Norm Dicks

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. What about 30 minutes?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to indulge the chairman, who is my friend and who I admire and was a former chairman of the Subcommittee on Defense, one of the finest Members of this body. I know he did not want to do this, but he had to do it, and he is doing his duty. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young).

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, it sounds nice, just 0.48 percent across the board. But let me just give my colleagues an idea of some of the things that this does to our bill. If the across-the-board reduction is taken from the uncontrollable cost increase requested in the President's budget, there is a 24 percent reduction. The budget request was $139 million. This would eliminate a significant amount of funding needed for mandatory pay and benefit increases and other uncontrollable costs which will otherwise be funded by reductions in program levels. Funding will be below the 1999 enacted level for the Solicitor and the Office of the Secretary, impacting the ability of the Solicitor to support programs including habitat conservation plan implementation, trust management improvement. Funding available to the Office of Insular Affairs will be reduced by $226,000 impacting the capability of the Department to support its responsibilities in four U.S. territories and three affiliated autonomous nations. Funding for the Office of the Special Trustee will be reduced by almost $.5 million, slowing efforts in trust management reform. Funding increases for BIA elementary and secondary school operation provided by the House are cut by almost one half. The across- the-board reduction to school operations is $2.4 million. This reduces the $5 million increase provided by the House for school operations despite anticipated increases in enrollment and needed improvements to education programs. This reduces tribal priority allocations by $3.6 million. This reduces the increase provided by the House by over one- half. The House provided an increase of $5 million over 1999 enacted levels to fund basic necessities in programs critical to improving the quality of life and economic potential on reservations. Park operations. The chairman of the committee has made a major effort to add $99 million to improve park operations. This amendment will reduce that by $7 million, eliminating $7 million of the $99.4 million increase provided in the House mark. This will reduce the capability of the parks to handle increased visitation and cultural and natural resource conservation needs. Seven million would fund the annual operation costs for the Big Cypress National Preserve and the Biscayne National Park in Florida. This reduces funding for the National Wildlife Refuge by $1.3 million. This reduces the amount the House provided for refuge operation below the President's budget request and eliminates 7 percent of the $18.1 million increase provided by the House for refuge operations. Endangered species funding will be reduced by half a million dollars below the House level. This increases the cut the House made to the President's budget request for candidate conservation listing consultation and recovery activities to $10.5 million. Mr. Chairman, I will put the rest of these in, but I think one here is very important. Funding for abandoned mine land reclamation will be reduced by $1.3 million. This is a 12 percent reduction to the $11 million provided by the House to increase environmental restoration of abandoned mine lands. Efforts by the Minerals Management Service in royalty reengineering will be slowed as a result of the $.5 million reduction, and I am particularly disturbed by this cut in the Upper Missouri National Wildlife and Scenic River. The Upper Missouri River retains the historical character of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1805 and 1806 and offers a diversity of natural and cultural resources including timber and fish species habitat and riparian and recreational resources. It supports a wide variety of wildlife: raptors, songbirds and waterfowl, sports fish and the endangered pallid sturgeon, a wide variety of predators and prey and big-game animals. The acquisition includes several historic sites as well as large inholdings of the Judith River, one of the last free-flowing rivers along the Missouri and a fully functioning riparian ecosystem. There are a lot of people who have been supporting this: Pheasants Forever, the Conservation Fund, the River Network and the Trust for Public Lands, and the most important thing is this is done by a voluntary seller and is very, very unusual for us to on the floor of the House overrule a decision of the committee on a subject of this importance. And then of course the whole idea here is that somehow by making this across-the-board cut that we will comply with the budget caps of 1997 and that somehow this will move us down the road to enacting all 13 appropriations bills and under these caps. And I would just say with all due respect that this cut is so infinitesimal, so small, that it will have very little, if anything, to do with dealing with the size of the budget gap that exists when we look at the important bills on HUD, VA, Health and Human Services and State, Justice, and Commerce which are coming down the road.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. (Mr. DICKS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DICKS. It is small and infinitesimal in terms of solving the overall problem. That is why it is kind of like, as my colleagues know, in the sea; and I would just say to the gentleman that it does hurt a number of specific programs, and it overturns the committee's work. But it does not help solve the big problem. It is just a very small step, and I think the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) is going to give further explanation to the committee about that fact.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, as the gentleman well knows, we have a panel system and all the people send in their applications and a group of distinguished panelists review those applications and pick those of the highest quality. That is about the best way to do it.

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

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. DICKS. If the gentleman will continue to yield, I would just say that there are requirements for them to have personnel. And I am very sensitive to what the gentleman said about the increase in personnel in the regions, because it is in the regional offices where most of these negotiations are under way; but there is tremendous pressure on them to be involved, for example at Pacific Lumber company on the big settlement in California, where they had to have people there who could negotiate with the State and with the private parties in order to reach these agreements, which involve thousands and thousands of acres of incredibly important habitat.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I would support the gentleman if we were taking the money from out of D.C. and transferring it to the regions. That is the point I was trying to make. But as I understand the gentleman's amendment, we are not doing that. We are cutting the overall amount of money rather than transferring it from D.C. out to the regions.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Could I ask the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) what his intentions are now about how long we are going to go here before we are going to have the votes?

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman yielding. Mr. Chairman, I would just say to the gentleman, we had extensive hearings on these issues; and in this bill he is going to see hundreds of puts and takes. We made cuts all over this bill, and a lot of programs were reduced. But in some cases we went along with what we considered legitimate increases. And we have got fixed costs. We have got pay. We have got GSA for the building space. I mean, these are all the costs of administration, and they do go up.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I am not prepared to go along with this. I think the recommendation of the committee is a sound recommendation. Certain agencies, especially the Fish and Wildlife Service, with all the work that they have to do under the Endangered Species Act, I simply disagree with the gentleman respectfully. I think this is a justified increase. I know the workload of these people because I am one of the people that is demanding that they increase their efforts. We need them to put in good people, and we want them to have good people in D.C. We want them to have good people in the regions who can make decisions and not hold up the private sector when they come up on HCPs, which happens to be something I happen to be very familiar with.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the interest of the gentleman and his concern about this. As we all know, our bill is underneath our allocation. So it fits into the budgetary scheme that has been created by the majority, one that I have serious reservations about, but it does. So I would say to the gentleman, we do meet all the guidelines of the 1997 budget agreement, as far as I know. And we have tried to do the best job we could after hearing all of these witnesses. I mean, I would show the gentleman all of the books of testimony that we have. We have listened to these people go into great detail about the workload increases. I am a demon on administration, too. Now, if this were another agency, let us say it was the National Endowment for the Arts or Humanities, I would insist that we hold down D.C. But in this case, because of the explosion of work that is being required of these agencies because of all of these listings, I must tell my colleague, I think 6 or 7 percent is very reasonable.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, but now the gentleman wants to come in and try to nitpick it a little bit.

Mr. DICKS. But it is not going to do that. My colleague knows full well as I do that all it is going to do is get us underneath the allocation further and then the Senate or somebody else will say, well, let us increase something to get back up to the level that the majority has authorized under the Budget Act. We do not take the money from here and move it over to somewhere else.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, with all due respect, I think the gentleman should refer to it as the ``other body'' under the rules. I call upon the Chair to enforce the rules.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, let me just tell the gentleman that some of these things that we are talking about are uncontrollable. And these are pay raises that are, under the law, required. They have got Worker Compensation payments, unemployment compensation payments, rental payments to the GSA, some of which go up automatically. So I do not believe that there is anything untoward here or anything that is excess. It is just that the cost of administration of these agencies goes up some each year. I think that this is a reasonable request and, therefore, again I urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I want to compliment the gentleman for his outstanding work and his ingenuity. I have no objection to the amendment. In fact, we enthusiastically support it on this side.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentleman for his amendment. I think it is very thoughtful. I must tell him that I had the pleasure of taking one of the previous NEA directors, Jane Alexander, to Seattle; and we visited a very important program there at Garfield High School that was serving underserved minorities within the city of Seattle. Also, we had a very successful program in Tacoma with Dale Chihuly, who is one of the great glass artists of our time. He set up a program on the Hill Top in Tacoma, which is one of our urban areas in the city of Tacoma, and got these literally dozens of young children learning how to make glass pottery and other things; and it had a remarkable effect on their lives. I think the gentleman brings a very serious point here, and I certainly am willing to accept his amendment and urge the House to accept it.