I understand. But my question is not that, because this section 2 does not say that limit of the debt of the United States shall not be increased unless three-fifths vote. The sponsors have gone over the words very carefully. This is an…

I favor major reform. I think there has to be a major change. But I think this is an extreme change. What was true of special ed I think would have been true and would be true today in terms of clean air, in terms of clean water. I am not…

I will restate my question. I understood the Senator from Idaho to say that the Chair would not be precluded basically from upholding a point of order, or ruling that the threshold has been exceeded even if there is a statement from the…

earlier today, I asked the Senator from Idaho some questions about how this whole process would work on an amendment. He gave me the best answers he could, which were that, well, if the CBO was unable to make an estimate and if the Budget…

I will simply say that last year we were told any amendment to last year's bill would be viewed as a bill killer. That is what we were told by the National Governors Association, the legislatures, and counties. Last year's bill had a…

I have expressed the concern that there is a feature in this bill that would require estimates for the life of a mandate which could go 20, 30, 40 years. It could be unlimited, and that becomes an impossible task. We are kidding ourselves…

First of all, let me say, Senator Glenn was the chief sponsor of last year's bill. He is the cosponsor of this year's bill. He is not filibustering, nor am I, nor anyone else who offered amendments to improve this bill. The committee…

One of the problems with S. 1 is that this new point of order that was created originally delegated significant authority to the agency. That language was corrected by the Byrd amendment yesterday. But the Byrd amendment created in the…

last year we had a bill which came out of the Governmental Affairs Committee, S. 993. It was a good bill, a bill that I believe had something like 60 cosponsors or more, 67 cosponsors, including the Senator from Ohio, the Senator from…

And is it the intention then, for instance, if somebody offers an amendment and it has an estimate in it but nobody knew that amendment was going to be offered, and then somebody wants to come and offer a second-degree amendment and then…

on Monday night I had a lengthy colloquy with the managers, the principal sponsors of the bill, the Senators from Idaho and Ohio. A number of important questions were left unanswered. In some cases, the answers were conflicted. Those…

amendment No. 173 corrects a problem in this bill. The bill does not provide that individual Members can seek an estimate from the CBO that is so critical to the survival of their amendments and bills. This is a different bill from last…

this amendment may seem like a technical amendment, but it has substantive ramifications to it. There are eight places in the bill where the term ``direct costs'' is used, and that is a very critical term in the bill. But in five of those…

I have no time to yield to myself and comment on that other than to simply say that this is a new estimate, the likes of which has not been made before, involving costs indefinitely into the future on 87,000 local governments. That is very…

I say, if the Senator will yield, there has never been a point of order based on this kind of an estimate, costs on 87,000 jurisdictions, local governments. There is nothing like this in existence. That is why I phrased my question the way…

Under your language, it is the sense of the Congress that the Federal agency should do something to ensure something, and I want to give the Senator a hypothetical. Assume that the estimate of the CBO was that the metal detector would cost…

the trouble with this sense-of-the-Senate language is that it delegates the legislative responsibility to the Congressional Budget Office. This is what the Senator from Ohio was alerting us to in his last couple of minutes. The…

Is that the intent of the sponsors, that the CBO recommends? We do not give them any guidance? That the sponsors of the bill just throw it off to the CBO? We are writing a bill here. What are we urging the CBO to do?

Well, there seems to be two different opinions on this issue. I think that it is important that the language of the bill be clear as to whether or not a point of order would lie against a bill coming out of the Committee, which does not…

The committee is concerned about and recognizes the difficulty of making outyear estimates, particularly beyond the 5-year window. The committee notes that the new enforcement procedures are based on thresholds being exceeded. However, if…

I am wondering whether or not the $200 million figure also goes up as well? It does. All right. That is fine if there is an inflation factor already built in. I thank the Senator from Ohio. Now, getting back to this question, let us assume…

If we could work out enough of these amendments, I would like to vote for this bill. I can assure my friend from Idaho that I supported the bill last year because I wanted to do something about these mandates. But we have to do it in a way…

If we can imagine a mandate which does not have a sunset provision or is not a 10-year authorization or not a 5-year authorization, it is just a permanent authorization, somehow or the other the CBO has to estimate the cost…

Is it then the intent of the Senator from Ohio that if the range estimate is made by the CBO, that that would be the same as no estimate?

It would make it a relevant hypothetical because CBO is mandated in the bill to come up with the direct cost. In order to have a discussion of when the first fiscal year is triggered, I am saying this is the CBO conclusion. Assume for the…