Mark Hatfield: “These are two very brief amendments, and yet I think they are very poignant and important to the basic concept we are…”

“These are two very brief amendments, and yet I think they are very poignant and important to the basic concept we are debating here tonight. They have been cleared on both sides of the aisle. Both the majority and the minority managers and staff have reviewed them as well. Mr. President, we have been moving to try to develop flexibility in this maze of Government bureaucracy where well-intended programs oftentimes get focused on administrative process and categorical grants to the local governments get mired in the compliance role rather than in the results-oriented focus of that program. This is an effort much like we added to the Goals 2000, an educational flexibility amendment. I am offering this similar pattern of providing 30 local government units within 6 States as demonstration projects to take the myriad of categorical grants and to try to see how they can be innovative, maintaining the goals of those grants but lifting much of the bureaucratic control and mechanisms that are now in place, and in turn that the State governments respond to the same call for this demonstration project.”