Political Quotes

“as the ranking minority member of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, let me begin by noting that the issue of unfunded mandates is not a Democratic or Republican issue. It is fair to say that Members on this side of the aisle have a range of views on the mandates bill--from those who believe it should be stronger to those who would make it weaker. In the previous Congress, under Democratic control, but the Committee on Government Operations and its counterpart in the Senate passed bipartisan legislation dealing with mandates. At the Government Operations Committee the vote was 35 to 4, including the support of our current chairman and our previous chairman, as well as the same group of State and local officials that support this bill. Unfortunately, the bill that is before us this year is different from last year's bill. It is also different from the bill described in the Republican Contract With America. This bill was hatched in secret, with no public hearings. Even so, our goal during the floor consideration of H.R. 5 is not to kill it, but to perfect it, and it needs plenty of perfecting. I intend to discuss this bill, not in the abstract terminology of unfunded mandates, but in the terms of the real world. We know, for example, that our constituents always agree that we should cut entitlements, but when we use the real world terms of Social Security and Medicare--the two largest entitlements--they say leave it alone.…”