Political Quotes

“Mr. President, this evening with my colleague Senator Bumpers, we rise to offer an amendment to the pending amendment of Senator Dole which would dramatically affect the fairness of the funding allocations to the States under this legislation. We describe our amendment as the children's fair share amendment. Our approach is simple. We believe that the funding to the individual States, and therefore to their children, should be needs based. As a result of our formula, States would receive funding based on the number of poor children within that State in the particular year in which they received funding. There are two modifications to that basic principle: that funds should be allocated where poor children are in the year of distribution. Recognizing the fact that this legislation imposes some very serious mandates on States, particularly in areas of preparing persons for work, and to be able to meet specific numerical goals for the percentage of welfare beneficiaries who are employed, we believe that there is a minimum amount of funds required for any State in order to meet those obligations.”