Dirk Kempthorne: “In response, Mr. President, to the Senator from New Mexico, I think it is necessary to point out that if at any point…”

“In response, Mr. President, to the Senator from New Mexico, I think it is necessary to point out that if at any point during this process, there truly is a compelling argument, that the committee, the chairman of that committee, may come to the floor and seek a waiver of this process of S. 1, and need not go through the remaining steps of that process. But the idea, as I understand the proposed amendment, is to say that the committee itself could exercise the jurisdiction of the full Senate, which I do not think is appropriate and is really a real short circuit of what we are trying to do here with this process. Earlier today we heard from the Senator from Nevada and the Senator from North Dakota on another issue, but they were saying that with this particular Federal mandate that has been put into place a year or two ago that there may be merit to this unfunded Federal mandate, but it would have been so nice to have known all the implications and the costs before this unfunded Federal mandate was implemented. What they were describing is how nice it would have been to have S. 1 in place before that particular mandate had been imposed. So, again, I think that S. 1 provides the process and rather than allowing the committee to have that sort of jurisdiction to say that because there is a compelling interest here we need not comply is not the route that we should go. If that is the case, if there truly is a compelling reason, then they can seek that waiver immediately.”