Ernest Istook: “let me say that I believe that the interest of the gentleman from Georgia and mine in this situation are very akin to…”

“let me say that I believe that the interest of the gentleman from Georgia and mine in this situation are very akin to each other. What I wanted to do in the colloquy I just had with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith) was, frankly, avoid trying to unnecessarily get into a debate today, since we have so many other things that are going to be consuming debate time on the floor. Although I believe that the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center should not, under current proposals, be transferred to the Department of Justice, nevertheless, I do not think it serves any purpose to try to engage in a debate on that today. Of the 21,000 students and 223 student-weeks of training that are currently conducted at FLETC, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, only about 5 percent of that training involves agencies that, under the proposal that will be on the House this week, would be under the Department of Justice. I do not think it would make sense to have FLETC be under the Department of Justice when only 5 percent of the work of FLETC is under the Department of Justice.”