Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to strike the last word.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's graciousness in bringing forth his offer. I think that the American public still needs to recognize that this is a program that has never been authorized by anybody, House or Senate. It has never had recent oversight. The line item appropriations have never been approved in any appropriation process, and the House has voted four times already this year to totally eliminate any funding and any authorization for this program. So I will join the gentleman in bringing forward his bill. I am not sure that I will support it, but I will fully support that we should have a vote on whether or not this should be an authorized program. That has been my point from the start. If it is unauthorized, it should not be paid for. We should come forward with a bill to authorize it, if that is the will of this House. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, it is my hope that this will not take any time. The purpose of this amendment just simply to limit DOD funds to not be spent on a totally unauthorized, never approved program from this Congress or any other Congress. We have voted now four times in this body to uphold this policy. This is simply an amendment that would extend that policy to the Department of Defense. It is my understanding the chairman as well as the ranking member have accepted this amendment. I yield to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Young].

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I would ask the body to support the Coburn- Peterson amendment.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I had contemplated, among others, in a bipartisan fashion offering an amendment to this title of this bill, and have decided not to do so but wanted to take this time to talk about the recently issued regulations by EPA on clean air and particulate matter in particular. Having been involved with this since the first proposed standards were issued, I have made it my concentrated goal to know everything I could know and to read the scientific studies that have been put forth in regard to these regulations. The claim is that these regulations are put forward on the basis that is the charge for the EPA to use the best available science. Well, in fact, that is not the case. The EPA has done what I think is an unconscionable wrong to this country. And what has exactly happened, Mr. Chairman, is we have taken a planned change in the air regulations and have gone to try and find science to support it. The EPA claims that there are 67 studies that support their new regulations, and that claim is absolutely false. There are five studies, and it is generous to say that these are studies, but there are five different collections of data that monitor fine particulate matter. Only two of those actually measure 2.5 micron size particles. The rest are extrapolated data. It is like a physician telling a woman she is going to have a boy child, a male child, because she has had three children before, all of which were females. The fact is that one does not connect with the other. The odds are still 50-50. In fact, the odds for having a healthy baby are much greater than the odds for this, the data put forth by EPA, to be inaccurate. I want to discuss for a moment the studies because I think it is very important that the American public know what went on with these studies. The first is a Harvard six-city study that the data is not available to the rest of the scientific community to look at and say yes, their conclusions from this data are accurate. As a matter of fact, the study that was correlated along with that, that used humidity in consideration for lung disease and lung problems, actually showed that the data put forth in the Harvard study was not right when in fact the confounding variables were considered. The risk of cigarette smoking was not considered in any of these studies. The risk of preexisting lung disease was not considered. Mr. Chairman, it concerns me greatly that the Government of the United States has issued regulations that are going to cost the American public, the taxpayers of this country, $60 to $80 billion dollars a year under the claim that it is going to improve the quality of life. If that is the case and the science can be shown to show that, then I will happily support it. But the truth is that there is not any science to support what the EPA is doing at this time. The EPA admits that. By the way, they have asked for additional money to study 2.5 micron particulate matter. So what concerns me is that we as a Government are moving toward new regulations that are going to cost thousands of jobs, that are going to eliminate new opportunities for advancement for individuals in their employment opportunities in over 400 counties in the United States, because we think we might be able to improve some health, when the science will not show that we can. Is it not a fact that we should know what we are doing? The greatest example is asbestos. The medical community now agrees we should have left asbestos where it was. We actually harmed more people, we actually spent and wasted a ton of money because we did not have the science before we acted. Let not make that mistake again. Let us ask the EPA, let us ask the President, not to do this until they know what they are doing and they have the science that backs it up. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to bring forth this area of interest. I am sorry that I did not have an opportunity to offer an amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I thought we were talking about the U.S. Man and The Biosphere Program.

Mr. COBURN. And the gentleman is talking about supposed UFO's.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I just want to finish up our debate on this amendment and make a couple of points. We have heard about UFO's, we have heard about black helicopters, we have heard about flatlanders, we have heard about Know-nothings, but what we have not heard about is the Congress doing its job. And this is about authorizing. This is about the Congress being responsible for the money they spend. There is no doubt in my mind that some of these biosphere programs are excellent; that they have been great for their communities; they have been great for the heritage sites that they surround. But the fact is that we are, as officers of this body and representatives of our constituents, responsible to make sure how we spend the money. I thought I might just give a short notice of the money and where it came from and who supplied it and where it has been spent because it is rather interesting. We heard today that it is not much money and it is under control. We spent $23,000 in Russia, of our money, for biodiversity, unauthorized. We spent money in Denmark, unauthorized, for biodiversity and the biosphere program. We spent $12,000 on the continent of Europe. We spent over $12,000 in Mexico. All of this money has been unauthorized, money with no chance for oversight. I do not believe in flying saucers, I do not even believe in black helicopters, but I believe in following the oath of my office. If this is a good program, then take it through the right committees, authorize it, appropriate the money and then let us do it together. But let us not violate the trust that the country has given us in terms of what we do and how we do it. I want to thank the chairman for being patient on this amendment. I appreciate his input. And I would say to those that oppose this amendment that they can oppose it on technical grounds because they support the U.S. Man and Biosphere and they support the U.S. World Heritage reserves, but if they oppose it on that basis, then they have an obligation to have those programs authorized and then funded individually, not hidden in other budgets, like the Air Force spending $70,000 last year, the State Department spending $50,000, EPA spending $50,000. Let us talk about the money, where it comes from and make sure it is under the oversight.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I would point out again, there has been absolutely zero authorization in this body for this program or for the expenditure of any money associated with it. There is no question. Questions have been asked. This has nothing to do with the United Nations. I can give the gentleman a list of 100 other programs that this body is spending money on that we have no right spending money on because we have abandoned our own rules. I would bring out an additional point. The gentleman from California [Mr. Brown], the ranking member on the Committee on Science, is bringing forth legislation to authorize this, as it should be. The Congress ought to debate this issue in the appropriate committee, which is his committee. We ought to have the testimony of those people who are both for and against it come before Congress, a reasoned and thoughtful decision ought to be made, and once that decision is made, then that ought to be brought to the floor of this House. That has not happened. It violates the very principle of the democracy under which we operate and the rules under which we operate this House. When that in fact does come, then we should have the vote on it. In the meantime, we violate our principle of trust to the American people for spending money that has never been looked at by Congress and never been oversighted.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman yield to me? He has given me so much data with which to look at, so for just a second?

Mr. COBURN. First of all, there have been no statements from me in putting forth this amendment that I objected to the World Heritage Reserve Program. Never said; no, I have never said that. No, the point is, and authorizing language that the gentleman, the implementing language that the gentleman from Washington states, title IV of the Historic Preservation Act; could he please inform me the date in which we signed on to this treaty?

Mr. COBURN. And could the gentleman in fact tell me whether since that time this has come before the Committee on Science or the other authorizing committees to, in fact, implement this treaty and the language associated with same?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman continue to yield to me?

Mr. COBURN. But the Senate can originate no spending, and therefore the House has to originate spending, and to do that it has to have authorized programs under which to do that, and I would just like a reference to where the authority comes for the House to spend money that has never been agreed to by the respective committees that have jurisdiction over that money.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, how much money is authorized?

Mr. COBURN. Exactly my point.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, the question I have is one or two, really. No. 1, the gentleman desires to be part of the boundary area around this biosphere reserve program, and the gentleman did of course check with everybody else that was going to be involved in that?

Mr. COBURN. I am talking about local property rights, to make sure everybody that was included in it had their individual rights as property owners checked as well. That is one of the real complaints. We can ignore it and say everybody is fanatics, flatlanders, and the know- nothings. But the fact is there are some genuine concerns about property rights associated with this issue. The gentleman can step on it, ignore it, and say they are just goofballs and ignorant.