Political Quotes

“how sad I would have been if on my last day, after 26 years in this Congress, I would not have had an opportunity to vote on this legislation. I certainly want to thank the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) and the gentleman from Illinois (Chairman Porter) and the ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), for giving me that opportunity. As I have said many times, priorities are very important when we talk about funding, and for many years I asked us to please think about children with special needs and I am happy to say that in the last 5 years, after the President signs this legislation, they will have increased spending 175 percent in the areas of IDEA. What that means to local school districts is the fact that they can do the modernization and the renovation; they can reduce class size; they can do all sorts of things, if they have that kind of money. I want to thank them also for including funding increases for Even Start and including the Literacy That Involves Families Together Act in the conference report. All of the reports that we have at this point show that teaching parents literacy and parents skills so they can be their child's first and most important teacher has improved their opportunity greatly to succeed.”