Political Quotes

“I thank Mr. Murphy. I appreciate his courtesy in permitting me to speak with him this evening. The Sun is setting on our Nation's Capitol. Many of our colleagues have returned to Washington, D.C. They are at dinner, they are with their families, they are meeting with their constituents. I appreciate his being here on the floor this evening to highlight a critical area that he has been so committed to and has worked on so hard because it is something that each and every American needs to address and needs to focus on because we are all in this together. I will say that earlier in my career as a child State legislator, I was part of the deinstitutionalization movement. It made a lot of sense. As my friend has said, we have had over a half million institutional beds. Some of the conditions were not what they should have been. Some of the treatment certainly is nothing that we would accept today. The notion of allowing people to be helped in a deinstitutionalized setting made sense for a lot of people. It is sad to say we didn't do a good job of implementing it. The institutionalization worked if we were there supporting the people who were deinstitutionalized with medication, with counseling, and with housing. And sadly, when we hit some choppy waters economically in my community and others around the country who followed what was in theory a good model, we found that there were too many people out on their own.…”