Ted Kennedy Quotes

Finally, we cannot have a fair prosperity in isolation from a fair society. So I will continue to stand for national health insurance. We must not surrender to the relentless medical inflation that can bankrupt almost anyone— and that may soon break the budgets of government at every level. Let us insist on real controls over what doctors and hospitals can charge. Let us resolve that the state of a family’s health shall never depend on the size of a family’s wealth. The President, the Vice President, and the members of Congress have a medical plan that meets their needs in full. Whenever senators and representatives catch a little cold, the Capitol physician will see them immediately, treat them promptly, and fill a prescription on the spot. We do not get a bill even if we ask for it. And when do you think was the last time a member of Congress asked for a bill from the federal government? I say again, as I have said before, if health insurance is good enough for the President, the Vice President, and the Congress of the United States, then it is good enough for all of you and for every family in America.

The great adventure which our opponents offer is a voyage into the past. Progress is our heritage, not theirs. What is right for us as Democrats is also the right way for Democrats to win.

Second, we must acknowledge that school readiness is not only about promoting early literacy and other academic skills. Science tells us that how children feel is as important as how they think, particularly if we are concerned about their capacity to succeed when they get to school. Knowing the alphabet and counting to 10 are not enough, if you can't sit still or pay attention in the classroom. All young children, regardless of their God-given abilities and economic circumstances, must be engaged in caring relationships and provided with a variety of opportunities to learn in a safe and stimulating environment. We already know what is needed to promote the intellectual, social, and emotional skills required to learn in school. The time has come for this nation to use that knowledge to help all children achieve that competence -- for their own sake, for the sake of their teachers and classmates, and for the sake of America's future.

The story of East Bengal will surely be written as one of the greatest nightmares of modern times.

He never mortgaged his beliefs to the passing fashions of the time. He walked with Presidents and Kings, but his favorite stroll was always down the street in Cambridge to Barry's Corner. He became one of the most powerful men in the world--but he never forgot the worker in Somerville, the senior citizens in East Boston, the barker in North Cambridge, the young family starting out whose grandparents he knew. His Irish smile could light up a living room, the whole chamber of the House of Representatives, and the entire State of Massachusetts. The congressional district he served had also been President Kennedy's district when my brother was in the House--and my grandfather Honey Fitz' before that.

There was the time, shortly after the Supreme Cour<nowiki/>t's decision in Roe versus Wade in 1973, when Cardinal Medeiros called Tip and asked to see him on a matter of great urgency. With some trepidation about the purpose of the visit, Tip agreed to see him right away. As it turned out, Cardinal Medeiros was extremely concerned about a powerful hurricane that had just devastated the Cape Verde Islands. He had a specific request for Tip--to see if $8 million in emergency relief could be included in the foreign aid appropriations bill. Tip, with that irrepressible twinkle in his eye, replied, "Your Eminence, I'll put $16 million in, if you won't mention Roe versus Wade." One of Tip's most famous stories concerned the gift by Henry Ford of $5,000 toward a new hospital in Ireland. Unfortunately, the local newspaper the next day reported that the gift was $50,000. The editor apologized profusely for the mistake, and said he'd run a correction right away, explaining that the gift was only $5,000. It took Henry Ford about 10 seconds to realize what was happening, and he said, "No, don't do that. I'll give you the $50,000, but on one condition--that you put a plaque over the entrance to the hospital with this inscription--'I came unto you, and you took me in.'"

We must act on the minimum wage as well. The downturn in the economy has placed strains on the lives of many families. And, as wages stagnate, workers at the bottom suffer most. The current minimum wage is only five dollars and fifteen cents an hour. Americans earning the minimum wage, working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, earn only 10,700 dollars a year -- nearly 4,000 dollars below the poverty level for a family of three. On this meager income, they fail to earn enough to afford adequate housing in any area of this country. We must raise the minimum wage by a dollar fifty an hour -- and raise it now. No one who works for a living should have to live in poverty. In addition, the spirit of September 11 calls for policies that not only help working men and women earn a decent living, but assure them time to meet their obligations to their families and their communities. We must stop asking parents to solve the work-family conflict on their own. We are in a new time and a new place, and we need new solutions. And we must ask private businesses to be partners in this mission. Our future depends on the development of healthy, well-educated, responsible citizens. Yet our government provides far less support for working and non-working parents than the governments of other nations. This abdication of modern responsibility contributes to the high rate of child poverty in the nation, and the tremendous pressure on today's parents to choose between the jobs they need and the children they love.

The CBO report specifically confirms that the long-term effect of the President's plan will be to reduce the Federal deficit. While there are differences between the OMB estimates and the CBO estimates, there is broad and welcome agreement by both budget agencies that the President's plan can be paid for by savings in the current system. The differences between the estimates are small, as the CBO analysis itself states. With further refinements in the cost data, the differences will be reduced. Only minor adjustments are needed in the program to assure that there is no increase in the deficit, even in the early years of the program. For example, one significant difference between the OMB and CBO is the CBO believes employers will be able to manipulate the system to achieve greater savings than they are entitled to. By improving the enforcement mechanisms in the bill, that gamesmanship can be reduced or eliminated. On the technical issue of budget treatment, CBO has been careful to describe the premium payments as receipts, not taxes. In asserting that these premiums should be part of the Federal budget, I believe that CBO is wrong. Premiums under the Health Security Act are paid to private insurance companies, not to the Federal Government. Never before has money not paid to the Government and not spent by the Government been included in the budget.

Madam President, I yield myself 4 minutes. Just to review for the membership exactly where we are, we will commence voting at 10 o'clock and the first vote will be on a school choice amendment by Senator Coats. Our position is in opposition to this. We addressed this issue in 1990. We had a good debate on this at the end of last week. We believe that scarce resources should not be utilized for private schools but should be focused on the public schools of this country. That position is supported overwhelmingly by the American people. Second, we will have a Grassley amendment to protect the parental role in surveys administered to children. I thank the Senator from Iowa. We support that amendment. We think it strengthens the Gephardt language which exists in current law.

According to the article, Ambassador Crocker has called for establishment of an immigrant visa program for these Iraqi employees. In fact, Senators Smith, Biden, Hagel, Lieberman, Leahy, Levin, and I have introduced legislation which establishes a program to do precisely what Ambassador Crocker calls for. Our legislation establishes an immigrant visa program for Iraqis who have worked for or directly with the United States government for at least 1 year. Our Government now provides such special immigrant visas but only for Iraqi and Afghan translators and interpreters. Our bill expands it to include Iraqis in other professions who have been employed by us or who have worked directly with us. In addition, our legislation creates additional options for Iraqis who are under threat because of their close association with the United States to apply to our refugee resettlement program.

The law professors wrote, "[i]t goes without saying that lying under oath is a very serious offense. But even if the House of Representatives had the constitutional authority to impeach for any instance of perjury or obstruction of justice, a responsible House would not exercise this awesome power on the facts alleged in this case." The historians wrote, "[t]he Framers explicitly reserved [impeachment] for high crimes and misdemeanors in the exercise of executive power. Impeachment for anything else would, according to James Madison, leave the President to serve 'during the pleasure of the Senate,' thereby mangling the system of checks and balances that is our chief safeguard against abuses of power . . . Although we do not condone President Clinton's private behavior or his subsequent attempts to deceive, the current charges against him depart from what the Framers saw as grounds for impeachment."

I was elected to the Senate, and in the early years as my family arrived I was exposed to the power of asthma with a small child, Patrick [Kennedy]. We detected when he was two that he was a chronic asthmatic. He had the test that is given to children, where they have pinpricks along their arm—I think it’s 24 pinpricks—of different kinds of allergies. His arm looked like a nuclear meltdown; it just absolutely reddened, all of it. He was allergic to everything. My brother Jack [John F.] Kennedy was allergic to cat fur and my sister Pat [Patricia Kennedy Lawford] had allergies, and maybe the others had some, but I certainly noticed those as they were growing up. My brother Jack would come back to the Cape and would go into his room, and he’d come out about an hour later, storming mad, wondering who let the cat sleep in the bed while he had been away, or some cat had come on in. He’d be battling the allergies for the next several hours.

Love is not an easy feeling to put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust, or joy. But he was all of these. He loved life completely and he lived it intensely.

There was no better way to spend an evening than to hear my brother swapping Irish stories with Tip. Jack loved him, and so did all the Kennedys. I'm sure that in heaven now, Tip is leading them all in a glorious round of "I'll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time." It may be apple blossom time up there, but here on earth, a beautiful blossom is gone. Still, the Speaker will always be with us in our mind's eye, in the hearts of thousands of his friends, and the tens of millions more who never met him, but whose lives are better today and whose hopes are brighter because he was a Speaker who spoke so powerfully for them. In an era so much pretension and superficiality and polldriven decisions in public life, Tip O'Neill was the real thing, and we were fortunate to have him as our leader.

Califano and I both went to the Holy Trinity Church here when our children were small, and part of the service was that, after 9:00 or 10:00 mass, the children would go down for Sunday school, and they would have a discussion there for the grownups. They’d have one of the Jesuits who would come over and lead the discussion, and they were always enormously interesting, very interesting, very gifted, talented lecturers. There were always a couple hundred people who were there with their children, and then, at whatever time, an hour later, you would break up and hook up with your children and drive them home.