Norm Dicks

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Yes, that is the intention of this legislation. I completely agree with the gentleman. The increase is necessary in order to deal with this very serious problem. We will continue to work with the gentleman as we go to conference with the Senate. We will do the best we can to help on this important issue.

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

Mr. DICKS. Yes, it is. I appreciate the gentleman bringing this to our attention. We should focus the resources on those areas where the problem is the most severe. If we have any problem with this, I'll be glad to work with the gentleman with the agencies involved to make certain that that happens.

Mr. DICKS. I have a parliamentary point. Limitations are appropriate on an appropriation bill. I just wanted to make sure the gentleman from Hawaii was reminded of that technical point.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. I rise in very strong opposition to this amendment. I hope the House will defeat it resoundingly. This does not make any sense for our environmentally sensitive areas, particularly on the coast of California and Washington and Oregon on the West Coast, and the sensitive areas on the East Coast as well. I ask for a ``no'' vote on this amendment.

Mr. DICKS. Madam Chair, I reserve a point of order on this amendment.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. I believe the report language beginning on page 100 very adequately describes and justifies the new Commission on Climate Change, adaptation and mitigation. As I noted in my opening remarks, we have tried in this bill to move the climate change debate beyond talking about whether global warming exists and, instead, focus on what we must do to deal with this as a reality. The recent reports of the international panel on climate change make clear that warming will persist for many years irrespective of any regulatory actions or technology breakthroughs which may occur in the near future. Testimony before our subcommittee in April describes significant impacts already occurring. These impacts included increased wildfires, changing precipitation and water availability patterns, increasing presence of invasive species, changing migratory patterns for many animals and birds, and significant loss of habitat for many species. The 2-year Commission established in this bill is intended to help identify and jump start the science which can help our country and the world adapt to these changes. The Commission brings together a panel of 15 of this country's science leaders, and is headed by the president of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Ralph Cicerone. Dr. Cicerone, who I have met with personally on this proposal, is one of the world's leaders in climate change studies. While the use of advisory panels is common in guiding federally- funded science, this panel is different in two ways. First, it cuts broadly across all areas of Federal science in looking at the climate problem. I make no apology for that. This is a national and worldwide problem, and I think we need to think beyond the traditional agency or subcommittee's stovepipe approaches. Second, the Commission has $45 million to begin implementation of its recommendations. Giving the commission implementation funds will make it both more credible and more effective. This is not a large amount of money, but we believe it could get a few of the most critical science initiatives going without having to wait for the 2009 funding cycle. Chairman Obey has asked our subcommittee to be aggressive and imaginative in approaching the climate change challenge this year. We think that the funding, provided in this bill for the climate change adaptation and mitigation science, responds to that need, and I urge the funds be preserved. The committee is aware, however, that a number of other committees are working on legislation in this area. Chairman Oberstar, from the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has written us in support of our Commission, which he believes can be supportive of efforts in his committee. We are also working closely with the Natural Resources Committee, and we understand how Science, as I mentioned earlier, will mark something up in July. I want to assure the Members that when we get to conference on this bill, presumably in September, I am going to try for July. We will give full consideration to any new legislation which may be adopted as we finalize fiscal year 2008 spending for climate research in our committee. I think it would be a real tragedy for this House, on the first major amendment this year on climate change, to have a negative vote, to show that we still don't get it, that we still don't realize that the planet is at risk here. So I urge the committee to stay with us. This was approved in the Appropriations Committee, and I think it's a very good Commission, and I think this thing will work and will help us adapt to the problems that we are going to face because of this. We have these problems on all of our Federal lands. We had a hearing on that. I think this is an important amendment. I urge everyone to defeat the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. We are prepared to accept this amendment. We spent $52 million in EPA's budget for the Energy Star Program, so we agree with you that this is a worthy cause. Energy conservation is a big part of our initial effort on climate change and global warming. I appreciate your leadership on this important issue, and we're prepared to accept the amendment.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I reluctantly rise in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. DICKS. The gentleman is correct. Last year, when Mr. Taylor was chairman and I was the ranking member, Mr. Taylor wanted to accept this amendment, and I went along with Mr. Taylor. However, this year, I am the chairman, and the Congresswoman, Ms. Solis, is concerned about this amendment and is opposed to it. And let me just give you a little text of what she said. This amendment is based on a fundamentally flawed understanding of the study process incorporated in the legislation which she authored, which was signed into law on July 1, 2003, and would result in a change in the study design. The San Gabriel River Watershed Study Act was signed into law on July 1, 2003, after a lengthy effort to build consensus, an effort which included outreach to and coordination with all the members of the San Gabriel Valley delegation, including representatives of Diamond Bar, La Habra, Industry, Chino Hills and the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County and the community of Rowland Heights. As a result of this effort, the legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives with broad support. Congressman Radanovich noted in a letter to the editor on August 4, 2002, that, ``legislative process works best when those with differing views get together to resolve those differences and arrive at solutions that are responsible, workable and widely acceptable. That is what happened in this instance.'' The process by which this legislation was drafted and enacted was iterative and compromising. In fact, upon passage, Representative Pombo noted that this bill enjoys the broad support of both the majority and the minority and urged his colleagues to support it. During this process, the boundaries of the study were clearly defined. According to the legislative text, the Secretary of the Interior shall conduct a special resource study of the following areas: the San Gabriel River and its tributaries north of and including the City of Santa Fe Springs, and the San Gabriel Mountains within the territory of the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, as defined in section 32603 (c)(1)(c) of the State of California Public Resource Code. This study was directed to be done in consultation with Federal, State and local governments, including the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles River and Mountain Conservancy and other appropriate Federal, State and local government entities. These areas were chosen for their importance in the regional watershed. During consideration of this legislation, the Department of Interior recognized the need for this study. It noted that: ``The watershed of the San Gabriel River contains important natural resources which are disappearing throughout Los Angeles County. Continuous greenbelt corridors provided by the river serve as a habitat for breeding, feeding, resting or migration birds and mammals, which allows migration to take place throughout developed areas. The rugged terrain of the higher reaches of the watershed contain different vegetations, including rock outcroppings and vegetation native to the Pacific Coast foothills. This area also has a rich cultural heritage, which is evident by the large number of historically significant properties within the proposed study area. Among them is the Mission San Gabriel Archangel, founded in 1771 by the Spanish missionaries who were moving up the coast of California.'' The Department of the Interior also noted that this study would have to examine a number of alternatives for protecting resources in the area. Specifically, the Department of the Interior stated: ``Alternatives to Federal management of resources are often considered in a special resource study for this type of area including national trail designations, national heritage area designations, and the provision of technical assistance to State and local governments for conservation of rivers, trails, natural areas and cultural resources. A study of an area where land ownership and jurisdictional boundaries are as complex as they are in the San Gabriel River Watershed would likely emphasize public-private partnerships.'' What I can't do here, because the gentleman and the gentlelady from California have not been able to work this out, I can't accept this amendment when the gentlelady is in opposition to it. And I think what she's basically saying is that you should not be able to take out all of your jurisdictions from this study because they need to be in there to do a comprehensive study. That's how I view it.

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

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. I would be delighted to yield to the gentleman from Connecticut.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 2643, and that I may include tabular material on the same.

Mr. DICKS

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

Mr. DICKS. I want to commend the gentleman from Connecticut for his leadership on the land trust. This is close to my heart. My youngest son, Ryan Dicks, works for the Cascade Land Conservancy in the State of Washington, and I'm very familiar with the work that these important agencies do. And I want you to know that in our bill we have $62 million in the Forest Legacy account, and we also have $268 million for land and water conservation grants, of which 50 million is for the Stateside program. And though I can't accept your amendment this year, I want the gentleman to know that I want to work with you and see if there's some way that we can help these important entities do the job that is so important in preserving lands that are important to the American people.

Mr. DICKS. I appreciate your yielding. Madam Chairman, I thank my colleague from New Jersey for bringing this important project to my attention. I will be pleased to consider this funding need should additional funds become available in conference. And I also want to congratulate the gentleman for his outstanding leadership on many important issues dealing with conservation and the environment. And I particularly appreciated his cosponsorship of our bill that has just been reported out of the Natural Resources Committee in protecting our wildlife. The gentleman is certainly an important leader from New Jersey, and we want to work with him.

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

Mr. DICKS. I want to thank the gentleman for his extremely kind words. I just want to say to him that I have appreciated working with him over the years; and we in the Pacific northwest appreciate his great efforts on behalf of the salmon recovery initiatives and our Northwest Power Act and all of the other major environmental legislation that the gentleman from Michigan, the dean of the House, has enacted during his long and illustrious career. I am proud to work with him and with anyone else who wants to make the environment of the United States better for all of our citizens. I thank him for his great leadership.

Mr. DICKS. I appreciate your concerns and want to assure the gentleman and his committee that we are very open to making changes to ensure the funds are spent in a manner which reflects the legislation coming from the Science Committee. I look forward to working with you and your staff over the next few months to coordinate our joint efforts in climate science. I want to congratulate the gentleman on working on a consensus basis. We tried to do that in the interior bill, and the chairman knows that he has my word on this issue, and we will work this out.

Mr. DICKS. Madam Chairman, I reserve a point of order against this amendment.

Mr. DICKS. I thank the gentleman for highlighting the issue and for his concern for improving Indian health care. We agree this is an important issue, and we will work with you to address it. I might mention that one of the programs over the years that I have been a big supporter of is the National Health Service Corps, which allows people to be trained and work in rural areas. I think there is a multitude of ways to attack this problem, and I appreciate the gentleman's leadership on this issue and guarantee him that we will work hard to do as much as we can because we agree with you that the need for dental care is a very high priority in Indian country.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. This is an amendment that affects a project in my hometown of Bremerton, Washington. The downtown Bremerton library building opened in August 1938. Now, that may sound recent, but, remember, Washington has only been a State since 1889. The building was funded under the Works Progress Administration. The WPA was one of Franklin Roosevelt's principal public works programs that helped America recover from the Great Depression. The building is constructed in an art deco style which was a signature style during the twenties and thirties and a favorite today of preservationists across the country. The building has a large rotunda with skylights. Because of its distinctive style, the library remains one of the most attractive buildings in downtown Bremerton. Like many art deco buildings, the library has a very bright color, in this case a vibrant yellow. The downtown Bremerton library was constructed on land that has housed a library for nearly a hundred years. When this library opened in 1938, it served as the main library. The City of Bremerton and Kitsap County combined their library system in 1955. In 1978, a new headquarters library was built for the regional system and the downtown library became a branch library. The library in downtown Bremerton has been undergoing rehabilitation for the last 1\1/2\ years. The city invested $100,000 last year in general fund money and $100,000 from its community development block grant funds. These were matched with $100,000 from Kitsap County and $100,000 from the Gates Foundation. The moneys were spent replacing windows and doors, remodeling bathrooms, rebuilding the roof and other structural improvements which brought the building, to a reasonable degree at least, up to current building codes and took care of pressing life/safety concerns. This year, the city is spending an additional $200,000 in general fund money to replace the existing heating, cooling and air ventilation system, to remove asbestos from the heating plant and associated piping, replace much of the building's plumbing, and to rewire the entire building for additional electrical capacity and other modern communication equipment. When I was a kid growing up in Bremerton, Washington, this was the library that I used to go to with my mother and father and my younger brother, Les. Bremerton is a city where we have the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, probably the most effective and productive shipyard in the United States. We have about 10,000 workers working there, and we have thousands of sailors who are home-ported in Bremerton and at the Trident submarine base at Bangor. I would like to think that this facility would be available to those men and women serving us in the military and for all of those thousands of government employees who work in the Kitsap County area. This is a good project. The money that we are providing, $150,000, will be matched by the city of Bremerton. They've already put in a lot of additional money. And this is a partnership. This is one of those good projects where there's a partnership. I urge my colleagues to strongly oppose this amendment and to support this worthy project. I would also say, again, to the gentleman, this is such a dramatic reversal, what we have done on this side of the aisle on earmarks from the comparison when the other side took power. In 1994, there were about a thousand earmarks. In 2006, there were 13,000 earmarks. The other thing I would suggest, too, it's one thing to go after the projects of your colleagues, but the President has what we would call earmarks, executive branch earmarks in this budget. If the gentleman was evenhanded in his approach, and I think he has been very fair in how he has selected these projects, but if he was evenhanded, he would go after some of the things that the President requests. As I said, the Preserve America Program is almost identical to Save America's Treasures, but I don't notice the gentleman offering an amendment on that particular project. No, I don't want to incentivize him, but I guess we can't because there is a unanimous consent agreement. But, again, I appreciate what the gentleman is saying, and it is important. Dealing with the entitlements where two-thirds of our spending is has got to be done, and I hope that we can approach those problems just the same way as the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Tiahrt) and I have approached this problem, with approving only one in ten of the projects that were requested from our colleagues. Again, it is our power. Don't give up Congress's power of the Constitution, which is the power of the purse. That would be a tragic mistake that would haunt this House for many years. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. I want to commend the gentleman from New York for his participation on our subcommittee and for all of his good work during the year. I must say, a performing arts facility in a town can be such a fantastic thing. One thing I hope my colleague from Texas remembers is that the local community has to match the money. I think in this case this is a grant of $150,000 to Save America's Treasures which clearly this is one of. And then the local community has to raise $150,000, and out of that there are improvements to the facility and the structure that are done over a period of time. Again, as we analyzed all of these projects, this is exactly what we had in mind. This legislation was authorized by Congress. And I would mention also that Mrs. Bush has her program, the Preserve America Program, which our committee has supported. Mr. Tiahrt has been a strong supporter of that program. I saw Mrs. Bush the other night and I told her we were working hard together up here to try and preserve this program, which does exactly the same things as Save America's Treasures. There may be a nuance or two, but basically it is the same thing. So again, I support the Hinchey project and oppose the gentleman from Texas's amendment. I appreciate the good work of my colleague from New York over all of the years we have been on this committee together.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.