Jack Kingston: “But I have just as much faith in your folks as I do in mine, and my people would do fine without Washington command and…”

“But I have just as much faith in your folks as I do in mine, and my people would do fine without Washington command and control bureaucrats telling them how they need to run education, telling them how to run the environment, telling them how to run health care, telling them how to run welfare. We have ideas of our own in the First District of Georgia, and we can do fine without Washington bureaucrats. Just think about what we are doing. We send our money to bureaucrats and then they tell us how to spend it. They get their cut and they send part of it back to us to run programs, and we know these people better than they do. We can do a better job on poverty, right down the street, than people in Washington can. I often think about that story, and you have heard it, 'The Star Tosser.' I do not remember the author, do not even remember the name, but the guy walks up and down the beach picking up starfish and he throws them in the water. Every morning he does that after high tide. He throws these starfish back in the water. Somebody came up to him one day and said, 'What are you doing? You cannot save all these washed ashore starfish. There are thousands of them. On a good day, you maybe get 150 of them back in the ocean. What difference could you possibly make?' The man picked up a starfish and said, 'I do not know what difference I make, but I am going to make a heck of a difference to this one right here,' and he threw it in the ocean.”