Dirk Kempthorne

I think I have made it clear. I think it is a responsible thing. But if you are going to offer a multibillion-dollar amendment, certainly that did not just come to mind that night. Certainly you have talked with either the Budget Committee…

Again, Senator, that is correct. We require, on an intergovernmental, that there not be an estimate. But in going through that process, it may be that the conclusion of that estimate is that they just cannot provide the data that we are…

If I may, to continue our discussion; yes, we do ask CBO to make an estimation. The Senator is correct. Since about 1981, CBO has been required to do some estimating. They have begun to build some years of information that will help them…

But the key to this whole legislation is that if a point of order lies against that, then you come down here. You may have from CBO or from the committee itself the analysis as to the rationale as to why a waiver should be granted, and a…

So that, again, once we add back what has been referred to as the Levin amendment, these numbers that we are now going to alter, realign, will be lined up in anticipation of adding the Levin amendment back in.

I respect the Senator's view on this. Now, we will probably disagree, but I respect what the Senator is saying. Congress has a bad habit of not picking up the tab on orders that it places, and so this I think is going to help us with this…

To the Senator I would say that a committee could determine that they wanted to do a 90-10 split on the cost. Now, because they do not provide 100 percent of the funding, yes, a point of order could be made against that authorizing bill…

I will answer that I strongly believe that we should follow this prescribed course. In that case, where you say there was a cost to the city of Albuquerque, there was a cost to the cities across the country that had to put in these metal…

If I may respond, this occurred at the end of last year. So, we talked with OSHA officials. They felt they could correct this through other means. I went ahead and prepared the language, which really reflects language which I think OSHA…