Mike Thompson: “first, I am sorry if I drew the wrong conclusion this might be jurisdictional. When the Senator mentioned this would be…”

“first, I am sorry if I drew the wrong conclusion this might be jurisdictional. When the Senator mentioned this would be a better part of the Export Administration Act legislation, which happens to be his legislation, and it was not referred to the right committee, I just thought that might be jurisdictional. That is where I got that idea. If he resents that implication, I am sorry, but that is the source of that idea. I think back to a time not too long ago when the Senator from Wyoming and the Senator from Texas worked long and hard on a bill called the Export Administration Act. Several of us who are committee chairmen had problems with that because of some of the same things we are talking about. In my view, and I think my colleagues' view, it liberalized our export rules at a time when we should have been tightening them up. The chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and myself as chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, looked at this and said that it had some major problems. The statement was made by the sponsors of the bill that they would not bring it up, as I recall, without our signing off on it, and we never signed off on it. If the hangup here is the fact my colleagues have not gotten a vote on their Export Administration Act, I suggest they offer it as an amendment to my amendment. Let's have a second-degree amendment.…”