Rob Bishop

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am pleased to see the passionate fervor of the gentleman from Colorado on this issue. I wish that that passion and fervor had been there a couple of years ago when I had an immigration bill on the floor that dealt with many of these issues. Unfortunately, today, we have an issue that is extremely important to those of us who live in the West. I think my county commissioners, all of whom see this as a very, very critical issue, will take some kind of umbrage to saying that this is not a significant thing, especially if you are one of the county commissioners that lives in the West and the Federal Government has control of your land--the entire county. Take Wayne County, for example: 3 percent of its county is private property, and that is not a small county. The rest is controlled by the Federal Government. There is the constant fear by these people that the President, by a stroke of a pen or picking up a telephone, can make a ruling or a proclamation that will change their lives significantly; that will make their economy turn upside down. And there is not a thing they can do about it. This is the reason we have asked for this bill--to at least give these county commissioners the chance of having public input before the decision is made. That is why this becomes so significant. These county commissioners want to be treated fairly, as all people want to be treated fairly, and one of the problems they have in being treated fairly is simply this particular archaic act. The original Antiquities Act was passed in 1906. Think about that for a minute. What kind of environmental laws were there in 1906? Also consider the state of the Nation in 1906. In 1906, the States of Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma were not part of the Nation. Even my State of Utah was less than a decade old as a State in this particular Nation. A lot is made often about how the Grand Canyon was created by using the Antiquities Act. Actually, it was. Unfortunately, it was a monument using the Antiquities Act, but the Grand Canyon had actually been a national forest before it was created a monument; and when it was created as Grand Canyon National Park, that was done by Congress because only Congress has the ability to create national parks. So one of the situations we have is the situation is extremely different from 1906 till today; and one of the things that also is different is that the Antiquities Act has been used in the past, but it has basically been abused in the current time. There are three criteria for which the Antiquities Act is supposed to be able to be used to create a national monument. One is it has to have a specific element that needs to be protected: archaeological, historical, geographical. Secondly, it has to be in imminent danger of being destroyed. Third, it has to be in the smallest footprint possible, which meant, when they were debating it in 1906 on the floor, the debate was very clear they were talking about 2 to 300 acres. President Bush created thousands of acres of a national monument. Fortunately, it was in water, but he created one because it had a lot of fish without ever deciding what the significant factor was. The President has created a couple of national monuments, our current one, for structures that were already under preservation status. There was no imminent danger. When President Clinton did the Grand Staircase-Escalante, that was not 200 acres. That was 1.9 million acres, which is larger than a couple of our small States combined. So the criteria for the use of the Presidential authority has changed radically. Also, the way it has been used has changed radically. Look, from the Depression era to the beginning of 1976, let us say, roughly a half century, the Antiquities Act was only used nine times. President Roosevelt, in his four terms, only used it three times, and one of those was reversed by Congress. When President Carter came into office, he then used it 15 times in his 4 years. President Clinton then used it 22 times, all of which were in his last 4 years. President Obama has already used it eight times, and is counting. It is very clear that we are doing it differently than it was in the past. All those other uses of the Antiquities Act were done, actually, to designate a specific topic and try to preserve it. What we are finding now is it is being used as a political weapon, a ``gotcha'' effort, a power play, without letting anyone know about it. In the case of the Grand Staircase-Escalante, the Governor, the morning, at 2:00 in the morning, was explaining what public trust lands were to the White House. At 12, the President then designated the Grand Staircase-Escalante monument without ever dealing with the issue of school trust lands in those particular areas. What I am saying is, we need to change something now because we are starting to use the Antiquities Act as a political bludgeon, and it shouldn't be that way. The most mellow way, the most moderate way of doing that is simply doing this bill that says, okay, we are not going to take the power away from the President. All we are going to do is, before you use it--you can't surprise people with it--you have to go through the NEPA process, which requires public comment, public input, which is what every other agency in the Federal Government has to use. Congress has to go through that same process. The only one who is exempt from public comments is the President. That is why this is important. That is why this is vital, especially to people who live in high rural areas that have a lot of Federal land in which they are frightened that the President could upend everything simply by a stroke of a pen, and they don't have an avenue to give input. This bill gives them input. It is easily the most moderate approach that will ever come about the Antiquities Act on this floor, and I think it is worthy of supporting the rule and bringing it to the floor for a final vote. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I do not yield for this purpose.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I do not yield for this purpose.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I want to reiterate my earlier announcement that all time is yielded for the purpose of debate only. I am not prepared to yield for any other purpose.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. May I ask an inquiry? Was that for a vote on Tule Springs or something else? Apparently, it was something else.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I thank the gentleman for giving me his time, which I would be happy to talk about the bill that is actually before us and will be here because it is a wonderful bill.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which they may revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, this resolution provides for a structured rule for the consideration of H.R. 1459, Ensuring Public Involvement in the Creation of National Monuments Act. It provides for 1 hour of general debate, equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Natural Resources. The rule makes in order three amendments, two of which are Democrat amendments, in addition to a manager's amendment. The rule also wisely provides for same-day authority for the legislative day of Thursday to consider the so-called ``doc fix'' bipartisan proposal, which may come forward for our consideration, as well as for the consideration of measures aimed at supporting the people of Ukraine against Russian aggression and expansionism. So this is an important rule. Therefore, it deserves our strong support. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand before the House today in support of the rule as well as of the underlying legislation primarily because it is my bill. I appreciate the hard work and support of the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings), in forwarding this important bill to the floor of the House for our consideration. I have to admit, Mr. Speaker--perhaps because the underlying bill is my bill--that I have had a closer consideration of the discussion, of the comments, that have been made about it, and I have taken some of them rather personally. To be honest, I am, quite frankly, amazed at some of the inaccuracies and the misinformation that has taken place by some outside groups in blogs, in Internet descriptions by special interests groups, and, actually, even by some Members of the floor. When I originally saw some of the reports that said this bill would stop the creation of any more national parks, nothing could be further from the truth, because actually the President can't create national parks; only Congress can. It has nothing to do with national parks. Eventually, they changed it to say this will stop creation of national monuments. Again, that charge is simply ridiculous. The essence of this bill is very simple. What it says is the President should be treated like everyone else. Congress, if they are going to make any kind of land decisions, must have an open process where they have hearings and markups and bring things for an open vote. If an agency of the government is going to make some sort of land designation, they have to go through NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, the process which provides for input--public discussion and public advice--about it. The only one who cannot do that is the President. When the administration testified about this bill in committee, I was amazed, because they said the President should not have to go through the open process of obtaining public input on his decisions because even though the entire Federal branch has to, he is only the head of the Federal branch, he is not the Federal branch. That just does not make sense to me. The idea is that everyone, including the President, should ask for public input. One of the groups, the National Resources Defense Council, wrote on their blog that NEPA was the Magna Carta of environmental laws. They wrote: Much like the Magna Carta protected people from dangers of monarchical rule, NEPA protects people by providing transparency in Federal projects. Both the Magna Carta and NEPA espouse the ideas of public participation in democracy by giving citizens a voice in government decisions. Yesterday, in a different bill in a different committee, the administration testified against the bill, saying it would stop public comments about this particular issue. I am sorry, but that is why I get so confused about the rhetoric about this particular bill. What we are asking is that before the President uses this authority, it go through NEPA to provide for public comment and concepts. If NEPA is the Magna Carta and it provides for citizen voices in democratic decisions, how can you then say that this bill, which provides for NEPA and that kind of policy, would eviscerate one of America's bedrock conservation laws? This is simply intellectual gymnastics at the highest level. Either getting public input is good, in which case we should pass this bill, or getting public input is bad, in which case there are a lot of things that we should change around here. I happen to think that getting public input is good. Because it does one thing: it solves problems before they develop. In our State, we have had a National Monument that has been designated by Presidential proclamation for almost 20 years now. We are still dealing with issues of what kind of grazing rights were or were not included in that proclamation, what kind of roads were or were not open. Even though we tried to solve the problem, because the President had no concept of what School Trust Lands were in that area, and we have tried to exchange those out, not all of those exchanges have yet to be consummated. Another of the monuments that the President recently proposed, they have already come to us and said there are problems within the boundaries of that monument. We have found private property we didn't know existed. We don't know whether there are provisions in there to allow duck hunting to go on, but we are not quite sure how you accomplish that. We are really not quite sure which land agency is responsible for the administration. Those issues are all the issues that could be settled before you make the designation. And if, indeed, the NEPA process was required, those would become the issues that would be brought up, they would be understood, and they would be dealt with before you make the initiative. So I have had people tell me that this is actually the ``No More National Monuments'' bill. It would stop national monuments. It is patently false. It is a false premise. It is a scare tactic, not an argument. And it is incredibly wrong. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 524 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Chairman, as I said on the rule, sometimes I am amazed at the kind of misinformation and inaccuracy that is taking place about this bill. This bill does not stop parks. It does not stop monuments. We have heard about the Grand Canyon being made a monument under this act, under this power, but please realize it was a national forest before that, and it was made a park by Congress because only Congress can make parks. The gentleman from Delaware, I appreciate him being here, he still has his park because only Congress can go through that particular process. I also get somewhat confused when people talk about how this is a way of rolling back any kind of protection. Mr. Chairman, the Federal Government owns over 635 million acres. We already have 336 million acres that presently are in a protected status. There is no way they can be touched by anyone at any time for anything. And those that are for development are only 38 million acres. It is almost a 10 to 1 ratio between the two of them. I want you to think back on when the Antiquities Act was originally passed. It was 1906. The States of Hawaii, Alaska, New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma did not exist. They were all territories. My home State had only been in the Union for a decade. There were very few environmental laws. Today, if you were to list all of the environmental protections that we have on the statutes, both by the Federal Government and by the States, it would take four or five pages, small type, just to list them all. There could have been a reason for doing this. This is back in the era when there was no Bureau of Land Management. There was not even a Park Service when this was being done. The majority of the designations Teddy Roosevelt made were in territories that were not States. Things have changed since that time. Unfortunately, this law hasn't. And if you don't allow the NEPA process to allow public input, you make mistakes. You made mistakes in Utah--and, yes, we have had bills that have been filibustered by the Senate to make those changes, but 20 years later we are still trying to work through what ought to have been there. The gentlelady from Maryland was here, and I appreciate her concept. Her Harriet Tubman national monument is a good idea. The unfortunate thing is it was poorly done because you didn't take the time to go through the NEPA process and get some public input. It is still in draft status. This is the boundary within the green. The stuff with the stripes on it are private property they just kind of found within the boundary that now they have to try to get approval to try to acquire that property. The white is also other private property that right now they don't think they need to acquire. Now, how come we missed all that stuff? It is simply because the President decided to use the Antiquities power without taking the time to get public input to go through those situations. Yes, a lot of Presidents have used this stuff. One other thing, too. The proclamation that created Harriet Tubman said there would be 11,750 acres set aside. The Park Service says it is actually 25,000, and no one knows the difference--25,000 acres of Federal, State and private lands. See, that is the problem. If you rush this stuff through without taking the time to get input from people, you make mistakes. Don't make mistakes. The National Resources Defense Council said that NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, which regulates the requirement to have public input before you go forward with that, held that the Magna Carta protects people from the dangers of monarchy, and NEPA protects people by providing transparency in Federal projects. Both the Magna Carta and NEPA espouse the ideals of public participation and democracy by giving citizens a voice in government decisions. Giving people the chance to have a voice in government decisions is the purpose of NEPA. Every Federal agency has to use NEPA. Congress has to do something very similar because everything requires some kind of hearing. The only person that doesn't have to do that is the President when he uses this archaic act, over 100 years old, in situations that have changed. Instead, what was said about this in some of the misinformation going out, they said if this bill is passed, it eviscerates one of the America's bedrock conservation laws. Look, you can't say it is good to have public involvement except here, in which it is bad to have public involvement. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the administration said. The administration said the President should not have to go through NEPA, should not have to get public input because he is only head of the executive branch, he is not an agency of the executive branch. That is intellectual gymnastics, and one of the reasons why we have problems. This bill doesn't stop anything. Any monument that was made could easily be made. This bill recognizes there may be an emergency situation, and anything less than 5,000 acres can be done.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Chairman, what I was trying to say was, this is a damn good bill. And there is a reason why it is a good bill: because it simply requires the President to have public information and get the input of people. If there is an emergency situation, it allows for them to create something under 5,000 acres on an emergency basis without doing NEPA, it is just that Congress has to respond within 3 years to validate it, otherwise it reverts back. Anything that he wants to do with NEPA, he can do it regardless of the size. It is the appropriate thing to do. This bill moves us forward and takes a bill that may have been appropriate in 1906--but we are certainly living in a different time and a different era, and we need to make sure that a President, before he puts his pen to a paper, has actually talked to local people, and it has not always happened.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. It is the responsibility of Congress to tell the bureaucracy what they can and cannot do. We establish laws, not their rules and regulations, and we should tell them they have to respect the rights of individuals, and treat them as real people, and not take away their personal property rights, and that is exactly what the Tipton bill does.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Madam Chair, when the ranking member was speaking, he quoted from the bill and said: This does not limit the Secretary's right, nor does it expand the Secretary's right. So he said then, What does it actually do? What it does is very simple. It stops the Federal Government from hurting people. This came to view in the Federal Government trying to take away water rights from ski resorts, and not just in Colorado. It was all ski resorts. As I have said repeatedly, the ski resorts in Utah are far more significant and far better than the ski resorts in Colorado. It affects all of us. It is not just limited to ski resorts. We also found out these same tactics have been used by BLM and other entities to affect farmers and ranches, same concept, same area. So what the Tipton bill is trying to do is solve the problem for everybody, not just for a few people. Even people in the East who have water rights will be protected by this bill, whether they recognize that or not. I want to introduce you to a guy by the name of Tom Lowry. He came to our committee to testify about what they were doing. This is a person, as soon as he got his ranch, the Federal Government--the BLM in this case--started to attack his private water rights. It took him $800,000 in legal fees to go through the system to try and protect his rights. He eventually got to the Idaho Supreme Court and won, where the Supreme Court said: You are right, the Federal Government was wrong, they have to back up. But it cost him 800 grand in legal fees to do it. That is what the Tipton bill is trying to solve--the rights of those ranchers and those farmers, the rights of ski resorts to actually conduct business and have their rights protected. That is why any effort to try and limit this down to say, oh, let's just deal with the ski resorts because we care about them, and forget the Tom Lowrys of this world, is a ridiculous approach. The issue is, How can we protect the rights of our people? That is what Congress is supposed to do. The Forest Service hasn't solved their problem yet. They have withdrawn their rules but haven't changed the rules. They have still yet to propose new ones. It is the purpose, and the right, and the responsibility of Congress to step in.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to recognize the 100th anniversary of the Logan Regional Hospital, which serves the citizens of the Cache Valley of northern Utah. In 1914, a new hospital with 60 beds was established that boasted modern patient conveniences, such as an X-ray machine. From 1948-75, the LDS church assumed responsibility for the hospital. In 1975, Intermountain Healthcare, a not-for-profit community service, was organized, which became a model for health care excellence. In 1980, the hospital was expanded and moved to its present location, thanks to the help of $2 million from private donors. Today, the hospital has 148 beds and offers a full range of hospital services. The 100 years of continued health care service has been possible thanks to the professionals who have donated so much of their lives to provide excellence in health care to their patients. Logan Regional Hospital fulfills the dreams of its original founders. Its not-for-profit community governance from committed board members continues to excel in providing for quality health care services.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate very much the gentleman from Arizona. I do enjoy working with him on the subcommittee. And I have to admit, at this stage of the game, I am a little bit perplexed about the amendment. The gentleman purports that the idea of transparency and keeping a database is not a bad idea. He just objects to the enforcement mechanism we put in there. If that were the case, I would wonder why he didn't just strike the enforcement mechanism out or come up with a substitute enforcement mechanism. I am not bound to this particular one. Had there been a date certain or some other ideas, I may even have accepted that as a friendly approach to try to help this particular title. But, instead, the amendment strikes everything. It strikes the very essence of forcing them to actually come up with a database that is there. During the Clinton administration--and that has been a while ago--the Interior Department did come up with a database of lands that were available for disposal, that were needless, that were useless for the government. We have the data. The only problem is it is almost impossible to get to the data. The data is found in books in over 150 different local offices. It would take a huge road trip to try to come up with just the information. This is now 2014. The idea that the BLM cannot actually put this data on a Web site that is available to everybody is, quite frankly, not acceptable. That they are too busy to do this is simply not acceptable. All this says is the data is there. Put the data on a Web site so it is transparent and it is viewable for everybody to see. And then we said, since there has been a whole lot of dragging their feet since the Clinton administration in trying to do this, we will give you some incentive. You can't buy new land until you put on this Web site so people can see what land is available for disposal. It does not stop them from managing the land for multiple use or for nonmultiple use or any other reason. It simply gives them an incentive to go ahead and do it. Like I said, if your goal was to change the incentive, I would have been amenable to discussions on that. I will still be amenable to discussions on that. But this amendment strikes the entire thing, not just the enforcement provision. For that reason, I would oppose the amendment and urge my colleagues to vote ``no.'' I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wittman) to show how this amendment would impact the Chesapeake Bay area.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Chairman, let me begin by talking about some things that have been overstated on parts, especially the one that is my title. My title does not stop the BLM or anybody in the Interior Department from doing multiple use on land. It has nothing to do with management. It simply says they can buy no new land until they first become transparent and provide a database that anyone can easily accomplish. As with some of the other statements that have been made on the floor, some of them are somewhat exaggerated from what this bill intends to do. Mr. Chairman, let me talk about this bill as an entity. There is a common thread that runs through this bill that deals with public lands and people from Florida to Alaska and all stations in between. What we simply have found is the Federal Government has large, centralized bureaucracies that do our land management process that no longer meet the needs of people, but, rather, they hide behind rules and policies and regulations which make them safe for them. But they don't actually help people, which requires sometimes people to be flexible and think outside the proverbial box. The island in Florida that Mr. Miller was just referring to was given by Florida to the government, and the government gave it back to Florida before I was born--and that has been a while. But the concept here is that the government does not own this land. They don't need it, they don't use it, but they still wish to control it--it doesn't matter why; they still do--and there is no purpose for that. It is ludicrous that the Congressman from Alaska must come down here and write a law to transfer 3 acres of land in Anchorage back to the city of Anchorage so it can be used to benefit the people of Anchorage. Again, land the Federal Government does not own, they don't need, they don't use, but they still wish in some way to control it. The grazers in Idaho who produce the stuff from which Big Macs and Whoppers are made--and I know that from personal experience, obviously--only wanted to be treated fairly and consistently and with consideration for the needs so they can be successful in their trade. Kayakers in Wyoming simply want the ability to recreate on an area that was designed for recreation without being specifically prohibited by rules and regulations that were to insist and support a policy that we have found no longer is necessary and does not work. If these 10 bills were to pass, unfortunately it doesn't solve all our problems. Because all these 10 bills do is show a tip of the proverbial iceberg of the problems that we face in dealing with land management when it comes from a large, centralized bureaucracy and we no longer put our primary interest in helping people meet their needs. Mr. Chairman, when the Berlin Wall fell down, the entire world realized that large, centralized bureaucracies of the communist world failed.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Eastern Europe learned that, entrepreneurs learned that. They found that lean, aggressive companies simply take market share from the lumbering corporate products of the past. Everyone realized that a large, centralized bureaucratic program is ineffective, except here in Washington, D.C., where we still address every problem with an effort to try and build something that is going to be controlled here in the center of all wisdom that is large, that is centralized, and that is bureaucratic. It is mind-boggling that the Nation who defeated the Soviet Union with creativity and freedom still decides to solve all problems and all management issues by going back to a Soviet-styled agency program and concept. This bill is needed because it affects people throughout the length and breadth of this country, and it is only the beginning of what we need to do to set it right and make sure that our highest priority is people, not rules and regulations.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I have appreciated the tone and the tenor of today's discussion and all the words that have been said on all the bills that are before us. We have the opportunity of making the desert bloom if we do things in the appropriate way. We have done it in the past. We can do it in the future. I recognize that most of the debate has been on the one bill in this particular issue which deals with the issue of water in California. Totally ignored was the other issue that is equally significant, especially to the 10 States that have an interest in that, dealing with land policy. You see, there is a role for government if government is efficient and effective and compassionate and uses common sense. As I have worked with individuals, both on the ground from the Forest Service and the BLM, who live in the communities and know those people, they are usually fair, efficient, and effective people. They get it. But the further they ascend or are removed from the people and go up into the hierarchy of the administration, as they tend towards Washington, D.C., they tend to forget people and the importance of helping people, and they become hamstrung, as agencies, with a blind obedience to policy and to regulation so that the agencies become inefficient and ineffective. They lack compassion, and they are certainly devoid of common sense. For example, we have one of the titles here that deals with islands off the coast of Florida, in 1946, given to those counties. They were told, as they had done that, that they could not sell the land, they could only lease it, which means that homeowners and businesses on this island that had been Federal property can now pay no property tax that helps the entire community to defend not only those areas but also keep the public lands open. It is an unfair situation. Now think of this: This is property the Federal Government does not own, they do not need, they do not use, and yet they still control, by policy, what they are doing on that land which, I am sorry, is a silly policy that simply hurts the people. We have the same thing across the country in Alaska. In Anchorage, there are 3 acres--3 measly acres--in the middle of the city, a city surrounded by Federal land, and you have to come to Congress because the rules and policy of the administration--the agencies--hurt people and lack common sense by denying Anchorage the ability to use that land efficiently, as they wish. Once again, this is land the Federal Government does not own, they don't need, and they don't use, but they still control what the local government can do with that particular piece of property. In Nevada, Fernley, Nevada, they are willing to pay the government just to leave them alone. All the land they want is within the city boundaries of Fernley. Once again, in this case, the Federal Government does not need this property, and they don't use this property. They simply insist on controlling it. What we need to do is simply get them out of the way so we can help the community to move forward. It seems amazing that at many of our land agencies we simply have a gridlock as we have a highly centralized bureaucracy that values power over the principle of actually helping people. If Congress has to be involved in moving 3 acres in the middle of one community, that is a preposterous situation which we find. I recently read a book that dealt with my church members living in Communist East Germany who had a very difficult time finding places in which they could build chapels so they could worship. If they found an area, simply a vacant space, they had to find equivalent private property to give to the state because the state government in East Germany insisted there was no net loss of property by the state. What I find amazing is we in America, with these land agencies, have that exact same philosophy: there can be no net loss of property to the government. That means either we are wrong today or Communist East Germany was correct back then, and I really don't think it is the latter. We have another piece of property in North Carolina. In 2007, the government came up with a management plan. It was agreed to by the community, not happily, but they agreed to it. They did a biological survey and they found out that this plan does nothing to impede or harm any of the species available at Cape Hatteras. Yet the next year there was a lawsuit, and the land agencies, instead of fighting for what they knew was right and they had agreed to, caved, in a sue-and-settle settlement, which harmed the people living in that area. It hurt those people who were making their livelihood after the tourism going to Cape Hatteras. Yes, in this case, the Federal Government owns the property and uses the property, but their control of the property is a total lack of common sense and a total lack of compassion and hurts the people who live there. During the Clinton administration, the Clinton administration identified land in the Federal Government control that was not needed and that was useless. However, trying to find what those lands are requires you to go to 150 different sites to look in 150 different books. Why would they not put that on a computerized system so that anyone can have access to it and there is transparency in what we do and do not have? Yet the agency simply says that, even though that is a good idea, they are simply quite too busy to actually accomplish that task. In a response that makes the rollout of ObamaCare look well- managed, why do we need to understand where these lands are? I will take a simple example. The Forest Service had land in one of my communities that they had owned for 40 years and did not know they actually had; and when the community wanted to expand their cemetery and did the title search, we finally found out this actually was Forest Service land. Needless to say, even though the locals wanted this land transferred and they didn't need it and they hadn't used it in decades, it still took 4 years to try and get this Congress to actually authorize it to take place, and then the Forest Service still charged the community $6,000 to do the paperwork to transfer the land over. We have, in the middle of one of our National Guard units, BLM land that they don't need and they don't use, and yet we are still trying to get them to transfer the land over to the State of Utah so they can build needed infrastructure on a National Guard base that is still owned technically by the BLM. That is why we need to understand what this is. We have a simple system, but we have bureaucratic lethargy in this country. We have a mountain lookout, a historical site in Washington that was historic before wilderness was created in that particular area, and to try to shore up that lookout so it doesn't collapse, they were then sued by an agency. And some judge back on the west coast decided you have to send helicopters in there to tear it down because you couldn't actually make those kinds of improvements in a wilderness area on a piece of property that is revered by that community and they want to keep it there. Even the environmental community uses that as a staging point for their hikes and trails in that area. But this is a decision that is silly, and we have to make that decision by this summer to save that historic site. In Yosemite National Park in California, a horrific fire destroyed both public and private lands. We now look at the fact that most of the private lands are now 60 percent recovered. They have gone through to take out the dead wood and the dead timber. They are starting the reforestation process. But on the public side of that land, we are still going through an evaluation process that even under an expedited system simply means that it will be until late summer before they can actually finish that, and then the lawsuits get to start. Now, look, if you don't remove that dead timber, that burned timber within a year, it is totally useless, and all it does is become infested and becomes a source and a fuel for a future fire in a State that we have already heard is in their third year of drought and desperately needs the water for other things rather than fighting a fire. These bills in this section of land try and solve these problems so we finally force the agencies to do that which helps people instead of hindering people's process. We find a situation where the agencies, today, of our government are inefficient, they are ineffective, and they lack compassion, which actually hurts constituents, hurts people, and they do not have common sense. That is why this package is so important, and it is important to do it now to help people. It is simply sad that we are in a situation where Congress has to push the agencies to do the right thing. We should be better than that. We can do better than that, and that is what these bills attempt to do. Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to reiterate that this rule is fair, it is appropriate, as appropriate and as fair as are the underlying measures that are being presented to Congress in this rule. The material previously referred to by Mr. Hastings of Florida is as follows: An Amendment to H. Res. 472 Offered By Mr. Hastings of Florida At the end of the resolution, add the following new sections: See. 3. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution the Speaker shall, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule XVIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R. 3370) to delay the implementation of certain provisions of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012, and for other purposes. The first reading of the bill shall be dispensed with. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. General debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Financial Services. After general debate the bill shall be considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. All points of order against provisions in the bill are waived. At the conclusion of consideration of the bill for amendment the Committee shall rise and report the bill to the House with such amendments as may have been adopted. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and amendments thereto to final passage without intervening motion except one motion to recommit with or without instructions. If the Committee of the Whole rises and reports that it has come to no resolution on the bill, then on the next legislative day the House shall, immediately after the third daily order of business under clause 1 of rule XIV, resolve into the Committee of the Whole for further consideration of the bill. Sec. 4. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the consideration of H.R. 3370.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I reserve the balance of my time.