Political Quotes

“Tonight I come to talk about a variety of issues. You know, clearly the country faces tough times, clearly our States face very, very difficult times. And over the last few months we have had the opportunity to go and to listen to our constituents at the State level talk about some of the issues that are important to them. My home State of Michigan is struggling today with 15 percent unemployment--the highest unemployment rate in the country. And one of the things that we consistently hear about is, you know, Washington made us do this. I hear people talking about, you know, our State needs to raise taxes. Why? So we can get the Federal highway dollars. And what we forget is that those are our dollars to begin with. Those aren't Federal highway dollars. Those aren't Michigan highway dollars. As a matter of fact, for 53 years, a State like Michigan has received 83 cents on the dollar--83 cents for every dollar that we sent to Washington for our gas tax. And now Washington tells us in tough times, to get that money back, you have to put up a State match. That is wrong. In 2001, President Bush passed--with this Congress' help--legislation calling for an improvement in K-12 education. It was called No Child Left Behind, and it put the Federal imprint on our K-12 education system across the country and across the State of Michigan. That's wrong. Why? Why do we need the Federal Government telling us how to run our schools at the State and at the local level?”