Political Quotes

“I want to thank the gentleman for making that a point. If you look at the United States as we compete against other Nordic countries, Australia and some other countries in Europe, we do not have the upward mobility. Meaning if you're born poor--and we talk a lot about the American Dream and moving up the ladder. If you are born poor in America, we rank about ninth or tenth in our citizens' ability to climb up through that ladder and get themselves into the middle class. That, to me, is a benchmark of how we've moved away from that philosophy that we had for many years, up until the 1980s, where we were going to make key investments that were going to help people climb up that economic ladder. That citizen has to bring initiative, has to bring ingenuity, has to bring determination. I am not one of these people who thinks every kid needs to get a trophy in Little League. I don't adhere to that philosophy. Kids are going to fail, but we need to help pick them up. At the same time, you can have policies that allow and cultivate the ability for people to go up the economic ladder, to not have such a disadvantage in life and an economic system that doesn't facilitate that to ultimately where we're getting bypassed by some of these other countries who have a different philosophy than we do.”