Jerry Lewis: “I do, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as all my colleagues know, as a result of these last couple of days this is a very…”

“I do, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as all my colleagues know, as a result of these last couple of days this is a very important, a very interesting, a very complex bill. To say the least, it is a difficult bill with many a compromise, an attempt to balance and measure and weigh carefully that which makes good sense for all those who care about the subject areas of this legislation. In the discussion that we had earlier regarding the AmeriCorps program, we did essentially come to an agreement within the House that involved an amendment that raided the Hostettler amendment. We left a minimum basic level for AmeriCorps in the bill as a result of that amendment, and indeed it was our understanding that we would work with that as we move towards the conference, and it relates to a lot of the rest of the bill. Later an amendment came to us that was not one that we had talked about before or had any in-depth discussion, but it was an amendment heartfelt but also that put this program against veterans' programs, and my colleagues know we discussed what we do with those programs. So we kind of reversed ourselves there, and this motion to recommit is essentially to take us back to the position that we were in earlier in terms of our general understanding about this and a lot of another items.”