George Miller: “either this bill is not on the level, or we desperately need the amendment of the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr.…”

“either this bill is not on the level, or we desperately need the amendment of the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Taylor]. Because the suggestion is, somehow, when we bump up against the hard question of whether or not we are going to regulate and bring in as a matter of national policy, that effluent be cleaned up from our rivers and our waterways, we will simply overrule the point of order and go on with a majority vote and we will go on about our way, because we recognize national important issues when we see them. Well, then you cannot have all of the rhetoric about stopping unfunded mandates. Because, in fact, the process that we go through today, the way that we arrived at the Clean Water Act and the 10 years we spent in the reauthorization of the Clean Air Act, is exactly that process. We went through 10 years of hearings, 10 years of combat, 10 years of acrimony, 10 years of scientific studies by the National League of Cities, by the great city mayors, by rural America, by the League of Counties or Organization of Counties. All of these organizations came in and said this is what it is going to cost, you are only paying a part of this, not all of this, back and forth. But we also knew something else: None of those cities could do it by themselves, and none of them were willing to do it without Federal money. And they also wanted protection from being sued by their neighbor if they could not do it immediately.”