Political Quotes

“I thank my friend for that compliment. I have really just stolen a lot of ideas from a lot of people and tried to put them together in one place. One of the things that aggravates me the most about unauthorized programs--and I am so happy that you raised it and are talking about it--is that it really was a fraud on Members of Congress. For example, with the Endangered Species Act, it was a problem with eagles and this chemical called DDT. It was thinning the eagles' eggs, and the eagles weren't reproducing, so we had a declining bald eagle population in the United States. We passed the Endangered Species Act, but the promise to the Members of Congress is: We will review this every 5 years. This isn't going to go on forever, folks. When we take care of this bald eagle problem and a few other critters, we are going to be done with this program. I think Ronald Reagan said that the closest thing to eternal life on this planet is a Federal program, and that is what we have seen. Congress doesn't bother reauthorizing these programs, so they just go on and on because we would have to actually make a tough decision if we were going to reauthorize these programs, amend these programs, or cut these programs. Nobody wants to make a tough decision. It is much easier just to make our grandchildren pay a huge debt because we are too lazy, too unfocused, to actually do our job.”