Political Quotes

“I thank the gentlewoman for yielding and for her strong work on this bill. Madam Speaker, this bill is unprecedented in a number of ways. It is unprecedented in that it uniquely affects my district, and yet I was not allowed to testify at the hearing of the Judiciary Committee where it was considered. It is unprecedented in its attack on a woman's right to choose, going well beyond the Hyde amendment. And it is unprecedented in seeking to federalize the local funds of the District of Columbia. Section 309 of this bill would make permanent the ban in the recent 2011 spending bill that keeps the District from spending its own local funds on abortions for poor women. That's bad enough, but the party that came to power even to devolve Federal power back to the States is engaged in the reverse process in this bill, in federalizing what has always been understood in our Constitution to be local power and, worse, local money and deciding how it should be spent. It is a dictatorship over local funds. It goes against every principle that the majority claims to support when it cites the Constitution. It goes against the accepted practice, a practice you can do nothing about in the States, where 17 States have, of course, spent their own local funds on abortions for poor women for decades, recognizing that this could not be done with Federal money. The District of Columbia does not ask for 1 cent of Federal money.…”