Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I want to first pick up a little bit on what the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Weldon] said when he said there are good public schools. I do not want people out there to believe that as a Republican Party we believe all public schools are poor, that public school teachers do a poor job. I believe 70 percent of our public schools do very well. I believe 70 percent of our public school teachers do very well. However, they only represent about 50 percent of our children in the United States, even though they are 70 percent of the teachers and 70 percent of the schools. Mr. Speaker, as Republicans that is not good enough. We do not want only 70 percent of our schools doing well. We do not want only 50 percent of our children receiving a quality education. What the Majority Leader is insisting happen is that 100 percent of our schools and 100 percent of our children receive a quality education. Now, we believe that the same old Federal approach that we have had, and as the Majority Leader was saying, we had to sit in that committee and see promulgated over and over again, has failed and we do not believe that just by doing more of the same or simply by adding more programs things will change.”