Date: 1995-01-23
Speaker: GENE GREEN (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Chairman. I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the chairman of my committee. the gentleman from Pennsylvania . expressing his concern about the reason there are a number of amendments. and I would not use the term misinformation as much as considering our committee had one weekend to look at this bill and never even had a public hearing during this session of Congress. So what we are doing during this floor debate is actually developing legislative intent. A lot of these amendments that we are talking about in the debate that you are going to hear and we heard last week and this week was to establish legislative intent on this bill. because we did not have the time in the committee. Now. I understand our chairman was told he had to move the bill. But that does not mean that we should shortcircuit the legislative process. and so when we do that in our committees. and maybe we can learn for our other committees. that by doing that in our committee process. we are going to make it longer on the floor. Instead of just our committee members dealing with it. now we have 435 Members who want to have questions and answers to this bill. So we are establishing legislative intent. Let me talk a little bit aboutjust today in the Houston paper. and I was going to say the Post. but it was not the Washington Post. it was the Houston Post. so we will not get confused with inside the beltway or outside the beltway. They had an editorial about the unfunded mandate bill that says. "No easy answers." This is daily newspaper. It talks aboutagain. it is not inside the beltwayit says. "Unfunded mandates is a term that is overly used and often misunderstood when we talk about misinformation." And it is part of the Contract with America or on America or for America or whatever. But State and local officials across the country complain about Washington being too quick to tell them what to do. whether it is clean air. fair labor standards. family leave. But is it fair. and let us go back and use their analogy. again from the Houston Post. It says. An analogy of a teenager in his car. Clearly. it is wroig for his parents to force him to use his money to pay for gas to run errands. But what if they simply order him to repair his transmission so it does not leak in the driveway? Instead of saying. "We want you to clean up your driveway. son or daughter. and that is what we are talking about." That is a mandate that parents give to their child. they are not telling him to use his money to pay for gas to go run errands. they are just saying. "Well. if you want to keep that car in the driveway. we want the transmission not to leak on it. at least." So we are unfunding that mandate for you to clean up your transmission. It is easy to talk about unfunded mandates. and I agree that the bill needs to be passed. but I also think we would be doing a disservice to ourconstituents and to the people of this country if we do not recognize what we are doing by taking as much time as we need. if not in committee then on this floor for the whole world to see. about the unfunded mandate issue. We are 1 country. but we are 50 States. What we come together on as a country is important to us. It may be called an unfunded mandate. it may be a national issue- instead of a local issue. But I still think it deserves the time on this floor of this body to consider it judiciously. I think that is what we are doing.