Political Quotes

“Mr. President, let me begin by commending my colleagues Senator Mikulski, Senator Harkin, Senator Alexander, and Senator Burr for their hard work to reauthorize the child care development block grant. This is a modest piece of legislation and I urge my colleagues to support it. The main point I wish to briefly make this morning is that even if this modest piece of legislation passes, it will not begin to address the very serious problems we face in childcare in our country and, even more importantly, in childhood poverty. The United States is the wealthiest Nation in the history of the world. Unfortunately, despite our great wealth, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. We have more people today living in poverty than at any time in the history of our country. Most significantly, and related to the discussion we are having about childcare today, the United States of America has, by far, the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth. In my opinion, we have a moral responsibility to address that issue and we should put our energy and our minds to focusing on how we eliminate childhood poverty in America. I will be offering an amendment today which is a very simple amendment. My amendment says the President of the United States should submit a plan to Congress which substantially reduces childhood poverty over the next 5 years.…”