Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in reluctant support of this measure, asking for its approval, because without approval, Federal funding for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families will expire on New Year's Eve. My reluctance centers on the incomplete nature of this extension. It's incomplete, first, in terms of time. In September, Republicans declined to extend this necessary funding for more than 3 months. Now they extend it only for another 9 months, assuring that during the height of the 2012 campaign season next year they'll have an opportunity to blame the poor for whatever questionable anecdote arises in the meantime. This type of short-term extension at a time of a budgetary crisis in many of our States reduces the ability to plan and to reform. It assures that direct assistance to our most vulnerable neighbors will just barely hang on. It postpones any meaningful action on responding to the Census Bureau report that more Americans were poor in 2010 than at any recent time. In my home county in the capital of the State of Texas, the percentage of children living in poverty grew from 18.3 percent in 2007 to 24.5 in 2010--almost one in every four children, in our area, impoverished. And today's bill is incomplete in terms of coverage. An important part of the 1996 reform of the welfare law, a reform that I personally supported, an important part is omitted today, the TANF supplemental grants.…”