Joe Cunningham: “I have good friends on both sides of the aisle and both sides of this position. What does me hurt is the partisanship…”

“I have good friends on both sides of the aisle and both sides of this position. What does me hurt is the partisanship, some of the partisanship, not from all Members, that I hear from Iraq to the White House politics to the rest of it on an issue. If we disagree on this issue, that is fine. I personally truly believe that this gives some of our children an opportunity to get out of schools that are crime- and drug-ridden and are being left behind. Not many, if any, Members of Congress, either the House or the other body, have their children in D.C. public schools. Most are in private schools. And yet there are some that would deny poor children, poor families to have the same rights that Members of Congress and other people that are affluent have. I think that is wrong. The other fallacy is that we are cutting public spending. We are not. Look where we have come from. When many of us dedicated ourselves to improving education, the roofs were so poor they were controlled by the fire department in D.C. Schools had to be delayed. We improved that. We put forth charter schools. We put forth a summer school where we had thousands of children volunteer to go to summer school in D.C., not because they had to, but because they did not want to be left behind. And there is another phase of that that we disagree on. But please do not say we are trying to damage education, because we believe from the bottom of our hearts that this is helping children.”