Thomas Daschle: “as I noted, President Reagan made it very clear that were he to waive the magic wand, the more the Federal Government…”

“as I noted, President Reagan made it very clear that were he to waive the magic wand, the more the Federal Government could turn local decisionmaking over to local decisionmakers, the happier he would be. Here we have virtually every single local decisionmaker elected and appointed who oppose the very renaming that is incorporated into this legislation. How ironic that in the name of President Reagan we do the very thing that he opposed the most--forcing Federal will on local officials. I don't think that Congress should pass legislation that removes Washington's name from National Airport and replaces it with the name of another President, or anybody else, over the objection of local officials. I personally oppose it. But that shouldn't be the issue. In the name of the spirit of Ronald Reagan, the issue should be, what do the local authorities think? What would they do? And if we are prepared to say tomorrow that we don't care what they think, it doesn't matter how opposed they are, we are going to do it anyway, Mr. President, how ironic. How ironic, indeed. The airports authority has only had this very unique opportunity to govern themselves for 11 years. We turned over that airport to them for 50 years. Another irony is that Ronald Reagan signed that legislation. So it, indeed, represented the spirit of the Reagan philosophy when we enacted it. All the local entities, in keeping with his spirit, said, ``We'll take this responsibility.”