Jimmy Duncan

Mr. DUNCAN

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. DUNCAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I will simply say this, the school superintendent in my home county of Knox County, Tennessee, told me that the school system he moved from in South Carolina a couple of years ago was the largest high school, it had 3500 students but it was going to 3800 students. That is a trend that we see all over this Nation. It is a bad trend for the youth of America. We need to do whatever we can to reverse that trend, and that is why I strongly support the Smaller Schools Initiative that the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill) and I have worked on within the Department of Education and why this amendment, I think, should be supported by all Members. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate very much the good words spoken by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner), chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, and for his support of this amendment. Once again, I commend the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill) for his leadership on this issue. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Chairman, I first would like to thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill) for his leadership in the movement to reverse the size of the growth in our schools. He and I and our staffs have worked together for the last 2 years to obtain funding within the Department of Education for the smaller schools initiative program, a very, very important program within our Department of Education. At a smaller school, a young person has a better chance to make a sports team, serve on the student council, lead a club, be a cheerleader, or excel or stand out in some other way. Also, a student at a smaller school can get more individual attention and not feel just like a number in some education factory. Actually, very large schools, large high schools, sometimes breed very dangerous types of situations because, while most students can handle very big schools, a few always feel alienated and feel like they have to resort to strange or dangerous behavior to get noticed. I was very shocked, for instance, when I read that the principal at the Columbine High School had never even heard of the Trench Coat Mafia, even though the group's picture had been published in the school yearbook. Agusta Kappner, a former U.S. assistant secretary of education, wrote recently in USA Today that ``good things happen'' when large schools are remade into smaller ones. She said, ``Incidents of violence are reduced; students' performance, attendance, and graduation rates improve; disadvantaged students significantly outperform those in large schools on standardized tests; students of all social classes and races are treated more equitably; teachers, students, and the local community prefer them. Students are better off going to smaller schools, Mr. Chairman, even in older buildings, as long as they are clean and safe and well-lit, than they are going to large, very centralized high schools, even in brand new buildings. We have done a good job of reducing class sizes in most places, but too often we are making a very bad mistake in making students go to very large high schools. Just yesterday I had one of my constituents tell me that at her small community high school she knew everyone there, even in the lower grades, but at the large, centralized high school which her daughter attended, she did not even know two-thirds of the people in her own class. I remember several years ago reading that the largest high school in New York City had 3,500 students, and when they broke it up into five separate high schools, their drug and discipline problems went way down. I feel very strongly about this issue, and I could go on at length. But I want to emphasize briefly four main points why we need to pass the Hill amendment. One, educational experts are increasingly rejecting the ``bigger is better'' approach to schools. In the smaller schools, obviously students can get more individualized attention. Secondly, research is finding that smaller schools especially help minority and disadvantaged students. The third point, more and more high school principals have criticized ``bigness.'' The National Association of Secondary School Principals recommended in 1999 that high schools change their structure to limit enrollments to schools of no more than 600 students in size. Fourth, smaller schools reduce violence and criminality. In summary, the Hill amendment is very simple. It lets local school districts use the local innovative programs to reduce the size of their schools as they feel that that action would improve school quality. This is a very good amendment. Mr. Chairman, I am proud to join the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill) in supporting this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner), the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. DUNCAN

Mr. DUNCAN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. DUNCAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DUNCAN. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1831, the Small Business Liability Protection Act. Madam Speaker, virtually every Member of Congress has a story to tell about the abuses of the Superfund program in his or her district. We have just heard a number of examples of that by my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Gillmor). The worst abuses often involve using this statute to threaten small parties and small businesses with liability for millions of dollars to pay for the clean-up of a Superfund site, even if the contamination that requires cleaning up has nothing to do with their waste. When Congress passed the Superfund statute in 1980, Congress was not aiming at small businesses and ordinary garbage. However, at the urging of overzealous attorneys representing both EPA and third-party plaintiffs, courts have expanded Superfund liabilities so far that someone can be held liable for cleaning up a site even if they sent only a quart of oil, ordinary household garbage, or even a single copper penny. This theory of joint and several liability, holding someone liable for all of the costs regardless of their degree of involvement at a site, has created unfairness, to say the least, for all parties caught up in Superfund liability. But the burden of this liability falls most heavily on small businesses, which often cannot even afford to hire a lawyer. In fact, Madam Speaker, I have said before that we should pin a medal on anyone who survives in small business today, and certainly Superfund problems of small businesses are a prime example. While we have not yet addressed all of the problems with the Superfund statute, I am proud to say that today we can make this flawed program a little bit fairer. Today we can pass legislation to protect small businesses from at least some Superfund liability. H.R. 1831 accomplishes this goal by providing an exemption from liability for people or companies who send only a small amount of waste to a Superfund site and households, small businesses, and now nonprofit organizations that send only ordinary trash to a Superfund site. Under the bill, these parties will not have to hire a lawyer to gain the protection of these exemptions. In most cases, H.R. 1831 places the burden on the plaintiff to prove that the small party is not exempt. Finally, we realized that not all small businesses will be eligible for these exemptions. For these small businesses, H.R. 1831 provides an expedited settlement based on a limited ability to pay so that they are not trapped in Superfund litigation for years and years, as we have seen some small businesses in the past years since we have passed the original Superfund legislation. This bill does not accomplish everything we want to accomplish on Superfund reform, but it is certainly a good first step in the right direction. I want to say that, first of all, I would like to commend my good friend, one of the great leaders of this Congress, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert), of the Committee on Science and a Member who chaired the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment of the Committee on Transportation in the past 6 years in the Congress, and held numerous hearings on this legislation and other Superfund-type issues. I also want to commend the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Gillmor) for the work that he has done, because he has worked on this for several years. I want to thank another close friend, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Costello), for his support, as he has expressed today; and the ranking member, his ranking member of our full committee, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar); and certainly, last but not least, the chairman of our full committee, the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young), all of whom have expressed strong support for this very fine legislation to provide at least some assistance to the small businesses of this Nation. Madam Speaker, I urge all Members to support this very moderate and reasonable legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DUNCAN. Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert), the chairman of the Committee on Science and a gentleman who has been a real leader on this particular legislation. (Mr. BOEHLERT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DUNCAN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I will simply say that this legislation is designed to remove some unintended consequences from this original Superfund legislation. In effect, it would have been done many years ago if we had been able to foresee what would happen in regard to some of these Superfund cleanup projects. So this is very good environmental legislation. It is very good small business legislation, very fair and reasonable and moderate, and is something that I think can be proudly supported by Members on both sides of the aisle.

Mr. DUNCAN. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DUNCAN

Mr. DUNCAN. The gentleman is exactly right, and that is the sad thing. We have plenty of oil, plenty of coal, plenty of natural gas, plenty of timber; as I said, much more timber than we had 50 or even 100 years ago. We have got plentiful supplies. As the gentleman said, God has blessed this Nation greatly, and yet to stop everything and shut this country down economically just would devastate, first, the poorest people in this country. Yet some of these people who know that it would shut us down and would harm us greatly economically, they feel justified at times because of a misguided belief that we are all destroying the world because of global warming. Mr. Speaker, I would like to just mention that for a moment. I have a report of Sallie Baliunas, who is a senior staff astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and deputy director of the Mount Wilson Observatory. In 1991, Discover Magazine profiled her as one of America's outstanding women scientists. She received her master's and Ph.D. degrees in astrophysics from Harvard University. She put out a very detailed report. I would be glad to provide copies of it to any Member who wishes, or staff member who needs it, but she says this global warming scare assumes that human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the dominant driving force in recent and probably future climate changes. Yet surface temperature records indicate that the world is warmed only about 0.5 degrees centigrade during the last 100 years, roughly half of the amount predicted by the computer models on which warming scenarios are based. Moreover, at least half the warming observed during the 20th century occurred before 1940, while most of the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations occurred after 1940. That suggests that of the observed warming, mankind is responsible for only about one-tenth or two-tenths of a degree. It further suggests that future temperature increases due to industrial activity during the next century are likely to be extremely modest. I could come here tonight armed with all kinds of reports that say the exact same thing, and even that the very, very small amount of global warming that has occurred has actually helped us increase crop production and helped alleviate starvation in many parts of the world. The gentleman started off earlier tonight and said we need to have some sound science behind some of these policies. We have not had that, and we have not had cost-benefit analysis on some of these things, so we have ended up following many policies that have been very costly and very harmful to this country. Once again, as I say, maybe they have helped a few extremely big businesses, because much of their competition has been driven out of existence; but it should be of great concern to all Americans, particularly those who are concerned and upset about these higher utility bills and higher gas bills and higher prices on everything else, because all of this is hitting at a time when it is becoming more and more difficult for many middle-income people to meet some of these bills. I have said before that extremely big government really only helps extremely big business and the bureaucrats who work for the government. Extremely big government is really good at only one thing. That is wiping out the middle class. Mr. Speaker, I can tell my colleagues that every place in the world where the people have allowed their governments to get too big, the middle class has been wiped out, and you end up with a few elitists at the top and a huge underclass. The great thing about the United States of America is that we have kept our government relatively small in comparison to other countries, and therefore we have had few people at the top and few at the bottom and a huge middle class. I also can tell my colleagues, you can never satisfy government's appetite for money or land. If we gave every agency and department up here twice what we are giving them, they would be happy for maybe a few weeks or a few months, but then they would come back to us crying about a shortfall in funding. I also want to mention something about government's appetite for land, because that ties into private property. It certainly ties into these economic problems. But I will yield to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis).

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Let me just say this. What we are talking about here tonight is the hope that we can get some balance and moderation brought back into our environmental policies. I voted for the toughest clean air law in the world, and I voted for the toughest clean water law in the world, and I voted to require double hulls on oil tankers and for higher grazing fees on our Federal lands and the Tongas Timber Reform Act, and so many environmental laws I probably could not even count them all, and I am sure the gentleman from Kentucky has as well. But some of these groups keep having to raise the bar and are demanding more and more and more, or their contributions dry up. So I really think that all of this is about money. One of the subcommittees on which I serve is the Subcommittee on Forests, and I was told by the staff of that subcommittee that in the mid-1980s, Congress passed a law saying that we would not cut more than 80 percent of the new growth in the national forests, and the environmentalists wanted that law. Today, we are cutting less than one- seventh of the new growth, less than 14 percent of the new growth, and that at a time when the amount of forest land in this country has been going way up. Yes, I said, way up. I have been reading, and I am almost through with Bill Bryson's very fine book called ``A Walk in the Woods,'' about hiking the Appalachian Trail. At one point in the book he mentions that New England in 1850 was only 30 percent forest and 70 percent open farmland. Today he writes, New England is 70 percent in forest land. In my own State of Tennessee, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel, in 1950 it was 36 percent forests. Now 50 percent of Tennessee is now made up of forests. Yet left-wing environmentalists have so successfully brainwashed many young people and children that I am sure if I went into any school and asked them if the number of trees had gone way up or way down in the last 50 or 100 or even 150 years, almost all of the children would say way down, when the truth is exactly the opposite. The Subcommittee on Forests in early 1998 had a hearing in which we were told that 39 million acres of forest land in the western part of the country was in immediate danger of catastrophic forest fires, because when we cut less than 3 billion board feet, and to somebody who does not know anything about it, 3 billion board feet probably sounds like a lot, but as I said earlier, that is less than one-seventh of the new growth in our national forests, much less what is already there. But we are cutting less than half of the dead and dying trees. So those dead trees which we cannot even get to to remove, once again, because of the extremism that we have had in some of these environmental policies, the fuel buildup on the floor of the forest has led to this great danger of forest fires, and we were warned about that in our subcommittee by our subcommittee in early 1998 and again in 2000. So then what happened? Last summer we saw 7 million acres out West burn, $10 billion worth of damage. Yet, if the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) or I went into one of our national forests and burned or cut down one tree, we would probably be arrested. So what happens when we will not let anybody cut any trees? The price of lumber goes up, houses cost more, furniture costs more, every product made of paper costs more; and once again, as I mentioned earlier, we devastate these logging communities. So what happens? We destroy jobs; we drive up prices. And who do we hurt? The poor and the lower-income and the middle-income people. I remember a few years ago reading that the average member of the Sierra Club has an income of more than four times higher than the average American. Maybe some of these rich people in the Sierra Club are not hurt if gas prices go to $3 a gallon or if the utility bills are doubled or if the prices go up on timber and everything else; but a lot of middle-income, millions of middle-income and lower-income people are hurt when all of those jobs are destroyed and the prices go up on everything. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield back to my friend for any comments he wishes to make at this time.

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight because people all over this Nation are concerned because they see their utility bills going way up with gas prices possibly heading to $3 a gallon, according to many articles. All of this is happening at a time that other prices are going up. Our economy has been slowing for almost a year now, the dot.coms have taken a dive, and many major corporations have laid off thousands of people. These things are happening. Utility bills are going up; gas prices are going up because of years of environmental extremism and actions by the administration of former President Clinton all coming home to roost. For years now, we have had groups of environmental extremists all over this country protesting and stopping or delaying for years anytime anyone tried to drill for any oil, dig for any coal, cut any trees, or produce any natural gas. This has helped extremely big business, which has financed many of these groups, because it has driven thousands of small and now even medium-sized businesses out of existence or forced them to merge. In the late 1970s, I am told we had 157 small-coal companies in east Tennessee. Now there are none. Federal mining regulators opened an office in Knoxville, and the regulators and the environmentalists drove all of the coal companies out of business. The same thing has happened to small logging companies all over this country. I have read and heard that many small communities have been devastated. Today, in the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, we heard testimony about a proposal for 400 pages of new regulations by the EPA on the runoff from animal feeding operations. All of the witnesses told us that this would drive many more small farmers out of business and lead to much more concentration by the big giants in the agriculture industry. Those on the left are always telling us they are for the little guy; but when they create this big government that comes down with all of these rules and regulations and red tape, it first drives out the small guys, and then it gets the medium-sized people, and it ends up destroying jobs and driving up prices. And who ends up getting hurt? The lower-income and the working people and the middle-income people of this country. We are going to talk tonight, Mr. Speaker, about its effect on several different industries; and I am pleased to be joined here tonight by one of my best friends here in the House and one of the most respected Members of Congress, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis). I would like to yield to him at this time for any opening comments that he wishes to make.

Mr. DUNCAN. I thank the gentleman, once again, he is exactly right on target. Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, we are simply trying to say that we hope to bring back some moderation and balance to our environmental policies, instead of allowing environmental extremists to control all of these things. It is like I have seen cartoons showing hundreds of oil wells in that Arctic wildlife refuge. That is totally false, because today the technology is such, as the gentleman mentioned, that we could put one oil well and go out 4 and 5 miles in any direction, so the footprint on the land is hardly anything at all. They said the people who opposed the original Alaska pipeline, and thank goodness we have that or we would have been in trouble years ago, they said it would kill off the caribou. At that time they say there were between 5,000 and 6,000 caribou. Now there are over 30,000 caribou. So all of this can be done in an environmentally safe way. As I said earlier, the coastal plain, which is 1.5 million acres, and as I said, I have been there twice, and most of these people who are against this have never even been there, there is not a tree or bush up there. It is a frozen tundra, as they call it. As the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) said, it looks like a moonscape. I was up there in August. Both times I was there in August it was brown with little puddles of oil seeping up. Most of the year it is covered by snow and ice. Yet, these groups show these pictures of the mountains and trees where nobody has ever advocated drilling for oil. As I said earlier, I have noticed over the years that most of these extreme environmentalists seem to come from wealthy or very upper- income families. As I said before, maybe they are not hurt if utility bills double or gas prices go way up, but millions of people are hurt and millions more are going to be hurt even worse if we do not start getting some order, moderation, and balance back into our environmental policies. The Sierra Club and some of these other environmental groups have gone so far to the left now they make even socialists look conservative. Some of these radical environmentalists, some proudly call themselves ecoterrorists, seem to want to shut this country down economically. They seem not to realize that the worst pollution in the world has occurred in the Communist and socialist nations because their economies do not generate enough income to do the good things for the environment that all of us want to do, so they protest any time anyone wants to dig for any coal or drill for any oil or cut any trees or produce any natural gas. Then these coal companies and timber companies and oil refineries and small natural gas producers that are run out of business can no longer hire accountants and salespeople and lawyers and blue collar workers, and people wonder why their college graduate children or grandchildren cannot find jobs, cannot find good jobs and have to work in restaurants, as many college students are working today, and why they have to go to graduate school. Mr. Speaker, this is really all about money. Environmental groups have to continually tell us how bad everything is or their contributions will dry up. Many of their contributions, as I have said, come from extremely big businesses, which are really the only ones which benefit when all of these small- and medium-sized businesses are forced out of business or forced to merge. Also, they are big enough to get the huge Federal contracts with obscene markups to do the environmental cleanup that is demanded by the same groups that they fund. It is amazing, I think, when these liberals and left-wingers and environmental extremists claim to be the friend of the little guy, because they are the best friends that extremely big business has. But almost everything they do ends up hurting the poor and lower-income people, and very small businesses and small farms. Jobs are destroyed and prices go up. More and more jobs are forced to go to other countries. Some groups, of course, receive contributions from foreign oil companies and people connected to OPEC or foreign shipping companies. There are many large foreign companies, and even some large U.S. companies that benefit greatly and make huge money if we have to import more oil, or more of other products, for that matter. It is all about money. That is what the Kyoto agreement is all about, for instance, because the U.S. relied on a free enterprise-free market economy with small government until recent years. The U.S. now purchases 25 percent of the world's goods, though we have just slightly over 4 percent of the world's population. Many countries are jealous of this, and believe they could take more of our jobs and income if we had to reduce our energy use by 30 percent, as the Kyoto agreement would require. The Kyoto agreement excludes such large polluters as Mexico and China and more than 125 other countries. This treaty would devastate our economy, and we should all praise President Bush for not caving in to the demands of extremists and going along with such a potentially harmful agreement. Some people who support the Kyoto agreement and oppose any type of coal or oil or lumber or natural gas production in this country know that their policies would be very harmful to the U.S. economically, and yet they do these things anyway. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) for any comments he wishes to make.

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and he is exactly right. I mentioned the briefing that Vice President Cheney gave us this morning. We were not given all the details, but President Bush, among other things, I am told, is going to announce in his energy plan tomorrow $2 billion for clean coal technology. The President is not going to announce any tax breaks for big oil companies or big gas companies, but he is going to advocate tax breaks or incentives for alternative energy sources and for renewable energy sources. Yet he still will be attacked on it, I am sure. The gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) mentioned the Kyoto agreement. The global climate information project said that, quote, So while the U.S. cuts energy use by more than 30 percent, most U.N. countries get a free ride. Because U.S. energy prices will rise, American products could be more expensive at home and less competitive overseas. That will slow down our economic growth and cost American jobs, all for a treaty that will produce little or no environmental benefit. One thing it would do for sure is speed up the transfer of wealth and jobs from this Nation to underdeveloped countries. I can tell you unless you can reduce your standard of living by 30 percent overnight, which very few people in this country would want to do, and no one should want to do, no one should have to do because we do not have to, if we can just get a little moderation and balance back into our environmental policies instead of following the extremist groups that have power far beyond their numbers. As I mentioned earlier, some of these people I think know that this Kyoto agreement would devastate our economy, and yet they do not believe they should think of themselves as Americans first and foremost, but they should consider themselves as citizens of the world. They think things like national borders and patriotism are old- fashioned anachronisms totally out of date and out of place in our sophisticated, globalized world economy of today. I know Strobe Talbott who roomed with former President Clinton in Oxford and who was one of his main advisors. He wrote this: He said within the next 100 years, nationhood as we know it will be obsolete. All States will recognize a single global authority. He may be right, but I certainly hope not. I want to read to you what nationally syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer wrote recently about those individuals and multinational corporations that she referred to as globalizers. First, they came and took away Main Street and all that meant in terms of the individual and the community and of small businesses who supported the Fourth of July parades, the Girl Scouts and the old folks home. Finally, they took away American industries and corporations. They could have headquarters anywhere in the world. They were proud not to belong to any archaic nation-state. Who, after all, really believed anymore? This, always said with such a patronizing smile in such old things. In between, they managed to denigrate patriotism, citizenship, environmental protectionism, labor, including child labor, human rights protection, and all that made for an American society. As I said earlier, these extreme policies that we have been going to have hurt for many years and are hurting now the small companies, and now even the medium-sized companies and driving them out of business and hurting what I do not like to refer to as the little guy, but that is the most accurate way you can portray it. I have always heard that what happens in California is soon headed to the rest of the Nation. We better hope not, because people in California wonder why their utility bills have gone up so much. And once again, these environmental extremists have made sure that no power plants were built in many years there. So while demand was going up, capacity was not keeping up. The brownouts and blackouts of recent weeks were inevitable. The national news a few weeks ago showed scenes of California farmers dumping out huge amounts of milk because processing plants had to shut down because of lack of power. So people all over the country will see milk prices go higher. As I said repeatedly tonight, we just need to get some balance and moderation back into some of these policies so we do not drive up the prices and hurt the poor and the lower-income and the working people of this country. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis).

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I could not agree with the gentleman from Kentucky more. He is exactly right. Last year, we had the largest or biggest trade deficit in our history. I think it was $350 billion. Every leading economist tells us that we lose conservatively 20,000 jobs per billion, which means we lost 7 million jobs to other countries last year; and much of it was because of these extreme policies that we have been following in recent years that have forced more companies to go to other countries and take some of our best jobs. Once again, as I said earlier, then I have many parents and grandparents coming to me bringing their college-age kids, good-looking kids with good grades, but they cannot find the good jobs that used to be out there. So they end up, even while they work on master's degrees or something, and then they are still going to have trouble finding these jobs. I know last year The Washington Times had a big story about the glut of Ph.D.s that we have, and so many people even with the advanced degrees are having trouble finding jobs. But there is one last thing that I want to get into because it has been a great concern of mine for the last 2 or 3 years. Private property is one of the foundation stones of our prosperity. Once again, some of these extreme environmental groups want the government to take over all of the land. There is something called the Wildlands Project that I read about in The Washington Post that would require 50 percent of the land now in private ownership to be taken over by the government. If people do not think that theirs will ever be taken over by the government, they should look around at every place in this country and all the land that has been taken over. It has happened all around my area of east Tennessee. I can tell my colleagues that today the Federal Government owns or controls over 30 percent of the land in this country. State and local governments and quasi-governmental agencies control or own another 20 percent. So half the land is in some type of public ownership. Then government keeps placing more and more restrictions on what can be done with the land that remains in private hands. In fact, I was told by the Home Builders Association a few years ago that, if the wetlands regulations were strictly enforced, over 60 percent of the developable land that is out there right now would be off limits. So what does that do? That drives up the prices for homes. So we have young families that, in past years would have been able to afford a home, now they cannot afford a very important part of the American dream. What happens, too, people developed subdivisions in the 1950s and 1960s with big yards. Now developers, the land costs are so high because so little land can be developed that they have to put homes on quarter-acre lots or one-third acre lots. They have to jam more and more people into closer and closer quarters, and so people get this crowded feeling. It really adds to this urban sprawl problem that these environmental extremists are always attacking. Yes, they are the very ones that are causing it. I can tell my colleagues, private property, while most people do not think about it, it is one of the main things that helped create the prosperity of this country. It is one of the great foundation stones, knowledge of our freedom, but of the prosperity that we have had in this country. Any one who does not understand this, I wish they would read a book called The Noblest Triumph, Property and Prosperity Through the Ages by Tom Bethell. The whole book is important, but a couple of brief excerpts. He wrote, ``Leon Trotsky, a leading Communist, long ago pointed out that where there is no private ownership, individuals can be bent to the will of the state under threat of starvation. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman has said that `You cannot have a free society without private property' . . . Recent immigrants have been delighted to find that you can buy property in the United States without paying bribes. ``The call for secure property rights in Third World countries today is not an attempt to help the rich. It is not the property of those who have access to Swiss bank accounts that needs to be protected. It is the small and insecure possessions of the poor. ``This key point was well understood (by) Pope Leo XIII (who) wrote that the 'fundamental principle of Socialism, which would make all possessions public property, is to be utterly rejected because it injures the very ones whom it seeks to help.' '' What we have been saying all night here tonight is some of these liberals and left wingers claim to be the friend of the little guy, yet all of these things that they do end up hurting the small businesses and the small farmers and the little guy most of all. Over the years, when private property has been taken by government, it most often has been taken from lower- and middle-income people and from poor or small farmers. So it is like all these industrial parks that are created. We do not need any more industrial parks in this country. We take land from poor farmers and then turn it over to these big multinational corporations for free or very reduced costs. Then when we have all of these Federal projects, agencies in my area, for instance, have taken twice the amount of land that they needed to take for their project. It has been a very sad thing to see. But if we allow more and more land to be taken, then we are going to ultimately destroy the freedom that we have in this country and the prosperity that we have in this country. It will be a sad day if we continue to allow that to happen. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) for any final comments that he wishes to make.

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, let me just say very quickly in summing up. One example that I wanted to mention was President Bush has been hit real hard on the arsenic in the water, yet one water district in Illinois said, if we went to those unrealistic standards that former President Clinton advocated, their water bills would have to go up $72 a month. So what we are saying is we need some balance and moderation brought back into our environmental policies. We cannot keep going along with wealthy environmental extremists who are not hurt when water bills go up $40 or $50 a month or gas prices go up to $3 a gallon or utility bills double. But millions of people throughout this country are hurt if we have to do all of that. We do not need to shut this country down economically and continue to hurt worse the poor and the lower-income and the working people and the middle-income in this country by forcing more jobs to leave to go to other countries and forcing people to reduce their standard of living by at least a third, as some of these policies would mean, because it is totally unnecessary. Then we would not be able to do the good things for the environment that we all want to do. So we just need some balance and moderation brought back into these environmental policies. I thank the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis), my friend, for taking time out from his busy schedule to be with me here tonight to discuss these very important issues.

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I think the gentleman is exactly right. When we cut fewer and fewer trees, we destroy jobs and we drive up prices, as I said, for homes and furniture and every type of paper product. When we restrict and cut back and eliminate coal companies and coal production, we drive up utility bills and drive up costs for businesses that have to be passed on to the consumer for every type of product, and we destroy more jobs. When we close half of the oil refineries, as we have done since 1980, and we sign, as President Clinton did, orders to not allow oil drilling in Alaska, and 80 percent of our offshore capabilities, we drive up the price for oil and gas and destroy more jobs. When we sign, as President Clinton did just before he left office, an order locking up 213 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, we drive up utility bills and destroy prices. For anyone who wants more information on this lockup of natural gas, they can read last month's Consumers' Research Magazine and the article by Rider from USA Today in which he said that President Clinton locked up 213 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Mr. Speaker, then what happens? People's utility bills all over the country go way up. I have the mayor of Engelwood, Tennessee, a small town in my district, who comes to me and tells me that he has senior citizens who are having to choose between eating or paying their utility bills. Once again, I say who we hurt with this environmental extremism is not these wealthy environmentalists; but we hurt the poor and the lower-income and the working people because we destroy jobs and drive up prices, and it hurts those lower-income people, and now even middle-income people who are becoming very concerned about how these bills are going up. But the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) mentioned the oil situation. Last September 25, long before the current administration came in, the Washington Post National Weekly Edition had a cover story headline which said, ``Will rising oil prices kill the boom?'' I can tell the Members that Aviation Daily reported last December that 12 airlines went into bankruptcy last year, mainly due to higher- than-expected oil prices. The Air Transport Association told me, and I chaired for the last 6 years the Subcommittee on Aviation so this was of special interest to me, they told me that each one penny interest in jet fuel cost the industry as a whole $200 million. So if oil prices go up, airline tickets have to go up. Then more people are forced onto our much less safe highways, the trucking industry is hurt, agriculture is hurt, and almost everything is hurt. Then, as the Washington Post asked on its cover, ``Will rising oil prices kill the boom?'' As the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) said, and I think he has some additional information, we have all of this oil. We have so much oil. I heard one radio report saying oil is the second most plentiful liquid today, after salt water, and we have hundreds of years of supplies if we did not have these extreme groups keeping us from getting to it. Vice President Cheney gave us a briefing this morning. He said that today well over half of our oil is having to be imported, and that by the year 2020, it is going to be two-thirds of our oil, and we are going to be even more subject to being held hostage by OPEC and some of these other foreign countries. Now, the U.S. Geologic Survey tells us that we have I think it is 16 billion barrels of oil in one little tiny place, on the coastal plain of Alaska. I can tell the Members, I have been up there twice. I have been twice to Prudhoe Bay. The first time was about 6 years ago, and I had a man in the Anchorage Airport who I told where I was going, and he said, well, if you see anything up there taller than 2 feet, it was put there yesterday by a man. Some of these groups show this false, almost Nazi-like propaganda showing trees and mountains and so forth. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 19.8 million acres. It is so big we almost cannot comprehend it. It is 35 times the size of the Great Smokies, a big part of which are in my district. We have between 9 million and 10 million visitors a year to the Great Smokies. Time Magazine reported a couple of months ago that last year the entire Arctic National Wildlife Refuge had 1,000 visitors, because there are no roads or paths, and it is dangerous for most people to go up there. We could drill on about 2,000 acres out of that 19.8 million acres and potentially get up to 16 billion barrels of oil, which is equal to 30 years of Saudi oil. We could do it in an environmentally safe way. Yet, we cannot do it. The votes are not there because of environmental extremists who put out all this false propaganda, so people see their gas prices going up and potentially going up much higher. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) because he has more information about the ANWR.

Mr. DUNCAN

Mr. DUNCAN. Madam Speaker, yesterday, I read one news item and heard another, both of which caused me great concern. One was the headline in the Knoxville News-Sentinel which said, ``Tennessee Economic Outlook Grim.'' Now, Tennessee has become one of the most popular places to move to in the whole country. Also, our economy is very diversified and not overly dependent on two or three big-ticket items and, thus, not as subject to the boom-and-bust cycle seen in some other places. So if Tennessee's economic outlook is grim, it causes me great concern about the economy in the Nation as a whole. The second item was a report on a national news cast that said Dell Computer and some other leading companies were withdrawing job offers previously made to people about to graduate from college. The report said that Dell was announcing additional layoffs which will soon total about 6,000, or 10 percent of their workforce, in addition to the withdrawn job offers. Over the years, I have had many parents and grandparents bring their children or grandchildren who have graduated from college to me for help in getting jobs. For the most part, they are good-looking young people and have made very good grades, but who are unable to find jobs. Many young people are going to graduate schools today because they cannot find good jobs with just a bachelor's degree, as in the past. Also, many young people are majoring in subjects in which there are almost no jobs. Colleges and universities cannot discourage people from majoring in some subject where the job prospects are poor because they would make the professors of those subjects very angry. But it is really sad when someone spends years in college and cannot find a job. Also, some universities are encouraging students to incur huge student loans which they cannot then repay. I remember last year reading in the Washington Times about the glut of Ph.D.s. The story told of one man who had gotten a doctorate in English and had sent out almost 400 resumes and got only one job offer for a job he really did not want. There are far too many lawyers. We always read about what the top graduates from the top schools are getting. The reality is that many law school graduates cannot find jobs or end up making less than they would if they managed a McDonald's or drove a truck. I was visited recently by members of the Tennessee Hospital Association. Their main problem is a severe shortage of nurses. Nursing is a great profession to go into at this time. But I strongly encourage all young people to check out the job prospects before they spend a small fortune and years of their lives getting a degree or even degrees that are almost meaningless. The main thing, though, that is going to cause our economy real trouble if we do not wake up is the energy crisis. We have wealthy environmental extremists all over this country that protest anytime anyone wants to drill for any oil, dig for any coal, produce any natural gas or cut any trees. Bill Bryson, in his book ``A Walk in the Hoods'' about hiking the Appalachian Trail, mentions that New England was once only 40 percent in forest land, while today it is almost 70 percent covered by forests. My own State of Tennessee is half in forests now, 50 percent, compared to only 36 percent in 1950. The amount of forest land has gone way up in the last 50 years; yet the children in our schools have been so brainwashed in recent years by extreme left-wing environmentalists. I am sure almost none of them would answer correctly if asked if the forest land had gone up over the last half century. The Sierra Club and some other environmental groups have gone so far to the left in recent years they are making socialists look conservative. Some wonder why gas is going toward $3 a gallon, as many are predicting, and why utility bills are going way up. Well, it is primarily because rich, yuppie environmentalists are slowly but surely shutting this country down economically. They may not be hurt when gas and utility bills go way up, but millions of lower-income and middle- income people are. Jobs are destroyed and prices go up when we stop or delay for years the production of any energy or even many other forms of production in this country. We have closed half of our oil refineries since 1980. We now have to import most of our oil. We are now cutting only one-seventh of the new growth in our national forests each year. Environmentalists pushed for it and won and passed a law in the mid-1980s saying we would only cut 80 percent of the new growth. But they always demand more, and they continually have to exaggerate the problems or their contributions will dry up. East Tennessee had 157 small coal companies in the late 1970s. Now there are none due to environmental extremism. Former President Clinton locked up 213 trillion cubic feet of natural gas just before he left office. Now the mayor of the small town of Englewood, Tennessee, tells me he has senior citizens in his town who are having to choose between eating or paying their utility bills. One Illinois water district said its water bills would have to go up $72 a month to achieve the unrealistic Clinton standards on arsenic levels; yet even at the present safe levels, people would have to drink water full-time for their entire lives to run even a minute, minuscule risk of cancer from the 50-parts-per-billion standard now in effect. All of the coal, oil, lumber, and natural gas companies we have shut down or greatly restricted used to hire many college graduates and other workers. When we drive up energy costs, we harm almost all companies and individuals. College graduates cannot find jobs at the very time prices for everything are going way up. Madam Speaker, if we do not soon stop this extremism and bring some balance and moderation back into our environmental policies, many more college graduates will be unable to find jobs and millions of lower- and middle-income people will suffer greatly.

Mr. DUNCAN

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, today I have introduced a bill that calls for the United States Trade Representative to investigate whether any price control program governing medication in Mexico or Canada violates, or is inconsistent with, any trade agreement, denies benefits to the United States, or discriminates against or restricts United States commerce. As I travel around the Second Congressional District of Tennessee, one concern I hear about over and over again is the high cost of medications. Many seniors, in particular, often face a choice between things like medicine, food and heat. However, this problem is not isolated only to the elderly. All Americans face these steep prices. For example, single mothers and poor working families also have to buy medications. As a father, I cannot imagine anything worse than not being able to afford medicine for a sick child. As has been discussed many times, there are a lot of complex reasons that prices are so high, and it goes far beyond greedy manufacturers as some have suggested. Some new drugs can cost more than a billion dollars to bring to market. In exchange, these drugs have a profound impact on the health of Americans and hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Fundamentally, we need to find ways to reduce these development costs, as it is these costs that are passed on to consumers. Another great inequity in the pricing of these medications is that many countries, such as Canada and Mexico, have outrageous cost control laws. While these reduced costs may be sufficient to pay the price to physically produce a pill or medicine, they rarely take into account the phenomenal expenses that went into the development of the drug. These development costs are then shifted elsewhere to other consumers who end up paying outrageously high prices for the same medications. If manufacturers and researchers were ever completely stripped of the ability to recover these costs, the flow of new drugs would slow dramatically, if not end completely. Nevertheless, it is wrong that Americans are so often asked to pay the price for drugs that benefit all mankind. It is particularly frustrating to consumers when they see our neighbors to the North and South paying much lower prices for exactly the same drug. I believe that this situation needs to be examined and addressed and this bill helps begin the necessary steps. The United States can no longer afford to be burdened with research and development costs of drugs that are going into other countries. I urge my colleagues to support this bill and improve heathcare for all American consumers.

Mr. DUNCAN

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, people all over this Nation are seeing their gas prices and utility bills go way up. Well, they can thank the environmental extremists, who have stopped or delayed almost every type of production in this Nation. All over the country, small groups of elitist environmentalists protest every time anyone tries to drill for any oil, dig for any coal, cut any trees or produce any natural gas. This destroys jobs and drives up prices and really hurts the poor and working people the most. Most of these environmentalists seem to come from wealthy families, and perhaps they do not realize or care how much they are hurting lower income people. Their rules and regulations drive small businesses and small farms out of business, and thus help the extremely big businesses who fund them. But unless people want their gas and utility bills to go much, much higher, they had better start opposing the left wing socialism that is prevalent in much of the environmental movement today.

Mr. DUNCAN

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, today, I introduced legislation commending the American Football Coaches Association and Clear Channel Communications for their dedication and efforts to protect children. These two organizations teamed up to provide a vital means for locating the Nation's missing, kidnapped and runaway children. In 1997, the National Child Identification Program was created with the goal of fingerprinting 20 million children. This program provides a free fingerprint kit for parents. This ID Kit allows parents to take and store their child's fingerprints in their own home. This information then remains in the parents' possession. If it is ever needed, it gives authorities vital information to assist them in their efforts to locate a missing child. In the program's first year, over 2 million identification kits were handed out at college football games across the country. Since that time, over 8 million of these kits have been distributed to parents. This is the largest child identification effort ever conducted. Clear Channel Communications partnered with the American Football Coaches Association last September and has committed to raise millions of dollars to help provide a kit to every child in the country. Mr. Speaker, I think our Nation would be a much better place if more organizations would join together like these have to help the innocent children in this country. Through this legislation, I would like to commend these two organizations for their efforts, and I hope my colleagues will join me as cosponsors of this bill.

Mr. DUNCAN

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, a few days ago it was announced that California utility rates were going up 50 percent on top of an earlier 10 percent increase. Is this a sign of things to come for the rest of the Nation? Already people all over the country have seen their utility bills go up significantly in recent months. Also, a few days ago it was reported that OPEC has voted to cut oil production by a million barrels a day, and that our gas prices are going to greatly increase this summer. The Air Transport Association told me a few months ago that each 1 cent increase in jet fuel costs the aviation industry $200 million. Thus, if oil goes up even just a little more, airline tickets will have to go up, forcing huge numbers more onto our highways, which are hundreds of times more dangerous than flying. Who is responsible for all this? We can thank environmental extremists, who almost always seem to come from wealthy families, and who are not really hurt if prices go up on everything. In California they have protested and have kept any new power plants from being built for many years despite greatly increased demand produced by the Internet and population growth. All over this country, though, we have groups of environmentalists protesting any time anyone wants to dig for any coal, drill for any oil, cut any trees, or produce any natural gas. This has driven up prices for everything and has destroyed jobs and has hurt the poor and those on fixed incomes the most. It has hurt truckers and farmers, and has driven many of our manufacturing jobs to other countries. The current issue of Consumers' Research Magazine has an article entitled, ``Why Natural Gas Problems Loom,'' by an editorial writer for USA Today. Listen to parts of this article. ``The problem is that the same government pushing natural gas demand is also keeping vast stocks of it essentially bottled up underground through tight and sometimes absolute restrictions on what can be done on the land and sea above. Two hundred thirteen trillion cubic feet of natural gas are off limits to drillers, thanks to a vast web of regulations and moratoria on drilling. The reason for all this is simple,'' the article says. It says, ``Environmentalists and preservationists have long pressured government to restrict or ban drillers. President Clinton, shortly before leaving office, took still more supplies away through his national monument declarations.'' Some of these environmental groups, Sierra Club, Earth First, and others, have gone so far to the left that they make even Socialists look conservative. They are really hurting the working people by destroying so many good jobs and driving up prices at the same time. They tell former loggers and coal miners and others not to worry, that they can retrain them for jobs in the tourist industry; ecotourism. But who in his right mind wants to give up a $15- or $20-an-hour job for one paying barely above minimum wage, which is what most tourism jobs pay. These radicals hurt most the very people they claim to help, and help most the big corporations they claim to be against. In the late 1970s, we had 157 small coal companies in east Tennessee. Now we have five. What happened? Well, we had an office of the Federal Government, OSM, open up in Knoxville. First, they drove all the small companies out, then the medium-sized companies were next. Federal rules, regulations, and red tape hurt small businesses and small farms the most. Big government really helps only extremely big business and the bureaucrats who work for the government. Mr. Speaker, I chaired the Subcommittee on Aviation for 6 years. Environmental rules and regulations have caused runway and other airport projects to take sometimes 10 or even 20 years to complete, projects that could have been done in 2 or 3 years. This has caused the cost of air travel to be much higher than it would have been, and has caused many of the delayed flights we have today. When I talk about the higher utility bills and all the lost jobs that environmental extremists have caused, nothing could potentially cause more harm to working people and lower-income families than the Kyoto agreement. There are not words adequate enough to thank President Bush for his courage in stopping this economic disaster from hitting this Nation. Our economy started slowing dramatically last June, according to the Christian Science Monitor, a liberal newspaper. This was 7 months before President Bush took office. To enforce this Kyoto agreement at a time of economic slowdown would run the risk of putting us in near depression conditions. Yes, Mr. Speaker, when people see their utility bills shoot up, when gas prices go higher, when homes and every other product made from trees cost twice what they should, they can thank the environmentalists. We have made great progress over the last 25 or 30 years with our air and water, but some of these groups do not want people to hear good things about the environment because their contributions would dry up. The really sad thing, Mr. Speaker, is that this is all about big money. Poor and working people are being hurt so environmentalists can scare people and get more contributions. And companies which benefit if we import more oil, OPEC countries, shipping companies and others, contribute to these groups so we will have to import more products which are made from natural resources. It is really sad what environmentalists are doing to the poor and working people in this country.

Mr. DUNCAN

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, a couple of years ago, personal bankruptcies reached an all-time record of 1.4 million. Surprising to me, my own State of Tennessee led the way. Today personal bankruptcies are still running at a rate of over 1 million a year, and all of this has been occurring at a time when the economy has been very strong, at least until the last few months. People are drowning in a sea of debt, a sea of red ink, and most of this has come from credit card debt, people being seduced by the lure of easy credit. Easy credit and large debts have ruined millions of lives. Just think how many families are touched when you have 1.4 million personal bankruptcies. Most of these have been mature adults. What many of us are most concerned about, though, is what is happening to young people, that is why the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter) and I have introduced H.R. 184, the College Student Credit Card Protection Act, along with approximately 40 cosponsors. The ``USA Today'' on February 13th, last month, had an article that said, the headline is ``Debt smothers young Americans.'' Arianna Huffington, the columnist, wrote a column in ``The Washington Times'' recently, and she wrote this, how far credit card companies have gone was illustrated recently when a mother in Rochester, New York filled out an unsolicited application her 3-year-old daughter had received. She listed the child's occupation as preschooler. Under income, she wrote nothing. The toddler was promptly sent a Platinum Visa card with a $5,000 limit, which Arianna Huffington said, she, no doubt, quickly maxed out on Barbies and Pokemon toys. In the same column, Arianna Huffington said this, one study found that one in four college students carries credit card debt in excess of $3,000, and this debt is a gift that keeps on giving long after graduation. Sixty-two percent of Americans aged 22 to 33, the most of any age group, are saddled with credit-card debt, more than $2,000 worth on average. They also suffer the greatest anxiety over such debt, with nearly half saying it concerns them a lot. In a ``USA Today'' article, it said this, as a freshman at the University of Houston in 1995, Jennifer Massey signed up for a credit card and got a free T-shirt. A year later, she had piled up about $20,000 in debt on 14 credit cards. Paige Hall, 34, returned from her honeymoon in 1997 to find herself laid off from her job at a mortgage company in Atlanta. She was out of work for 4 months. She and her husband, Kevin, soon were trying to figure out how to pay $18,200 in bills from their wedding, honeymoon and furnishings for their new home. By the time Mistie Medendorp was 29, she had $10,000 in credit card debt and $12,000 in student loans. Robert Samuelson, the economic columnist for ``The Washington Post'' and ``Newsweek'' wrote a column a couple years ago talking about how many colleges lured students in very excessive student loan debts, telling them not to worry about the big increase in fees that these colleges had imposed many times increasing their fees at many times the rate of inflation, just saying do not worry, we will give you a student loan. So many students have been getting out of college with $25,000 and $50,000 and $57,000 worth of student loan debts and massive credit card debts in addition. It is just not right to start young people out or encourage young people to go so far into debt just as they are starting out. The ``USA Today'' story said this, it said young people are taking advantage of all of these credit card offers they are getting. A study from Nellie Mae shows that the average credit card debt among undergraduate students increased by nearly $1,000 in just the past 2 years. The percentage of undergraduate college students with a credit card jumped from 67 percent in 1998 to 78 percent last year, according to this, to the Nellie Mae study, and many of them are filling their wallets with credit cards. Last year, 32 percent said they had four or more cards. There was one cartoon I saw in the paper and it showed a young college student, a female college student in one panel showing a list of 18 credit card hours she was taking, and the next panel she is flipping out a thing that says, and she has 18 credit cards to go with it. ``The Washington Post'' ran a story and said W. Dyer Vest, a senior at Virginia Tech owns two T-shirts that he said cost him $2500. The shirts were ``free,'' actually as long as Vest signed up for two Visa cards at the table displaying in the campus center. Credit card in hand, he proceeded to update his wardrobe, outfit his girlfriend, eat well at restaurants and give generously well at Christmas. A year later, he owed $2500 to credit card companies and could not afford the minimum payments. He later dropped out of school for a semester. John Simpson, an administrator at the University of Indiana said this, he said ``credit cards are a terrible thing. We lose more students to credit card debt than to academic failure.'' Can you imagine that? An administrator at the University of Indiana saying that we lose more students to credit card debt than to academic failure? Robert Manning, a professor of economics at Georgetown University and author of the soon-to-be published book Credit Card Nation argues that giving children credit cards without limits is like handing them the keys to the family car with no restrictions.

Mr. DUNCAN

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has 264 million acres that it manages for the federal government. None of this land is national park or national forest land. The BLM has identified three million acres that it would like to sell, because it is not environmentally significant, surrounded by private land, difficult to manage, or isolated. Today, I have introduced the Federal Lands Improvement Act which will allow the sale of this land, with proceeds to go; one-third to the counties where the land is located for schools and other needs; one- third to the national debt; and one-third back to the BLM for environmental restoration projects on its remaining land. As I have already stated, this bill would not sell any national parks or wilderness areas. It only proposed to sell lands that have already been identified for disposal by the BLM. Currently, the federal government owns 30 percent of all the land in the United States. This is roughly 650 million acres. In comparison, the State of Tennessee is only 26 million acres total. It only makes sense that the federal government consolidate its holdings so that it can better manage those areas which are truly environmentally sensitive. I hope my Colleagues will join me by cosponsoring this legislation so that we can take a step forward in protecting our federal lands.

Mr. DUNCAN

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, a few days ago, I did a Special Order about a tax cut and how one can never satisfy government's appetite or demand for money. I said then that if we gave every department and agency double what they got the year before, they might be happy for a short time, but they would soon be back crying about a shortfall in funding. Everyone supports education, for example, and I certainly do. But you almost never hear the fact that education spending has gone up at a rate many times the rate of inflation over the last several years. But I want to expand today on something else that I mentioned in that special order of a few days ago, and that is government's appetite for land. Just as you can never satisfy government's appetite for money, you can never satisfy government's desire for land. They always want more, and they have been getting it at what people should realize is an alarming rate. Today, over 30 percent of the land in the United States is owned by the Federal Government. Another almost 20 percent is owned by State and local governments or quasi-governmental agencies. So today you have about half the land in some type of public or governmental ownership. The most alarming thing is the speed with which this government greed for land has grown over the past 30 years or 40 years. Another alarming aspect of this trend is the growing number of restrictions that government at all levels is putting on the land that does remain in private hands. A few years ago, the National Home Builders Association told me if there was strict enforcement of the wetlands rules and regulations, over 60 percent of the developable land would be off limits for homes. Now some who already have nice homes might think this would be good, to stop most development. But you cannot stop it, because the population keeps growing, and people have to have someplace to live. So what happens? When government keeps buying and restricting more and more land, it does two things: It drives up the costs and causes more and more people to be jammed closer and closer together. First, it drives up land and building costs so that many young or lower income families are priced out of the housing market, especially for new homes. Second, it forces developers to build on smaller and smaller postage- stamp-size lots or build townhouses or apartments. Do you ever wonder why subdivisions built in the 1950s or 1960s often have big yards and now new subdivisions do not, or why new homes that should cost $50 a square foot now cost $100 a square foot or more? It is in large part because government keeps buying or restricting so much land. This trend is causing more and more people to be jammed into smaller and smaller areas, increasing traffic, pollution, crime, and just an overall feeling of being overcrowded. It is sometimes referred to as the urban sprawl, and environmental extremists are attacking it because they know it is unpopular, but they are the very people who have caused it. Most of these environmental extremists come from very wealthy families, and they probably have nice homes already or even second homes in the country. But it is not fair and it is not right, Mr. Speaker, for the people who already have what they want to demand policies that drive up the costs and put an important part of the American dream out of reach for millions of younger or lower income people. Make no mistake about it, when government buys or restricts more and more land, it drives up the costs of the rest of the land. And this hurts poor and lower income and middle income people the most. Even those forced to live in apartments are hurt, because apartment developers have to pass their exorbitant land and regulatory costs on to their tenants. When government takes land, they almost always take it from poor or lower income people or small farmers. We have way too many industrial parks in this country today. States and local governments, which do almost nothing for older small businesses, will give almost anything to some big company to move from someplace else. Is it right for governments to take property for very little paid to small farmers and then give it to big foreign or multinational companies or even to big companies to develop resort areas for the wealthy? I do not think so. One of the most important things we need to do to insure future prosperity is to stop government at all levels from taking over more private property. Anyone who does not understand this should read a book called The Noblest Triumph, Property and Prosperity Through the Ages by Tom Bethell. The whole book is important, but a couple of brief excerpts: The Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman has said, ``You cannot have a free society without private property? Recent immigrants have been delighted to find you can buy property in the United States without paying bribes. The call for secure property rights in Third World countries today is not an attempt to help the rich. It is not the property of those who have access to Swiss bank accounts that needs to be protected. It is the small and insecure possessions of the poor. This key point was well understood by Pope Leo XIII who wrote that the fundamental principle of socialism, which would make all possessions public property, is to be utterly rejected because it injures the very ones whom it seeks to help.'' Over the years, when government has taken private property, it has most often taken it from lower and middle income people and small farmers. Today, federal, state and local governments, and quasi- governmental agencies now own about half the land in this Nation. The most disturbing thing is the rapid rate at which this taking has increased in the last 40 years. Environmentalists who have supported most of this should realize that the worst polluters in the world have been the socialist nations, because their economies do not generate enough income to do good things for the environment, and that private property is almost always better cared for than public property and at a much lower cost.

Mr. DUNCAN

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, former President Clinton promised us we would be out of Bosnia by the end of 1996. We are still there and have spent billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in the process. We have spent billions more in Haiti, Rwanda, Somalia, Kosovo and many other places. We have become the world's policeman, even though our people do not want us to be. There are armed conflicts going on in many places all around the world all the time. We seem to follow a CNN foreign policy, throwing huge money at whichever problem area is being emphasized on the national news. Macedonia is next. We are spending $4 million every day in Iraq 10 years after the Gulf War. In Sunday's Washington Times, syndicated columnist Steve Chapman wrote this: Remember the war in Kosovo? The United States launched an 11-week aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999 to help the ethnic Albanians. Two years later, our soldiers are fighting the Albanians and welcoming help from the Serbs. In the Balkans, you see, a friend is merely someone who isn't your enemy just yet.