Gary Condit: “Mr. Chairman, I want to just bring up a point, I spoke a minute ago and I wanted to talk a little bit about the intent…”

“Mr. Chairman, I want to just bring up a point, I spoke a minute ago and I wanted to talk a little bit about the intent of this bill. The intent of this bill is to provide information to the Members about the cost of an unfunded mandate on the private sector. Since I have been here, maybe it was different when some of the other Members, they have been here, maybe they found it a little bit different. But I have found that when someone introduces a piece of legislation and it goes through the process, that they are introducing that legislation and it is passed out of committee and gets to this floor because somebody thinks it has a benefit to this country. We clearly debate the benefit. I mean, the benefit is espoused by the author of the bill. If it gets out of committee, it is espoused by the committee members, the chairman of the committee, everyone clearly understands that there is a so-called benefit. Some Members may disagree and say, well, it really does not do that, but there is a debate. We do spend a lot of time talking about the benefit. What we do not talk about and what we do not focus on is the hidden cost and who is going to pay that cost. And what the unfunded mandate bill does is focus on that.”