Political Quotes

“I had several members of school boards in my office today from Ohio. They were here because they are concerned about the fact that we are underfunding the No Child Left Behind legislation and passing unfunded mandates over to our States, and they told me there is an effort underway to require an audit of 12 or 13 percent of all of the school lunches that are fed to needy children in this country. Currently I think the audit requires a sample of 2 or 3 percent to be audited, but there is concern apparently that maybe we are feeding children who somehow do not deserve to be fed, so they want to increase the audit size to 12 or 13 percent. Then I pick up the New York Times, and I read about Halliburton and the fact that they overcharged our government $24 million, saying they had provided food to our troops that they had not in fact provided. I mean, when are we going to get real around here and go after the real culprits? Now, I am not in favor of fraud in the school lunch program certainly, and we ought to do whatever we can to stop fraud wherever it exists, but I am a lot more concerned about Halliburton ripping off the American taxpayer than I am the fact that some needy child may be getting food that does not meet the specific criteria. That is just an example of how our priorities are really out of kilter up here.”