Don Nickles: “I am appreciative of the cooperation of our colleagues and also of the quality of the debate. I think we have had an…”

“I am appreciative of the cooperation of our colleagues and also of the quality of the debate. I think we have had an interesting debate. I compliment the participants. I will just make a couple of comments. I am reading this amendment and listening to some of the debate yesterday, and looking at this amendment, it says: Provided, That notwithstanding any other provision of the Act-- Talking about the Murray amendment that is included in the Transportation bill-- nothing in this Act shall be applied in a manner that the President finds to be in violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. I know I heard people say yesterday the Murray amendment, the underlying legislation that is in the appropriations bill, is compliant with NAFTA, it is compliant with our treaty, a treaty we have already signed. If that is the case, I think the proponents should adopt this amendment. I wish they would. I would think they would accept it. It would further clarify that we are going to keep our word in the treaty. A treaty is making a commitment on behalf of the United States with other countries. We should keep that. If we are going to rewrite the treaty on this appropriations bill, we have a problem.”