Chuck Grassley: “before I answer this question, there is one further response I want to give to the Senator on his question about the…”

“before I answer this question, there is one further response I want to give to the Senator on his question about the cost benefit. A more explicit answer to the question is, as I said, we only want to do what S. 1 does, and S. 1 deals just with cost. On the point that the Senator from Ohio just made, there is not a real solid answer I can give because of the very basis of my language being sense of the Senate. I think sense of the Senate implies, first of all, that the bureaucrats and regulation writers do a good-faith effort to be within the congressional intent of whatever the ceiling is of the unfunded mandate. Second, sense of the Senate is not binding because it is only sense of the Senate. It is not statute. I would feel that the Congressional Budget Office, in making this estimate, could do no more under my amendment than just simply say in a quantifiable way that the agency cost will be so much. That could be higher or lower. The extent to which it is higher, their statement that it is higher in no way, under the statute or under the intent of my amendment, is going to keep the regulation from going into effect. If I could be perfectly candid with the Senator from Ohio, I think if unfunded mandates legislation is going to mean anything, eventually you have to get to that point where the regulation writers are within the intent of Congress on what the cost is, or else we do not have a very effective statute. But I cannot do that now.…”