Political Quotes

“Thank you, Judge Carter. I appreciate your holding this tonight and your flexibility in allowing me some time to share as we've talked about before at times on the floor various aspects of the growth of the regulatory State. The issue is not being against regulation or for regulation. The issue is having transparency and accountability. We've seen in this administration and the last administration, the administration before that, an ever-increasing reach in agencies where they're stretching the law, whether it's the Clean Air Act of 1972 that's being stretched to proportions far beyond the original intent of Congress or issues related to the Clean Water Act that stretch beyond the bounds of science, to unfunded mandates in No Child Left Behind from the last administration. We can think of a wide variety of these issues. For me, I think the American public wakes up when it hits them in the pocketbook, when it hits you and me in the pocketbook. In our case, you probably experienced the same thing in Texas. The year that I was sworn into Congress, a consent decree was forced upon our local community for nearly a billion dollars in storm water compliance that was not only beyond the needs of the community, it was beyond the economic capability of the community to comply. That was based on a rule issued by an interpretation of a law that had been passed 8 years before in a different Congress, in a different political climate.…”