Frank Lautenberg: “Last year I cosponsored the Kempthorne-Glenn legislation, S. 993, to deal with the unfunded mandates problem. Today, I…”

“Last year I cosponsored the Kempthorne-Glenn legislation, S. 993, to deal with the unfunded mandates problem. Today, I will vote against the pending legislation, S. 1, but I want to reiterate my support for the sensible, workable proposal offered by Senator Levin. Had it been adopted, the Levin substitute would have forced the Congress to review any imposition of new, unfunded costs on the States and localities, but would not have tied us up in a procedural nightmare when we needed to address important national interests. Last year's bill was built on a bipartisan consensus. It was rooted in the realization that the Federal Government had mistreated States in two fundamental ways. First, the Federal Government had, too causally and too often, imposed mandates without thorough consideration of the financial burdens State and local governments already face. And, second, the Federal Government had too frequently told the States what to do without giving them the resources and the flexibility to do it. No one denies that problems resulted. No one denies that solutions need to be found. But if I were to characterize last year's bill, I would say it was designed to sensitize us to the problem. To require us to think carefully and critically about what kind of burdens we were imposing before we imposed them. Under the terms of last year's bill, we would know how much of burden we were creating.”