Jerry Moran: “Like Tom, when I came to this Congress 4 years ago, my highest priority was to do something about unfunded mandates…”

“Like Tom, when I came to this Congress 4 years ago, my highest priority was to do something about unfunded mandates because they were unfair. The worst part about it was that the executive branch took a cookie cutter approach, one size fits all, regardless of the geography, demography, or cost. They also did not seem to be willing to talk with us, to work things out, to exercise judgment. So I authored what we call the FAIR Act, the Fiscal Accountability and Intergovernmental Reform. We worked on it for 4 years. Virtually everyone on this bill was a cosponsor because in the last term we had 250 cosponsors. That bill had the support of every one of these local organizations that we have mentioned today, National League of Cities, Conference of State Legislatures, several of the larger ones, even the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and virtually every business group. It should have been passed last year. It is a source of great frustration that it was not.”