Political Quotes

“I would love to. Here we go again, I am sure someone is thinking this. Last week we did the debate on the National Endowment for the Arts. We on our side of the aisle had a very good proposal to keep the money in the arts but to attack the inefficiency. I chair the oversight subcommittee. This is an agency that spends $99.5 million a year. Only in Washington is that considered not much money. Back in my district that would be a very nice medium-sized company employing 600, 700 people, paying them a good wage. But here in Washington it is not a very big program. When people from Wisconsin or Michigan send that first dollar to Washington for the National Endowment for the Arts, the first 20 cents goes to bureaucracy and overhead, even though the first 35 percent of the money they hand out is by formula. We could hire an AmeriCorps volunteer for $27,000 a year, and in the morning they could write out the 50 checks that take care of the 35 percent of the money and then we could find something else for that person to do for the rest of the year. The first 20 percent goes to overhead, 35 percent gets formula block granted, which we wanted to continue, and then 25 percent of the money goes to one State. Are all the arts concentrated in one area and 143 congressional districts get nothing? All we said is we want to get rid of the bureaucracy.”