Political Quotes

“I said $100 million. If I said $100 billion it was a slip of the lip. At this hour I might have said $100 trillion. I think I said $100 million, but I do know. Whatever I said, I meant $100 million. But I thank the Senator for the interruption, if not the suggestion. It sounds like a hollow tunnel. I thank the Senator. The program which this $100 million is designed to address, again, is a demonstration project to see if something can be done on this problem of enormous magnitude. The leader in the Senate is the distinguished Senator from New York Senator Moynihan. If I might have Senator Moynihan's attention, I have been very much impressed with the clarion call which our colleague from the State of New York has made on the problem of rising pregnancies and unwanted children. It is a source of enormous problem in America which should have been addressed a long time ago. It is a very complex matter as to how to address it. It results in enormous costs. In 1991, the most recent statistics available, the Federal Government spent some $29 billion for AFDC, aid to families with dependent children, Medicaid and WIC payments. As to the families begun by teenaged parents, more than 1 million American teenage girls between the ages of 15 and 19 become pregnant each year, and there are some 50,000 low birth-weight babies born to teenaged girls. I first saw a 1-pound baby in 1984 when I visited a hospital in Pittsburgh. It was an ominous sign, a child as big as a hand.…”