One of the most powerful tools for empowering individuals and communities is making certain that any individual who wants to receive a quality education can do so.
Education can lift individuals out of poverty and into rewarding careers.
I will never be able to create a budget from scratch with the amount of time that I have, but my instructions remain the same: Give me a budget that has no new revenue.
We are thinking ahead to long-term care, aware that many folks don’t plan ahead and won’t be ready. We want to see to it that people will have choices.
We all leave personal legacies for the people we know and love.
All of us basically want the same things: opportunity for our children, and prosperity for our families and communities.
The US government should not be in the business of discrimination.
Surely no issue unites us more than our appreciation for our military personnel who are bringing aid to devastated countries, defending us against terrorism, and fighting to make a free election possible in Iraq.
Truly, the challenges we face are not Democratic challenges or Republican challenges. In fact, they are not political challenges at all; they are fiscal challenges, and educational challenges, and the challenges of figuring out how to take care of each other.
We need to take advantage of the opportunity we have now to create a vision and become great.
Education exposes young people to a broader world, a world full of opportunity and hope.
I’m free. I’m free to say what I feel.
It was very constraining, much more than I ever would have thought, to run for governor.
We have lots of studies about what’s wrong with our education system. We need to accept responsibility, be bold, find solutions and move forward to make education a centerpiece of our economic development.
Education is the foundation upon which we build our future.
There is just no reason why the richest nation in the world can’t provide health care to all its people.
Vernon Reis opened the world to me through books. He taught me that while I was physically firmly planted in blue-collar Auburn, Washington in the 50s and early 60s, intellectually I could go anywhere, explore anything, and sample exciting new ideas simply by opening a book.
We can leave our legacy only if we are willing to change – to go beyond partisan labels, and to solve the problems facing Washingtonians.
When nearly a third of our high school students do not graduate on time with their peers, we have work to do. We must design our middle and high schools so that no student gets lost in the crowd and disconnected from his or her own potential.
It’s our responsibility to pass on what we inherited, not to squander it, but to build on it.
If we want unity, we must all be unifiers. If we want accountability, each of us must be accountable for all we do.