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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Then the bill would have to be amended to provide that the Budget Committee would get involved prior to the markup of the bill in committee. Because as I understand it, it is CBO that makes the estimate and the Budget Committee does not…

We also have subsequent appropriations which are possible, as well. We are trying to legislate now on the basis of an estimate. There is no logic in an estimate to say we are going to go with the high point of a range anymore than there is…

The other possibility, if I may ask the Senator to yield, is that we are overfunding. We do not want to be appropriating more money or requiring the appropriation of more money than is needed to do the job. They are both unacceptable…

That is actually a related but somewhat different idea. If I have enough space on my amendments list, I intend to offer an amendment on this matter. The Senator from Ohio raised the same question, and this is what it is. Let us assume the…

I agree with my friend from Idaho, by the way, that authorization bills should have limits. But there is no saying that Senators cannot offer a bill that does not have a limit on the length of the authorization. They do it all the time…

I thank my friend. This is a very different process, may I say. The CBO would never have to determine whether or not there was a mandate that applied to local government, what year it is effective, and it was never required to create with…

My question then of the Senator from Ohio is, since this is not an estimate of the 5-year costs, once that threshold has been reached--strike the five. I want to change my 5-year time. I do not want to get two 5-year periods in here. It…

Well, I think there is a serious ambiguity here and, to some extent, an abdication if we let this go without clarification. The abdication is that we must, as a Senate and a House, later on know what the legislation intended. It is central…

now, under my hypothetical the Congressional Budget Office has made an estimate. It has taken into consideration each of the items that have been mentioned in the authorizing bill. I could not agree more with the Senator from Idaho that…

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…

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…

If I may say so, we are introducing a tremendous ambiguity, because we are saying in the bill that the first fiscal year after the effective date, and each 4 fiscal years thereafter, we will determine a critical estimate. I am giving the…

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…

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…