Mark Souder: “The people of Wisconsin have an independent tradition and the people of Indiana have an independent tradition. And the…”

“The people of Wisconsin have an independent tradition and the people of Indiana have an independent tradition. And the Founding Fathers knew, although Indiana and Wisconsin were not in existence at the time, that we have inherited that belief that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We have a healthy skepticism of a concentration of power. Our Founding Fathers knew that we needed a balance. We needed individuals with rights. We needed a Court, we needed a Congress, a President. We needed strong States. A lot of people believed that going to a Constitution as opposed to Articles of Confederation was consolidating too much power. Back then, they did not think about departments of education and national tests. That was far from it. They were doing minimal Federal Government. Our Founding Fathers had it right. They were fearful that power concentrated, as it was in Europe, would lead to the type of tracking in the education systems, would lead to the type of monarchy dependency, that we would look to our capital city for all the solutions rather than inside our souls and inside our own families and look to government to fix the problems of the poor rather than sacrificing our own time and money to reach out to those who are hurting. Mr. Speaker, that is indeed what is happening in America. We need to stand up. And this budget deal and the tax cuts were an important first step.”