Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington State, the former chair of this subcommittee, Mr. McDermott. Mr. McDERMOTT. I want to say just a few words about this. Obviously, I support the extension of the TANF. But I think that there is a real need--and we've been extending it 1 year at a time, 1 year at a time, 1 year at a time for some time--there really is a need to re-look at the whole concept of what this safety net really needs to be. We wiped out welfare as we know it, as was the phrase in 1996, at a time when the economy in this country was going straight up. Anybody could find a job if they looked for one. And it was very clear that there were efforts in that bill to push people off the rolls and out into the work market. Now, it was possible to do that. Today, however, you have a situation where there are four people that are looking for every job that's out there. You have many middle class families who have exhausted 99 weeks of unemployment and have nothing in this country except food stamps. Now, it sort of depends on whether or not we're going to have a middle class in this country when we have a downturn like this and we decide whether we're going to help the middle class make it. We've got foreclosures that won't quit. And we've had no proposals out of the House to do anything about foreclosure prevention.…”