Joe Cunningham: “Mr. Chairman, I have thousands, tens of thousands of flight hours both in the military and civilian aircraft, and in the…”

“Mr. Chairman, I have thousands, tens of thousands of flight hours both in the military and civilian aircraft, and in the future I plan to get thousands of more flight hours. Mr. Chairman, the gentlewoman is correct that we have lost a lot of lives in aviation. If I thought for 1 minute that we could pass something that would prevent that, then I would pass the amendment, but I rise in opposition to the amendment. There is nothing that stops this body from passing a funded mandate onto States or Government agencies. If we feel it is important, whether it is endangered species, clean water, clean air, or, in the case of the gentlewoman's amendment, then we should fund it. It is only logical, when we fund it we should have a cost assessment to help all the Members figure out what those costs are going to be to the States, because if we pass on an unfunded mandate, then I imagine the States, and I imagine the State of the gentlewoman and the State of California, none of us has enough money to do all of the things we want to do in the other services that we talked about, in education, law enforcement, social services and the rest. But when we pass that unfunded mandate, it makes the States take a look at a priority, and quite often those priorities are not in agreement with the individual Members passing on the mandate.”