Virginia Foxx: “I want to thank members of the freshman class--I think people don't realize we call ourselves ``freshmen'' our first…”

“I want to thank members of the freshman class--I think people don't realize we call ourselves ``freshmen'' our first year here--for doing such a wonderful job of humanizing this bill. This is not the most exciting legislation that has ever passed the House of Representatives, and I have to say my piece of this legislation is probably one of the least exciting pieces of it. It's H.R. 373. It's called the Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act. It's pretty dull. I'll tell you, when you read it, if you need something to put you to sleep, it's a great thing to put you to sleep, but it is very important legislation. All seven pieces of the legislation that you all are talking about tonight have real impact on the public. I want to say, in 1995, when Republicans took over the majority for the first time in 40 years, they passed a bill with bipartisan support called the Unfunded Mandates bill. We all grew up hearing how the Federal Government was putting unfunded mandates on State and local governments. So they said, well, we're not going to do that anymore. We're going to figure out how much this costs, and if it costs over $100 million, we're not going to do it. Well, guess what? There were loopholes in the legislation. We hear about loopholes all the time in tax legislation, but you don't hear very many people talking about the loopholes that are out there that govern the bureaucracy. Well, there were lots of loopholes in the Unfunded Mandates bill, or UMRA.…”