Political Quotes

“I do not believe the delegates to the White House conference would want to see this bill weakened by the Glenn-Chafee amendment. Let us look at environmental regulations as an example of the rising cost of regulation. In the past, environmental regulations were based on common sense and they have been responsible for giving us a much improved quality of life. But increasingly they are now choking off American entrepreneurship and producing fewer and fewer benefits. I think I understand why this is happening. Because, to me, solving our environmental problems is a little like harvesting a Missouri soybean field. You can get most of the soybeans quickly and efficiently with a modern combine. It is an expensive machine but it is worth the cost because it is fast, efficient, gets the soybeans that provides a vital food source supply, and it does so in an economical way. We could build a superefficient combine, designed to harvest almost every single soybean, leaving almost none behind, but it would sure be a lot slower and it would undoubtedly be far more expensive. And very few farmers in Audrain County, MO, where I am from, could afford it because it would only get a few more soybeans. You could even take that one step farther. You could get every last bean, perhaps, if you hired an army of people to crawl through the fields on their hands and knees, looking for any single bean the machine has missed.”