Francis Escudero

“Let us be reminded that the poorest families belong to the agricultural sector. 40% of our labor force is directly dependent on agriculture. Another 20% are indirectly dependent.”

“By lowering their expenditure on food, we would be awarding every family with an increase in disposable income, and mitigate labor demands for wage increases.”

“While the average Malaysian or Thai household spends only 34% of its income on food.”

“Agriculture development is an activity very close to my heart because my father, now congressman Sonny Escudero, served as Secretary of Agriculture under 2 presidents.”

“Fourth, we must be self sufficient in producing our basic food staples such as rice and corn and fish.”

“McKinsey and Company has a new study that shows that the persistent gap in academic achievement between children in the United States and their counterparts in other countries deprived the U.S. economy of as much as $2.3 trillion in economic output in 2008 alone. Can we imagine how much that academic gap has cost us in potential income?”

“We should align government subsidies to private and public colleges with courses that meet the demands of the market. Like engineering and computer sciences.”

“In California, the entire net income of its grant California Lotto has been exclusively earmarked for its schools.”

“The reported backlog of 40,000 classrooms is unjustifiable. At a cost of P500,000 per classroom, it would cost only P20 billion to build everything. That's only one year's income of PAGCOR. I am incredulous how the future of millions of Filipino children has been irretrievably lost because of the insatiable greed of those in power.”

“Government must provide the hardware - classrooms, desks, chairs, and the software - books, teacher retraining.”

“The higher the knowledge and skills of our workforce, the higher their earning power. Whether they decide to remain here or go abroad, the economy will benefit because of their remittances.”

“We must give our children the equal opportunity to develop their minds and bodies to the fullest. We will continue, even expand, the conditional cash transfers (or CCT's) to the poorest families so that their children will have the means to get to school and the nutrition to support a healthy brain - and body. We must cut down drastically that 34% drop-out rate in primary grades.”

“It is accepted fact that the world has been moving from an economy of goods to an economy of knowledge. And knowledge is the single most important resource to any advanced society.”

“There is a Chinese Proverb, which says, if you plan for one year, plant rice. If you plan for ten years, plant trees. If you plan for 100 years, plant people.”

“Third, we must invest in our youth and in our future.”

“Such budget deficits are unsustainable. We must put a stop to smuggling - estimated by foreign institutions to be as much as $10 billion (as P480 billion) a year. The uncollected VAT alone would be over P50 billion.”

“As soon as the national government can afford, a larger percentage of the Internal Revenue allotment should be given to local government units. It is presently 20%. By devolving added responsibilities, this could eventually go to 60%. This would speed up the development of the countryside.”

“We must follow the principle of subsidiarity -- devolving authority to the lowest level of government which can handle the problem. Regions and provinces, cities and municipalities are tired of waiting for Imperial Manila to act on their problems.”

“We must enlist the best and the brightest to serve in government, and pay them a salary equivalent to what they would earn in the private sector.”

“We must enforce the laws and enforce them speedily. People will obey and follow our laws if there is certainty of punishment.”