Very quickly, Mr. Chair, I have been in committee where friendly amendments have been accepted. It's part of Robert's rules. I think that's well established. But that being said, I've also been in committees where a chair didn't accept it. My recommendation here is that you either accept it or don't accept it. If you do accept it, we move on with that. If not, then we move directly to voting on the subamendment and then the amendment. It effectively will do the same thing.
I just take some exception to the notion that prescribing witnesses somehow is a restrictive move. It absolutely is not. If you are prescribing the witnesses you wish to appear before a committee, the committee always, at its every opportunity, as master of its own destiny, can add additional witnesses as it sees fit. The only thing it does, in my opinion, is accelerate the agenda of the committee to say these are the witnesses that need to be heard from. If the committee then decides later on that it wants to hear additional witnesses, they can always do that.
But I would recommend respectfully, Chair, that you make a determination on whether or not you will or will not accept a friendly amendment. We either go with that or we go with the subamendment and then the amendment.