Blake Moore: “I want to thank you so much, Representative Horsford from Nevada--and Representative Hakeem Jeffries as well, who is…”

“I want to thank you so much, Representative Horsford from Nevada--and Representative Hakeem Jeffries as well, who is here with us--for focusing on this effort and to conduct, this evening, this Special Order on lifting Americans out of poverty. You know, it was very, very difficult to listen to Representative Barbara Lee provide those data and those statistics of the numbers of Americans who are living in poverty. Reflecting on my own personal experience, reflecting on what I see every single day among my constituents, the stark poverty, especially of children, it is very, very difficult to talk about this because this is just not abstract; this is very real. For the purposes of this discussion though, with your permission, Representative Horsford, I would like to just modify your motto or your theme for one moment. Instead of talking about lifting Americans out of poverty, I'd like to talk about lifting America out of poverty. You see, America is heading down the road to not just having 46 million Americans living in poverty, not just having half of Americans during the recession relying on food stamps and having that as their only means of support, not just having African Americans or Hispanics or those living in stark rural poverty being the victims of poverty, but having poverty pervade our entire community. Because we, by not investing in educational opportunity of young people, are eating our seed corn. Rice farmers have taught us not to eat our seed corn.…”