Norman D. Dicks: “Just briefly, the President doesn't require that they use a project labor agreement. He just suggests that they might be…”

“Just briefly, the President doesn't require that they use a project labor agreement. He just suggests that they might be able to use it. That's pretty neutral. Mr. LaTOURETTE. Reclaiming my time, well, let me say this. You know, I do agree with the gentleman from Arizona, which I very rarely do, that, in fact, under this administration, there's sort of a feeling that we should have PLAs, which I happen to think is a good thing into my part of the world. However, this language is almost identical to the Bartlett amendment that was in the defense authorization. To my belief, this was written by the Associated Builders and Contractors, and the Associated Builders and Contractors are not in favor of project labor agreements. Neither are most of the people, including Mr. Culberson. He's very proud of the fact that they don't have any unions in Texas. Well, we've got them in Ohio. And I'll tell you, here's the difficulty with this and why this is a wolf in sheep's clothing. What the problem is is, if an agency determines that they want to proceed with a project labor agreement, this language prohibits them from doing it because it prohibits any contractor or subcontractor who may bid a piece of that job to be required to enter into a union contract. And that's the difficulty, because if the agency, independent, without any thumbs on the scale, says, You know what--well, I've got to tell you, CRS is wrong. CRS is flat-out wrong. They're a great organization. They're flat-out wrong.…”