Porter Goss: “I would like to further state that the Committee on Rules did respond in a very cooperative way to what we think was a…”

“I would like to further state that the Committee on Rules did respond in a very cooperative way to what we think was a very legitimate concern by the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight on how to work out a compromise that would work on this, and we did come up with an amendment which we called the Goss amendment which we thought resolved the issue pretty well. I would like to point out that this is a subject that went through a briefing, a hearing, a markup, and not a little bit of debate, to say nothing at all of the fact that we had a rule discussion on it. So we have really given this a lot of analysis. My concern about a killer amendment is very real. We have tried to weigh and balance, and we have got a protection built in. I say this sincerely, because I speak as a local government official who has come out of being a mayor and a county chairman. I have very strong, deep personal feelings about dealing with unfunded mandates whether they come from the Federal Government or the State capital, and that is, that we have got our Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, and we have been given, I think, very strong promises of commitment from the leadership that we are going to pay attention to what they say. We are going to have a report, a study, monitoring, and I think we have hit middle ground here. Until we know a little better whether there is a problem or there is not, I think we ought to go as the committee has presented it.”