Neil Abercrombie: “My difficulty is, and I'll conclude with this. Mr. Bishop, I am very appreciative of your indulgence in this and the…”

“My difficulty is, and I'll conclude with this. Mr. Bishop, I am very appreciative of your indulgence in this and the other Members. Obviously it is very, very important to all of us and important on a fundamental constitutional basis as well. The difficulty for me in doing that is that I am seeing it right now for the first time. The language in the bill has been gone over and over and over again with a legal fine tooth comb so that I have confidence in that. My problem is that your intention and my intention may not be what the consequences legally would be when somebody reads it as written on the paper. My friend and mentor on the Armed Services Committee, the chairman, Ike Skelton, who usually characterizes himself as a country lawyer, which should put everybody on edge and make them wary when he says it, has a saying that he admonishes us with on the Armed Services Committee all the time: Read it. What he means by that is the words on the paper are what will be referred to when legal recourse is taken. And what my fear is, is that not knowing the consequences of the language, despite the gentleman's intention, if I accepted such a thing, I am doing it on blind faith. Not on blind faith in you. I have faith in your good intentions. But I am doing it on blind faith as to what the safe harbor would be or not be or what the consequences would be.”