George H.W. Bush: “You know, it would be very interesting, I don't know how the Commission would determine this, to see, of the families…”

“You know, it would be very interesting, I don't know how the Commission would determine this, to see, of the families who are having difficulties in the sense, both combination of economic difficulties, remembering what Dave talked about single-parent families, how faith--I don't know how you could; it's so private in one way--but how faith matters, whether they still have the seeds of faith to sustain them or whether they just lost that and perhaps through some ministry could reacquire it. I don't know. I mean, I'd be interested. What do you think? Commissioner Josephine Velazquez. In all the programs that we have been viewing, wherever we see that there is a religious factor built into it, a spiritual factor build into the program, you can see that the results you get are so much more positive. So it is a very positive aspect and something that we should look into. We have lost that. And we have been shown--a lot of these families come up to say, and a lot of the children, ``Why don't we have our prayer back in schools?''--things that they're missing. We lost it somewhere along the line, and the American people are asking for it to be back. Commissioner Jackson. I'd like to give you a comment. I think yesterday, Mr. President, in Los Angeles, we had a story told by a young man who is today 27 years old. His mother left under unusual circum- stances. They lived in Nicholson Gardens, which is a public housing development in Los Angeles. At 17 he had to become the father, the mother of the family. His youngest brother was 2 months old when she left the home. He has raised every one of them. But he said yesterday the most important thing was his faith and commitment in God and that he had to fight through a court system to keep his sisters and brothers. And now he has become an assistant manager at Nicholas Gardens. But he specifically said to us yesterday that without his deep abiding belief in God, that he could not have made it, and that was the driving force keeping him going every day.”