Joe Barton: “We do oppose the manager's amendment, Madam Chair. It is a good-faith attempt to try to perfect some of the anomalies…”

“We do oppose the manager's amendment, Madam Chair. It is a good-faith attempt to try to perfect some of the anomalies within it. It's fairly long-winded. It's fairly complicated, because when the government starts to intervene in the marketplace, it has to intervene more and more pervasively to try to handle all of the various things that normally the hidden hand of the market, to quote Adam Smith, would correct or take care of. So, if you support the underlying bill, you should support the manager's amendment because it is trying to correct the problems which those who support it have seen in the underlying bill. If you don't support the underlying bill, which I do not, you should oppose the Waxman amendment because here is a program, again, which is spending $6.6 billion--or at least is authorizing the spending of $6.6 billion, which we don't have, which has no pay-for, and the Department of Energy has a $5 billion program currently on the books that has been appropriated for which they've not yet handed out the money. So we oppose Chairman Waxman's manager's amendment and would ask for a ``no'' vote.”