Chuck Schumer: “the gentleman is right. There are just as many local politicians who will waste and fritter away the taxpayers' money as…”

“the gentleman is right. There are just as many local politicians who will waste and fritter away the taxpayers' money as there are Federal politicians. What we seek to do in our proposals, Mr. Chairman, is simple. We say to the localities ``Yes, we want you to spend the money on 100,000 new cops on the beat. We want you to spend the money on things like drug courts, but we do not want to let you fritter away all these dollars for anything you want.'' I say to my colleagues who are thinking of voting for H.R. 728 without these amendments, take the wisdom of Speaker Gingrich. He knew. He knew how bad it would be to put together a huge block grant with no, no restrictions on it. He knew in his wisdom that there would be planes that could be bought with this money. Under the new Republican bill, until our amendment, planes could have still been bought; armored personnel carriers. Why some police officer in Louisiana needed an armored personnel carrier is beyond me, but much worse than that is the fact that the Federal Government let him buy it. Under these provisions, they would be powerless to stop them. We could have the President, the Attorney General, the Speaker, the minority leader telling the locality ``You cannot buy these things,'' but they would still have the right to buy them under H.R. 728. Mr. Chairman, this is one of the times where I agree with the Speaker. The Speaker is right.”