Political Quotes

“I rise today to offer a technical, yet extremely important, amendment to S. 1. My amendment would require committees that choose to pay for their public sector legislative mandates to report as to "how the committee has created a mechanism to allocate the funding in a manner that is reasonably consistent with the expected direct costs to each State, local, and tribal government." If the Congress chooses to pay for its mandates, and I believe the strong presumption should be that it do so, certainly the intent of this bill would be to have the funding reach those State, local, and tribal governments that will be impacted by the mandate rather than allocate funding State, local, and tribal governments through a random or arbitrary process. For example, if a mandate is imposed on local school districts, it would make more sense to ensure the money reaches local school districts rather than to State education agencies. If a mandate were to have an impact on State and local government in rural areas, it would make little sense to allocate the funding to our Nation's cities. On the other hand, if a mandate were to specifically impact the cities of our country such as Philadelphia, Seattle, Louisville, Baltimore, Houston, and New York City, why would funding be allocated to the State capitals of Harrisburg, Olympia, Frankfort, Annapolis, Austin, or Albany? To do the latter would undermine the entire purpose of this bill.”