Sheila Jackson Lee: “I thank the distinguished manager for yielding to me and for the eloquent statements of our colleagues, including…”

“I thank the distinguished manager for yielding to me and for the eloquent statements of our colleagues, including Congresswoman Sewell and Congresswoman Moore. I thank our chairman, Mr. Richmond, for his persistence that members of the Congressional Black Caucus come to the floor of the House to be able to address these concerns that are very important. I am going to be very brief, but I want to join my colleagues on what I think is a striking and provocative discourse, and it is a hurting discourse. The reason why I want to make sure that my voice is heard is because I have constituents who are living poor, but their spirit is not poor. Their commitment to success is not poor. Their desire for better opportunities for their children is not poor. Yet we want to condemn or malign this group that may be living in poverty. It strikes me as a difficult proposition to know that the Speaker of the House, for example, is seeking, again, welfare reform which, when I first came to the United States Congress, I enthusiastically voted against. And I was right because so many people were turned off the rolls; so many lives were ruined; so many children did not get the needs that they needed; so many poor mothers could not tend to their newborn babies because resources were lost. {time} 2015 Now we come again to a concept of welfare reform, and we are not concerned, I guess, about the different health conditions of different ethnic and racial populations.…”