Rob Bishop

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, as you know, it is very difficult for me to speak without chalk in my hand at any given time. Today, I rise to support House Resolution 1149, supporting the goals and ideals of National Charter School Week, which is being held now. Actually, it runs from May 2 through May 8 of this year. This week has been designated as the 11th annual Charter School Week. Charter schools are innovative public schools that have unique freedoms and responsibilities. They explore new educational approaches, and they are free from some rules and regulations governing traditional public schools. In exchange for this freedom, charter schools are held to a higher level of accountability than traditional public schools might be. Charter schools must demonstrate the success of their students' academic achievements to parents, to policymakers, to authorizers, and to their communities or face closure. Many charter schools have met and have exceeded in this challenge. Most charter schools meet necessary student achievement and accountability requirements, and they often set higher individual goals to ensure that they are of high quality and are truly accountable to the public. However, despite these innovative approaches and promising reports of parental satisfaction, charter schools often face unique and unusual obstacles in creating and replicating successful schools. One such obstacle is State caps, which limit their growth. Twenty-six States and the District of Columbia have some type of limit, or cap, on charter school growth. Most caps restrict the number of charter schools allowed. Others limit the number of students that a single school may serve. These caps prohibit effective charter schools from being created and replicated and, thereby, from serving students in need, oftentimes in niche needs. It is essential that Congress continues to support public charter school programs and that it continues to recognize the unique attributes and benefits of charter schools. These programs provide support for the development of charter schools. These programs have helped to create a public charter school system all across this country--schools that work to improve academic achievement, oftentimes for low-income students. It is important that the charter community is able to continue to provide a high-quality option based on innovation, on freedom from red tape, and on partnerships between parents and educators and that it is able to continue to give hope, oftentimes to disadvantaged and at-risk students across this Nation. It is, indeed, one of those good things that we are doing in our school system, and I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise today in support of House Resolution 1312, and also mention a conflict of interest since I did spend 28 years as a public school teacher before I joined this august body here. This resolution recognizes the roles and contributions of America's teachers in building and enhancing our Nation's civic, cultural, and economic well- being, and supporting National Teacher Appreciation Week. Teachers provide one of the greatest services to our youth, which is education. Educators bear the responsibility of teaching the next generation, and, apart from parents, are one of the primary sources of knowledge and values of our kids. In today's challenging learning environment, teachers provide more than economic leadership. Teachers plan and organize classroom activities, they assess student performance, they understand the basic needs of students, they encourage them to improve, working closely with parents as they relate to students' performance and discipline, they motivate students, encourage them to participate in extracurricular activities, they make the highways safe, and entertain the community on Friday nights. Showing teachers appreciation and recognition during the upcoming National Teacher Appreciation Week is a terrific act of gratitude that reminds us of how important teachers are, and reminds us of what an integral role they play in our lives. Teachers today devote time to professional development, their own education, and on class preparation outside the classroom. Most teachers spend much longer than the official school day working on teaching duties, and often spend their own money to meet the needs of their students. Teachers make these time, energy, and monetary commitments, and they deserve recognition for such. Today we also recognize the importance of having well-trained, dedicated, and skilled teachers in schools. We honor all teachers who have made a difference by preparing tomorrow's leaders. I also want to thank my colleague from Missouri (Mr. Graves) for introducing this resolution, unfortunately 7 years after I retired, but introducing it nonetheless. I ask for your support. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Madam Speaker, I would like to yield such time as he may consume to the sponsor of this particular resolution, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Graves).

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I reserve my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I reserve my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise today also in support of House Resolution 1157, congratulating the National Urban League on its 100th year of service to the United States, and I appreciate the gentleman from Florida for having introduced this piece of legislation. The National Urban League is a nonpartisan civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of African Americans and against racial discrimination in the United States. It is the oldest and largest community-based organization of its kind in this Nation. Founded in New York City on September 29, 1910, by Ruth Standish Baldwin and Dr. George Edmund Haynes, among others, it merged with the Committee for the Improvement of Industrial Conditions among Negroes in New York, which was founded in 1906, and the National League for the Protection of Colored Women, which was founded a year earlier, and was renamed the National League on Urban Conditions. The National Urban League helped train black social workers and worked in various other ways to bring educational and employment opportunities to blacks. Its research into the problems facing employment opportunities, recreation, housing, health and sanitation and education spurred the League's quick growth. By the end of World War I, the organization had 81 staff members working in 30 cities. In 1920, it took its present name. Today, this organization remains committed to improving the lives of Americans. There are more than 100 local affiliates in 36 States and the District of Columbia providing direct services that impact the lives of more than 2 million people nationwide. We congratulate the National Urban League for 100 years of service to our Nation, and I ask my colleagues to support this resolution. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

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

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize one of Utah's great medical institutions, McKay-Dee Hospital, as it celebrates 100 years of service. Founded by Annie Taylor Dee in Ogden, Utah, its goal was to bring medical services to underserved areas. In 1915, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints assumed ownership of the Dee Hospital, and under the leadership of David O. McKay expanded services for even more residents. In 1976, the LDS church relinquished control of the McKay-Dee Hospital network to the not-for- profit Intermountain Healthcare, leaving it with the charge to become a model of health care excellence. Taking this charge of excellence to heart, tens of thousands of hardworking individuals have devoted their lives to healing patients at the three hospitals that have become the Intermountain McKay-Dee Hospital and Medical Center, and their efforts have been recognized as a national model for providing quality and affordable health care. Mr. Speaker, I ask you and my colleagues to join me in congratulating the Intermountain McKay-Dee Hospital for its 100 years of dedicated service.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Two hundred years ago, James Madison, on the House floor, gave the following speech, and he said: ``If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare and are the soul and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish, they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Nation.'' What Madison said sarcastically 200 years ago is actually before us in bill form today. Madison concluded by saying: ``Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the foundations and transmute the very nature of limited government established by the people of America.'' Now, are the sponsors of this bill sincere? Yes. Are the goals of this program good? Yes. Would this program be beneficial for kids? Yes. Should the Federal Government take the initiative to introduce it? No. If we view the different responsibility levels of government, someone has to stand up and say, stop, we are not a school board. There is also a practical reality of this legislation. The most common response to top-down mandates of teachers who have to implement it is, this too shall pass, which simply means the potential grants in the future may be good, but a buy-in has to come at a local level, which means the advocates of this program should be taking their initiative to every local district where they can get that buy-in from those who have to implement it. It will take a lot more time and work, but it is much more effective in the long run because the reporting requirements that will be mandated on every district in this Nation by this bill will produce more resentment than reform. This bill is well-intentioned, it has all sorts of good motives; but because of that, it is too important to allow it to remain at the Federal level. It must be done in the districts where it will actually have some impact.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I agree totally with the gentleman from Missouri, who is such a leader on the Armed Services Committee. Part of the problem, nuclear soft power notwithstanding, we are talking about the overall defense of this country, and in area after area we tend to be weakening our position. I agree with the gentleman that we should not have scaled back in our laser technology. I agree definitely that last year we made a mistake when we cut the kinetic energy intercourse program, those mobile rockets aimed to stop missiles coming at us. I agree that we made a mistake when we limited the number of ground-based missiles that we had, ready to go. The silos ready to be filled, we just simply stopped it, artificially, arbitrarily, and that puts us in a weaker situation. I am also concerned that when you add to what they're talking about doing about on the Constellation program for NASA, it's not just about the manned space flights. It's also the impact that has on the industrial base that prohibits us from ever changing course in any of these other particular areas. It is all part and parcel with what I think is perhaps a very cavalier approach to the defense of this country that time after time after time overlooks the details and how those details interact and puts us at a more vulnerable situation. Once again, no one will ever attack us because we are too strong. They could attack us because we have failed to bring a bag of nails into battle with us.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I don't have the expertise right here to go through some of the details. Obviously, you're ahead of me on those particular ones; but it still goes back to the basic approach that, even if the Russians are legitimate in these treaties and even if they live up to them, we live in a world where it is not just necessarily the Russians for whom we have to be prepared and that, even if we make a treaty with the Russians, the North Koreans and the Iranians are not necessarily going to be cowed by us.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. They could easily transport some of their stuff to nations closer to us, which makes it even more deadly for us. So what we have to do is make sure that, when we look at what we are doing vis-a-vis the Russians, we have to put it in the context of: Are we able to defend ourselves against all sorts of rogue players who are out there, not just the Russians or the Chinese? That's why the decisions we made this year, based on the decisions we made last year, I think, put us in a weaker position to say, yes, we could defend ourselves against the rogue nations as well.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. From Syria to Hezbollah.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. As we move forward with this proposed treaty, but also as we look to the overall military budget, which, I think, is what you're talking about as well and especially our missile defense, let us make sure that we have not left some detail uncovered. I hope that, in the future, they're not writing those ``what would have been'' books about the United States because we simply failed to be prepared and because we failed to look at the details of our situation. So I appreciate the gentleman for bringing this issue to the floor. It is a significant issue, and it's one that this Nation should take seriously--looking at how we're dealing in the future not just with our nuclear posture but also with our missile defense posture. Indeed, if we're going to have to spend almost billions of dollars to maintain, that's money that comes out of the combat veteran and the combat ground forces that we have. That also is unacceptable. So I appreciate being allowed to participate with you for a short period of time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Now, let me turn that analogy slightly into the situation we are in right now, because I think this administration is missing a lot of bags of nails that are out there. One in particular deals with our missile program in the future if, indeed, the direction we're going is not the right direction and we want to change that. You and I were here with several other Members last year a long time talking about our missile defense system, because last year we cut the potential of a mobile missile defense system, KEI. We stopped the ground-based missile defense system that we had, and we were complaining that that was probably an inopportune time. One of the nails that we are now missing is what happens if we don't look at the unintended consequences of our actions. I'm going to say how this thing kind of turns together, and sometimes I think this administration is not realizing how everything in government relates. Last year, when we stopped the ground-based missiles and stopped the KEI, among other things that we did, we put the industrial base in disarray. Now I'm coming back to the old industrial base argument because I'm using it again and again. This year, NASA, space exploration, which you think has nothing to do with defense, but space exploration is trying to take this product, the Ares rocket, which was labeled our best innovation of last year, and they want to cancel the production. Now, that ties together as a bag of nails simply because the people who work in the companies that produce this rocket also produce the missiles. So the rockets that are built to send a guy to the moon are built by the same kinds of people who build the rockets to stop a North Korean or Iranian or some other rogue missile from coming into this country. And if we devastate the industrial base, we don't have the capacity to change our projection and fix this problem if, indeed, it takes place, and we increase the cost to the defense of this country significantly because of it. Let me give you one example. Just the oxidizer that starts the propulsion concept in our motors, that, because of the cuts last year to our missile system, has gone from $5 to $12 a pound. It's a fixed cost to produce this stuff, and we use it by the ton. And when you cut down the amount you use, the company then has to make a profit, so they charge more per unit. So we've gone from $5 to $12. If, indeed, you stop the Ares 1 program in our space program, who uses this stuff significantly, that cost will either double or triple or be even more. So it means to produce the same motors we need to just maintain where we are, we are going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars--maybe running into the billions of dollars--without having done anything to improve our status. We will spend more money. We will not have a better product, and if we want to turn around and change that, we don't have the industrial base yet. If we fire all those people who are making these kinds of rockets, we don't have anywhere to turn for our own defense system. The Department of Defense has recognized that. The Navy has said that they are fearful that the increased cost for them could be 10 to 20 percent. They don't know where the increase can stand if, indeed, we go along and cancel our space program.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Well, I appreciate my good friend from Missouri bringing this issue up to us again, especially now that we're talking about missiles. One of the things President Reagan once said is: Was the United States ever involved in a war because we were too strong? The answer is no. But what we're also talking about here is sometimes--as I was an old school teacher--when we're young and naive, we tend to overlook details, and those details could be devastating. For example, Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo not because he was outmaneuvered at Waterloo. He was not. He lost it because they overlooked a detail. They didn't bring a bag of nails. At that time, when you overtook the enemy artillery, you would dismantle it by driving a nail through the firing mechanism so it would be useless. When Napoleon overran the British artillery, they didn't bring any nails with them. Consequently, the British recaptured that artillery and it wreaked havoc on Napoleon's forces. And every book of what would have happened always has a chapter of what would have happened if they had actually brought the nails.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Yes. And our ICBMs, for example, need to stay there until the year 2030. That's their planned life. But what happens if you do one of those solid rocket motors and you pull it out to do the inspection and there is a problem with it? Where are the experts to go in and find out what went wrong, and how do you solve that problem in the future? Where are the niche suppliers who are no longer in the market? This is one of those things. So I'm talking about nails for the future of our missile defense system that are being lost because we simply didn't think ahead--or this administration didn't think ahead. DOD sent us a report last year that said if you slowed down Constellation, it would have a significant negative impact. Secretary for Acquisitions in the Department of Defense said that this industrial base is not our birthright. If we lose this industrial base, we may never get it back. And all of them are saying--General Keller said the same thing, that he is not comfortable with the direction we're going because the cost overruns that will come to the defense system simply means, obviously, NASA and Department of Defense did not talk one with another. The Augustine Commission report that was supposedly giving a report on what we would do with our space in the future said, This is a problem. The industrial base situation is a significant problem if, indeed, you stop the Constellation program. You need to work that ahead. NASA did not do it. They either chose to ignore it or they didn't study the report very closely. Those are the nails we have. So you have those pictures up there of what we are going to do with North Korean potential missiles that were in striking distance of the United States; Iranian missiles that could come within striking distance in the future but are definitely within striking distance of Europe now. And what is even more terrifying is if one of those countries-- and I don't think it would be beyond the realm of possibility--were to give their devices to some rogue player, not necessarily another nation, but some rogue player, and obviously have them aimed at the United States, and we, because we decided not to think through situations and think ahead of what we're doing, for either naivete, being new, or simply ideological reasons, we have lost the nails to make sure that we continue to defend this particular country.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the President moves to Florida to salvage or to attempt to salvage a deteriorating political situation caused by accepting NASA Deputy Director Garver's poor decision to cancel Constellation. Constellation consists at least of two parts: the Orion capsule for the astronauts designed to be 10 times safer than the space shuttle, and the Aries rocket to send into space. But the alleged savings are more than offset by unintended consequences, because the industrial base that builds the rocket to put people towards the moon also builds the rockets to shoot down incoming missiles from North Korea, Iran, and other bad guys. And if you take the space component away, the defense side costs doubles, triples, maybe even more. And the Augustine report, which this administration is not following, noted this potential industrial-based problem, but NASA either refused to pay attention or chose to ignore the warning. Regardless, the solution to escalating defense costs and to maintaining the dominance in space will be dependent upon fully funding the Constellation program. And, Mr. President, anything less than that is totally unacceptable.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, Lori Garver is the number two administrator at NASA, who is a political appointee that has been given credit as the prime author of the program to cut the Constellation. In a speech in Maryland a fortnight ago, she said, ``NASA has changed their goals,'' and seemed to indicate that the new goals of NASA will be to end poverty and hunger, create world peace, education, save the environment, and, in a note of bitter irony, create new jobs. It would seem that Ms. Garver perhaps should look at her door and realize that, since 1958, the goal of NASA has been space: to be first in space science, first in space exploration, first in man flights. And the Constellation program is the program that works, with an emphasis on human safety to accomplish this. Ms. Garver's plan would cede control of the heavens to the Russians and the Chinese, probably for most our lifetime, and has the unintended consequence of hurting education, aerospace, ironically enough defense, and jobs. Mr. Speaker, we can and should do better.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Madam Speaker, I have an amendment made in order under the rule.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This is a very simple amendment, an easily understandable one. It simply has two parts to it. Number one is you continue the funding authorization that is in the current law; and, number two, you add a 5-year sunset period in there. As I said earlier when we were talking about the base bill, there is nothing wrong with the things that we should be doing, but there is something wrong when we refuse to periodically exercise our legislative responsibility to review those things that we are currently doing. We do it all the time. The Endangered Species Act has a sunset, FLPMA has a sunset, The Elementary and Secondary Education Act has a sunset, all of which are designed to have us come back here and reevaluate what we are doing to make sure that our priorities have stayed the same. There is nothing wrong with a sunset. In fact, it should be standard fare in most of our pieces of legislation. If we are now creating this bill, which replicates AmeriCorps one more time, there is nothing wrong with saying let's review it every 5 years to make sure we are still going on the path we originally determined. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Madam Speaker, once again, the process here is that it is not about whether a program is popular or not. The Endangered Species Act has popularity within certain groups. Obviously, higher ed has popularity and elementary education has popularity. The issue here is, do we adequately review these particular programs to see where we are and what our priorities ought to be? And if we don't, we have a tendency of losing those in the morass of the rest of the body, the plethora of legislation, the plethora of organizations that we simply have. This does not technically sunset the program. It sunsets the authorization for the appropriations for the program; the program goes on until further action is taken by this particular body, but it is the sequence that we use to try and see should we redo, should we continue, should we at least reevaluate what we are supposed to be. When we don't do those kinds of reevaluations, we abrogate legislative responsibility, and we pass it on to an executive branch which sometimes, well, always, has somewhat of a checkered response in its oversight responsibilities in these particular areas. Madam Speaker, this is the right thing to do. It is one of the things that could easily turn a bill that is right now partisan into a bipartisan bill so we don't have to look back and say what we did we could have done so much better. I urge approval of the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

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

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I, as well as many who are here on the floor, am just pleased to be here on a Saturday morning to discuss the bill that is the significance and the reason why we are here, and also the side-view of being able to count the number of arm splints that we see today so we can be part of an historical occasion. This bill I do think happens to be one of the metaphors perhaps for this entire session as we begin this weekend reality play that definitely does fit into the theater of the absurd. This is a good program, but there is much common good for which we could have found a great deal of common support had this bill been allowed to have some bipartisanship with it. Both the ranking member of the full committee and the ranking member of the subcommittee had amendments that had been proposed in the committee that were withdrawn under the assumption that they would be worked upon and added to the final bill when it came here to the floor. That was not simply the case. So what could have been an easy bill to pass with common assumptions to it that would have been one of the things that could have been done in a bipartisan way has now been turned into something that has a partisan flavor to it, as the only rule bill that we have for this weekend so far simply because of the standards that we have had in this proposal. This is indeed a metaphor for what we are doing and what we have been doing for much of this session. I do have some concerns, Madam Speaker, for this bill in three basic areas. First of all, the concept of funding and fiscal responsibility. Secondly, the concept of curriculum that will be involved in this program. And third, what I would probably call is the genealogy of this particular program. One of the amendments and one of the requests that we had is that this bill should be sunsetted in some particular way. In fact, there will be an amendment that will be brought to the floor to add a sunset provision to this particular bill. This bill as currently administered spends $12 million a year. For some people, that is considered a lot of money. Around here, I realize that is simply a rounding error. But what it does, if you pass this particular bill, it takes off the cap that caps this program at $12 million a year and allows it to be funded at any level one assumes. The CBO made the assumption that would be $120 million over 5 years. How they reached that assumption no one really knows. One of the things we should do if we were fiscally responsible would be to make sure that there was a specific cap on this program and that there was a sunset provision so it could be reviewed. One of the things we all realize around this country, especially as we talk about the increasing deficit of this country, is that there are some things that the Federal Government must do. Defense of this country is one of the things we must do. There are some things we should never do. And there are some things that fall into those limited categories of it would be nice to do if it meets with our priorities and we have the means to provide them. Providing for the Park Service, healthy forests is one of those things we should do. But it must be set in the environment of how much money we have and where our priorities lie. Having kids being groomed to be future managers is a nice thing to do on these public lands if it fits into our priorities. And that is why this program should be reviewed at a regular basis by Congress. Once these types of programs are passed on indefinitely and become embodied within the budget itself, it is never reviewed by this body again, which is our function and our responsibility. If anything was done in a self-executing rule, the amendment we will talk about later to actually put a cap on this program and make sure that we review it on a regular basis, that should have been self- executing because it is our responsibility as Congress, and we should not abrogate that particular responsibility. The second concern I have is what I call the curriculum of this particular program. It has been portrayed by groups to us that this is like a new version of the CCC coming along trying to make changes and improvements in public lands. If that were the case, we would probably have very little concern about it. But that is not necessarily what will be allowed if this bill actually goes into effect. See, when this program was originally started the goal was to have kids working on projects that would benefit specially our Forest Service and public lands. But unfortunately as this is now altered, there is no guarantee of where the funds will go and what the priorities may be, which is one of the things we simply wanted. Keep the program doing what the program was intended to do. This time the government will send money, much of which will be handled by the Student Conservation Association. They will be the ones who will facilitate programs and give grants. How it's structured no one knows. Because once again, instead of ensuring that this is done to the betterment of public lands, this allows for money to go to political issues under the guise of some kind of conservationship. For indeed, this group has had an agenda in the past which has been anti- affordable energy, anti-coal fired plants, pro-higher taxes and energy costs. Our staff had the opportunity of looking on the Web site of this particular group. They sponsored a conference here in Washington several years ago sponsored by the National Park Service, some funding from the National Park Service in which the curriculum for that conference was not just about how we improve our public lands, but also how one stages protests, how one can do a sit-in to prevent a timber harvest from taking place. In fact, as you look at their Web site their organizing chart lists to start small and then grow and make it fun in the process. Now, once again, that is not what this program was intended to do, nor should it be the program. And there are no prohibitions to say that this program will not evolve into that form. Had they simply added amendments we wanted to say what the purposes and the directions of this program were, once again it would be a very good bipartisan bill. But that was not allowed. It was not allowed by leadership here or in the Rules Committee to take that place and form. This Student Conservation Association once again has taken a great deal of stimulus funds that were added in the stimulus bill. In each of those, once again, there was much that was involved that was advocacy outside building our public lands. One of the funds got 18 grand into my community to assist in building a public library so that they could associate at the refuge center with conservation efforts. One hundred twenty thousand dollars was given to this group so they could go to New England and show legal techniques and practices of how they could use the legal system to reach goals that they had. That is political activism, which is not what this program was about, not to which this program should evolve into itself. One of the things, Madam Speaker, that was funded as part of this program is the Mo Udall Legacy bus tour. Actually, it was a 54-day bus tour promoted by the National Park Service. You can see their logos all the way around here, as well as Department of Interior, to promote sustainability in biodiesel buses. According to the kids, it was a wonderful 54-day trip. However, most of them actually said how great it was as they visited microbreweries in every one of those areas, especially biodiversified microbreweries. Actually, I don't know how successful this tour was. I don't drink anything harder than Dr. Pepper, so I am going to ask some of the rest of you around here to see if their touring, their visiting to all of the bars they had in the cities in which they went on this particular trip really was worthwhile in making that particular kind of evaluation. Nice trip. There is nothing wrong with these guys doing this as long as they do it on their own dime; not on the government's dime under the guise of creating some kind of better lands for our public services. National Park Services, which will be in charge of the oversight of this, does not have a great record in that. In 2007, the IG in the Department of the Interior came up with this in one park service- managed job corps center--$3 million of misreported expenditures and $200,000 of improper charges. And that is the oversight that we're going to have. Those types of things should have been added to the bill. We asked those to be added to the bill. It would have solved the problem of this particular bill, but they weren't done; therefore, we're here complaining about something which should have been and could have been a great program of bipartisan support, and it isn't. Let me talk about the genealogy, for, indeed, this Student Conservation Association that will be managing this new program was an offspring created by the National Park Conservation Association, the godfather of this program, a special interest group with a history of what I consider to be extreme agendas--a history of filing lawsuits against this government, filing lawsuits against the Second Amendment rights, efforts to restrict hunting and recreation that are currently permitted on public lands, and presently involved in a national courtroom crusade to destroy the benefits of coal-fired plants with letters, with testimony. Once again, their motives may be pure, fine. It's okay to do that, but not on the government dime. And this bill is written so loosely that it is not clear if any money goes indirectly or directly back to this point to do it. This bill, when originally established, this program, when originally established, was there to inspire use and needs and build needed programs on public lands. When this program was originally established, by law, it's highest priority was to generate a new generation of land managers trained specifically to improve public lands and specifically to implement the bipartisan Healthy Forest Restoration Act. That was, under the current system, the highest priority: to help our lands, stop catastrophic fires, to improve our forests. It was managed for that. Seventy-five percent of the money went to that particular issue. That is what should be done. But once again, in committee, when we said let's restate that at least as one of the important criteria--because, you see, when this bill was written, they removed anything that related to healthy forests from the language. Reinstate that. We actually said, Why don't you reinstate it so at least 50 percent of this goes to improving the forests of this country? And that wasn't allowed either. So there is no criteria. There is no reference once again to the purpose of this bill originally, which was to make sure that we had a healthy forest. Instead, we have an open-ended bill that could do anything, that could go anywhere, that may make any kind of function. And see, Madam Speaker, all of this could have been avoided. These are not tough issues. This is not one of the bills that is going to make or break the Republic. It could be avoided if simply the Democrat majority had decided to try and do something in a bipartisan way. If they said, These are your objections. Let's draft something to make sure that your restrictions are what we do as well. We didn't need to be here. As I said, the committee promised that they would work on this before it came to the floor. I was not privy to those negotiations. I don't know where it went down, but something happened that did not need to happen. And the Rules Committee, we once again took these amendments to the Rules Committee and, in their typical fashion, the Rules Committee dropped all of them except for two. That didn't need to take place. Typical of what we're doing around here is simply trying to push things through when we don't need to do it. If we had really had a spirit of bipartisanship, this is something that could easily be accomplished. So you can sit back, if this happens to pass today, and simply tell yourself it could have been great. It could have been a united bill. It could have been something which we all could say of which we are now proud. But because of the process that we are using, that does not take place. In fact, Madam Speaker, what we are doing here is duplicative. AmeriCorps, if you look on their enacting legislation on page 22 and page 24, everything this program--which was designed to help public lands, especially healthy forests--everything this is now opened up to do is done by AmeriCorps. It's part of their program. Why not funnel all of the money there and avoid the duplication? What we are doing now is building a program that has no latitudes, no restrictions on what their options are, no restrictions on their funding. This is a hole so wide you could drive a Toyota Prius through it because there is nothing involved that could stop it. That is not the way you do good legislation. This is not the way you do good legislation. But it could be, and it should have been. I reserve the balance of my time.