Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I have tremendous respect for the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Yates). I think the problem that we are having here, to address his concerns, is between some of us on the authorizing committee who have held hearings on the Forest Service budgeting and accounting practices and feel that money is being moved around in ways that are not accountable and being spent in ways that are not provided for under law; that we are not getting the full bang for the buck of the K-V Fund's investment on the ground in environmental restoration because it is being diverted on overhead that is not just legitimately overhead for the K-V program. Certainly, there is legitimate overhead for the program. But other more general overhead purposes of the Forest Service, which I would agree, since the Forest Service, as I said earlier, is not getting enough funds in many other programs.

Mr. DeFAZIO. So I would say to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Yates) that I think we have some essential grounds for agreement, but the problem is I see the Forest Service doing things like the argument over purchaser road credits last year. I could come to the floor and list project after project they were doing purchaser roads credits, which truthfully had little to do with the timber sales that they were conducting, but they were meritorious recreation, road, and environmental projects and restoration flood damage repair that they could not otherwise pay for. So I think the bottom line we keep coming back to is there is not enough money to fulfill their missions, particularly their mission as it relates to the environment.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman. In a memo which the Forest Service produced yesterday in opposition to the Furse amendment, they said the Forest Service is working to reduce overhead and increase expenditure clarity and accountability through better financial management. Well, I think they need a little pushing, because the results of that hearing were absolutely disastrous. Basically, they are not auditable at this point in time. There is no accountability. How can we say we are going to take 25 percent of these needed K-V funds for reforestation and environmental investment and divert it arbitrarily for whatever purpose? Twenty-five percent is high in anybody's book. But for an ongoing, existing agency which does not have to go out and rent new space, does not have to go out and buy new vehicles, does not even have to hire new employees, because for many of them it is only part of their time, 25 percent seems very high to me and an arbitrary number.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time once again, I thank the gentleman. And just in summary, I do not think anyone can defend what has been going on and we need some resolution. And we feel that we need to move that issue forward, at least into the conference. So we are hopeful Members will support this amendment supported by environmental groups, taxpayer groups and others to bring some accountability, and to better accomplish the environmental reforestation and other goals of the Forest Service which are being, in fact, woefully underfunded by this body. And that is something we will also have to deal with in future appropriations.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, and I said as I spoke, the objectives of the K-V Fund are meritorious. The question is how much goes to overhead? And I would say that 25 percent where they are attributing rent for a Forest Service employee who works in a ranger's station, attributing all of those, if we add up all the overheads and the indirects we find that in part it is going to the chief's salary. It is going here because the chief spends 4 percent of his time on K-V Fund, so 4 percent of his salary. I mean, when we add them up, they do not add up to 100 percent. So my concern is that we are not getting as much money on the ground as we should. I certainly would not want to get an unintended effect here which would be to deprive them of any capability of managing and investing these funds. But I think the gentleman from California (Mr. Miller) is trying to make the point that the 25 percent number is arbitrary and too high.

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, here is the problem before us. The administration and this Congress have been starving the Forest Service, while giving them ever more and more expensive obligations, many of which have tremendous merit. If we look at the backlogs to meet the environmental guidelines of the President's forest plan in my region, it would sop up virtually the entire budget of the United States Forest Service. We are simply not funding many meritorious activities. The gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Furse) was going to offer an amendment yesterday, with which I disagreed, but I agreed with the program she wanted to augment. If we look at her augmenting those programs, it would take them up to 30 and 40 percent of the annual objective; again, programs that benefit the environment, that reinvest in our forests. We have been treating our forests like cash cows for much too long, and now people are unwilling to reinvest in the resource. That is pointed out by this issue of the K-V Funds. The K-V Funds are spent for meritorious purposes, reforestation and related environmentally beneficial activities consequent to timber sales. Everybody agrees that those are activities that should be carried out. But the problem here is that since we are starving the Forest Service in many other budgets, they are attributing an, I think, unusually high overhead to this program so that they can move their funds around. And they are very, very messy and unaccountable accounting practices which we have held hearings on.

Mr. DeFAZIO

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

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, does the gentleman think, and I realize he is on the authorizing committee and we have not authorized this, but does the gentleman think it is reasonable that two adjoining forests should require two different $25 trail head parking fees? I mean, that seems a little bit steep, and then the next forest over is requiring yet a third one. So one can cover an 80-mile stretch and have to pay $75 just to park at trail heads. I think there needs to be a little bit better coordination. Would the gentleman at least agree to that point? It is an actual case example from my home State.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, the question is, if I go to the Deschutes Forest and pay $25 for a trail head parking pass, it is not good in the next door Willamette Forest, and it is not good in the Siuslaw Forest. If I buy one in the Willamette Forest, it is not good in the Siuslaw Forest. But the one in the Willamette Forest is good in some other forest. I mean, one has to get a road map to figure out which of the forests have reciprocity and which do not. It is very, very, very complicated and potentially very costly.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, the key here is the word ``demonstration.'' Demonstration to me means let us go out and see if it will work, and then let us review it. In fact, there is a logical review point: Next March. This bill extends for 2 years beyond October 1, 1999 the demonstration program, after it is no longer a demonstration, with all of its faults intact. The logical thing to do is not extend it now. The Committee on Appropriations could come forward next year with an extension, if we fail to authorize it in the authorizing committee, and again legislate on an appropriations bill.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, this is an important issue before the House. A number of years ago, in the 1996 Budget Act, the demonstration program in the appropriations bill was extended to collect fees among the various Park Service, Forest Service, BLM and Fish and Wildlife Service units. The idea was to see if it was feasible, see if it could be done in a way that was accountable, see if it could be done in a way that would augment the scarce resources of these agencies for meritorious purposes, and then come back with a review. That review will come to the Congress, by law, next March. So next March, this Congress will receive a full accounting of the fee demonstration program among the various units of the Federal Government, and there are problems with this program. There is such a multiplicity of programs with exclusive and overlapping jurisdictions out there that, in my own home State, if you visit the Deschutes Forest and you buy a pass to park at the Deschutes Forest, you cannot use it next door in the Willamette Forest, and if you buy a parking pass in the Willamette Forest, you cannot use it in some parts of the Deschutes Forest. And if you buy a pass in the Deschutes Forest and the Willamette Forest, you cannot use it in the Siuslaw Forest. If you have one for the Siuslaw Forest, the Willamette Forest and the Deschutes Forest, you cannot use it at Crater Lake. Now, this is going on in other people's districts and States throughout the West. People who live in rural areas, who live adjacent to forests, who live on in-holdings in forest, to park at a trail head have to pay $25. It has also seen very steep increases in fees at various park units around the country. We have seen the fees go from $3 to $10 per person and $5 to $20 per person at Yosemite, $10 to $20 per vehicle at Yellowstone, and the list goes on. We need to review this program. We are going to receive a report, the United States Congress will receive a report, on this unauthorized tax. Make no mistake about it. If you oppose this amendment, you are voting to continue a tax on millions of Americans who visit our public lands in the United States in a mishmash fashion with no accountability, for no purpose that you can actually discern in many cases, because the accounting at the Forest Service and other agencies is so poor. Eighty percent of the money was supposed to go in the Forest Service last year. Fifty-three percent of the money collected went to administration, and they were not enforcing it and offering tickets last year. This year they are going to be writing tickets. There is going to be even more overhead expense in the program. This program needs to be reviewed. It needs to be properly authorized by the committees. My amendment would not terminate the program, it would merely say that the appropriators, this bill, cannot extend for two years beyond 1999 into the next century this program without authorization. I do not think it is too much to ask, that a tax like this levied upon millions of Americans recreating on their public lands be authorized by Congress, that we review it, that we have some accountability. We will hear that some of the money, particularly in the Park Service, is being spent for meritorious things. That may well be true, but let us have a full accounting. Let us authorize it. Let us do it in a way so that you do not have to plaster your whole windshield with passes until you are peering through a little tiny slot there as you drive around the western United States and trying to figure out what additional passes you need to paste and which ones you are going to have to take off at 25 bucks a hit or more. This is not a program that is well run. There is too much overlap, too much multiplicity, and it is very egregious upon people who live close to public lands. So I would urge Members to vote for this amendment, which means you are voting simply to say we will receive a report in March, and then we will authorize or not authorize an extension of these fee programs. Maybe it will be authorized for the Park Service and not for the Forest Service, and maybe other restrictions will be placed on it. Maybe we will require intergovernmental or interagency agreements so people will only have to buy one or two passes, instead of five or ten different passes at a very, very high cost to them. Mr. Chairman, I would hope that the committee might accept this amendment and decide that it would be wise to get this authorized before the tax is extended.

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

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. So the key here, Mr. Chairman, is that as to the demonstration program, there is going to be a report rendered. We may very well find that the Park Service is doing a tremendous job with it. I think we will find that the Forest Service and some of the other agencies have tremendous problems with the program. We can then authorize it in due time, have an authorization in place for the Committee on Appropriations for next year. This is not a crisis. The program will be continued between this year and next year under existing law. It is just I object to extending it for another 2 years, because then I do not believe the authorizers will ever get to it.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I would agree with the previous speaker in the well that we do need a comprehensive approach, but we are always told, this is not the time. The IMF fund has been languishing without replenishment from this Congress because many of us have genuine concerns about the activities of the IMF, and now we are being told we are in a crisis, we have to fund it. We have been told that for months now. We are in a crisis, we must fund it, but do not worry, we will reform it after we give them another $18 billion when they do not need us for another couple of years. Well, we know what will happen. Nothing will happen. This has gone on time and time again. The same thing here with the Economic Stabilization Fund. It is always the wrong time to deal with this issue, we are being told. The Secretary of the Treasury said, we are confronted with large, fast- moving financial markets. He is right, and we need to do something about hot money going around the globe, attacking everybody's currency and destroying economies so a few people on Wall Street or in London or some other financial center can get filthy, stinking rich. But we are not dealing with that. It is not time to deal with that. Just pump some more money into the existing system so that they can continue to become incredibly wealthy, but do not worry, some day we will deal with it. There are things we could do immediately. The U.S. could take steps through the World Bank with conditions upon additional money to the IMF to deal with hot money, requiring other nations around the world to put in place steps to deal with hot money. The Tobin tax, a tiny tax on this hot money moving in and out of countries, billions of dollars in a single day, just putting a tiny tax on that could fund all of the activities of the IMF, all of the activities of the World Bank, dampen speculation, and stop tapping the taxpayers of the United States to pay for all of the bailouts of all of these wealthy people, these speculators around the world. That is what this debate is about here on the floor. It is not about the stability of the United States dollar. This amendment leaves the President total authority to use that $29 billion any way he wishes to support the United States dollar or to devalue the United States dollar, as was done recently by an intervention by the United States Treasury. That is still here. Although we have had people rise here on the floor and say, this would impinge upon the capability; it would not. All it says is one cannot lend the money directly, one cannot go around the Congress. How did we get into this debate? Because the President was going to come to the Congress for $8 billion for Mexico, they counted heads and found out under those conditions there were not a majority of Members in the House of Representatives who wanted to use $8 billion of taxpayer money to bail out the Mexican speculators, both Mexican and U.S. speculators who were in there getting incredible rates of return; 50, 100 percent rate of return on short-term investments, and they wanted all of their capital back, too. They had already made 100 percent profit, but they wanted the capital back. When Congress was a little reluctant to do that, concerned that we ask the speculators to take a hit, not just the people of Mexico and not just the taxpayers of the United States, the Secretary of the Treasury went and took the money out of the Economic Stabilization Fund, without the authority of the Congress. They say that they can do that. We are just trying to say now that we want to renew the provisions we put in effect 3 years ago that says, if they are going to take more than $250 million out of the Economic Stabilization Fund, our money as United States citizens, that if it is going to be for purposes other than defending or supporting or weakening the United States dollar, as is seen fit by the Secretary of the Treasury and the President, that they get prior authorization from Congress. That is not going to threaten our troops in Korea. It is not going to threaten the stability of Israel in the case of a war. It is not going to cause all of this economic calamity. What it would do is begin to force people to reform this system.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from Vermont.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, they went to 150. I do not know what they are now.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman. I also have a letter from a member of the PRD party in Mexico, and he goes on at great length about the conditions that came out of the Mexican bailout and the disaster it has been for the people of Mexico; the fact that it did only bail out a few very wealthy people in Mexico and banking interests and wealthy people in the United States and yet has caused 20,000 small businesses to collapse and, I am told, economic calamity. We need to change these policies. If we do not adopt this amendment tonight, we will never get them changed.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. For some reason, long ago, sometime when I was very young, I became aware of the Salton Sea and became kind of fascinated with this inland body of water created by a manmade engineering mistake and had been saddened in later life to see its incredible degradation, and in particular the highly publicized die-off of large numbers of migratory birds. This is a very prime stopping point for migratory birds, so not only would it be a tremendous resource for the people of southern California in terms of its recreational values and environmental values, but also for migratory birds and things that would benefit all of us in the United States by having it appropriately restored to health. That being said, we have a common objective. The problem here is the process. And I have got to say that I am a bit puzzled by recent actions in the committee on which I have served now for more than 11 years, formerly called the Interior Committee and formerly called Natural Resources, now called Resources. And I guess therein lies the rub. The current chairman removed the word ``natural'' from the title because he took some offense to that, and things have been a little bit weird ever since. That is what is going on here today. We are considering a number of bills tomorrow in the Subcommittee on Water and Power that have some merit in terms of turning over reclamation projects to local districts, but the chairman of the subcommittee is going to insist on environmental waivers, which the President has promised will bring about vetoes on all of those, no matter what merit they might have. I have the same problem with this legislation before us. Why not work out the differences with the administration? I know that the majority does not like the reality of Bill Clinton in the White House. There are some days I do not like the reality of Bill Clinton in the White House. Other days it is okay. The point is, it is a reality, and we have a lengthy statement of administration policy here which is pretty definitive. There are some problems we have to work out. Why not work out these problems and achieve our common objective, which is to clean up the Salton Sea? I think that this was a great dream of our deceased member, and I fully am supportive of that dream. I would love to see it come to fruition in my lifetime, and I would like to see it happen without a lot of unnecessary delay, but there are substantive concerns here. I am pleased to hear from the previous speaker that they are going to drop the proposal that the money come out of the Land and Water Conservation Funds. That would have been an unprecedented expenditure, and that is fine. I am happy to find the money elsewhere in the budget. I can come up with some budgetary offsets to fund this, if it costs $350 million or half a billion or less. I do not know what it is going to cost, because the other concern here is I do not know that we know the solution at this point in time. From what I heard in the committee and in the deliberations in the committee, we are not quite certain of how we are going to go forward, what technology or which one of these methods will work, what exactly are all the interrelationships between the salinity and the other pollution problems, the bird die-offs. None of this is totally explicable. I do not think that the Miller bill is being offered in the spirit of trying to delay the cleanup. It is not being offered because of some sort of pride of authorship. It is a genuine attempt to get this thing done this year by this Congress and move it forward so that we can all live to see the cleanup of the Salton Sea. That is what is going on here. These are not insignificant concerns. There is probably a constitutional problem with the way this bill is being written by the manager's amendment to require that the committees of jurisdiction basically sign off on the final project, and the Secretary would be subject to a resolution of the committees, not of the entire Congress. I have been down that road with other legislation. That does not stand up to scrutiny. If some obstructive person wants to sue, they can delay this thing for years just because of that provision. Why have that provision? We could have an expedited congressional review. There are other ways to get around that problem. It just seems that that was done in haste and perhaps out of a desire to get this done, but I think it is a problem. The Clean Water Act exemption, that is a problem. It is a problem with the administration. It is a problem with some Members on this side. Limitations on liability, that should lie with both sides of the aisle. We do not want to expose the Federal taxpayers to have them assume new liabilities that they do not currently have when there are other responsible authorities who should share in any future liability that might arise. Cost sharing, irrigators benefit. Irrigators are a big part of the problem in terms of the increased salinity in the chemical soup we are dealing with here. Why should not they have some cost sharing if they are going to continue to benefit and will doubly benefit by an improved and cleaner Salton Sea? There are a number of other minor provisions that are of concern. But I rise out of a genuine concern that we do something significant here today, not just something symbolic, something that actually will be enacted into law. Too many times that I have been here, both with my own party in charge and now with the Republicans in charge, we do things for the day or for the moment or to say we passed them out of the House of Representatives. Does not do us a lot of good if they do not get through the United States Senate and they do not get signed by the President of the United States. And a number of the problems that I am pointing out here that are addressed by the Miller substitute are problems that are going to cause problems in the other body and are going to cause big problems downtown. So I would just urge us to move ahead deliberately with what I believe is probably the intent of all Members of this body, and that is to get this job done as expeditiously as possible and honor the memory of our diseased colleague.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, twice the voters of Oregon have gone to the ballot box to enact and uphold our Death With Dignity law. The Ninth Circuit Court, the Supreme Court, and most recently the Attorney General have upheld the right of the citizens of Oregon to enact a Death With Dignity law. But now a group of our colleagues, working hand-in-glove with the same national special interest groups that opposed our ballot measure, have proposed Federal legislation to preempt our Death With Dignity law. Many of these same Members of Congress wax eloquent day after day on the floor of the House for States' rights. Yes, States' rights if it restricts a woman's right to choice. They are for States' rights if it shreds the social safety net. But if the people of Oregon want a Death With Dignity law, well, they are not for States' rights anymore. The Federal Government should preempt them. This is not only an attack on our States' rights, it is an attempt to overturn the will of a majority of Oregonians with an unprecedented Federal intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship. It is no longer a doctor-patient relationship when we are dying, it is a doctor-patient and Drug Enforcement Administration official relationship. This will have an incredibly chilling effect on the end of life painfully provided by doctors. We must reject this proposal.