Political Quotes

“I would really defer to the Governors of the States that have come to us and have been very strongly in support of what we have been putting forward. How they are going to do it is, we are going to release them from all the Federal strings attached to the current program. What Governors will tell you is they can run a much more efficient program than we can out of Washington through the States. I happen to believe--I had a conversation just this past week with my Governor from Pennsylvania, Tom Ridge, a former Member of the House, who feels very strongly if given the opportunity to design their own program, given the existing amount of AFDC dollars coming through, existing amount of what was the Jobs Program coming through, which is what is in the Republican bill, they cannot only design a better program, put more people to work, get more people off the rolls, get people back into productive work in Pennsylvania at less money, that without the hoops they have to jump through here at the Federal level--we now provide that flexibility for them to be able to design their own system, which we hope and I believe will be a lot more efficient.”