Political Quotes

“right now, this evening, hundreds of thousands of vulnerable youngsters across America are living in foster care, separated from family and growing up in a constant struggle instead of in a loving home. For years, this body has worked on a bipartisan basis to come up with an alternative--we call it the Family First legislation--in order to give new hope to our youngsters. I am particularly grateful to Senator Bennet because he and I have teamed up on this with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, including Chairman Hatch, Kevin Brady--the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee--and Congressman Buchanan. We have had a bipartisan team working for this. Now, in the waning moments of this Congress, after the legislation passed the House unanimously, after there were a number of hearings in the Finance Committee, and after objections were raised when we used the process in the Senate called the hotline to see if Senators had problems with this legislation and three indicated they had concerns, and we resolved all of them--yet it looks like this Senate is going to go home and end up continuing a policy that causes so much pain to vulnerable children and their families. What our bipartisan bill would do is to say that for the first time, foster care dollars could be used to keep families together instead of ripping them apart.…”