Joe Barton: “next week the President of the United States is expected to sign in the Oval Office or the Rose Garden a bill that…”

“next week the President of the United States is expected to sign in the Oval Office or the Rose Garden a bill that increases fines for utterances of an obscene nature over the public airwaves. That is Chairman Upton's bill, and I am a sponsor and strong supporter of it. {time} 1130 If C-SPAN were over the public airways and not cable, I would probably be the first victim fined, the first violator of that bill because of my reaction, not to the gentlewoman's point of order, which is within the rules of the House, but because of the underlying premise that the Congressional Budget Office has propounded that there is an unfunded mandate in this bill. The thing that I can say that is printable is that is hogwash. Now, we went down to the dictionary that is always here in the House of Representatives and looked up the word ``mandate.'' The number one definition, a command to act in a particular way on a public issue. That is the number one definition for mandate in that dictionary: a command to act in a particular way on a public issue. Now, if the bill before us had told the cities that they had to provide cable service themselves to every citizen in their community and not compensated for it with Federal dollars, that would be a mandate. If the bill had said that every Member of Congress in the House and the Senate had to be provided an office with a television studio by the cities, that would be a mandate; and it would be unfunded. It is not in this bill.…”