Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, this is a very simple amendment. We do have a problem with thieves stealing significant fossil remains from public lands, but the way the bill is written currently is that we are going to hit a fly with a sledgehammer. What we are going to do is put Scout leaders and troops, graduate students, and the regular public in line for tremendously harsh penalties if they inadvertently or inconsequentially pick up a small rock that might have a fossil. All this amendment does is it tells the Secretary that ``they shall allow,'' without penalty, the insignificant capture of these small items--not to resell, not for going on the black market, but actually for educational purposes--by Scout troops, graduate students, college classes, and the like. What we know from the history is that there have been significant difficulties in terms of the lack of law enforcement on public lands. This goes back to one of our other amendments we talked about earlier, which is not only is there a backlog in the repair and care of our public lands, but we don't have the money to enforce and protect the very assets which we think are paleontological assets, which we know are valuable both for history and science. We haven't had the forces capable of even enforcing what is already illegal. It is already illegal to steal those items from public land. So what this amendment does is just change the wording from ``may'' to ``shall''; that the Secretary ``shall allow casual collecting'' that will not harm any of our public lands and will not put the truly innocent--simply inquiring minds--at risk of the harsh penalties of this segment of the bill. It is as simple as that. All it does is lighten up on the inadvertent and the non-inappropriate looking for small fossils and small rocks that may not even contain fossils. We have already had testimony that the majority of the people who have been arrested under the illegal statute have not been those who have been in the black market. It has been Scout leaders and graduate students and college professors who have actually been out there. So I think it is a commonsense amendment, and I hope my colleagues will consider it and adopt it so that we don't overshoot on what is intended to be a solution to a very serious problem. I would also like to spend a moment in rebutting some of the words of the Senator from California. I have not yet offered, but intend to offer, one amendment that will in fact strike some earmarks from this bill. The San Joaquin River has, no question, been engaged in a lawsuit. But if you ago back to 1924 and see what the Federal Government said about the salmon run over this area, it was already in decline. As a matter of fact, it was in a decline to a level very close to what we have seen today. What we have had is a lawsuit that has reached a settlement that now we are to pay $1 billion with the specific goal not of 100,000 salmon, not of 30,000 salmon, but the goal in the settlement is 500 salmon. The likelihood of achieving that, for $1 billion, first of all, is unlikely. The ultimate outside costs are going to be tremendous. What are the costs? Through this lawsuit, we are going to put at jeopardy, put at risk, $20 billion worth of economic activity in one of the most fertile areas of California. The Congressman who represents 85 percent of that district and his constituents are adamantly opposed to this settlement because they know what it is going to do in terms of the water resource for that agricultural community. Not everyone supports this settlement, as the Senator from California said, certainly not the Congressman representing the district. The other claim Senator Feinstein made is it would be less costly than the alternative litigation. If you use the two analyses done in the late 1990s regarding the economic impacts of water supply reductions, estimates paint the total costs of this settlement to the community at over $10 billion; $10 billion is the economic loss to be associated with this settlement. At a time of economic difficulty, the last thing we need to be doing is cutting out another $10 billion of economic productivity. Amendment No. 677 to Amendment No. 684 I ask the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 677 be called up.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, this is a simple amendment, too. It is a good housekeeping amendment. What this amendment does is requires the Federal Government every year to detail to the people of this country the amount of the property that the Federal Government owns and the cost of that land ownership to taxpayers. Do you realize right now we have 21,000 buildings that are owned by the Federal Government sitting empty? We have 40 million square feet of excess space that is not being used, just by the Department of Energy alone. The Federal Government currently does not disclose these assets. As a matter of fact, they do not even know what they are. What this amendment would do is ask the Federal Government, through the OMB, to create an inventory of Federal assets as far as land and buildings are concerned. We do not know what it costs us to maintain it. We don't know if it is economical for us to continue to maintain it as a Federal Government property or whether we ought to put it up for sale or we ought to cede it to the States, to an Indian tribe or some other Government agency where it can be utilized. We just don't have the knowledge. Without this kind of knowledge there is no way that Congress can manage Federal properties and Federal lands. What this would specifically require is the Office of Management and Budget to issue a report detailing the following: the total amount of land in the United States that is owned by the Federal Government; the percentage of all U.S. property controlled by the Federal Government, that is controlled--maybe not owned but controlled; the total cost of operating and maintaining Federal real property, including land, buildings and structures; a list of all Federal property that is either unused or vacant--that is something we should know which we do not know--and the estimated cost of the maintenance backlog on Federal land, buildings, and properties by agency. This will give taxpayers greater transparency. It allows the taxpayers to know what kind of poor stewards we are with Federal property and land. It will also give us a focus to direct the maintenance backlog that we have today, to create a priority for it. We can see it in light of all the maintenance problems by agency. It also will help us when we are considering a bill like this one. Nobody knows the total impact of this bill--this bill, 170 bills. Nobody has done a study to say what the total impact is going to be. We don't know what the total impact is going to be on energy transmission. What we do know is it is going to hinder it greatly. What it does is it gives us a management tool. According to the Congressional Research Service, the total amount of Federal land is unknown. In fact, different sources show significantly different estimates. This is their direct quote: The estimate of $650 million assumes the four Federal land management agencies have reasonably accurate data on lands under their jurisdiction, and the Department of Defense. I would note that this amendment specifically excludes any properties that should not be known publicly, that are of national security or defense nature. It is interesting, the Government tracks property we own, but the taxpayers cannot track the property the Government owns. Let me repeat that. Government at all levels tracks the property we own, but the taxpayers are not allowed to track the property the Government owns through them--ridiculous. The Government should have to disclose exactly the same information, when it is not a national security issue, that we have to disclose on our own property. What we do know is that the Federal Government controls more than one-fourth of the Nation's total land, and that continues to grow. It is going to grow by almost 3 million acres in this bill. Between 1997 and 2004, the latest years for which reliable information was available, Federal land ownership increased from 563 million to 654.7 million acres. In 7 years it grew 100 million acres. That is 100 million acres on which nobody is collecting any property tax. It is 100 million acres we are not taking care of. It is 100 million acres that have facilities and structures and backlogs on maintenance issues on it that are costing us dearly every year. As the Federal Government takes more land, the costs of maintaining the property increases and the maintenance backlogs continue to grow. It also does something else. In this 100 million acres of growth in the 7 years up to 2004, that is 100 million acres that is not available to the American public to utilize in a productive way, in a way that could build capacity, could build wealth, could build jobs. None of that happens. The only jobs that come with Federal Government programs or Federal Government property is Federal jobs that are not necessarily productive of new assets, new wealth, and new job creation beyond it. The other thing we know is, as this 100 million acres has been added over the previous 7 years, that the maintenance backlog of what we do own has fallen further and further behind. We know, according to the GAO, the maintenance backlog just at the Forest Service--not the national parks--we know that is somewhere between $12 billion and $19 billion. But the Forest Service has tripled. The other problem I mentioned earlier, of the 21,000 buildings we have now that we are not utilizing, we could reduce the debt by $18 billion just in the maintenance costs to those buildings. Think about that. We have 21,000 buildings sitting. We are not doing anything with them except maintaining them, and we are spending $18 billion that we do not have taking care of buildings whereas we could get $18 billion for those buildings if we would dispose of them. But we have been blocked in this body from proposing real property reform. The first step, then, is to know what we have, and this is just a guess of what we have. I mentioned earlier that the Department of Energy--I said 40--it is 20 million square feet of excess capacity. That is three times the size of the Pentagon. So three times the size of the Pentagon, you could put five U.S. Capitols inside the Pentagon in terms of square footage. The other benefit from this is transparency will help us every time in every way. Knowing what we need to know about Federal property, knowing what we need to know about maintenance backlogs, is key to us fixing the problem. We cannot manage Federal property unless we know what we are managing, unless we have the details and the data. My hope is this amendment will be accepted and that the American people can actually know what they own, much like the Government knows what they own. I have one other amendment to offer, but I will defer that to a later point in time, and at this time I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, first of all, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the statement of the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, given yesterday before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. I think Members will find significant support for my amendment on alternative energy in his statement.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, we are putting the cart before the horse, because one of the things the Secretary spoke about yesterday is that we have to figure out how to transfer all this renewable energy from Federal lands. What this bill and what a previous amendment that I have offered and that is now pending would do is to say this bill is going to offset that. We are not going to know where we need to send it or how we need to send it. With this bill, we are going to deny the options to the Secretary of the Interior in terms of transmission lines with geothermal, with solar, and with wind. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the opening statement of the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator Bingaman, because I am very pleased with his statements on oil and gas and renewables, and it again would support the amendment I have offered that we should not preclude renewables from this bill.

Mr. COBURN. I would also note the testimony yesterday given by the Secretary of the Interior on his idea that we have to figure out where the transmission lines are going to run. This bill goes against exactly his testimony before your committee yesterday. Because what he said was, we need to plan ahead where the transmission lines are going to go. We need to know that before we block off anything else. That was the implication of his testimony. For these renewable energy sites to succeed, we need to work closely with other agencies, States, tribes, and interested communities to determine what electric transmission infrastructure and corridors are needed and appropriate to deliver the renewable resources to major population centers. Our own Secretary of the Interior, our former colleague, says we have the cart before the horse. What we heard in opposition to the first amendment, No. 680, is a continued slight to the American people in terms of taking care of the properties we have. Now, the GAO says, and the IG of the Department of the Interior, it is somewhere between $12 and $19 billion in backlog. What we hear is nobody wants to put a priority in taking care of what we have. What we want to do is build more new and let what we have crumble. The last thing we should be doing is building something new until we take care of what we have. Go to any of our national parks and talk to the people who are in charge of the maintenance and they will tell you: Congress never gives us the money to take care of it. And it is growing at $1 billion a year in terms of backlog. I understand the chairman's reluctance to accept these amendments. I respect him greatly. But we are going to continue on doing what we have been doing, which is a shame looking at our national parks. I have not even talked seriously about the backlog at the Forest Service. So if we want to deny the amendment to not start new construction unless the Secretary certifies it is something for safety or that it would, in fact, help us build something that would cost more to fix than to repair, then we are going to keep on allowing this backlog to grow. That is exactly what this bill does. This amendment is not trying to stop or play any games, it is saying, let's catch up with the real need we have in our parks now. Let's catch up with the needs on the National Mall. Let's catch up with the $200 million backlog at the Statue of Liberty. No, we are not going to do that. We are going to authorize all these new programs. Then we are going to fund the new programs because we look better doing it than taking care of the very valuable assets we have. I disagree with my colleague from New Mexico on the importance and the intention of that amendment. The amendment is to cause us to focus on priorities which this body has not. One of the reasons we have not is because we do not have my other amendment saying we need a list of what we have, where we have it, what the problems are, and what the backlogs are. With that I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown.) The Senator from Iowa is recognized.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 682 be brought up and considered.

Mr. COBURN. While I thank the chairman, the Senator from New Mexico, for his words and his comments, I would note that true eminent domain was not truly exercised in this country until the authority was given in 1960, not at the start of our founding. As a matter of fact, we believed in property rights in our founding. It is only since 1960 have we decided the Government knows better than a private landowner. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the present ongoing debate on eminent domain between the Friars and the National Park Service on the Appalachian Trail, just to show you how controversial the taking of land of private homeowners, landowners is, when we, in our ultimate wisdom, say we know better than the people who own private land in this country.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, H.R. 146 is the pending business; is that correct?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 683.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, this is the last of the amendments I will offer on this bill. These are specifically five particular directed authorizations and spending that really do not fit--maybe with the exception of one--that do not pass the smell test and do not pass the commonsense test. I have no delusions about how the Congress will handle this. We have demonstrated our inability to choke off our own parochial interests. These are five areas that, I believe, if the American people really knew what they were about, would reject out of hand. This bill is going to cost the American taxpayers $11 billion. If we adopt this amendment, we will reduce that by 10 percent. In this bill is $3.5 million for a birthday celebration for the oldest city in America, St. Augustine in Florida. That is going to occur 6 years from now. Think about that. We are in one of the most difficult financial times we have experienced. Families are being hit severely with unemployment, declining values of their savings, declining values of their No. 1 asset, their home, and we are going to authorize $3.5 million to study how to best have a birthday party in a town in America. It may be a great thing to celebrate this early city in our country, but it is not a great thing to steal $3.5 million from the next two generations to pay for it. Noting, and I have said this on the floor, that we will have a $2.2 trillion deficit this year, any example of less than the tightest fiscal ship ought to be made fun of, it ought to be brought forward, it ought to be made public so people can see it. There is not a whole lot of difference between this and somebody inserting something in a bill to say the people who got the $176 million worth of bonuses will be able to keep them. That is what happened in the conference. That is why the AIG problem is there, because some Member of Congress made it happen that way. We should be just as outraged when we see these kinds of projects earmarked in an authorization bill that do not pass the smell test either. There is $5 million for botanical gardens in Hawaii and Florida. We don't have to spend that money. That is an option. This is directed authorization to make sure when it comes to appropriations we know where it is going to go. It is going to go to somebody's benefit--some Congressman's benefit or some Senator's benefit. So in this bill is a birthday celebration, $5 million for botanical gardens in Hawaii and Florida, a controversial issue, to say the least, in terms of spending over $1 billion on a settlement claim on a river. Prior to a dam being placed there, they already had a marked decline of the salmon run in it. That is what the historical records show. But we have a lawsuit and a Federal judge who says we are going to do this. By the way, we are going to put at risk $11 billion worth of commerce in some of the most productive areas of California. The metric on spending the $1 billion that has been agreed to is when you have 500 salmon. That comes out to over $2 million a salmon. I have not figured that up by ounce, but it is pretty expensive salmon. It is not to say we should not do good things and right things to maintain fisheries and to maintain natural salmon runs. The fact is, this happened a long time ago, and it was diminished before there was ever an imprint in terms of damming in the waterway. There is also $250,000 to study Alexander Tyler's boyhood home in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, with the idea of making it a national landmark. First, it is not a priority--it cannot be a priority for us. It cannot be a priority that we would spend money right now at this time when we are facing these significant difficulties financially, when, in fact, we are going to borrow $7,000 per person across the whole Nation more than we spend this year--$7,000. That works out to almost $30,000 a family that we are going to borrow against our kids and our grandkids. And then we have the gall to say it is OK to spend money on this. The final aspect is a study and an authorization to allow an unspecified amount for a new national ocean exploration program and undersea research program within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that is tasked to conduct scientific voyages to locate, define, and document historic shipwrecks. There is $320 million authorized to be spent over the next 7 years on that. It may be something we want to do when we have our ship aright and our ship is not sinking, but to authorize and spend that money now on a new program to look for sunken ships does not pass the commonsense test this body ought to be about. We already have the following that documents shipwrecks, old ones as well as new ones: the U.S. Coast Guard, the Library of Congress, 12 private museums, 8 libraries, 8 historical societies. And those are just a few. There are other Government sources, including the National Archives and Records Administration, Internal Revenue Service, Office of Distribution Services, the Defense Mapping Agency, the Smithsonian Institution, the Naval Historical Center, and the Federal Building, Great Lakes Courthouse papers. There are 12 separate museums and 8 other libraries and historical societies. There are 22 publications out this year on shipwrecks. Oh, there are nine U.S. Government shipwreck publications, and there are eight other additional sets of records in custody of the National Archives. The other thing that this bill does is it throws five earmarks right at President Obama and says: We don't care what you said, we are going to do it anyway. It goes against his pledge. It goes against our pledge. It goes against the idea of change you can believe in. It diminishes hope when we have items such as this in this bill. It is discouraging to the people who are out there struggling that we would put such things in this bill. I understand they are authorizations and they may not happen. I agree that you ought to authorize earmarks before we do them. But I can tell you, I don't think these pass any resemblance to anything that has common sense. I will talk about this again in the morning. Tomorrow, I also plan, before the final vote on this bill, to list specifically over 30 wilderness areas that the wilderness study said should not be transferred into wilderness as we do in this bill. Hear me clearly: 30 new wilderness areas which the study said should not be included in the wilderness area that we have included in wilderness in this new bill. Why spend the money on a study if you are not going to pay attention to it? Why did we waste all that money? I will go through a limited but thorough critique of the bill again tomorrow. I know the ranking member would like to speak and to praise a species of stamina and courage that I would only hope we would reflect in the Senate. I yield the floor.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, there is eminent domain, and then there is the threat of eminent domain. The threat of eminent domain is as powerful as eminent domain in itself because we cause people who have pure and sincere and guaranteed rights to their property to give up their property. The fact is, this bill relates to all sorts of statutes that utilize eminent domain. If, in fact, we do not intend to utilize eminent domain, why won't we say it? We will not say it because we want to use the power of having that to intimidate property owners in this country and landowners. This is about protecting one of the most important principles of our country: the right to have and hold property. This is an issue under which we either accept the rights of individuals to hold property or we say the Government knows better. Even though we are saying we are not going to use it, we are going to use it to intimidate landowners. I would appreciate your vote.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I yield a minute to the minority whip.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to yield back all time on the Kirk nomination.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that H.R. 146 be the pending business.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, that is a straightforward amendment. The authors of this bill said we are never going to use eminent domain for any of this, even though they reference two or three statutes that give eminent domain. Well, if that is the case, if we are never going to use eminent domain to accomplish the purposes of this, there should be no trouble accepting this amendment. This amendment just says we can't. On this bill, you can't use eminent domain to take the property away from somebody who doesn't wish to give their property. Amendment 5 of the U.S. Constitution says: No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor shall private property be taken without just compensation. That is the Constitution. But the father of the Constitution said it a different way. He said, in a word: As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his right. Eminent domain is necessary and appropriate at times in this country for national defense, for the health and well-being of the country, for priorities that protect the public at large, and that makes sense. There are times when we have to use it. There is not a time associated with any of the parts of this bill that we should have to use eminent domain. I have been assured by the authors of this bill that they have no intention of using eminent domain. If that is the case, then support this amendment, and we will never have a problem with it. The property rights folks in this country, of which about 100 support this amendment, would say that is great, so let's vote it up or down. But if we vote against it, what is it going to tell them? What it is going to do is erode the confidence of landowners in this country. We say we are not going to take your land away from you without your permission, without there being a willing seller, but we have kind of a king's edge. We have our fingers crossed behind our backs because there may be some time when a bureaucrat has made a decision other than what we are saying tonight. So the way to enforce that would be a straightforward message that says, according to this amendment, ``notwithstanding any other provisions of this act, or any amendment that is made to this act, no land or interest in land, other than an access easement, shall be required under this act by eminent domain.'' That is straightforward. Let's give them confidence that we are not going to take their land away against their will. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN. I spent about an hour this afternoon talking about the problems of the National Park Service. They are severe. I introduced into the record the GAO report on the problems at the Department of Interior, as well as the testimony of the acting inspector general, Mary Kendall, about the significant problems that parks are experiencing. Our parks are falling down. The maintenance backlog, according to the Park Service, is $8.9 billion. But according to the testimony of the GAO, it is somewhere between $13 and $19 billion. This is a very straightforward amendment. What it says is, before we start anything new and new parks, we are going to bring up-to-date what should be brought up-to-date in the parks we have today. That is important because they need to be fully operational. They need to be fully accessible to the public which many are not now because of maintenance backlogs. They need to pose no safety or health risk for both the employees of the parks and the Department of Interior as well as the American citizen, some 270 million who visit them every year. This is a very straightforward amendment. It says we are going to do something we don't often do. We are going to prioritize how we spend money in the parks. What we are saying is, we are not going to do any new construction in terms of units of the national park system until the Secretary--and this is left to the Secretary, not us--determines that the existing sites, the structures, trails and transportation infrastructure of the National Park Service are fully operational, fully accessible to the public, and pose no health or safety risk to either the public or park employees. We have thought about other things. We want to make sure there is an exclusion in there. If something is going to cost more to repair than to build something new, we say build something new. The other thing, anything that the Secretary deems is important for public safety that is new, we let them do that as well. All this is saying is with this $10 billion of new authorizations and $900 million of mandatory spending accompanying this bill, the first thing we ought to do is take care of what we have before we start off on another project. The crown jewels of our national parks are fading. They are fading because we won't take care of them. The backlog since the last time we considered this bill has grown by $400 million. That is just what we know since the last time we considered this bill. The other thing we know from the GAO report is there is a marked risk to both employees and the public in many areas of our national parks. The other thing we know is many of our best parks, the Grand Canyon, for example, a large number of the trails are in such disrepair that they are closed. The people can't access them because we haven't said put the money where it needs to go to make sure we keep the things we have today operational and pristine. So it is straightforward. What we also know is that the agency needs some help in terms of priorities. In spite of what we have had, oftentimes we are sending them messages to do something else that is not within these priorities. All we are saying is, we have these wonderful assets. Before we go create new assets and new things to enjoy, let's take care of the ones we have. We would not build a new addition onto our own homes when the whole rest of the home is collapsing from lack of maintenance. The first thing we would do is take care of the home, the maintenance of the home. The bill in front of us actually has the potential to make the situation in our parks worse. It is because we are going to mandate certain things in the bill that will take away from true priorities of maintaining our existing structures. A recent memo prepared by the Facility Management Division of the National Park Service reveals at least 10 States where the National Park Service backlog exceeds $100 million. At least 20 States have facilities with deferred maintenance exceeding $50 million. That excludes $4 billion that is sitting there for roads and bridges in our national parks. This is in spite of the historically high appropriations levels we have sent to the parks. I listed earlier--and I will not list again--all the things the National Park Service is responsible for. But it is a litany that, when you look at it, is almost incomprehensible that one agency can take care of everything we have asked them to take care of. The USS Arizona now faces a maintenance backlog of $33.4 million; the Gettysburg National Battlefield site, $29.4 million; the Statue of Liberty Park has a backlog of $196 million. Are we going to let it fall apart while we create something new or should we take care of what we have first? What we do know from both the inspector general's report and the GAO is the Park Service is denying access in an increasing number of areas because of the growing maintenance backlog. Representative Rob Bishop is from Utah. The Dinosaur National Monument is largely inaccessible due to its overwhelming backlog. The center is designed so a kid can go in there and see, within the mountainside, the fossils that are there and see what scientists say about those fossils and then be able to put all that together in their mind. Unfortunately, no one has been able to access this building for 10 years--for 10 years--because we do not have enough money to fix the building and it has been condemned. So here is an area where there is great educational value, great historical value and for 10 years the building has been condemned and we have not put the money there. This amendment is meant to fix what is wrong now before we spend money on new things. According to the inspector general of the Department of Interior, financial management has remained a top challenge for the Department, and their work--this is the inspector general--has documented decades of maintenance, health, and safety issues that place Interior Department employees at a health and safety risk, as well as the public. A report by the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees found widespread evidence of major problems that will be evident, including decreased safety for visitors, longer emergency response times, endangerment of protected resources, and dirtier and less well- maintained parks. The problem will only grow worse in the coming years if we pass this bill and do not prioritize the maintenance backlog. It is noted that at the Grand Canyon, the cross-canyon water line is deteriorating so badly that it had 30 leaks this year and is in danger of failing entirely. Yet we did not spend any money on that in this bill. We did not authorize them to fix it. We are not about taking care; we are about solving our own political situation. At Yellowstone, 10,000 gallons of raw sewage this past year leaked from a broken pipe and flowed into a trout-spawning stream in Yellowstone National Park. It is the absence of maintenance. We know the life expectancy of many of these infrastructures, and yet we have not done anything about it. Carlsbad Caverns--a great experience. Sewer lines were actually leaking into the caves because of deferred maintenance. Superintendent Benjamin said: Believe me, if there's sewage dripping down into the cavern, people are not going to believe we are doing a good job. No kidding. Well, that starts with us. The National Park System has grown to almost 400 units, 84 million acres, and a $9.6 billion maintenance backlog. That is according to the Park Service. It is much higher if you look at the GAO's numbers. We appropriated $540 million for new land acquisition from 2001 to 2008. We have increased the number of National Heritage Areas since 2000 from 18 to 40. We added 10 more in January of this year. In the 110th Congress, 35 bills were introduced to expand the National Wild and Scenic Rivers. The National Park Service already manages over 3,000 miles of scenic rivers. This bill includes 1,200 miles. But yet the maintenance dollars, the dollars put there to take care of what we have, are not there. In April of 2008, the Congress passed and the President signed the Consolidated Natural Resources Act. That was another big lands bill that impacted land and property rights in over 30 States. It authorized $380 million in new spending and not one way of paying for it and none of it for maintenance backlogs. What we also know is this agency, the Department of Interior, is unable to prioritize the maintenance of existing obligations over new commitments. They get mixed signals. We say: Go do this new one. And then we send appropriations dollars and say: You have to spend it on this rather than taking care of a rotting sewage line. Until we in Congress and the administration prioritize the maintenance of our existing national parks, these problems are going to grow. There is no excuse for it. Amendment No. 679 to Amendment No. 684 So I would put forward this is a simple amendment. It does not cost us anything. It actually saves us money because to repair something that is falling down--before it gets to that stage--is much cheaper than waiting until it is a catastrophe. Consequently, if we were to plan appropriately, and if we were to direct the funds appropriately, we would be repairing that which we need to repair so we do not spend extra dollars once they have failed. My hope is we will get positive consideration of this amendment. This is a commonsense amendment. People at home would do the same thing. They take care of what they have before they go and add something else that is going to take away money that is required to maintain what they have. I would say, again, individuals do not build additions to their homes when the roof and the foundation is caving in and neither should the Park Service and neither should Congress. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and that amendment No. 679 be called up.

Mr. COBURN. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I will spend some time tonight offering two amendments to the bill under consideration. I begin by asking: Why is it in the midst of all the problems that face the country, the Senate is going to spend time on an omnibus lands package? It is no emergency. There is no crisis. There is nothing critical about it. Instead of working on the problems that are in front of this country, we will spend the next 2\1/2\ days or next 1\1/2\ days on a 1,243-page bill that has 170 separate bills in it that, in fact, for the average American doesn't come anywhere close to being a priority. One has to ask that question. Why are we doing this? We don't have anything better to do. We don't have anything more important to do. If that is the case, we probably should go on until we do have something that can make a significant change in the country. I call up amendment No. 680.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to read this amendment because it is very short and very straightforward: At the appropriate place, insert the following: Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, nothing in this Act shall restrict the development of renewable energy-- ``Renewable energy''-- on public land, including geothermal, solar, and wind energy and related transmission infrastructure. Very straightforward. We had a great experience with the harsh reality that we are energy dependent this past summer. It is going to come back again. Unfortunately or fortunately--depending on how you look at it--in the West, where the Government owns 1 out of every 2 acres, the vast majority of geothermal land resides. What you will see--as indicated on this map--through this area, through southern California, along the coast of California, and Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, some areas of Montana, Wyoming, and Arizona, is where the vast resources of a clean renewable energy exists: geothermal. The only problem is, in this bill we gut a large portion of that and say we can never touch it. Well, why would we, if we believe in climate change--and I am a skeptic, but I will take that point for a moment. Let's say we believe in climate change and we want to have energy produced that does not increase the CO2 content of the atmosphere. Why would we pass a bill that takes and restricts a large portion of this area from geothermal? We know in Nevada and Arizona, for example, solar is a massive source for clean energy. Yet in this bill, in both the wilderness areas and the heritage areas and all these other areas, we are going to restrict not only the utilization of geothermal and wind and solar but also the ability to capture it and move it somewhere else. Well, if we take all this area for geothermal, and if you concentrate Nevada and Arizona in terms of the solar and then you look at the wind corridor that comes up through here, as shown on this map, and say you cannot send a transmission line anywhere across any of these properties, what we are doing is shooting ourselves in the foot. We do not want carbon-based energy. And now, where the Government owns 650 million acres, we do not want wind, solar or geothermal. Why would we do that? I guess we are going to go all nuclear. We do not see any nuclear coming from the President. We do not see any nuclear coming from anywhere else. So what are we going to have? We are going to have no energy. So we are going to limit hydrocarbon energy, and then we are going to take our greatest sources for wind, solar and geothermal and we are going to say: Sorry, that is off limits. You cannot use it here. You cannot extract it. Geothermal is so powerful because it is a direct conversion. We capture steam and we capture a temperature gradient that turns a turbine that puts off nothing but water vapor--no CO2, no nitrous oxide, no sulfur dioxide. It is free energy. Yet in this bill we are going to take 2.2 million acres out of these areas and say: You cannot touch it for renewable energy. Why would we do that? So all this amendment says is you can do whatever you want on all these areas, as what we have done in the bill, but you cannot exclude it from renewable energy. I am reminded, everybody wants renewable energy, but they just do not want it in their own backyard. Everybody wants us to have wind. We love wind. We have turbines like crazy in Oklahoma, like they do in North Dakota and South Dakota and several other States. We are happy to have it. But if you applied the same thing to Oklahoma, in terms of wilderness areas, we would not have any of the windmills that are generating a significant portion of our alternative renewable energy today in Oklahoma. More importantly, you would not be able to transport the energy you are creating that is renewable, that does not create CO2, that does not supposedly contribute to ``climate change.'' We are going to pass a bill that is going to significantly restrict that. What are we thinking? Why would we limit alternative renewable energy access in all these Federal lands, this extra 2.2 million to 3 million acres? Why would we do that? It is almost like we have a death wish. Either that or we are not thinking, we are not considering what we are going to need in the future. We are considering the short term, but we are not considering the long term. So this map shows us specifically where geothermal is available. If you look down in southern California, we have heritage areas. Knock it out. If you look in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, we have heritage areas. We knock it out, saying: You can never utilize this land to capture clean alternative renewable energy. That is ludicrous. So all this amendment does is say: Yes, you can. We are going to do everything else under the heritage areas, under the wilderness areas, under all the other restrictions we put in this bill, but we are going to capture renewable, clean energy for the American people. We should do nothing, given the fact that we are in trouble on energy and we don't even know it right now. What we know is the supply-demand glide is going like this and we are in a recession now, and we don't feel it, but as we lock in and cut exploration for natural gas in this country, we will see a twofold increase in natural gas within the next 18 months. We know that because we have built reserves every year until this year in natural gas. We know we consume 4.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas every year in this country. As they shut down the exploration for known areas of natural gas because the price is under $4, what we know is the demand is not going to decrease significantly over what it is because we have gone to alternative sources for power generation--a lot of it natural gas--that the demand is going to increase and the supply is going to become static. What is going to happen? The price of natural gas is going to go up. What is that going to do to utility bills? Before we do a monstrous cap-and-trade that is going to severely raise everybody's electrical rates in this country, we are going to limit an alternative supply for electricity with this bill, because we are going to limit the access to geothermal, we are going to limit the access to wind, and we are going to limit the access to solar, and solar thermal electricity generation. I have trouble figuring it out. It must be my commonness being from Oklahoma, but I can't figure out why we would--I know we are going to cut one leg off in terms of going green over the next 20 years. I can't figure out why we are cutting off the other leg. I am wondering what we are going to use for power in this country. If we are going to severely limit alternative renewable, nonpolluting energy that is clean and we are going to massively limit--as the Department of Interior is already--exploration for hydrocarbon-based fuels, and we are going to limit the significance of coal, of which we have over 300 years available to us, what are we going to use for energy? We are also going to slow down the permitting process and the loans for nuclear, so what are we going to use? What is going to keep the lights on? This amendment is about keeping the lights on in a way that nobody should be able to object to. It is not carbon based. It is a renewable, it is essentially almost free, it is something we can capture without any significant greenhouse effect. Yet we are going to limit it with this bill. I think it is significantly foolish on our part. What we know is that this 140 million acres we see here, if we add in what is already in wilderness areas, what is already off limits in terms of national forests and Federal lands, you add in--and this does not include except a small portion of Alaska--we are going to markedly limit our resources. Ninety percent of all the geothermal capability in this country--a clean source for renewable energy--is found on Federal lands. As we grow the limitations on Federal lands, what we are going to do is take that 90 percent and we are going to take anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of that and say you can't have it. There are 29 million acres with solar potential in six southwestern States--these six States. If you can't transmit the power through power lines, if you can't disturb the soil to build, whether you put it above ground or underground, if you can't cross a river with a power line either overhead or under the river, how are we going to transmit the power? What we are saying is we believe in renewable, clean energy, but we don't. The other point I wish to make is we now have in this country in wilderness areas alone 108 million acres. Do you know how many acres we have in developed land in this country? It is 106 million. Not counting the Federal lands outside of wilderness, which is 650 million acres, we have 108 million acres of wilderness and only 106 million acres of developed land. Where do we stop to the point where we don't steal away from the future potential energy production in this country? I am not talking carbon based; I am talking noncarbon based. How do we get the power from geothermal from these concentrated areas to the west coast and back to the upper Midwest if we can't cross any of these areas? And then, what is the cost and what is the line loss load when we have to do something such as this and then go underground and then come back up? It becomes prohibitive, and then we lose all advantage from renewable energy. The other area we know where we have tremendous potential in all of these areas and others is biomass. We have a tremendous source. Approximately one-third of the 747 million acres across the United States is covered in forest land. Fifty-seven percent of those forests are owned by the Federal Government. Also, 590 million wet tons of biomass are available in the U.S. annually--590 million tons. Sixteen percent of renewable energy generated right now from electricity comes from biomass and 3 percent of our total energy in the year 2000. I don't have the dates for where we are today. Here is what the U.S. Forest Service says: ``The technology to generate energy from wood has entered a new millennium with virtually limitless possibilities.'' Yet, even if we generate it, we can't transmit it under this bill, or the difficulty of costs for transmitting it will be prohibitive. Each of the designations in this bill--somebody challenge me on this--each of the designations in this bill specifically withdraw the land from future mineral and geothermal leasing. That includes the wilderness areas, the wilderness study areas, and the wild and scenic rivers. They are withdrawn. They can't be used. Right now, there are 708 federally imposed wilderness areas totaling 107 million acres of land in 44 States. That will go to 1.92 million acres with the passage of this bill. It is a small portion of the 2 billion acres in this country, but it still denies the fact that we have more land now in wilderness than we have developed. The prohibition from capturing clean energy, renewable energy, and nonpolluting energy is unfortunate. One of the things that is wrong with this bill also is that we are viewing tomorrow's energy potential on all of these lands with today's technology. Just like when you go back and look at the old BLM studies and the Department of the Interior studies on the land, if you use old technology, you can say there is no energy there. When you use new 3D seismic and electromagnetic seismology, what we see is a whole great potential for all other sources, including geothermal. The other concern I have with this bill, and the reason I have this amendment, is we recently had a Federal judge in Washington, DC issue a restraining order to halt the development of major oil and natural gas reserves on 100,000 acres of Federal land in portions of Utah, not because it was in a wilderness area, not because it was in a heritage area, not because it was along a scenic river, but because it was near there. So we are going to abrogate to the courts and the aggressive environmentalists the ability to stop even clean renewable energy sources by the wilderness area designations. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, a former colleague of ours, recently ordered a secretarial order calling for the production, the development, and delivery of renewable energy; that it would be a top priority of the Department of the Interior, but this bill restricts that order. So here we have the Department of Interior Secretary saying this is our priority and we are going to pass a bill that undermines that authority and that priority. Secretary Salazar claims that this effort will include the identification of areas of high potential renewable energy, including geothermal, wind, solar, and biomass. It also includes mapping out transmission infrastructure to connect power to consumers. Well, as we create all of these wilderness areas and heritage areas, guess what we are doing. We are limiting the ability to map out power transmission lines. In total, the lands bill will withdraw over 3 million acres from energy leasing, placing them outside the scope of Secretary Salazar's endeavors. Majority Leader Harry Reid summed up the difficulties imposed by these designations when he discussed energy resources in Nevada. He said: We know that our State has immense clean energy resources. However, the Federal Government's management of 86 percent of Nevada lands makes it challenging to explore and develop our enormous renewable resources. The only area in this bill that does not affect geothermal is in the State of Nevada. It is the only area. If we are serious about alternative energy, this amendment should be accepted, should be voted for, allowing us to have a wilderness area, but at the same time utilizing clean energy as a way to bring us to energy independence in the 21st century. So this is a very simple amendment. It says, OK, let's have what we have, but let's don't restrict it as far as renewable, clean energy. Let's use the renewable, clean energy that is available. This happens to be geothermal, but we know where the solar is, we know where the biomass is, and we know where the wind corridor is in this country. Why would we restrict it? Amendment No. 675 to Amendment No. 684 (Purpose: To prohibit the use of eminent domain and to ensure that no American has their property forcibly taken from them by authorities granted under this Act) Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 675.

Mr. COBURN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. COBURN. I ask unanimous consent that instead of going in the order that the unanimous consent had requested, Senator Vitter from Louisiana be recognized for 5 minutes, then followed by myself, and then followed by Senator Thune.