[testifying before a U.S government funding committee,1981] The truth is, if you're going to take away the lunches of schoolchildren, the pensions of miners who've contacted black lung, the storefront legal services of the poor who are otherwise stunned into insensibility by the magnitude of their troubles, you might as well get rid of poets, artists and musicians. If you're planning to scrap medical care for the indigent, scholarships for students, daycare centers for the children of working mothers, transportation for the elderly and handicapped - if you're going to eliminate people's service training jobs and then reduce their unemployment benefits after you've put them on the unemployment rolls, taking away their foodstamps in the bargain, then I say the loss of a few poems or arias cannot matter.
