Political Quotes

“Let me thank the gentleman from Massachusetts and the gentlelady who is managing this legislation and indicate that I wish we did have, Mr. McGovern, a bipartisan mission like Mickey Leland and Bill Emerson. If anybody remembers those late Members, they founded the Select Committee on Hunger in order to stamp out hunger. Mr. Speaker, I wish we had the kind of passion that drew Robert Kennedy to Appalachia to show America that the hunger that existed in this Nation was not a respecter of race or region--or maybe even the sensitivity of Martin Luther King in the same year. Tragically, they both lost their lives in 1968. He was galvanizing poor people to come to Washington because they wanted jobs, because they wanted to eat. Here we are on the floor of the House, Mr. McGovern, and I read from the statement made from the gentleman of Iowa last night on the floor that we need to start the long march to start to reform the expansion of the dependency class. Who is in the dependency class? There are charges that President Obama has put 48 million people on food stamps. How has President Obama put 48 million people on food stamps? People are hungry, and 16 percent of the poor people in America are children. What our friends want to do with regard to reform is if you get a school lunch and a school breakfast, that is not evident that your family needs food stamps. So maybe this family is dysfunctional.…”