Dale Bumpers: “first of all, I commend the author of this amendment, my good friend, Senator Wellstone, for the thoughtfulness of his…”

“first of all, I commend the author of this amendment, my good friend, Senator Wellstone, for the thoughtfulness of his amendment. It may not be perfectly worded. Oftentimes, we understand the thrust of amendments that come up in the Chamber at times like this, even though they are not worded quite precisely. What we ought to do now is to vote for this amendment because we know what the intention is and what the thrust is. We can worry about the precise language in conference. Mr. President, shortly we are going to be taking up the unfunded mandates bill. I have very serious reservations about that bill. I do not want to debate it. I think the thrust of that bill is probably good. But I think it needs a lot of work. We have been voting today largely along party lines. Virtually every vote has been a motion to table voted for by the Republicans and, for the most part, voted against by Democrats. That is understandable. But if there is one amendment on this bill that Republicans and Democrats ought to join hands on it is this one. The Senator from Minnesota proposes that if we are going to pay the cities and the counties and the States for any obligation we put on them, surely we must also agree not to enact legislation, the effect of which is going to increase the number of homeless and poor children in this country. Surely, we can all agree nobody in this body wants that.”