Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that. I just want to tell him how outraged I am by the propaganda against poor people. I am outraged by it. If you look at a family that uses SNAP, formerly called food stamps, this program works perfectly well in a capitalist society, in a countercyclical economy. When we almost had a depression in 2008, the food stamp rolls went up, and now they are coming back down because people are more connected with work. Two-thirds of these families that receive SNAP have at least one working person in it. And guess what. They have veterans in them and elders, children and disabled people. Eighty percent of the people who receive SNAP, someone has worked the year before or the year after, so it is not an issue of people not wanting to work. And think about it: we now have given $1.9 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest people. We hear the White House bragging about how we have increased those jobs, we have increased jobs by 164,000 people. Let me tell you, I happen to know in my own community people got two or three of those jobs because that is what they need to hold it down. Before I finish, I will just say that we ought not fall for the okeydoke, because poor people are not those other people. They are you; they are your cousins; they are people who go to your church; they are your kids' classmates; they are people who worked every day and lost their jobs due to technology or downsizing.…”