Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This amendment is noncontroversial in nature. Section 7 of the bill would create a new discretionary grant program to assist State education agencies in meeting the regulations established in the bill, collecting and analyzing data, and implementing the schoolwide positive behavior support approach. This grant program is to be funded out of the authorization provided in the bill for such sums as necessary. While State agencies will have to apply for these grants, it is unclear if the grants will be awarded on a competitive basis or a merit-based approach. We have seen in the past, unfortunately, when these grant programs have been established, even if it is stipulated that they should be competitive or merit based, oftentimes later Members of Congress will come in and earmark funds directly, and some of these accounts we have for competitive grant programs, merit-based grant programs are completely earmarked just a few years later, so organizations and individuals, nonprofit agencies or State agencies can't even compete for them because all of that money has been earmarked. We need to look no further than FEMA's National Pre-Disaster Mitigation Program. It was a competitive grant program designed to ``save lives and reduce property damage by providing for hazard mitigation planning, acquisition, and relocation of structures out of the floodplain.'' Again, this was going to be a competitive grant program.…”