Political Quotes

“tonight we want to begin a dialogue that we hope sets the framework for tomorrow. Tomorrow, there is going to be limited debate on a bill that is coming to the floor. It is called ``Dollars to the Classroom.'' This piece of legislation, which was authored by a colleague of mine from Pennsylvania, builds on a previous resolution that this House has passed. What that resolution said was that when we send a dollar to Washington for education, instead of getting 60 to 70 cents of that dollar back to the classroom, back to the local level, we are going to strive to get that up to 90 to 95 cents of every education dollar getting back to a local classroom. Before I do that, and before I begin that discussion on education, I want to set the framework. A while back, we did a proposal out of my office, or we did kind of an analysis, and we started addressing an issue which I think is very important. The question was: Why is it that everyone has so much faith in Washington? Why is it that people believe that if they send their money to Washington, Washington is better at building their roads, Washington is better at educating their children, Washington is better at creating jobs than if we left that money at the State or local level or if we left that money in the pockets of the American citizens? We identified a phenomenon which we call ``the myth of the magical bureaucracy.''”