John Chenoweth: “Mr. Chairman, last year our Senator Dirk Kempthorne from Idaho wrote and passed and had signed into law Senate bill 1…”

“Mr. Chairman, last year our Senator Dirk Kempthorne from Idaho wrote and passed and had signed into law Senate bill 1 prohibiting unfunded Federal mandates. Unfunded Federal mandates have been a bane to local units of government and our States. We heard the statement just recently in the debate, if there are bureaucracies. Let me tell my colleagues, there are bureaucracies. In the Reagan legacy, Ronald Reagan knew what he believed in. He was very centered on the fact that power should go to the individuals and to the States. He is honored by people across this Nation because he was so focused and he never deviated. This issue that the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. McIntosh] brought up is very special to me. Putting more money in funding for IDEA is a very important thing to me. I have a grandson who is disabled. I have six little grandchildren and one of them is disabled. I can tell Members, he is a beautiful child. He has unspeakable joy in his spirit. But he is disabled. As such, he pulls a kind of love and emotion from us that is unlike anything I have ever experienced. Hence, when I see the children who are under the IDEA program and the fact that their little lives are lived out in bodies that are disabled, my heart goes out to them. I am no different than any other American. Yes, we are a rich country and we can certainly afford to be able to help these helpless little children.”