Political Quotes

“the amendment I am offering would impose the same information requirements with respect to unfunded mandates on appropriations bills as H.R. 5 requires for authorizing legislation. Even if we are not going to prohibit consideration of appropriations bills which contain unfunded mandates we should at least, Mr. Chairman, require that they be submitted to CBO for an estimate of the cost of any unfunded mandates they may contain. Otherwise we will be making appropriation bills a magnet for authorizers attempting to circumvent the requirements imposed on their own bills. I personally have some reservations about the practicality of CBO-produced estimates of Federal mandates in legislation. It is a good idea in concept, but we are likely to see problems in its implementation, at least for a while. But if we are going to require such cost estimates for authorizing bills we ought to require them for appropriations bills as well. It is easy to imagine a situation where members of authorizing committees, frustrated that they are unable to get a cost estimate from CBO on a timely basis, or are unwilling to do so because they know how the figures will turn out, go to the Committee on Appropriations and persuade a majority of members there to add the legislation to the appropriations bill.”