Political Quotes

“Thank you very much, Mr. McGovern, for your leadership on this very important issue. To my colleague, the distinguished Congresswoman who is managing for my friends on the other side of the aisle, there are probably many of us who have lived the American story and began life on the rocky side of the mountain. I rise because I happen to come from a district where my predecessor died on the side of an Ethiopian mountain. It's a far, far place away from Houston. My predecessor was Congressman Mickey Leland. He was so driven by the vastness of hunger, he was so much a soldier of Robert Kennedy's message that he didn't allow danger to thwart him from trying to help people who were literally dying. And so he was carrying grain. And he had colleagues who were not on that flight, Tony Hall and Congressman Emerson. And I would say to you that it really gets me in my heart, what we're doing today, because my predecessor, a Member of Congress, and we're described by many terms, but he felt that hunger was so severe that he helped found the Select Committee on Hunger. We have the Mickey Leland Hunger Center because hunger was prevailing in America and around the world. So you can understand why I stand here today and tell you that it's not good enough to feed 85 percent of the hungry children so that 15 percent of them don't get breakfasts and don't get lunches. That's not something to give you a halo for or to give you an accolade.…”