David Cay Johnston: “if I may reclaim the time for just a minute, it is irrelevant what the House wanted or what they wanted on the initial…”

“if I may reclaim the time for just a minute, it is irrelevant what the House wanted or what they wanted on the initial bill. I wanted no supermandate. The point is, what does the language say? Mr. President, I have been telling my colleagues, including my dear friend from Delaware, that we ought sometime to take yes for an answer. When language is clear, unambiguous, we need not put forth ambiguity into it. The Senator came to one of our negotiating sessions. We talked about judicial review. I believe I am correctly judging the Senator's reaction that when he read what we had about judicial review, there was a light bulb. I think I see what he is doing now. I think you will see here that not only do we have that language which says it supplements and does not supersede, but we also have language that explicitly recognizes that there will be times when you cannot meet the test; that is, that the benefits justify the cost. There will be times when you cannot do that because the statute requires otherwise. If you look on page 36, we say if applying the statutory requirements--this is line 22--if, applying the statutory requirements upon which the rule is based, a rule cannot satisfy the criteria of subsection B, it goes on to tell you what to do.…”