Doc Hastings

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Graves), one of the newer Members of our House and a very valuable member of our Republican Conference.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, this amendment consolidates 17 Democrat amendments and one Republican amendment. Inside this lengthy amendment are a number of significant changes to oil and gas policies, royalties, collections, and studies. That might be fine, but I am not aware that any of these provisions have been subject to hearings in our Committee on Natural Resources, and I think that we should certainly have a better understanding of the impacts before we pass this on the House floor. I want to point out two provisions in this amendment. There is one provision stripping biomass from the regulation from the bureau. Now this, I think, is a fine amendment, but I think it would have been better accomplished if we had simply made in order the Lummis amendment. The gentlelady from Wyoming had an amendment to take out all of the language on onshore activity. That would have been a much, much better way to do it, especially in light of the fact that the administration in this regard says that, and I quote, It would be most effective if this reorganization focused exclusively on the OCS at this time, end quote. But, of course, that wasn't done. So this is, I suppose, a small victory. The second, however, is a much more insidious amendment that includes a cumulative impact of oil and gas on marine mammals. Now I don't know exactly--and I don't think anybody really knows--how to measure what those impacts are, plus or minus, good or bad. I think it would be good for us, from the standpoint of making policy, to know the full impact of that. And, really, the only way you can know the full impact of that is to have hearings on this subject. To my knowledge, we have not had any hearings on that. So all in all, I would say, Mr. Chairman, this seems to be a pattern that we see on a regular basis on this floor where there are amendments--we saw this earlier today. We saw a whole bill, for example, brought to the floor today that was introduced literally minutes before it was debated. That is not the way the American people think we ought to do business here. We ought to look at these things in a way that we can make the proper decisions. And these two issues that I highlight in this manager's amendment, in my view, fall within that category. So I am disappointed in the way this is being done, probably more than what is the content of the manager's amendment. Therefore, I am left only to oppose the manager's amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition, although I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Reclaiming my time, which I don't have, I appreciate the gentleman's trying to help me through this. I still urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I have no problem with this amendment. From the beginning we have said that the first priority is stopping the leak, cleaning up the gulf, and making the communities and the people of the gulf States whole, and BP needs to be held accountable for this disaster. Having said that, we need to be cognizant that our actions taken here or the actions of the administration do not in and of themselves jeopardize American jobs and domestic energy production. Part of holding BP accountable in this case, should BP America file for bankruptcy, is to ensure that the parent company that shares in the profits cover whatever debts that may not be covered by BP America. That is what this amendment does, and I am pleased to join my support for this. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I object.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentleman's trying to clarify that. I have to say, in my reading of this, that this will lend itself to more acquisition, and I will simply say this, reading the language here, ``provides a substantially greater likelihood of improving the resilience of whatever is lost.'' Now, having said that, let me put this analogous to at least my part of the country as it relates to refuges. If a refuge burns in my area and it might damage something, the way I envision the interpretation of this is the refuge manager can say, boy, this is irreparably lost and there might be some private land right next door, I think I will buy that private land. Now, in due respect, that is the way I interpret it. Listen, I hope I'm wrong and I hope you're right, but I have a very strong wariness of any attempt--especially in a bill, I say to my friend, the Transportation chairman, especially when we are authorizing $30 billion of land acquisition. Surely, surely there must be a way to massage that to satisfy at least what the gentleman's amendment purports to do. But I have to say, for this Member, I am always weary when I see we are taking another fund and using that to acquire even an extension of Federal lands.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise).

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I yield myself the balance of my time. I simply make the point that, yes, I understand these dollars come from the affected party. But if it gets into the Federal Government Treasury, then the Federal Government is the government of the people, it becomes taxpayer dollars. That's the only point I am making. I support the amendment. I think it makes perfectly good sense. It has broad support of those Members that are affected by this spill. But I just wanted to simply make that point, probably more to emphasize than anything else that BP is truly responsible for this, and we all recognize that. I urge support of the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would establish a new fine on spills larger than 1 million barrels, and has a retroactive date of April 1, 2010. Now, I won't debate the fact that making this fine retroactive means that it will likely face a constitutional challenge. But I will debate the fact that once fines are paid by violators to the Federal Government, that money becomes taxpayer money. If we then spend that money on gulf restoration to clean up the mess caused by BP, we would be spending taxpayer dollars to clean up the BP spill. Mr. Chairman, the taxpayers should not be on the hook for the cleanup of the BP disaster. If there are projects in the gulf that demand restoration because of damage from the spill, then BP must be held accountable. If the gentleman has projects that demand greater attention, then I offer to work with him, just as I am working with other members of our committee from Louisiana, to ensure that the Federal oversight gets the gulf cleaned up and the gulf made whole. But I reject the premise that we must use taxpayer dollars to clean up the mess made by BP. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time in opposition, though I'm not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, our main purpose here today is supposed to be, as I've said several times, to be addressing the gulf oil spill and ensuring that offshore drilling is the safest in the world. Unfortunately, as I have mentioned again many times, the Democrats have used this vehicle to put extraneous material on this particular bill. One of the most glaring unrelated items that I had mentioned several times, also, is the $30 billion in new mandatory spending. An oil spill is not an excuse to spend more money, especially when the money is going towards provisions that are completely unrelated to the gulf oil spill. Regardless of your views of the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Historic Preservation Fund--and I know I would probably disagree if it were my friend from Wisconsin on that--everyone should agree that that bill has no business being here in this particular bill. However, I fully support our Nation's sportsmen and would like to see more of our public land open for a variety of purposes such as hunting, fishing, recreation, and economic development. Given that the Democrat majority and the Obama administration continually are looking for ways to lock up our land and block public access, it's encouraging to me to see some of my colleagues across the aisle supporting increased access, and I thank the gentleman for that. I hope that we will work with this in the future to ensure that all Americans, including sportsmen, have greater access to public lands. However, as I had mentioned, this bill is not the appropriate vehicle to address this issue. I think we can do it in a much more ordered way if we take this up on its own, because there is some merit to the gentleman's proposal. But I will not stand in the way of this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, let's be pretty specific on what this particular fund is all about, and I will explain why I think it is a very, very bad idea. The fundamental goal of the Natural Resources Damages Act, that's the fund we are talking about, is to ensure the protection and restoration of all resources on Federal lands, water and land. This includes restoration of damages caused by fires, invasive species, oil spills, ship groundings and vandalism. What this amendment attempts to do is to shift funds from the restoration of our national parks and national wildlife refuges to the purchase of nonimpacted land. Now, Mr. Chairman, I just find this amendment ironic. Since the legislation, the underlying legislation that we are debating, already mandates--let me emphasize that, Mr. Chairman, mandates--up to $30 billion, with a ``B,'' dollars to spend on land acquisition for the next 30 years, why do we need this amendment? Why, for goodness sakes, will we take a fund, the Natural Resources Damages Fund, if you will, and say, okay, now you can use that for land acquisition. Is $30 billion not enough? Is $30 billion not enough? Let me put it in a different way, Mr. Chairman. One of the issues that we have in our country with public lands is a maintenance backlog. This is analogous to maintenance backlog. We talk about we haven't got enough money to maintain our natural resources. In fact, that figure, last I heard it, was $9 billion. Here is a fund that is, in part, part of the restoration and one could say maintenance of our Federal lands, and we want to take money away from that and acquire more land. What is the goal here? Is the goal here to increase the $9 billion to 10, 11? Who knows how high we can't maintain. Is there not enough? This amendment, in my view, ought to be defeated. It's not well intentioned at all. It has taken another tragedy, using the tragedy of the Gulf of Mexico and simply saying, aha, another opportunity to take a fund and buy more Federal land. This doesn't make any sense at all to me, Mr. Chairman. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.'' I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I understand I have the right to close, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. We are more than happy to accept it on our side.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Could I inquire how much time I have?

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Chairman, before I yield to the gentleman from California, I would just like to tell my friend, the chairman of the Transportation Committee, that the taxes that I referred to are on page 224 of the bill. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock).