Mark Neumann: “I rise to make it perfectly clear my opposition to the amendment in the form of a substitute, and I would like to make…”

“I rise to make it perfectly clear my opposition to the amendment in the form of a substitute, and I would like to make it clear exactly what is going on in this amendment in the form of a substitute. What is happening here is they are trying to say that we need 30 days here in Washington to review this. Surely, we are not talking about Wisconsin people who want more time to review this, because after 18 months, my colleague from Wisconsin has gone through the list of how many different hearings they have had out there, but surely, after 18 months of hearings the people in Wisconsin have had their chance to be heard. This legislation is not legislation designed to reform welfare all over the United States of America. This is legislation designed to reform welfare in the State of Wisconsin, the people that are going to be affected by this legislation, have had 18 months, they have had 18 months of chances to express themselves. What came out of this 18 months of debate in Wisconsin? Why do we not need another 30 days of debate out here in Washington, DC? Well, first let us make it clear if we give them 30 additional days to debate this out here in Washington, DC, what we are really doing is giving the Washington bureaucrats the power, the time and the right to rewrite the Wisconsin plan and to Washingtonize it. We do not want our Wisconsin plan Washingtonized.”