Henry Waxman: “Mr. Speaker, I first of all have to express my regret in response to the complaint that, while we have openness in…”

“Mr. Speaker, I first of all have to express my regret in response to the complaint that, while we have openness in government, we had an amendment to this bill suddenly presented to the minority. And let me explain why that happened. The legislation before us was completely bipartisan in committee. I don't think anybody voted against the bill passing out of our committee, for all the reasons that both the Chair of the subcommittee and the ranking member described, and I would like to get into those substantive issues as well, because this is the best known and most important of the freedom of information that people look to when they want to be able to find out what government is doing. It is called the Freedom of Information Act for that reason. But we did not have presented to us in committee any objection to the fact that there is a score on this bill of $7 million. But because there is a score, we found out last night that there might be an objection to the bill; and we didn't want to have an objection to the bill, possibly cause people to come to the floor and vote against something as important as the Freedom of Information Act.”