Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I support this amendment. I do not think it is going to pass. I hope it passes. But what we ought to be doing, and maybe this would be the prelude to next year, is we ought to just take a percentage of the 18.5 cent gasoline tax and turn it back to the States, because I think they know better about where the money ought to be spent than frankly we do in Congress. And when you have a problem in that individual State, then you go defeat that Governor or you change their legislature or you do something. What the gentleman from Wisconsin was saying was a fact. The great State, my neighbor State of West Virginia, in that 1 year got 47 percent of all the highway demo money out of the Committee on Appropriations. Forty-seven percent. There are three wonderful, and I like the gentlemen very much, three good Members of Congress and two outstanding Senators. Let me just say that for the record. I have great respect for Senator Byrd. I think he is a good person, a decent person. But the fact remains that that State has three Representatives, got 47 percent of the money and the rest of the country got 53 percent. Texas got nothing. Florida got nothing. California got nothing. We in the Committee on Appropriations made a decision that was supported on a bipartisan basis, Republicans and Democrats, that we would do away with highway demo projects.”