NAN A. S. HAYWORTH: “And if the gentlewoman would yield, it is worth noting that one of the genuine reforms and one of the few times in which…”

“And if the gentlewoman would yield, it is worth noting that one of the genuine reforms and one of the few times in which the gentleman at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue in the big white house was willing to work with us was on this notion of unfunded mandates, where Washington bureaucrats decreed to local government officials you will do it this way. The frustration of that system has led the mayor of Winslow, AZ, to coin a new phrase. He calls it the idiocracy. The idiocracy which would mandate an action being taken without taking into account the realistic, common sense, reasonable notions of the good people who live right there in the area and also want to redress the problem but on their own terms, reflecting their own priorities, with no less of a commitment to solving that problem. That is what we must remember.”