Don Nickles: “first, I wish to compliment the leaders of this legislation, Senator Kempthorne and Senator Glenn, for their patience…”

“first, I wish to compliment the leaders of this legislation, Senator Kempthorne and Senator Glenn, for their patience and for their diligence in pursuing a piece of legislation which I think is very much needed and is a very good piece of legislation. They have taken giant steps toward eliminating unfunded mandates on public entities. This legislation says if we pass legislation, we should know how much it costs on public entities, and if we are going to mandate something on a public entity that if we do not provide the funding that a point of order can be raised to stop that mandate. I think that is a good step. We should know what it costs and, frankly, if we are not going to provide the funding, we should have some capability to stop it, and this legislation has done that and I compliment the authors. The legislation also says that if we have legislation pending that has a negative or has an impact on the economy of over $200 million on the private sector, that CBO should score it; CBO should tell us what that impact is before it becomes final. I think that is good. If we are going to pass legislation, if we are going to make laws, we should know what its impact is on the economy before it is too late. Maybe the impact is positive, maybe it is negative, but we should know what it is. I think that makes us a lot more accountable. Hopefully, it will make us better legislators. So I think that is a very good provision.”