Rob Portman: “It requires a cost analysis so we will know what we are voting on. Then on the floor of the House, any Member of this…”

“It requires a cost analysis so we will know what we are voting on. Then on the floor of the House, any Member of this House can stand up and raise what is called a point of order, which means it can stop the whole process if a new mandate is not funded. So you know what the cost is, and if some committee sends a bill to this floor that is not funded, in other words, it has a new requirement that is not funded, then any one of us or any other Member can stand up and say, ``Point of order; this legislation needs to stop,'' and it stops right there, and you have a debate on the floor of the House about the unfunded mandate in that legislation. Let us take an example, the motor-voter bill, the first bill that I had the privilege to consider here in the Congress when I walked in my first day. I had to vote up or down on motor voter. I kind of looked at it. Everybody wants to have more voter registration. But I did not think it made sense, because Ohio, as the gentleman from Ohio knows, has a good voter registration program. It is run at the State level, as all programs were until we passed this national bill. I was told by some members of the Governor's office here in Washington this was going to cost the State of Ohio several million dollars a year. Nobody was sure, because there was not a good cost estimate. There was no Federal money to pay for it. I voted against the bill on that basis.”