mr. chairman , i thank the gentleman for yielding time to me . 
as we can tell , this is the kind of issue that we could spend the next 10 years debating . 
i want to solve the problem . 
the problem is not going to be solved by filing lawsuits , by scoring political points , by paying huge legal fees to the trial bar , waiting year after year after year while constituents of all of us wait for some kind of remediation . 
sure , claims have been filed , almost 100 of them , i understand . 
there has not been a single judgment to date . 
there have been some settlements , but there has not been a single judgment rendered . 
i do not call that a safe way to procure that our constituents get their water cleaned up . 
last year cbo said that this was not an unfunded mandate . 
this year another analysis says it is an unfunded mandate . 
as one who served on the committee on the budget and was here in 1995 , i would suggest that this would be classified , if one is an accountant , as a contingent unfunded liability or a hypothetical unfunded liability . 
but it will not be that way in the end because there are two choices that we face here today : an easy choice , which is to vote `` yes '' and to have the status quo and to go forward as we have in the past ; or the hard vote is to really solve the problem . 
having voted to strip mbte provisions from this bill last year , i am voting the other way this year , and i am proud of it , and i will tell the members why . 
i have established it with the chairman , a task force that is going to work between now and conference time on a plan that will structure a remediation program that will clean up the water , not 10 years from now or 20 years from now , not unfairly in this community and not in that community and not in this state or that state , but across the whole country . 
my constituents deserve a workout for this problem , and we as policymakers have an obligation to work together in a bipartisan fashion in our conference to come up with a solution . 
it is my hope that this solution will include the creation of a fund that will include participation by all the potentially responsible parties , a way to settle claims in a quick and fair fashion that reduces the overall cost . 
i do not want to see communities like south tahoe city suing their own lawyers to try to get the money back so that they can actually perform the remediation that they had planned to do and might have been able to do if it had been settled in such a fashion so that they did not have to deal with other costs . 
i want to see a fund created that will really resolve this issue . 
please allow this bill to go forward to conference , and when we come back with a conference product , it will be a product that my constituents who have been hurt by mbte contamination will see their wells cleaned up , will see adequate compensation to redress their issues ; and we will have the problem resolved , and we will end this endless fight that we could have if we do nothing . 
i urge opposition to the pending amendment . 
