Political Quotes

“I believe that it is both necessary and appropriate for Congress to enact some type of unfunded mandates constraints. I have served in local government and I understand the problem. I supported last year's unfunded mandates bill, S. 993, as did almost every other Senator, all of the Nation's Governors, mayors, and other State and local officials, as well as the President of the United States. That is why I voted for S. 993 today. That bill is a fine bill--a bill that would work. If the Senate had not been tangled up in partisan squabbling at the end of the 103d Congress, unfunded mandates restraints would have now been the law of the land. I deeply regret that S. 993 was not enacted. And today it was actually voted down. S. 1 has many problems which I and others have tried to resolve. This bill creates a potential for endless delay, gives enormous power to unelected bureaucrats, contains troubling ambiguities that will mar its implementation, and utterly fails to address the biggest unfunded mandate of them all, illegal immigration.”