Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to present this amendment. This amendment will not kill the bill nor send it back to committee, but it is an amendment that is important to every Representative in this House if you care about the 10th Amendment and you care about the ability of your State to set its own policies. Mr. Speaker, every Member in this House should be paying attention to this bill. We read the Constitution the first day of this Congress. The 10th Amendment guarantees that the States have the ability to take care of their own water systems and many other issues that pertain to the States. This bill, this bill overrides State law in California. This bill sets aside numerous State laws in California. This bill overrides 150 years of California water law set in place by the legislature, the governors, by the courts of California, and the Federal courts. This bill destroys the ability of California to conduct and to manage its own water. I put this map up of California so that you might contemplate for a few moments the impact and exactly what we're talking about. California is a big State, 38 million people, diverse, extraordinary water fights. There's a fellow who lived in California years ago, Mark Twain, and he said, ``In California, whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting.'' And it's been true ever since. This is the Central Valley of California, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Western Hemisphere.…”