KINDER'S COMMENTARY: A SAMPLER OF QUOTES WORTH REVIEWING

Herewith, some attention-grabbing quotes from my reading for a late spring's column:

No poor employers

Sen. Phil Gramm, GOP presidential candidate, on work and jobs:

"No poor person ever hired me to do a job. When I was a kid working my way through school, every single person who hired me was a person who beat me to the lowest rung on the economic ladder, who worked hard, saved and invested intelligently and by dint of extraordinary effort, succeeded in creating a business that could hire the likes of me."

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First things first

Former congressman and secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp:

"You can't have employees without employers."

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What Democrats know

On National Public Radio, commentator Cokie Roberts, both of whose parents were long-time Democratic members of Congress from New Orleans, and whose brother, Tommy Boggs, is an establishment D.C. lobbyist, who represents personal injury lawyers:

"The Democrats know that ... their one shot is to scare people to death that the Republicans are going to take away their Medicare, and the Democrats aren't going to cooperate in cutting it."

Democratic alternative?

Rep. Charles Stenholm, conservative Texas Democratic congressman, speaking on the budget debate currently raging in Washington:

"There is a widespread concern that we Democrats appear to be for the status quo because we have proposed no constructive alternative" to the majority Republican House budget plan.

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The amazing Clinton

New Republic columnist and McLaughlin Group regular Fred Barnes, speaking on CNN's Late Edition:

"It amazes me that the president's out giving a speech attacking these militia, a few thousand people who are not a serious force in America, and (surgeon general nominee Dr. Henry) Foster's a big thing for him. Meanwhile, the entire welfare state, what liberals have worked on for 60 years, is being dismantled and the president barely mentions it."

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Liberal media hate speech

Columnist Tony Snow on the TV program "Inside Washington":

"What's ironic to me is that conservatives have been subjected to hate speech for a long time. There's a presumption that if you're conservative in America, you're racist, you're sexist, you're homophobic. You are somebody who is intolerant. One fact: A lot of people in the elections in 1994 decided that they wanted a country that believed more in their values and had more faith in them."

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Limited federal power

From a Chicago Tribune editorial concerning the Supreme Court's decision in the Lopez case, in which the Supreme Court struck down a 1990 federal law that prohibited the carrying of a gun within 1,000 feet of a school:

"Despite the cries of some that the sky is falling, this is a healthy decision, a needed reminder to Congress that its powers are not unlimited."

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Come clean on Waco

From Paul Gigot, premier Washington columnist for The Wall Street Journal, writing last month:

"We now know that everything about Waco, fact mixed with fiction, has swirled around the Internet and elsewhere to feed the paranoia about a government `out of control.'

"No doubt even an honest Waco accounting wouldn't matter to some of these fevered minds ... but we also know that private conspiracies flourish amid public ignorance. Trust grows when citizens see a government that can police its own excesses."

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Fill in the blank

Columnist George Will, on ABC's "This Week With David Brinkley":

"The Democrats, as far as I can tell ... have a key on their word processor, and it prints out the following: ~`We dare not balance the budget on the backs of -- blank.' And you can say elderly, consumers of school lunch programs, riders of subsidized Amtrak and mass transit, those who like to watch `Masterpiece Theatre,' the list is endless."

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Crackdown on terror

From National Review, May 29 edition:

"As part of his crackdown on domestic terrorism, President Clinton is considering a five-day waiting period for the purchase of radios."

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.