Political Quotes

“I want to understand what the Senator is aiming at. Maybe the words ``constitutionally permitted'' should be added. But it is this issue of the mandates that I find intriguing because we really are an Alice-in-Wonderland place. It is interesting to see the flip of liberal and conservative positions from time to time. We do not shrink at all from mandates to local school districts. We load them up one after another. We did it with title IX in the old Grove City case, where the Supreme Court made a decision this was discrimination against women and girls, and we said we were going to withhold money. We had to finally change it statutorily because the Court's decision was a statutory, not constitutional, decision. I supported that. I supported withholding the funds if they were going to discriminate against women and girls. We had a 4-year battle. We could not break a filibuster the first time, trying to reverse Grove City. But it was a mandate. We do it under title VI of the Civil Rights Act. We withhold funds for failure to enforce racial discrimination laws; if education districts will not enforce them, we will withhold funds. We do it under section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 for discrimination against the disabled. And we do it under title III of the Age Discrimination Act, if there is discrimination on the basis of age. Interestingly, those are all statutory. They do not rise to the dignity of a constitutional prohibition.”