Political Quotes

“Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars is transferred out of States that pay far more in Federal taxes than they receive back in Federal spending--the so-called ``payer States.'' And this money is transferred into States that receive a lot more Federal spending than they pay in taxes--the ``taker States.'' This is an enormous and economically unjustifiable redistribution of wealth between the States. The payer States can be characterized in a number of ways, but most of the payer States are large population States, while virtually all of the taker States are smaller, which means that they are overrepresented in the Senate. Over time, Senators from these States have inserted hundreds of programs that systematically steer money into the taker States. Our amendment takes a first small step to begin rolling back these taker State preferences by eliminating one of the most unjustifiable of them all: the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, commonly referred to as EPSCoR. {time} 2240 EPSCoR was started as an experimental program in 1978 with the goal of redistributing Federal research dollars into States that traditionally received less than their ``fair share'' of NSF funding. However, because ``fair share'' was determined on a per State basis, rather than on a per capita basis, it has devolved into just another program that steers money into smaller States that already get far more than their fair share of Federal spending.…”