Burgess Owens: “we have initiated the debate on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Act reauthorization. I want to pick up on a…”

“we have initiated the debate on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Act reauthorization. I want to pick up on a point that I made during the discussion of the rule, and that is that poor people are treated with great contempt in this Congress. During the discussions that preceded the preparation for the bill, there has been language that indicated that the poor are held in contempt. Children are treated with contempt. They make the mistake of assuming, speaking as if we are dealing with welfare mothers and women who are unworthy of being helped by the government. Actually most of the aid to families with dependent children is exactly what it says, it is aid to families with children. We are helping children, and to treat children with contempt is a great mistake in humanitarian terms, in national terms and even military terms. It happens at this point in history there has been a lot of highlighting of the fact that poor children in certain countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan and a few of the Islamic nations are being nurtured and brought into schools called madrassahs, and being given three meals a day, taught to read and write, and they are taught to hate, and then shipped out to military camps which become part of the armies which are supposed to wage jihad against the West. Recently in the New York City Times there was an article which shows that the right-wing Hindus in India are doing the same thing.”