Political Quotes

“I rise today to call on this Congress to pass legislation to strengthen our neighborhood public schools. As a former superintendent of schools in my State, I know firsthand what it takes to improve education for all of our children. We must raise academic standards for our students and ensure accountability to our parents, the taxpayers and our communities. We must build new schools to reduce overcrowding and to provide a safe and orderly disciplined environment, free from drugs, violence and gangs. We must reduce class size and equip our children with the basic skills they need to make the best of their God-given ability. But instead of helping our public schools, where over 90 percent of all of our children attend, this Republican-led Congress, has chosen risky voucher schemes that would divert public resources to subsidize private schools. Using taxpayer money to provide private schools tuition is wrong. Our neighborhood public schools need all the resources we can provide them. I commend the President for his veto yesterday of the private school voucher scheme. I have a better bill for our public schools. My bill would provide money out of that voucher bill to provide building new schools. I urge this Congress to take action.”