Political Quotes

“I think what we have is really competing public policy objectives, Members of goodwill on both sides trying to get at competing objectives. On the one hand there is conflicting evidence, albeit some good evidence, and this amendment would take away the discretion of the Secretary to find that if, in fact, we can do more to prevent AIDS by needle exchange programs, that we would not be able to do so. But stopping AIDS and stopping the threat of AIDS is only one policy objective. Even if this does that, and we have had a family member in my family who has died of AIDS, my wife did that bike ride from Raleigh to Washington to raise money for research for AIDS. I have been a strong supporter of AIDS research. It is very important; stopping the spread of AIDS is an important public policy objective. But we cannot look at that in a vacuum. We also have other policy objectives as well. Why I am troubled by the needle exchange programs and Federal dollars going in to subsidize that is the fact that we are, in effect, sending conflicting messages to drug users.”