Cord Byrd: “I may not have another chance today to say a few words on this. Mr. President, the first item of legislation passed by…”

“I may not have another chance today to say a few words on this. Mr. President, the first item of legislation passed by this Congress was S. 2, the Congressional Accountability Act. The Senate now has under its consideration S. 1, the so-called unfunded mandates bill. When I think about the paradoxical effects of those two bills, I sincerely hope I am not the only one to marvel at the utter inconsistency of what we see going on. On the one hand, when the Senate passed S. 2, it agreed to apply to the Congress and its employees many of the same worker protection and environmental safety laws currently enjoyed by the rest of the Nation. Yet here we are today debating the unfunded mandates bill, which, if enacted, could turn right around and endanger many of those same protections. In principle, I am not opposed to the idea of requiring congressional funding for programs that we enact. I agree that in some cases we have passed along to the States the cost of increased benefits that we knew we could not fund.”