as to why we could not get it done.”