Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership. Mr. Speaker, this bill is all about Republicans refusing to pay for an important public service that they know works. It is about their meager 6 percent solution, where they decline to extend services that empower families, that support young children and their parents, to extend that to the other 94 percent of eligible Americans, despite the fact that there is evidence-based indication that these services perform so well, and in one area, helped to prevent child abuse. It is about their refusal to respond in a fiscally responsible manner to support this program, despite what their own experts say about the effectiveness of the program. So, instead of providing a reliable source of necessary funding for public services, Republicans insist upon being willing to remove life- sustaining resources from some of our country's most vulnerable citizens. It is really a punitive, mean-spirited effort to demonize the poor. Let's look at who will be hurt by this retread proposal, because they tried this a few years ago and it was rejected. SSI, or Supplemental Security Income, is an initiative to help some of our most disadvantaged Americans. The SSI program pays modest cash benefits that can be obtained only by, essentially, showing that you have got nothing--well, not exactly nothing. You can have total assets other than your home of $2,000. You can't have more than $735 a month in income.…”