Political Quotes

“Tomorrow this House is scheduled to consider the transportation appropriation bill. Within that bill there is a provision requiring that the local governments in the Washington, D.C. area spend hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money to add the name of Ronald Reagan to the Metro system every place it says National Airport. Now, the local governments have the authority to do this. When a local government requests a name change, the name of the Metro station within its jurisdiction is changed. That deference to local government is really one of the principal things that Ronald Reagan stood for. But this body, deciding that it did not like the fact that the local government had resisted adding those two additional names, is now going to require them to do so, even though this is not a Federal facility. It gets only 6 percent Federal money, 94 percent of which comes from the riders of the Metro system. So we ought to ask ourselves, do principles only apply when it is convenient, when it suits our politics; or do we vote consistently with principles like deferring to the sovereignty of local governments in opposition to unfunded Federal mandates? Because this is what this is, an unfunded Federal mandate. It would not be done in other congressional districts, but we are going to be doing it over the opposition of this local government and the regional authority. We are going to do it out of what I can only consider to be partisan petty politics.”