Political Quotes

“last week we began a colloquy with the managers of the bill on some of the uncertain provisions and ambiguous provisions in the bill. I thought we could pick that colloquy up this evening. I have a number of amendments that have been offered. There are two additional amendments to be offered that have been listed for me. I think the number of the issues which have been raised, even though amendments both are filed and to be filed, could be clarified if I could discuss with the managers of the bill some of the provisions which I consider to be ambiguous. In order to do that, I thought I would again use the same hypothetical. If I could get copies of this to the two managers of the bill, this hypothetical Senate bill is the one I used last week. We went into the first ambiguity and then after about 3 hours of debate clarified it with an amendment. This bill, hypothetical, to be offered after the effective date of this law mandates reductions of dangerous levels of mercury from incinerator emissions after October 1, 2005. Under this hypothetical bill the EPA is designated to determine what constitutes a mercury level dangerous to human health. The first question is when is this bill effective? That is not a theoretical question. That is a very critical question because there must be an estimate of the cost of an intergovernmental mandate the first year that it is effective.”