Dick Morris Quotes
I felt that what you should do is really take the best from each party's agenda and come to a solution somewhere above the positions of each party. So from the Left, take the idea that we need day care and food supplements for people on welfare. From the Right, take the idea that they have to work for a living and that there are time limits.
Morris, Dick. Behind the Oval Office: Winning the Presidency in the Nineties. Random House, 1997.
It was finally passed and signed into law on August 22, 1996
This is one of the first formal efforts to provide health care to the poor. It is also the first formal recognition that the access to care is inherently different for the poor and special devices, systems and cures as well as publications may be needed.
What makes this a noteworthy political quotation is that when he made the statement, his party had lurched to the radical right and almost no one else in the Republican party would publicly say that the Federal Government had any legitimate role that involved social services, food distribution, welfare or health care. Also the Republican Presidential candidate the day before had been discovered writing off the poorest 43 percent of the country. Heller however, was up for reelection in a state what was hit much harder than most in the Great Recession and without Federal Assistance many state residents would be in terrible circumstances and Heller would not fare well in the election if he took the then required Republican ideology. Also, Heller came from a blue collar family and had a much different outlook than most Republicans of that particular time.
Richard Samuel Morris is an American political author and commentator who previously worked as a pollster, political campaign consultant, and general political consultant.
