Timothy Roemer: “first of all, I would just like to say that the intention of this amendment, which would exempt children's immunizations…”

“first of all, I would just like to say that the intention of this amendment, which would exempt children's immunizations from the legislation that we are considering here, given the special circumstances that we have a Federal program running right now for children's immunizations which we need to improve but we might need to eventually have go back to the States and localities, I am not sure that I will offer this. I may withdraw it, but I do want to talk about the importance of immunizations for children. Let me say, I want to congratulate the Members that have been working so hard on this bill, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Clinger], the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Portman], the gentleman from California [Mr. Condit], the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran], and many others. My amendment is in no way to be dilatory or to take away from the serious debate and the bipartisan nature by which we are working together to prohibit unfunded mandates where many of my constituents and Democratic and Republican mayors want us to act in this body in a bipartisan way. I intend to vote for passage of this legislation. But I also want to make sure that there are not unintended consequences of this legislation. And with immunization rates in this country trailing badly other developed and industrialized countries, we need to make sure that we continue to put the very highest priority on immunizing our children.”