Political Quotes

“The reality is that this bill which we are about to pass will be the grandfather of all unfunded mandates. We are going to be imposing significant new responsibilities on the States, without the resources to fund those responsibilities, and that as we impose that grandfather of all unfunded mandates, we are going to be creating a whole series of stepchildren as its consequence. Let me just use the example of my State, a family of three typically, and in the case of all eight of the women I mentioned earlier, this is the case, a single mother with two children. The State of Florida provides $303 a month in economic support, cash assistance to that mother and two children. That $303 is roughly half Federal money and half State money. Under this proposal, it is going to take 75 percent of the Federal money that we have been providing for the support of that family of three in order to pay for the job training and related support activities and the child care of that mother and her family while she is preparing to work. There is no proposal to act to fund those additional activities. In fact, the level of funding at the Federal level will be declining over the period of this program. So instead of that family having $303, it will see that reduced to approximately $185 a month which will be available for economic support because the remainder of the money, approximately $135, will be used to pay for these other mandated services.”