Jim Moran

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. MORAN. It's possible if the language was more specific, we wouldn't have quite the trouble with it.

Mr. MORAN. Thank you. You have this deep-seated concern about why we did not ask for a vote; so I can clarify that. The reason is we were overwhelmed with more than 40 amendments and we were trying to look to the welfare of the rest of the committee. There's only so many of these issues that you can call a recorded vote on, so we tried to be reasonable.

Mr. MORAN. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. MORAN. I move to strike the last word.

Mr. MORAN. My only observation is it's ironic that the majority doesn't seem to trust anything that Secretary Salazar does, except if it involves the delisting of wolves. This rider does undercut the public's right to petition a Federal court to review an agency's decision. So, we're establishing a precedent here with regard to wolves. It blocks the court's ability to carry out its customary authority to review executive branch decisions. That's the way the system's supposed to work. The executive branch makes a determination and, in our system, if there are individuals or organizations that don't agree, they have recourse to the judicial system. This says, no, we're going to suspend that part of the Constitution. No, you don't, you can't go to the courts. The executive branch is inviolate here. They make a decision, that's it. Permanent. We like Secretary Salazar, and we support Secretary Salazar far more consistently than the majority does, if the majority supports him on anything. But we don't really see why we need to suspend the constitutional process in this particular specific unique circumstance. So I would support the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. MORAN. I simply rise to associate myself with the very thoughtful, insightful comments of the gentleman from Idaho, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. We agree. The amendment should be defeated. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MORAN. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Some on the other side may be thinking, well, what's a guy from a heavily residential suburban area in the Washington area and with no cattle in his district know? So I would have thought this would have been a perfectly fine amendment: What do you need to have restrictions for livestock moving from one place to another? But upon further investigation, what is not immediately apparent becomes very important. As the gentleman has said, we're talking about very wide swaths of land that are covered by these livestock movements, and they don't just take a few hours or a few days to cross. Sometimes they can take weeks. When you've got very large herds of cattle, you can cause quite a bit destruction to the soil, to the brush, to waterways, to any number of environmental resources in the process of major transfers from one area to another of very large herds of cattle. There can be very substantial environmental destruction. That's why those who are involved in this feel there ought to be a NEPA review. The National Environmental Policy Act will review it, it will tell us what the ramifications will be, what are the consequences, and then based upon that information it empowers those who have land or interests that would be adversely affected by large movements of cattle from one place to another. That's why the NEPA review has an appropriate place and role to play in this, and that's why I think the gentleman's amendment makes a lot of sense and I would support it.

Mr. MORAN. Reclaiming my time, the language is clear it applies to all waters, not just navigable waters.

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

Mr. MORAN. Well, first of all, I would like to ask my good friend: Why is this not an earmark? Why is this not an earmark for one particular national preserve? While we are considering that, perhaps Mr. Young can come up with an explanation. And I share the ranking member's great affection for Mr. Young. He is a good friend. But this also creates a precedent. Any time something happens on a national preserve or park land, they could come to the Congress and say, all right, no more inspections, and we could get a proliferation of these kinds of things specific to individual national reserves or parks. The fact is that if the Park Service has jurisdiction, then they have responsibility. And I'll bet you anything that if we were to say there were to be no boat inspections, something's going to happen and some serious accident is going to occur, and then people are going to ask why in gosh name wasn't the Park Service there to do inspections? And it's going to go back to this, where we set a precedent of not allowing any boat inspection or safety check.

Mr. MORAN. I thank the gentleman. Not surprisingly, I fully agree with the gentleman that this language again is inappropriate in here. It's punitive. It requires excessive record-keeping, and ironically, because normally we are getting complaints there is too much record- keeping. Well, now what we do is we're requiring in this bill even more detailed records that are not now required. It is going to expand the bureaucracy. They have to provide quarterly reports on any oil and gas permit or plan that wasn't approved by the agency. So in other words, the intention is to discourage the agency from not approving anything even if they feel that the oil and gas drilling operation might not be a safe one, that they don't have the requisite rules in place to prevent a Deepwater Horizon tragedy. It says for each such document that the bureau receives, they have to provide the date the document was returned to the applicant, the date the document is treated by the bureau, and the date of final agency action, and on and on. More and more records that are not necessary. We know what the intent of this is. It's to tell BOEMRE, the new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement, it's in your interest to just speed these along. Don't hold up any of these permits because if you do, you're going to have this very burdensome requirement on you. Here it's 16 months after Deepwater Horizon, and the Congress hasn't enacted a single significant safety reform. And the majority wants us to return to the good old days of very lax reviews, quick approvals of every oil and gas permit and plan. And if you don't, we're going to impose this very burdensome requirement on BOEMRE. That's just not in the interest of safety. It works against our resolve not to let a Deepwater Horizon tragedy occur again. I'm using this acronym BOEMRE. For those who don't know what it means, it's the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. It's the new agency that was set up to prevent any future Deepwater Horizon tragedies. So here we're seeing language that is intended to mitigate against BOEMRE being able to do its job. I strongly support the intention of the ranking member of the full committee in striking this burdensome language.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I simply rise to ask if we could see the amendment. It's pretty difficult to address it until we actually see the amendment.

Mr. MORAN. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. MORAN. I move to strike the last word.

Mr. MORAN. I was happy to yield. Reclaiming my time, it just seems to me that more information, accurate information, should not be a threat. Isn't it appropriate to let the public know--in fact, to let lawmakers know who might need to respond--how lethal is the pollution? How substantial is the pollution? What's the composition of the pollution coming from the very largest polluters? What are we doing to our people? What are we doing to our environment? What are the sources of much of the billions of dollars that we're spending in health care, twice as much as any other country spends on a per capita basis? So all we're trying to do here is to have a registry--information. That ought not be threatening. This amendment should be defeated. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MORAN. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would eliminate the ENERGY STAR program, even though a great many American consumers rely on it to choose appliances that meet Federal energy efficiency standards, such as windows, refrigerators, dishwashers, and clothes washers. The program has improved since an Inspector General report highlighted flaws with the program. In response to the IG's report, ENERGY STAR moved away from allowing manufacturers to self-certify that they comply with efficiency standards, and now it requires third-party certifiers. Well, I'm sure there's room left for further improvement in the program. As the gentleman from Louisiana has stated, many, many consumers have come to rely on this program in their everyday purchases and would, frankly, be stunned to think that this program is now being targeted. Americans, with the help of ENERGY STAR, saved nearly $18 billion on their utility bills last year alone and enough energy to avoid greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from 33 million cars. Isn't that a good thing? This is a voluntary program that works. We've heard so much railing coming particularly from the other side about EPA's regulations, and now the majority wants to attack a voluntary pro-consumer program. The underlying bill already contains a very substantial cut to the ENERGY STAR program, notwithstanding the fact that it has saved hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars and has enabled consumers to be much better informed as to what their appliances might cost them in terms of energy requirements. But the ENERGY STAR program has been funded in this bill at the 2008 level, 4 years ago. Since then, the population has expanded, the number of appliances and things that use a great deal of electricity, particularly computers, has expanded almost geometrically. People's bills are going up. They want to know what are the most energy- efficient products, so they rely upon the ENERGY STAR program, again, a voluntary program and one that has been improved since the IG report. They have third-party certification now as to what they are saying so that we should have some confidence now in the ENERGY STAR imprimatur, if you will, on appliances. It doesn't seem that this is the kind of thing that we should be cutting. This is a pro-consumer, voluntary effort that works. So I strongly oppose this amendment.

Mr. MORAN. Reclaiming my time, I would say to the gentleman, we have things like the Better Business Bureau which, frankly, doesn't have that kind of certification. Almost anybody can get designations. Sometimes it's helpful. Other times it's less so. I think the American consumer wants some level of credibility in the organization that is certifying that an appliance is energy efficient. The Energy Star designation means something. And if this was self- policing, done completely in the private sector, you wouldn't have had an Inspector General report. You wouldn't have had this corrective mechanism that now says, you've got to fix this. You can't rely completely upon self-certification, which is exactly what you'd have under the private sector.

Mr. MORAN. I thank the Chair. I think a number of very good questions have been raised by the ranking member of the full committee--Appropriations Committee--and we are concerned about this precedent. We're also concerned about the safety of people who use this national preserve. We can understand Mr. Young's angst, but nevertheless we have a responsibility not to establish precedent that may come back to haunt us. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I agree with the distinguished Member from California. I know my colleague--and she's more than a colleague, a friend--is very passionate about this program, and it has a sweet acronym, DERA. As I said during the H.R. 1 debate, the diesel emissions program is a good program. That's not the issue. Right now, with regard to this amendment, the issue is whether or not we should be raiding other EPA accounts to give this diesel program even more funding than it actually has already gotten in this bill. Chairman Simpson funded the diesel program at $30 million, even though President Obama requested nothing for it. Now this amendment would add a mere $5 million, but it would take $10 million from EPA's buildings to pay for it. It may be politically attractive to take from a buildings account, until you know what it funds. The following facilities would have to give up funding to add this $5 million to the diesel program: the Ann Arbor, Michigan, national vehicle and fuel emissions lab; the Andrew Breidenbach environmental research center in Cincinnati, Ohio; the Region 9 office in San Francisco; the Research Triangle Park main laboratory in North Carolina. In that regard, the project in 2012 needs to be funded so we can save future lease costs that would be in jeopardy if we were to take this money away from the Research Triangle Park lab. The Narragansett, Rhode Island, research lab would be cut, and the air and radiation lab in Montgomery, Alabama. All of these facilities have requests in this fiscal year 2012 budget for needed facilities improvements. To cut those in order to increase a program that was already plussed up $30 million above the request doesn't seem to me to be the right thing to do. In addition, we have an amendment filed from another Member--and I see her here so I suspect it's going to come up right now--to take away the $30 million that's already in the bill. I would hope my good friend would stick around to strike the last word and address this amendment that would zero out the diesel program. I don't want to zero it out, but neither do I want to zero out money for six important EPA facilities. So I hope the supporters of the diesel program will stick around, will defend it against its elimination, which is an amendment that's coming up very soon, but right now it seems to me that the wisest thing to do is to try to protect the $30 million that's already in the program, which is $30 million more than the President requested. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MORAN. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.

Mr. MORAN. I would be happy to yield to the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee.

Jim Moran

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