Richard Pombo

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding and I thank the gentleman for cosponsoring this amendment. We have heard a lot of things about this amendment, most of which have absolutely nothing to do with this amendment. What this is all about is the Federal acquisition of new land. It has nothing to do with Yosemite or Yellowstone or the Grand Tetons or any of the other stuff. They are already federally owned. The Federal Government already has those. This map will probably be shown quite often tonight. This is Federal ownership of land. Everything we see colored on here is Federal ownership of land. What this amendment says, quite frankly, is the Federal Government already owns enough land. They do not need to buy more. Now, everybody that is coming down here tonight is talking about all the great things this bill is going to do. We heard people one right after another coming down. They are talking about their urban parks, they are talking about protecting their wetlands, they are talking about doing things so that their States can buy land. They are talking about all of these things. Well, I say to my colleagues, that is what this amendment puts more money into. It puts more money into urban parks, it puts more money into our endangered species recovery. It puts more money into protecting farmland. All of the things my colleagues have been talking about. All I am saying is the Federal Government owns enough land. Now, if there is something that is that important, if there is something that we really need to buy, then sell something and buy it. The Federal Government owns 700 million acres of this country already. All of that is not environmentally sensitive. All of that is not important to be held in public trust. They can sell some of it and buy something, if they want to. But if Members really do care about urban parks, about protecting farmland, about protecting endangered species and doing endangered species recovery programs, this gives more money, $450 million a year in more money for the things they say they want. That is why they are supporting this bill. Nobody has the courage to come down here and say they think the Federal government ought to own more land. They own one-third of this country already. They own too much already. Members know that. Members know they own too much already. Talk about State ownership, in the 13 Western States alone, the States own 142 million acres, besides the literally hundreds of millions of acres that the Federal government owns. In my State of California, the government owns over half of the State. Everybody thinks California is this developed, packed State. Over half of the State is owned by the government, over half of it. When we talk about government ownership, do Members realize that the 700 million acres that the government owns, that the Federal government owns, that half of that is held with some kind of conservation easement? It is held as National Park Service land, as wildlife refuge, as wilderness area. Three hundred fifty million acres is already held with a conservation easement on it. How much do they want? They say they are in favor of this bill because of all the great things it does. We do not take a dime away from any of that. What we are saying is, the Federal government owns enough land. If Members really want to protect urban parks, really want to put money into protecting farmlands, really want to put money into protecting endangered species, this is the amendment that does it. This is the one Members have to support.

Mr. POMBO. Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Manzullo).

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula). (Mr. REGULA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons). (Mr. GIBBONS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask my colleague from California to use some of his time.

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Gary Miller). (Mr. GARY MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. POMBO. May I inquire of the Chairman as to the time remaining?

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Doolittle). (Mr. DOOLITTLE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. POMBO. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).

Mr. POMBO. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the time. Madam Chairman, this amendment is very simple. It says that none of the money within this act can be used for the establishment of monuments under the Antiquities Act. Now, I agree with the chairman of the committee that this legislation does not deal directly with that, but the reason that this is so important, I think, has been proven time and time again over the past 8 years, when the administration has found it inconvenient or not enough money has gone into the areas that they wanted, they turned around and they took money from other places, as the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) is very aware, when it came to Pittman-Robertson money, if they did not have money for the projects they wanted, they just took it out of Pittman-Robertson. What I am afraid of is that under this act, when $3 billion a year is thrown out and we let them spend it on whatever they want, it may become convenient for them to establish a new monument and then not have the money for it and just take it from here, because there is really not enough sideboards, oversight on this particular spending. What the gentlewoman from Idaho (Mrs. Chenoweth-Hage) is trying to do is she is trying to rein in the administration. She is trying to rein in the executive branch. She is trying to pull them back and say, no, it cannot be done unless Congress specifically authorizes it. I believe this is a very important amendment, and there may be those that sluff it off and say that this does not deal with the Antiquities Act, that this underlying legislation does not deal with monuments, but there is not enough oversight within the legislation to stop them from spending the money on things that they want. I support the gentlewoman's amendment wholeheartedly. I think it is an important amendment, and I think that it should be added on to the bill.

Mr. POMBO. Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This is an extremely important amendment. I think it cuts to the heart of a lot of what is wrong and what is broken with our current land management system at the Federal level in this country. This amendment speaks to when the Federal Government goes into an area by action of this bill, by taking money that is appropriated under this bill and authorized under this bill, and buys one piece of land. And I held this up a little earlier. It is a map of Federal land ownership in this country. And we can see throughout the West most of it is owned by the Federal Government right now. But let us say that they went just outside of this, take Texas as an example, or Louisiana, or any of the States that have very little Federal land, and let us say that they drew on the map a little circle and said we want this to someday be a wildlife refuge, and they buy one little piece of land. Well, what this amendment says is that if they do not own it, they do not control it. Under current law, under current practice, under current interpretation of the morass of laws that are currently on the books, the Federal Government, just because it draws something on a map, they have not paid for it, they have not exchanged money, they have not paid the rightful property owner anything, all they have done is they have gone in and drawn something on a map, what this amendment says is that they do not control it, then. It is very simple. Now, I know most Members of the House, most people in this country believe that, well, the Federal Government cannot control it. The Federal Government cannot put special restrictions on one property owner that it cannot put on another just because some bureaucrat sitting in an office in Washington, D.C. drew a line on a map. But the truth of the matter is they can, and they literally have hundreds of rules and regulations on the books that come down on the head of the poor unfortunate property owner who happens to be inside the line instead of outside the line. What this amendment quite simply says, if they do not pay for it, they cannot control it. The Constitution states, ``nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.'' It says that if it is for the public good, a wildlife refuge, a national park, a wilderness area, or for something else that people support, they have to pay for it before they can take it. And what I am trying to do is to protect those property owners, the unfortunate property owners, who happen to fall inside the line instead of outside the line. Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POMBO. Madam Chairman, may I inquire how much time remains.

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Chairman, here we go again. If this bill passes, all local zoning gets thrown out the window. Everything goes to hell in a handbasket. Well, I think it is time that maybe we talk a little bit about what the truth is. Why are we doing this? Currently they say that the developers, the local farmers, the small landowners, they have the ability to go to court if they want to challenge a local decision, and they do. According to a recent survey, judges avoided addressing the merits of Federal takings claims in over 94 percent of all takings cases litigated, 94 percent. So 94 percent of the people did not even get their claim heard because the judge, for one reason or another, decided not to judge on the merits of that case. So we are not talking about 100 percent of the time, we are not talking about a developer not winning 100 percent of the time. What we are talking about is 94 percent of the time the small family farmer, the small developer, the mom and pop guy, got thrown out of court and did not have access to their day in court. Another recent survey reveals that 83 percent of takings claims initially raised in the United States district courts from 1990 to 1998 never reached the merits, and when they did reach the merits, it took property owners an average of 9.6 years to have an appellate court reach its determination, 9.6 years before the court would give them a final decision. How many small property owners, how many mom and pop development companies, how many small farmers and ranchers, can afford to pay attorneys for almost 10 years, hundreds of thousands of dollars? Mr. Chairman, hundreds of thousands of dollars. What ends up happening, and this is why most of these cases are never settled in court, is because the property is not worth what the attorneys want to go to court with. There is a certain poll-tested wisdom out here that says if you bring up open space and drinking water and all the environmental things we all love, that that is the key to this. If we throw in pornography and liquor licenses as well, we might pull over a few more people. But the truth of the matter is that what this bill tries to do is guarantee access for the small property owners, the individuals that are out there that cannot have access under the current rules. There is absolutely nothing wrong with allowing them into Federal court on a civil rights case to test their fifth amendment rights, nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. What are they afraid of? Are they afraid they are going to tell them they cannot keep taking peoples' property? I think our Constitution guarantees that. The system does not allow them into court.

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Canady) for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, it is not a myth. It is a reality. What this bill is all about is protecting the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the individual and that is what we are trying to do. I was trying to follow along with this debate, and I ran across a letter that was sent out by a large fund-raising organization that masquerades as an environmental group known as the Sierra Club. One of the things that they point out in their letter is that a recent poll determined, so now that they have everybody's attention, that it would allow industry and developers to bypass local public health and land protections. It goes on to talk about waste dumps, incinerators, urban sprawl. It sounds very much like the argument for this amendment and against the bill. The truth of the matter is, there is nothing in this bill that in any way takes over local land-use control. That is just a scare tactic that they are trying to throw up that has nothing to do with this bill. What this bill is about is protecting the individuals' constitutionally guaranteed private property rights, and that is what scares the hell out of the proponents of this amendment.

Mr. POMBO

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

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this legislation, and I would also like to thank my colleague, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte), for all of his hard work in putting together such a strong bill that enjoys wide bipartisan support. This legislation also enjoys the support of the National Forest Counties and Schools Coalition, which represents 800 rural counties, 5,000 school districts and 1.2 million school children and includes an impressive and diverse array of interest groups representing education, labor unions, forest products, State and local governments and farm groups. This bill will accomplish several important goals. First and foremost, it will stabilize the revenue sharing payments made by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to counties with Federal lands. It will help local governments and school districts restore the quality of education provided to the school children. It will provide temporary relief to counties and school districts by authorizing a reliable and predictable level of payments. These payments will have the added advantage of neither encouraging the long- term reliance on appropriations nor discouraging the management of Federal lands in a manner that will generate revenues. Lastly, it will facilitate the development of a long-term method of providing payments to States and counties by the Federal Government. Mr. Chairman, this legislation will ensure that we continue to honor the commitment that we established with rural counties and schools; a commitment that dates back to 1908 when our National Forests were formed. In addition to helping reverse the 10-year decline in forest reserve funds, it will allow counties and schools to restore many important school functions, such as hiring more teachers, reestablishing music and art programs, providing student transportation and purchasing library books. And, it treats all 800 counties that rely on National Forests very equitably. This bill is incredibly important for the 1.2 million school children in rural forest-dependent counties, to help ensure that these children have the same quality of schools and education as other students do. Finally, Mr. Chairman, I would note that this bill is a piece of win- win legislation of legislation for the forests, for the communities which depend on forests, and for the hard-working families that make up these communities. It authorizes forest improvement projects that will stimulate local economic growth while promoting forest improvements and it sets up a panel designed to help all of us look for the most effective ways of fostering and preserving this long-term relationship for the future.

Mr. POMBO. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Madam Chairman, the opponents of this legislation, the supporters of this amendment, have raised two objections to this legislation, two areas of objections. First is the downlink issue, and I believe that what they would really like to do is to turn our counties into wards of the State, to be totally dependent upon the appropriations process, totally dependent upon the Federal government to fund their local school districts. I am totally opposed to doing that. That is exactly what they have proposed that we do, that no longer would there be a link between what is happening locally, what is happening with their local economy. No longer would they have an interest in what is happening in their local forests. They would now have to come, hat in hand, to the Members of Congress to beg for school funding. That is exactly what the downlink issue would do. Again, it would increase the power of the Federal government, increase the power of the individual Members of Congress, and make all of their local school districts beholden to the appropriations process that happens here in the House of Representatives, ever more powerful. We heard someone talk about the era of big government, and wanting no more big government. The truth is that this is big government in and of itself. All of a sudden, Members of Congress become more powerful. Their school board members have to come to them for funding for their schools. That is exactly the wrong thing we ought to be doing. Yet, it is one of the objections that has been brought up on this legislation. The second objection, which is related to this particular amendment, talks about the 20 percent set-aside. We wonder, how could people that claim to be environmentalists, people who claim to care about the environment, be opposed to what this legislation does? The real truth of it is that the national environmental groups are opposed to this because they need confrontation. They do not want solution. What happens when we get all of the local stakeholders together, what happens when we get somebody who actually lives in the community to sit down with somebody else that lives in the community and talk about a forest plan that actually solves the problem, is they come up with the solution, because people who live there, people who work there, people who see each other in the grocery store every day and whose kids go to the same school all of a sudden have to sit down together and come up with a solution, and they do it because they live there and they have something at stake. But the national environmental groups do not want a solution. They thrive on controversy. Members have all seen the letters they send out. If all of a sudden we had a solution they cannot raise money anymore, so they are opposed to finding that kind of a solution. They are terrified of finding a solution. What they want is they want to continue the controversy. Why did they oppose the Quincy Library group? Not because it did not solve the environmental problems, not because it did not solve a problem that was very real, that was local, that was driving the locals nuts. They were opposed to it because it was a solution. They were opposed to it because, darn it, people got together and they came up with a solution. It was the local resource users, the local schools, the local businessmen and the local environmentalists that sat down and came up with a solution. By passing this legislation as is, what we end up with is we end up with people all over the country, not just in Quincy, not just sitting down in a little library that was underfunded in an area where the schools are getting nowhere near the funding that they should, but it would be all over the country, local people would sit down and they would come up with a solution to solve their local problems. That is what we want. That is what we are trying to solve with this particular legislation. I realize that the gentleman is saying that he wants to make this optional, but he knows as well as I do that if we do not craft this legislation in the very delicate balance that we have, that all of a sudden, these projects just do not happen, because there is always a need for school funding. There is always the necessity for more money for local schools. That is why we try to solve it by increasing the money substantially. What he is trying to do is he is trying to take away the ability for them to sit down and solve these problems. That is the result of this amendment, and he knows it, the end result of all of this.

Mr. POMBO. I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

Mr. POMBO. Reclaiming my time, I realize, as I said, that the gentleman's amendment does not completely take away that option. But the practical reality of the gentleman's amendment is it does take away the option, because once we create that competition for funding, we take away that option. What we are attempting to do with this legislation is encourage these people to sit down and do the right thing and come up with local solutions. If the gentleman's amendment were to be adopted by this body, in practical reality, we take away that option. They will never have that option of doing that, as a direct result of what the gentleman is doing.

Mr. POMBO. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Herger) for yielding. Madam Chairman, we heard a few minutes ago my colleagues talk about the addiction, and what this legislation would do is it would give us the opportunity to break that addiction. It would give us the opportunity to find a solution that is driven locally. We hear about local control. Well, all the people that vote against every bill that ever comes to this floor that has anything to do with local control all of a sudden are talking about it. The reason they are talking about it is that the national environmental groups are terrified, they are terrified, that local people are actually going to get together and find a solution, because they thrive on conflict. It is the very existence of their organizations, and if we get local people together talking about the problems and finding solutions we will have a solution and that addiction will be broken.

Mr. POMBO. Just to respond to what the gentleman is saying, Madam Chairman, I understand that there are a great many needs and a great many issues that are out there. They are very important. In this legislation, we are trying to take care of a very specific need in the education of our children in rural counties. That is the primary focus of what we are trying to do. But at the same time that all of this is going on, we have an administration that is talking about setting aside an additional 40 to 60 million acres. We have them running around talking about setting aside hundreds of millions of dollars a year to buy more private land and turn it into public land. This problem is going to be exacerbated. This problem is only going to get worse. We are attempting to try to solve a very real problem with the education of our students in rural counties.

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, this debate is not about diversion or delay. This debate is about tough choices. We saw the President's spin machine out all weekend long talking about tough choices, but they did not want to tell people what those tough choices were. Those tough choices include a massive tax increase. One of those tax increases is a tax increase on the meat producers across this country. The bulk of that $500 million tax increase is going to come out of the hide of our producers all across this country. Now, for Members that represent farm States that have substantial livestock production in their States, they have got to know that this is going to be a tax directly on those producers. At a time when we have historic lows in prices, when we have an extremely difficult time for our livestock producers to make it, to break even on their product, we are talking about increasing their taxes. That is one of the tough choices that the President keeps talking about. That is one of the things that he wants to lump on all of us. I think that everybody ought to have a chance to vote on that tough choice.

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me. I rise in opposition to the amendment. Even though I agree with many of the arguments of my colleague from Wisconsin (Mr. Green) makes, his amendment is not all that simple. There are many major changes that are made in the system by this particular amendment that I do not agree should be done by an amendment on the House floor without the full knowledge and without the hearing process, without everything that it takes to rewrite dairy policy. This has been a very difficult bill to get through because it does make major changes and has been very hard because there are so many different ideas region to region across the country. One of the most difficult things in all this is to hear from people, to get the members educated on that so they understand what they are voting on. This particular amendment makes major changes in dairy policy in a so-called simple amendment that is being added onto this bill. Because of that, I rise in opposition to this amendment.