Gary Condit: “Mr. Chairman and Members, the amendment offered by the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Roberts] is an honorable amendment.…”

“Mr. Chairman and Members, the amendment offered by the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Roberts] is an honorable amendment. His intentions were clearly to deal with the unfunded-mandate issue. We did not want to get into the debate of my colleague from California. We clearly wanted to talk about unfunded mandates, and we have a consistent position on this, and that is that if the Federal Government requires local governments, States, and counties and school districts to do something that they think is a good idea, we are asking the Federal Government to reimburse them for those good ideas, because it costs them money. This amendment from my colleague, the gentleman from California, by my colleague from California, will cost somebody some money. Make no mistake about it, it will cost somebody some money. Somebody will have to pay to calculate those numbers and take the time to take the surveys. There will be personnel costs and so on and so forth. We clearly wanted to simply ask that if you are going to mandate this on schools, please, reimburse them for the costs. We did not take a position on the amendment. That was not our intent. Our intent was to say it is unfunded mandate, and, please, recognize that and pay for it. What I wanted to do to the amendment offered by the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Roberts] was just add language that the requirement of this title shall, however, be suspended if such reimbursement is not authorized by Congress. That is real clear, real clear.”