George Miller

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. That is the people running this program. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I appreciate what you are saying. You have taken the National Biological Survey, you have put it into the science function of USGS.

Mr. MILLER of California. In the transfer, somebody lost $50 million, and in the transfer they lost the right to all the volunteers, and in the transfer they lost the right of these thousands of citizens to participate with Fish and Wildlife or any other agency who are relying on these; yes, they were relying on the Biological Survey. The programs have now been abolished and transferred.

Mr. MILLER of California. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. MILLER of California. You are getting bad information. Here is program after program in our State and other States.

Mr. MILLER of California. They are in fact using the volunteers. Here it is. You still have not told me why you would ban this group of Americans from participating with the Government like hundreds of thousands of other Americans getting to participate on a voluntary basis. The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Regula] says if he goes into the hospital, he does not want a volunteer doing the work.

Mr. MILLER of California. When the doctor gets to taking your urine sample, who is going to carry it down the hall? Do you want to pay the surgeon's rates, or would you like to have somebody else help out the surgeon?

Mr. MILLER of California. Reclaiming my time, the point is this: As already stated, you can have people who have their Ph.D.'s, who have a Nobel Prize, and they cannot volunteer in the science part of USGS under this bill. There are no exceptions. Now, even though they cannot get onto the land that you are concerned about, and we are all concerned about, without the owners' invitation, and I suspect he would ask are you going to have 50 grade school children running around my land, or are you going to have some serious scientists conducting this study, then he would decide whether or not he or she would extend that invitation. You have all those built-in safeguards. Somehow we are not going to let highly qualified, talented people who happen to want to volunteer in one little piece of the Federal Government, and I still have not heard the reason why. I think we ought to strike this provision. Amendment offered by Mr. Gilchrest as a substitute for the amendment offered by Mr. Regula

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I object.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I object.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, the supporters of banning American citizens from volunteering for the USGS are simply not being candid with the Members of this House. They say that the volunteers may be biased. Does that mean that people who they want to volunteer for the migratory bird count are not biased? Are the environmentalists who go out and count for migratory bird count, are they undercounting the birds so the shooting limit will be less? Are the gunners who go out and count for the migratory bird count, are they overcounting the birds so the limits will be higher, the seasons will be longer. You trust those people. But you do not trust the Boy Scouts who gave 1,000 hours in Wisconsin. You do not trust 32 veterinary students who volunteered the time of three full-time employees to do autopsies on animals. You do not trust them. The gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham] comes down here and talks about some conspiracy of bias, and he is sponsoring legislation and pushing for legislation to let us accept science from industry. Something is going on here. What is going on here is a very, very extreme agenda about taking American citizens who are interested in the environment out of the equation. This amendment now says you must be qualified and supervised, you cannot go on to private land without the invitation of the owner. So it is not a property rights issue. It is not a competency issue. It is an extreme radical right-wing agenda about taking American citizens out of one part, one small part of the environmental movement, one small part of data gathering for the entire Federal Government. Under the bill as written, it does not matter, as I said, if you have a Nobel laureate; you cannot gather this information. You cannot gather this information. Graduate students cannot gather this information. There is something terribly wrong here, because they are talking all around the amendment, but they will not talk to the amendment. We look out here at the Patuxent environmental science group; 849 volunteers provide the information. They gather if for the scientists who put it to peer review. We are not going to allow them to do that under this legislation. The thousands of people that go on the Fourth of July butterfly count, the butterfly count across this Nation on the Fourth of July could not turn in their information to the USGS. The Christmas bird count, thousands and thousands of your citizens who go out every year could not turn in their information to the USGS under this amendment. Is that really what you want to do? Do you want to single out the Boy Scouts, the Nobel laureates, the Fourth of July butterfly count, the Christmas bird count? I do not think that is what you want to do. What you really are trying to do is strangle, strangle our ability to gather information that has an impact on our ability to manage habitat, to manage species and try to help private citizens, governmental agencies, and corporate America make decisions about the use of their lands, the sustainability of their profit-making use of the land and the environmental use of that land. And somehow this is what you have done. You have decided that you are going to take tens of thousands of Americans who are qualified, who are carrying out the best tradition of volunteerism. You do not like AmeriCorps. You do not like them if they are paid. And now you do not like them if they are volunteers. It is simply not fair to these Americans. It is simply not fair to our constituents.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, this amendment should be supported by all Members who care about our national parks, national wildlife refuges, national forests and public lands. This is an amendment that should be supported by those who care about our parks and outdoor recreation opportunities in our urban areas. No doubt about it, this amendment directly benefits people in every congressional district in this country. The land and water conservation fund is one of the most popular and successful programs that our government has run. Funded by a portion of [[Page H 6971]] the oil and gas revenues generated from leasing Federal lands on the Outer Continental Shelf, the land and water conservation fund helps to meet the increasingly heavy demand for hunting, fishing, and recreation areas, protects outstanding resources, and preserves the Nation's natural and historical heritage. In addition to Federal land acquisitions, the fund provides for direct grants to States for parks, open space and outdoor recreational facilities. Since 1965, over 37,000 State and local grants have been awarded, totaling $3.2 billion. The States and localities have matched this amount dollar for dollar to acquire $2.3 million acres of park land and open space and to develop more than 24,000 recreation sites. In fiscal 1996 there will be $11 billion in this trust fund, yet unappropriated for a lot of political reasons, but unfortunately the short fund, the recreational needs of this country. My amendment would fund the Land and Water Conservation Program at the same levels that Congress appropriated in fiscal year 1995. In addition, my amendment provides for $5 million to fund the Urban Parks and Recreation Recovery Program. The current bill provides no funding for this program. My amendment would provide an increase of $183 million over the $51 million which is provided in the bill as reported by the Committee on Appropriations. The increased funds for land and water conservation provided in this amendment are offset by a corresponding $183 million reduction in the Department of Energy's fossil energy research and development fund. It is true that the budget resolution which Congress has adopted calls for a 7-year freeze on Federal land acquisitions, but I would remind my colleagues that this House also had voted to abolish the Department of Energy, and yet the bill before us today would provide Department of Energy funding for fossil fuel research to the tune of $384 million. It is my understanding that this research appropriation greatly in excess of the $220 million level which the Committee on Science has authorized in H.R. 1816. By contrast, my amendment would bring the DOE spending within the Committee on Science limits by allowing $195 million for DOE's fossil research programs. This amendment presents a very real question of priorities. In my view, the national wildlife refuges, the national forests, the public lands and the urban park areas outweigh the need for the excessive and above the level the Committee on Science recommends for spending on DOE research for coal, oil and gas, research which can and should be done by those industries without these Federal subsidies. Finally, Mr. Chairman, I think the amendment ought to be considered in the context of the debate on the Endangered Species Act and the private property rights. Members recently have received a July 10 ``Dear Colleague'' on the recent ``Sweet Home'' Supreme Court decision on the Endangered Species Act. In that ``Dear Colleague,'' the gentleman from Alaska, the chairman of our committee, and five other Members state that if we are to have wildlife refuges and sanctuaries, we should go back to the right way of obtaining them, buy them or pay them for the use of the land for refuges. We will debate the merits of the Endangered Species Act at length when that legislation is reported to the floor. But what we must understand, that Members cannot continue to claim that they think the right way to provide for these lands is to pay for those private properties, which it is, and then not provide the money to do so when these lands are so important to helping our urban areas, our suburban areas and our rural areas meet the demands for recreation and for public space and to meet the needs of both endangered species and habitat. The Land and Water Conservation Fund has a priority list of lands that include bear habitat within the Kodiak National Refuge, the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife Refuge in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois; preserve the natural water flow patterns for the critical Everglades National Park in Florida; to promote the outdoor recreation of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail in Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York; to protect the historical integrity of the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania; to enhance the scenic and natural values of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in Los Angeles, the important national forests of the greater Yellowstone area in Montana; to help protect the salmon streams and the national forests in Oregon and Washington; and to provide resources to those urban areas who are trying to reclaim the recreational opportunities for their youth in cities throughout the country that are trying to bring back the streets, a very successful program where again local government has sought to participate far in excess of the moneys that are available, and without these moneys they simply will not be able to take care of those urban resources and to fully fund the backlog of acquisition and problems that we have. We have people who are inholders who want to get rid of their private lands, who want the Government to buy those lands. We have management problems created in some cases by those, but there is no money. This is the great backlog that we continue to discuss in this Congress where we continue to add to it. Hopefully we will not continue to add to it in the new Congress, but we ought to start getting rid of it out of fairness to those landholders and those people who are concerned about the integrity of our natural resource system. So those are the priorities. The Congress can choose, as this bill does, to force feed energy research in oil and gas and coal far beyond the recommendation of the Committee on Science, or we can take that excess force feeding of those moneys and apply them to very high- priority items throughout the entire country to protect and preserve the environment, to protect and preserve our national parks, to protect and preserve our national forests, and to expand and protect and preserve the recreational opportunities for our citizens in our inner cities and suburban communities and small towns across the country. That is the choice that this amendment presents. It is neutrally funded. It costs no more money than to force feed this energy research. I would hope my colleagues would choose their local community that is requesting these funds. I would hope they would choose their local counties. I would hope they would choose their local States and the gems of the natural resource system of this country, the national parks, the national wilderness, and the national refuge system of the United States.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Montana [Mr. Williams].

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Vento].

Mr. MILLER of California. I say to the gentleman, you know, you brought up the California desert. That was already Federal land. We changed the management structure from BLM to the National Park Service.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, this is about priorities. This budget resolution froze land acquisition. It also abolished the Department of Energy. One of the reasons it abolished the Department of Energy, I suspect, was we have already put $8 billion into this fossil fuel research, and we have gotten bupkiss out of it. We have gotten a huge debt out of it. Here is one of the wealthiest industries in the world who makes huge financial decisions about research, about exploration, about development and the hundreds of billions of dollars, and we are telling ourselves we believe in the marketplace, so to speak, but they are only $200 million of taxpayers' moneys away from a breakthrough. They could not do it on the first 8 billion, and actually it is far more than that. That is just the last 5 or 6 years, $200 million. So, I say to my colleagues, ``Choose the priority. You can choose land acquisition and protection for the national parks and the wildlife refuges, or you can choose to force-feed $200 million more than the Committee on Science tells you that they are prepared to see this organization spend, and this adds to the $8 billion you have tried to force-feed in terms of energy development.'' Now, you said abolish the Department of Energy. But apparently when it is gone, the subsidy to these corporate clients will continue to be left. So this is about priorities, this is about stark choices, and this is about decisions. When your constituents ask you why don't you run the government like a business, it is because you are feeding business $200 million they do not need, do not want, and do not find in their priorities. If this was a priority, they would be spending money on it. They are out in deep waters in the Gulf, they are in Russia, they are in the Middle East, they are in Kazakhstan, they are in China, and they are in Vietnam. And we are, like fools, sitting here saying, ``Oh, will you do some energy research in the United States of America?'' Let's choose the ecosystem of America. Let's choose the national parks. Let's choose the refuges, let's choose our urban park land, the families and recreation and the 300 million visitor days that will take place this summer, as we sit here and debate, by people who have chosen our national parks, chosen our seashores, chosen our refuges, chosen our national forests. Give them a hand. Give them a hand. Exxon, Chevron, Shell, Phillips, these boys, they will figure it out themselves. They always have. Vote for the Miller amendment.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I want to strongly support this amendment offered by the gentleman from Guam [Mr. Underwood] and again tell the House that this is neutral. He has taken the money that we have saved by closing--a portion of the money from OTIA, and it is a very important amendment, badly needed, and I hope the House will support it.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I just want to associate myself with the gentlewoman's remarks, and to thank her, because I think that we are picking up on a single issue over here which may have been in fact nothing more than a mistake, and trying to jeopardize the entire program for the Historic Trust. In fact, as the gentlewoman has pointed out, this has been a program that has been used and leveraged in our communities to save in many cases decaying parts of our community, which has brought new investments to our community, and has also preserved the Historic Trust of this Nation, the assets of this Nation, which we want to bring into the future for our children and grandchildren. I want to thank the gentlewoman for her support in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, what we are being asked to do here is to reduce the law enforcement capability of the Fish and Wildlife Service by limiting their ability to purchase vehicles that they have deemed and the committee has already passed on as being important to their law enforcement capabilities so we can take that money away and give half of it to pay attorney's fees. This is a law enforcement agency, or an agency that has law enforcement responsibilities to deal with poachers, to deal with people who traffic in illegal game and illegal protected mammals under the Marine Mammal Act and other such acts, airborne hunting acts, where people go out and illegally slaughter animals, and this is how they enforce the law. Now what we are going to do is decide to reduce that, so we can pay a bunch of attorneys half of that money to pay the people in Alaska, with no showing that that is necessary, and no showing that this need does not exist. However, here it is at quarter to 11 at night and we are going to make this decision. The Members would not do this to any other law enforcement agency in the country at quarter to 11 at night, but somehow they decide they can just dismiss the claims of these individuals, actually sworn officers, people out there enforcing the laws of the land, and decide they are just going to willy-nilly take away from them the necessary resources, and even deny them the ability to receive donated planes that they use in carrying out these activities on their behalf. Mr. Chairman, I think this is a poorly thought out amendment. As has already been determined, we do not have the information to make this decision, but they are giving the benefit of the doubt to the attorneys' fees over law enforcement agents for the Fish and Wildlife Service. I would hope Members would reject the amendment.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MILLER of California. I want to thank the gentleman for yielding. His State is exactly the kind of State that needs this acquisition because they are going through an incredible transition to try to hold onto one of the world's great resources, and to do so, they need the cooperation of farmers and cities and private landowners and homebuilders and others, and they have worked out a State plan. They have tried to patch this together so that they can protect the Florida Keys, they can protect the Everglades, and they can protect the economy in the northern end of that ecosystem. But they need help in land acquisition because people are willing to help but, as so many have said on both sides of the aisle, they want to be paid. They cannot just give away their families' assets. But those assets, in some cases, in central Florida and elsewhere, are farm lands that are productive but they are key if we are going to save Florida Bay, the Keys, and this great ecosystem. I really want to commend the gentleman and thank him.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentlewoman for offering this amendment to keep our commitment and our trust obligations, and to thank her and her colleagues, Mr. Obey and Mr. Richardson, for this amendment. I rise in support of it and hope the House will pass this amendment.

Mr. MILLER of California. This backlog, Catellus, is not in it. This backlog is not unique to the Democrats, because the majority on our Committee on Resources just reported out a $5 million new national park. I mean if we are really serious about no backlog and whittling down the backlog, let us whittle down the backlog. Let us not add to this. This is money the taxpayers have deposited in a trust fund that they believe that was going to be utilized to take care of whatever that valuable piece of property you described or some other ecosystem of the United States.