Political Quotes

“I take some time this morning to address one of the important arguments made by our colleagues on the other side of this debate. Proponents of the legislation argue the only way to encourage broadband deployment is to provide subsidies to telecommunication industries with no strings attached. Furthermore, they argue the only way to create such subsidies is to pass a large, new, unfunded Federal mandate. I submit if what all of us here want to do is determine the taxes and spending policies of our State governments, then we should do what Senator Alexander did, what Senator Voinovich did, what Senator Hollings, I, and others did. We ran for Governor. We were elected. As a result we had the opportunity--in my case for 8 years--to decide what the taxing and spending policies of our States' governments should be. That is what we did. The authority we are granted here in the Senate by the Constitution is to decide the taxes and spending policies of the Federal Government, not the taxing and spending policies of the State governments, and not the spending and taxing policies of local governments.”