Political Quotes

“last week President Clinton visited Patrick Henry Elementary School in Alexandria, VA, to have a bite to eat. He dined on federally subsidized beef tacos and coleslaw and corn and fruit. The point of his visit was to try to convince the American people that the Personal Responsibility Act would slash the money that funds the current school lunch programs. Frankly, that is a lot of suckatash. The President and those who oppose welfare reform are not telling the truth to the American people. The Personal Responsibility Act would direct that money to go where it is most needed, away from the Washington bureaucrats and toward low income children. The idea is to help those who have the greatest need. I apologize for injecting real facts into this otherwise lively debate, but let us look at the numbers. In 1994, the Federal appropriation for the school lunch program was $4.3 billion. The Personal Responsibility Act would allocate block grants to the States of $6.7 billion next year, rising to $7.8 billion in the year 2000. So funding for school lunch programs will increase by 4.5 percent each year over the next 5 years. Let me repeat that again. School lunch programs will increase by 4.5 percent each year. Now, people can argue about whether that is good or bad public policy, but, please, do not mislead the public by calling it a cut.”