David Cay Johnston: “Under the original Dole amendment, people would be able to petition as often as they wished to. They would have an…”

“Under the original Dole amendment, people would be able to petition as often as they wished to. They would have an automatic judicial review of that. Sally Katzen suggested--I think it was an excellent idea. I think the Senator carried forward some of the ideas with that, which was we have 180 days after the publication of the initial list within which to petition with a very high threshold. That is, we have to show a substantial likelihood that the existing rule does not meet the test. If you do not make the application during the 180 days, you cannot apply again for 5 years. This is only an every 5-year process. The appeals from that are consolidated so that there is only one appeal, so that the very problems that I was talking about in my bill, that Sally Katzen was talking about in our negotiating session, were accepted on terms suggested by her. It deals with that problem of agency overload and court overload. We did that. I think it was an ingenious suggestion that she made. We accepted it hook, line, and sinker. We said, ``Yes.'' That is the problem with this bill. It is hard to accept ``yes'' for an answer. Mr. President, this bill, virtually everything, virtually all the major areas of opposition to this bill as suggested have been dealt with, and dealt with successfully.”