Ernest Istook: “Mr. Chairman, there is a general principle we often quote here that says, you should not do for people what they are…”

“Mr. Chairman, there is a general principle we often quote here that says, you should not do for people what they are capable of doing for themselves, because you don't want to restrict their ability to grow and to achieve. It is not a matter of we do not want to help them, but it is a matter we want to do it in the right way. I hear a lot of comments about we ought to be doing more for the District here, we ought to be doing more for the District there. Then I hear people say, oh, we have cut this budget or that budget. For example, they claim, inaccurately, but they claim, that we have cut a Federal commitment to the metro subway station. Let us back up. What Federal commitment are we talking about? We are talking about the budget proposal submitted by the White House which is not a budget submitted or approved by the Congress. Just because something is proposed by the President, let us not pretend that if we do not agree with the President on something, that we have gone out and we have cut budgets or that we reneged on a commitment; that is not the case. We have made sure that rather than going to this new, after-the-budget, laundry list of things that now they say are higher priorities than the metro subway station, so we cannot spend money out of this account for it. Instead of doing that, we said no, we are going with the top priority of the metro station.”