Mr. Chairman, I would concur with the gentleman's statement. There is a standard of reasonableness built into this bill in terms of the agencies being able to gather and make the reports.

Mr. Chairman, first of all by defeating this amendment, we do not affect in any way the current law and current regulations affecting lead paint or asbestos. Those regulations, those rules, stay intact. This amendment does not even…

under this bill the Congress will still have the authority to pass the legislation that the gentleman from Pennsylvania wants. We still have that authority. We have not given that up at all. We will simply have the cost in front of us…

I would like the gentleman to respond to a couple of concerns that I have. First of all, it is my understanding that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervisor have never issued safety and soundness…

again, the frustration. Everything, every amendment that comes up, is an emergency, it is a crisis. It is something that this bill is somehow going to take away the flexibility of this body or the regulators to address. I just do not think…

I think the frustration here is that no one wants to deny any Member the opportunity to offer an amendment. It is just that with the debate on some of these amendments, we are hearing the same arguments on our side in terms of not opening…

They do not have an option of opting out of this. We have the same authority we would, but the costs would be identified up front. We would have to affirmatively waive that point of order. The responsibility would still lie with the…

Mr. Chairman, very briefly, I want to clear up some comments that were just made for the record. First of all, nothing in this bill cancels any current mandate or prevents us from passing future unfunded mandates. We would of course have…

if a mandate is required and we believe the costs should be allocated to someone else, why not vote on it? Why not overrule a point of order and take some responsibility for our actions as we send that dollar down to the States and…

I rise on behalf of the committee to oppose this bill and move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, for reasons that we have opposed other amendments to this section, we would oppose this amendment at all. I think we are all against rape…

We would still have that option, but we would have the costs in front of us and identified before we could act on that instead of being automatic. This is not a no-money-no-mandates bill. There may be an amendment offered to that later…

Also it is my recollection that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the NFIB, the National Association of Home Builders and Browning-Ferris, all private sector entities that could be adversely affected through this public- private competition…

In point of fact, does not this legislation specifically require the committee reports to include an analysis of how funding a mandate would affect the competitive balance between the public and the private sector?

Mr. Chairman, one of my concerns is in dealing with the coalitions that put this together, including State governments and local governments together, and this of course cuts right through that coalition and breaks it up. There is a huge…

let me, if I could, just sum up for a minute. Mr. Speaker, I just note that one of the issues that came up today during the course of the debate, Members were saying, well, if one State dumped pollution into another State, the polluting…

Basically they are looking to us to fill different levels of government to work together in the most efficient way to try to take care of their concerns and their problems. And one of the problems it seems to me with the unfunded mandates…

Mr. Chairman, I have heard a number of scary stories told here that really do not apply to this legislation, if my colleagues take a look at what we are asking here. First of all, what this legislation is about is it forces Congress to…

All we are doing here is accounting and that the individuals, whether they be States or localities, would have to pay and we would know what the costs are.

I just heard a statement that when one State dumps pollution into another State, the polluting State would not have to clean up unless Congress gave them a billion dollars. That is not accurate, is it, under this legislation?

Mr. Chairman, as we try to sort out the federalism, the different functions of the State, the Federal Government, and the local governments, I believe that the Advisory Council on Intergovernmental Relations will play a more crucial role…

this addresses many of the concerns of the gentlewoman from California that she had raised on the first amendment. But instead of putting these into the purpose clause, where I do not believe it belongs, it puts it where the Commission can…

a key ingredient of the new Republican majority's rules package is the elimination of approximately 30 subcommittees in the House of Representatives. There were 101 House subcommittees in the 103d Congress. Today, under the new Republican…

I have been in local government for 15 years where we were subject to sunshine laws, and I believe that total access for the public and the media at committee meetings will end once and for all the controversial practice of shutting the…