Political Quotes

“I may have made a mistake. Perhaps I should have taken the block of money that was to correct the inequity of the donor States and put it up there above the line as one of those programs. But it was a program. While not clearly identified above, it was a program. Let me give you some examples. In the 1991 ISTEA I bill--I was a conferee and I was in the second row and was told to be quiet while the dominating chairmen, predominantly from the Northeast, controlled it. That bill came out, and Massachusetts got $2.45; Connecticut, $1.92; New York, $1.25; Maine, $1.23; New Jersey, $1.09; Pennsylvania, $1.16. The donor States: South Carolina got 72 cents; Missouri, 85 cents; Michigan, 80 cents; Mississippi, 83 cents; Virginia, 79 cents; Florida, 82 cents. You bet I took a block of money and I straightened it out, together with the support of my distinguished ranking member, the senior Senator from Montana. We straightened it out. We took a chunk of money and balanced that thing out so that now, with the underlying bill, they get 90 cents--not these egregious disproportionate sums, but 90 cents. With the amendment before us, we tried to allocate the dollars so the donor States came up--as many as we could--to 91 cents. Maybe one or two were a fraction under, about 90.8 cents. But that's what we tried to do under this bill. There it is.…”