Political Quotes

“when the Republican chairman of the committee gets up and his basic argument is ``The President made me do it,'' we understand the weakness of his substantive arguments. The gentleman even said we should be for this because this is the same principle as the AmeriCorps. I understood there was on the other side no great love for AmeriCorps, so I assume all those who are against AmeriCorps would agree with the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Watt]. But most damaging is the argument the gentleman is making, and people should understand here how he is narrowing the unfunded mandate piece. What he says is this: An unfunded mandate should be considered only if de novo, out of the blue, we impose a restriction. He acknowledges this will cost the local communities more money, but he says it is a condition and therefore we can impose greater costs on them as a condition of funds. But understand, these are funds they are now getting and have been getting for a long time. Theoretically, his logical argument is, well, if they do not like the mandate, they can say no to the funds; therefore, it is not an unfunded mandate. But is it realistic to tell local communities that, having built this public housing, having people live in it, having the obligation to maintain it, they can now say no to the funds? What the gentleman from Iowa is doing is turning the unfunded mandate point into a great ``gotcha'' for the communities.…”