Political Quotes

“today we continue a discussion that began in 1996. It deals with this city. This is a picture of Washington, DC. And it deals with what we really can expect Washington to do and the kind of balance that we need to strive for in this country between what we expect from Washington, what we expect from the private sector, what we expect from individuals, and perhaps what we can expect from faith-based and religious and volunteer organizations in America. In many cases, I believe we have moved too much power to this town. We have asked Washington to do all kinds of things that perhaps it is not best equipped to do. We saw some of this last week when we heard the President articulate a vision for education, a vision that I believe moves power, authority, and control from the local level, from the parental level back to this community, back to this town, and it says the way we improve education in America is we empower Washington and we empower the bureaucrats in Washington to make decisions. We used this chart for the first time or this picture for the first time in 1996 when we talked about the crisis that this Nation was facing in welfare. Because what we had done in welfare is we had moved decisionmaking away from the local level, where we were best equipped to help those in need, and we moved it to Washington.”