Political Quotes

“I suggested to the House today that if they gave the opportunity to this House for me to offer my amendment to reinstate NEA and give it some money to operate, I would be willing to bet, a substantial sum, in view of yesterday's very, very close vote, that the House would have supported NEA. We never had that opportunity to pass upon that question. I want to close by saying that even the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce [Mr. Goodling], refused to accept the Ehlers amendment. He said clearly, in response to the question that I asked him, that if the Ehlers amendment passed, he would unite his committee and pass legislation to correct the defects that are in the legislation so he could have a bill that he could give the conferees between the House and the Senate as representing the House side. So, obviously, this Ehlers amendment is in the nature of a figleaf. It does make available some of the money for art, but not in a way that is effective and certainly not in the way that art has been distributed over the years so effectively by the National Endowment for the Arts. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to vote down the Ehlers amendment.”