Bobby Scott: “I would like to thank the lady from Ohio for convening this Special Order so that we can talk about the great weekend…”

“I would like to thank the lady from Ohio for convening this Special Order so that we can talk about the great weekend that we had. The gentleman from Florida, Kendrick Meek, did a tremendous job as chairman of the foundation. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick from Michigan did a great job as chairman of the caucus; Donna Christensen from the Virgin Islands and G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina leading the legislative weekend. We had dozens of important legislative seminars, foreign affairs, armed services and veterans, transportation, health care, education, housing, social services, financial issues, civil rights, voting rights. Every aspect of legislation that you can imagine, we had the nationally recognized experts. They were open to the public, the public had an opportunity for questions and answers and input. These were great workshops. I participated in four of them. The town hall forum entitled 'The Cradle to Prison Pipeline' that talked about the unfortunate situation where so many of our young people start off and gradually, slowly but surely, get in trouble, drop out of school and end up in prison, and how with appropriate investments, strategic investments we can change that pipeline to a cradle-to-college pipeline, which is so much better for humanity, so much better for our communities, and that we could do that in a cost effective way. I participated in a budget forum where we had budget experts talk about the fact that in 1993 we began eliminating the deficit.…”