Political Quotes

“I am happy today for several reasons. I think Congress has come together with the administration to take a step forward on certainly what is a pressing national social problem. That is welfare reform. We started out, as the previous speaker said, almost 2 years ago to try to bring together something that could be signed and enacted into law so we could actually change the system that is broken, according to everyone who has observed it, and actually do something about it now. I want to thank the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Shaw], the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich], the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Sabo], and many others here. I particularly want to thank the gentleman from Delaware, Mike Castle, who came together with me to put together something that would be bipartisan so we could get off of this partisan gridlock that we have been suffering from. Mr. Speaker, in our motion to instruct conferees we asked for two or three things: One, a safety net for kids. That has been accomplished with Medicaid and food stamps. The safety net is there for children. The unfunded mandate problem has been partially taken care of, with the States being allowed to continue with waivers, and also because the Medicaid situation is intact, there will not be a lot of costs transferred to county hospitals across our country. We also asked that savings go to the debt. That has not been accomplished, but as the previous speaker said, we will continue to work on that.”