Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. There are three States that have already issued through the State legislatures a requirement that they not have this U.S. Man and the Biosphere: Kentucky, Colorado, and the third is Alaska.

Mr. COBURN. They have had impact on the lands.

Mr. COBURN. Use. Use of their lands; land value, changing land value.

Mr. COBURN. Would the gentleman from California continue to yield to me and let me give him an answer?

Mr. COBURN. Having been unintelligent and ignorant, what I would put forth and focus on is there are people who do not have the right to do what they had the right to do before the Man and the Biosphere Program came into their own land. The gentleman can say that does not exist, but there was testimony in the Committee on Resources about the State of New York, the Adirondacks, and I would refer the gentleman to that testimony, where local landowners and officials referred to that.

Mr. COBURN. If that is the case, then let us authorize it and do it right, rather than do it in an unauthorized fashion.

Mr. COBURN. The U.S. Man and the Biosphere Program has never been authorized, never. The gentleman's side does not dispute that fact. It has never been authorized. So let us authorize it, if that is the case.

Mr. COBURN. No, that is the World Heritage preserves. All treaties, all treaties have to have implementing language and also appropriations that come from authorizing; that is, if we would look at the Camp David accords, we do not just automatically let the State Department spend what they want to spend on it.

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

Mr. COBURN. I just think the point needs to be made, Mr. Chairman, the core area of the biosphere, I do not have any objection to it at all. The fact is, it has a tremendous impact on other people, without a good representative walk through our body. If Members will look, this is an exact diagram of what they all look like in terms of their impact. There is a core area that is designated. Then there is a managed use area that limits--and these are all private lands that the gentleman has agreed to, himself, that in his land he wants it managed in a certain way, but it has to be agreed to. But a third area is a zone of cooperation which impacts people's ability to do with they want with their land.

Mr. COBURN. It does not in the gentleman's area, but it does so in many other areas in this country. That is the difference. Announcement by the Chairman

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

Mr. COBURN. We would be happy to strike it on a point of order, but they would not specify putting the money out on a line item, so we cannot.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I will give the example, in upper New York State, the Adirondacks. In the district of the gentleman from New York, Mr. Jerry Solomon, there was testimony before the Committee on Resources in his district. I would be happy if the gentleman would read that.

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

Mr. COBURN. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. COBURN. I yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I would tell the gentleman that I have been to the FBI. I want to bring one additional point before I yield to the other gentleman from Oklahoma. We have before us an historic agreement on tobacco which has associated with it taxes on tobacco. Do my colleagues know where all the cigarettes will be sold in the future? They will be sold on tribal properties throughout the United States. The Cherokee Nation, the Creek Nation, the Choctaw Nation, anywhere in history that they have lands, they will come and buy land and claim it as tribal lands, and they will be the sellers in fact of gasoline, they will be the sellers in fact of tobacco, they will be the owners of casino gambling, of bingo halls, and, in fact, the revenue lost to individual localities, municipalities and States will be enormous. We have to deal with the greater issue: Can there truly be a sovereign country inside a sovereign country? That is one we will not attack. Nobody wants to deal with that issue. That is why we face this problem. And until we say the Indians cannot be truly sovereign, until we stop giving to the Cherokee Nation $100 million a year and allowing them to waste a large portion of that through the problems, if the gentleman is familiar now with what is going on with the Cherokee Nation, then we will not solve this problem.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I will be happy to allow the other gentleman from Oklahoma to answer that, but I will tell the gentleman from Washington that presently those very things that he is describing are ongoing without interference from the BIA or the Secretary and, in fact, there is extortion ongoing.

Mr. COBURN. I will continue to yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. COBURN. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. First of all, Mr. Chairman, I would like to answer what has just been put forth as an abuse of the frank. In fact, the information sent by the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Istook] was to public officials, cleared by the House Committee on Frank; and its erroneous nature will be determined by the facts and not by a Member standing on the floor. I would rise to support the Istook amendment but begrudgingly. I come from the second largest tribal district in the United States, and I want to describe for the Members of this body what is occurring. In fact, extortion is occurring today as members of tribes go out and tell people who are independent private businessmen, many of which are members of that same tribe, that if they do not sell their fast food stores to them, if they do not sell their gas stations to them, that they will open one across the way and eliminate their business. So not only is there an unfair competitive advantage, not only is there an unethical approach, but in fact there is extortion, which is under investigation by the FBI at the present time. This is well-placed common sense. It does not limit all tribal lands coming under trust. What it says, simply, is that there must be an agreement between the tribes.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, this is not truly about biosphere reserves. This is not about the United Nations. What this is about is us as a body and whether or not we are going to follow our constitutional process in this body. This is just one example of many where this body has violated and continues to violate its own rules in terms of authorized programs. In the last several years millions of dollars have been spent on this program as well as hundreds of other programs without any authorization whatsoever from this body. This amendment seeks to eliminate just one of the many hundreds of areas where money is spent, taxpayer money is spent, never being approved by Congress in an authorizing body, never being looked at completely by that authorizing body. Second, it lacks complete oversight. There is no oversight into the money, the taxpayer money that is spent. There has been no oversight function whatsoever. What this amendment attempts to do is to talk to the Congress about returning to do what it is supposed to do. Now if you oppose this amendment, then what you really do is you oppose us operating under the rules that we have set for ourselves, because what in fact we have said is that we are not going to fund money for programs that are not authorized. We are not going to spend American taxpayers' money in a way that we cannot go and see that it is spent properly. We are not going to spend money on authorizing programs. There were exclusions in the first three authorizing programs that came through this House floor that said we will not allow money to be spent on this until it will be authorized. So I would simply ask, Mr. Chairman, that we in fact apply the rules of the House and the disciplines that were put there on purpose so that we do the right job with the American taxpayers' money. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from Idaho [Mrs. Chenoweth].

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I do not usually get up here and talk, but there is a lot of absences that we did not hear just a minute ago, a lot of things that were left out. There are 4 million people today who are receiving Federal income money who earn no money. It is called the earned income tax credit. It is 36 percent of the claims for that are fraud. It is the most abused system that we have. It is not about leaving those people out. It is about creating an opportunity for them to join the rest of America through a tax reduction that is for middle class America. They are already granted earned income tax credits. What we are saying is, if they work and pay taxes, they ought to get a tax cut. If they do not work and we are already giving them a payment, maybe we should not give them more so we can encourage them to work.