Political Quotes

“We are not attempting nor would I recommend we block grant emergency assistance. So you keep pointing back to one State in one instance and draw a bad case for that. It would be--I am not arguing there would not be a severe strain. But I suggest the Governor of Florida and the State Legislature of Florida knows that occasionally they are hit by hurricanes. It is not like these hurricanes are just, ``Gee, wow, in Florida we had a hurricane. We never see that.'' They see them all the time and they know they can be disastrous, and that should go into their calculation whether they want to go into this in the first place. We are assuming, and I think it is a good assumption, that the Governor and the State legislature are not going to take on this enormous responsibility without having thought through what the different consequences would be, given natural disasters or given economic downturn, and a whole lot of other things. We believe that there still will be States out there that, because of the enormous burden that the Federal Government forces upon them with this program that drives up costs for them and makes their program inefficient, can take the money and take the risk and still do a better job, and they are willing to assume that risk. They do so with eyes open wide. If their eyes were not open, they certainly are open now as a result of our discussion.”