Political Quotes

“Why are we doing this bill? That is a good question. A lot of what the gentleman from California (Mr. Martinez) said I agree with, about the substance of the bill. The reason I think we are having to do the legislation now is because the President and the administration has not taken the results of our agreement seriously and there is a constant state of spin. Everything has to be spun. The truth cannot be announced that when he sent a bill over here to create another national test, 295 Members of the House said no, not a good idea, Mr. President, for a variety of reasons. Two hundred ninety-five Members of the House is a veto-proof vote. Why were we so upset with this proposal and why did we support the Goodling amendment that stopped it in its tracks? There is a lot of reasons. If one is in a minority community, an inner city, where parents have a hard time getting their kids into a quality school, and we do a national test, those kids are going to do a lot worse on the test than somebody here in the suburbs of Washington. We already know that. We do not need to stigmatize those kids any more. It is $100 million. That bothers some of us, that we are going to spend $100 million to develop yet another national test on the top of the ones that we have. So we said no overwhelmingly to the President.”