The Best of Notable Quotables; December 16, 1996

Bryant Gumbel Journalism Fellowship Award (for Liberal Advocacy)

"[Clinton] knows that he is consigning helpless people to
terrible hardship, and some to premature burials. He called the
press conference to announce that he will sign the bill anyway... Mr. Shumyatsky is in the U.S. legally, but is not a citizen. Thus his SSI checks will cease when the welfare bill becomes law. He will have no money at all. Perhaps he will set up light house-keeping in a park. Maybe he'll curl up on a grate. Maybe he'll do the politicians a favor and just die."

-- Former NBC News reporter Bob Herbert in his New York Times column on the welfare reform bill, August 2. [88 points]

Runners-up

"Let me go to the minimum wage though for a minute...Ten million
people would be affected by it. Most of them live at or below the
poverty level. And this Congress which is trying to cut the
Earned Income Tax Credit, which conservatives used to tell us was
the alternative, and refuses to do anything about the minimum
wage makes Marie Antoinette look like Mother Teresa. It is just
an outrage!"

-- Wall Street Journal Executive Washington Editor Al Hunt, March 30 edition of CNN's Capital Gang. [72]

"For the fourth time this year Washingtonians were warned to boil
the drinking water because more than 10 percent of samples tested
positive for bacteria. The warning was lifted late Thursday but
not before thousands of people from all over the world, here to
see the fireworks in the nation's capital, were treated to water
that would embarrass a Third World country and Bob Novak. Maybe
this is enough to get your Republicans bent on cutting spending
for clean water to reconsider."

-- Time columnist Margaret Carlson, July 6 Capital Gang. [48]

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