Dale Bumpers: “let me begin by saying I hope the Senator from New Hampshire and the senior Senator from Texas will look very carefully…”

“let me begin by saying I hope the Senator from New Hampshire and the senior Senator from Texas will look very carefully at this amendment and accept it. It is not only a harmless amendment, it is a very beneficial amendment. It is an amendment that corrects a problem that apparently was not foreseen. It would be difficult for me to believe that the Congress intended that Legal Services Corporation grant recipients not even to be permitted to testify if a congressional committee asked them to, or to respond to the committee's questions. Let us assume that the Senator from New Hampshire wanted the answer to a question about a lawsuit brought in New Hampshire in which a Legal Services grantee was involved. They would not even be able to answer it. The Senator from Maine has crafted this amendment in a way that could offend nobody in Congress because it allows Legal Services grantees use only non-Federal funds to respond to inquiries. They can only use money that the grantee has received from non-Federal sources to answer specific questions in writing. To me, what we have done to the Legal Services Corporation is a real travesty, but I am not here to reopen that debate. But, Mr. President, just to give you some idea of what we did, we put 19--count them--19 specific restrictions on the Legal Services Corporation of things that they have always done and can no longer do.”