Richard Pombo

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Buyer].

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Chairman, I, along with my good friend, the gentleman from New York, Gerry Solomon, am offering this amendment today because I believe some of our institutions of higher education need to be put on notice that their policies of ambivalence or hostility toward our Nation's armed services do not go unnoticed by this House. I believe that when a college vents its policy protests by denying its students the opportunity to participate in ROTC, then that school should be denied Department of Defense dollars. It is just that simple. If a college feels that funding from the Department of Defense is important, then they should not attack ROTC, which trains those who will defend the liberties and freedoms of all Americans. Colleges and universities need to know that starry-eyed idealism comes with a price. If they are too good or too self-righteous to treat our Nation's military with the respect it deserves, then they may also be too good to receive the current generous level of DOD dollars. With the passage of this amendment, we will end this ungrateful double standard. The bottom line is an issue of fairness. The House, representing the American people, needs to stand behind our young men and women in ROTC programs, our constituents across this country. We should not allow some institutions to accept generous amounts of DOD dollars while slamming the door on our future military leaders. For our young men and women who train to defend the freedoms of all Americans, and for those who have proudly worn the uniform of this country, I urge my colleagues to support the Pombo-Solomon amendment, and send a message over the wall of the academic ivory tower.

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I rise today on this historic occasion to express my strong support for the Republican Budget. This budget represents a contract with our children. For too long Congress has thoughtlessly spent away the prosperity of our children to satisfy its appetite to spend. I see Members get up who are opposed to this balanced budget plan claiming that passage of this plan will result in the end of civilization as we know it. They say that the elimination of this program and that program will cause undue harm to this Nation. Well I stand here today and say that if we do nothing then we will be responsible for undue harm to our children and our grandchildren. How compassionate will we have been to our children when in 30 years there is no money left for student loans, no money left for Head Start, and no money left for anything else. Why? Because every dollar that the Federal Government brings in will be eaten up by interest on the debt. It pains me to see the Federal Government spend over $250 billion per year in interest payments on the Federal debt. That money funds nothing--no education, no military, no Medicare, and no Social Security. Enough is enough. We are balancing the budget to ensure that we build a future for our children that is free of debt and full of opportunity. My son and daughter deserve nothing less. I can think of no greater responsibility as a father than to do this for my children. I ask that everyone look inside themselves, think of America's children, and support the Republican budget.

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Boehlert amendment and in support of the committee bill, and I believe that one of the most important points that needs to be made on this legislation is that the Boehlert amendment effectively strips out the private property rights protection that was included in the committee bill, and I want to explain why that is so important, that we include the protection of private property rights. The fifth amendment of the Constitution, which was passed for one reason, to protect private property rights, stated, ``nor shall property be taken for public use without just compensation,'' and for 200 years we operated quite effectively with that protection under the fifth amendment of the Constitution. Twenty years ago, Mr. Chairman, this body began to pass legislation which increased the regulatory might and the regulatory power of the Federal Government dramatically, to the point where in the past 10 years people have began to lose their private property to the regulation of the Federal Government without compensation. Now, if the Federal Government were to come in, and take someone's property to build a project, a dam, a road, a highway, to take their property to put in a park, they would be required under current law and under current practice to pay for that without any questions asked. I say to my colleagues, they're taking your property; they should pay for that. But if they were to come in and use a regulation like wetlands, section 404, the Clean Water Act, and they effectively took away all use or value of someone's property, under current practice and under the guise of some of my colleagues here they would not have to pay for that property even though they took away the value of the property, they took away the use of the property, they took away the ability for someone to continue to make their mortgage payments and to pay their property taxes. It is OK because it is all in the name of the Clean Water Act and preserving wetlands. Well, that is wrong. When we passed the takings legislation through this House, I felt that was an important first step in protecting private property, but the second step in protecting private property is including that protection in the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and other regulatory issues that we take up under the House. It is extremely important. Mr. Chairman, I just want to tell my colleagues, if you voted for private property rights protection as part of the takings legislation and regulatory reform through this House, you have got to support private property rights and vote against the Boehlert amendment because effectively it strips----

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. If there is a cost to the agency, if there is a cost associated with taking this person's livelihood away from them, taking their property away from them, all of a sudden wetlands like this, they will no longer put those kinds of restrictions on them. Now, we all know, as my colleagues know, I went around the country as part of the wetlands task force and had the opportunity to see wetlands that I have never seen before. My entire district, except for the tops of the hills that my colleagues see here, is considered a wetland, my entire district, because of the idea that, if the water rises to within 18 inches of the surface, that that makes it a wetland, and that was, in mind's eye, what a wetland was all about, and this was land that people farmed, that they had been farming for 4 or 5, 6 generations, and they only time it ever got wet was when it rained or when they irrigated. Now, when I went to Louisiana, I saw wetlands; I mean they had water on the ground, 18 inches of water, 2 feet of water, standing on the ground. Now, I can understand, OK that is wetlands, but why is this a wetlands? I say to my colleague, now, if you don't have property rights protection [[Page H4956]] in there, there is no book to stop the agency from getting out of control. In your amendment you talk about going back to the 1987 delineation manual and sticking to that until we get something better. You define wetlands in your definitions of your amendment as land that supports aquatic vegetation or wetlands-type vegetation. That is your definition of a wetland. I say to my colleague, now, on your way home tonight, or when you come in in the morning, because it's going to be dark here, go by just 395, make a right, go down about a mile, and you'll see a sign that says the future site of the Fairmount Hotel, and it's an acre or two of land that has toolies, that has sitting water on it, that looks, by every definition, as a wetland, but this is land that's been developed for a long time that we tore down an old building. They're putting up a new one. I say to my colleagues, I mean you have got to have something more to it than that. You've got to define the difference between the wetlands I saw in Louisiana and this. You've got to define the difference between what the value of these wetlands are to the environment. You don't do that; that's what we're trying to fix. Mr. Chairman, we are trying to stop the agencies from going out, and running amok, and trying to do this type of thing. That is what has to stop. I say to my colleague, your amendment to this bill doesn't do that, and I understand the importance of wetlands in different parts of the country. I heard the people in North Carolina talk about the importance of wetlands to their area. I heard the people in Louisiana talk about the fishermen, talk about the importance of wetlands to their livelihood. I heard the people in Vancouver talk about the importance of wetlands to their livelihood, but there is a big difference between the wetlands that they talk about and the wetlands that look like this. They are not the same thing.

Mr. POMBO. Yes, if the land is wet long enough, it will support that kind of vegetation. In my house in California, across the street they have a cattle trough, and it runs over all the time because it comes out of a spring and it supports aquatic vegetation. It has got toolies down the cattle pasture. It is saturated long enough to fit the gentleman's definition, and it is not a wetland, and that is the kind of stuff we are trying to stop. I say to the gentleman, You don't allow us to do that. You're getting back into the original reason that the Clean Water Act was passed. We wanted to stop polluted rivers. We wanted to stop polluted rivers. Now, somewhere along the line they decided that we were going to regulate wetlands under the Clean Water Act, and there is a reason to protect wetlands. We all understand that. Any of us that have done our homework understands the reason to protect wetlands, real wetlands. But there is a big difference between differing types of wetlands. I say to the gentleman, What you have in your home State is not the same as what I have in my district. What Mr. Hayes has in Louisiana is not the same as what is in my district. You are not giving us the ability to differentiate between those. You are throwing it back to the bureaucrats, throwing it back to the regulators and telling them you are going to make the decision. You are avoiding making the tough policy decisions that have to be made. Let us give it to the bureaucrats. One of the things that has frustrated me the most about serving in this body is that we intentionally draft legislation to be as vague as possible so that we can always blame it on the regulators. We can always blame it on the bureaucrats. It is always their fault. It is never our fault. Unless we start making changes like this bill has in it, we will never correct these problems. Make the tough decisions.

Mr. POMBO. I can explain what is going on in this picture. It is grazing land, which the Corps does not consider agriculture. So they cannot. In California under current law what is happening right now, grazing is not agriculture. Therefore they cannot plow that up. That is what they are doing right now.

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

Mr. POMBO. Reclaiming my time, I have read the gentleman's amendment. Reclaiming my time, the gentleman's definition states that it is land that is saturated enough so that it will sustain aquatic vegetation.

Mr. POMBO. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. POMBO. I say to the gentleman, If you understand your definition of what is in your amendment, if I had a broken water pipe, and the land was sufficiently saturated so that it would support the kind of vegetation that is in a wetland, would that not fit your definition?

Mr. POMBO. OK. Now, does the gentleman understand his definition because I am going to ask the gentleman a question about that?

Mr. POMBO. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I think that this debate has been very interesting for a number of reasons, and I think that, if we look at what the debate has centered upon, I know earlier in testimony they talked about clean water, and one of the things that they brought up was a picture of a polluted stream. As my colleagues know, we are all against water pollution, we are all in favor of clean water. And that is not what the debate is about. What the debate centers upon is whether or not the U.S. Congress will make the tough decisions. For a number of years, actually since the Clean Water Act was passed and they somehow found wetlands within it, Congress has refused to make the tough decisions, the policy decisions. Therefore, all of the decisions governing wetlands have been made by regulators, bureaucrats, and by the courts. And I say to the gentleman from New York, Mr. Boehlert, you talked about using good science. Well, I strongly believe that we need to use good science and that that should be the basis for our environmental decisions. But I also believe that it is our obligation and responsibility to make tough policy decisions. One of the problems in this picture was brought up earlier. One of the problems that we have out west is wetlands that look like this, that have nothing to do with--we cannot tell from this picture, but there is no inlet or outlet from this wetland. It is a mud puddle. It is a hole in the ground. It is a low place. Now I say to my colleague, ``You have said that you know in your amendment that grazing is agriculture and would be exempted from the regulations of the permitting process.'' I will tell my colleague one thing that happened in my district in an area that looked exactly like this. It was grazing land, and had been for many, many generations, and for those of my colleagues that do not know, cattle business has not been so great lately, and the gentleman decided that he would be better off trying to farm the land in order to try to make a profit off of it, and he wanted to plant vineyards on it. And they told him he could not plant vineyards on it because of wetlands like this that were on the property, and he said, ``But agriculture is exempt from it. Under current law, agriculture is exempt.'' And they said, ``Well, no, because you are converting from one agricultural use to another. Therefore, you are changing the use of the land from grazing to vineyards.'' So I say to my colleague, ``Even under your language that you bring out, I don't believe that the bureaucrats would take that as an answer for it.'' So, what he told him was, Okay; I'll stay out of the wetlands. I won't plant any vineyards in the wetlands. I'll just plant them on the sides of the hills, and I'll contour the hills and just stay completely away from them. I'm putting in a drip irrigation system so there won't be any runoff. The answer came back, ``No, you can't do that because you will change the drainage on the land from what is currently there, and you can't do that.'' So he was struck with an unprofitable piece of property because the cattle business is not real good right now. He was stuck with an unprofitable piece of property that he could not make any money off of, that he could pay the mortgage on and pay the property taxes on, but he could not make any money off it because they were restricting what agricultural use. Now, notice I have not talked about development of any kind, not about building a single home on any of this. It is one agricultural use to another, and, under the current definition, they are saying, ``You can't do that. You can't change from one agricultural use to another, and they are restricting his ability.'' Mr. Chairman, that is why I believe that the property rights provisions in the chairman's bill are so important, because right now we have the regulators and bureaucrats running out there who, at no cost to them, at no downside to them whatsoever, and actually an upside because they just expanded greatly their jurisdiction by taking a wetlands that looked like this, they expanded greatly their jurisdiction by taking a wetlands that looked like this, they expanded greatly their jurisdiction. Therefore, they need more employees, a bigger budget, more pickups, more helicopters so they can go out and search their land and look for these valuable wetlands that look like this. They expanded their agencies because they expanded their jurisdiction, and because of that property rights and the takings part----

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. I thank the gentleman for yielding. We in the past couple of years have had instances in California where in one specific example, eight flies stopped the construction of a $600 million hospital in southern California. Without any regard to what the use of that property was for, what the effect was on the citizens of that community, and with absolutely no regard at all for the well-being of the community, Fish and Wildlife came in and stopped the construction of a $600 million hospital. They ended up having to mitigate their way out of it and give up, I believe it was 40 percent of their site to be permanent fly habitat on the grounds. There are many instances where a little responsibility interjected into the actions of the agency would make a large difference.

Mr. POMBO. Yes. We are talking about literally billions of dollars that are involved here. Recently in California we had the fairy shrimp listed. The fairy shrimp, I believe, will have a larger impact on California than anything that has been on the endangered species list or any proposal to the endangered species list that we have had yet. We literally have all the way from Bakersfield to Redding and now we are getting reports out of the Riverside and San Diego areas of fairy shrimp in those areas as well where any mud puddle that holds water for 14 days in the springtime is habitat for the fairy shrimp. This definitely affects all farming and ranching activities. We have farmers who have fairy shrimp in their cow troughs, in their watering troughs, in their watering holes. We are looking at on the listing of the fairy shrimp alone billions of dollars that are affected in the State of California. The fairy shrimp is a third of an inch long, an eighth of an inch across, an invertebrate that has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, and there is absolutely no cost to the agency to go out and list this and declare all mud puddles habitat for the fairy shrimp. What we are trying to do is instill a little common sense into the way the agency responds.

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I think we all would like to thank the gentleman for the wonderful job he has done in managing this bill on the floor, and I appreciate all of the hard work you have put in in battling over the last 12 long hours. Mr. Chairman, I would like to rise in opposition to this amendment and to bring it into perspective in that if you take the incentive away, the hammer away from the agencies, you run into the situation that is the result of this bill coming to the floor, where an agency like the Fish and Wildlife Service can list the fairy shrimp and declare most of California habitat and control most of California without any cost to the agency, without any fear that anything is going to happen to them. They have run amok. It is the bureaucracy out of control, it is the bureaucracy and the regulators with a free hand running all over the Western United States and the Southern United States, without anyone having the ability to come down on them, unless of course you happen to have 10 years and a half million dollars to spend on attorneys' fees. That is what we are trying to correct in this bill. And I know what the gentleman's intentions are, but I feel that if this amendment were passed, it would completely damage the bill, so that we would not be able to accomplish what is truly needed, and that is to restore some responsibility to the agencies, and to put that hammer in the hands and I guess to restore the power to the people who are out there having to live under this. I think this is an extremely damaging amendment, and I would urge all of my colleagues to vote ``no'' on it.

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

Mr. POMBO. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. POMBO

Mr. POMBO. The Federal Government would have in effect taken away their entire equity in the land and the bank would own what was left.

Mr. POMBO. What would happen if we took 19 percent of their value away?

Mr. POMBO. I would like to ask the gentleman a question. I heard you say you were in the real estate market, you were a realtor. In your travels throughout your business, have you ever known anybody to buy a piece of property, a home, a single-family home, with 10 percent down or 15 percent down? Have you ever run across that at all?

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

Mr. POMBO. Reclaiming my time, I think we went far enough when we went to 10 percent. I mean, I was trying to be nice about that. In regard to another comment that was made about zeroing in on environmental laws, I would just like to point out that when this was before Judiciary, that it was all Federal regulations; the compromise that was worked out involved the Federal regulations that provide about 90 percent of our problems. The other 10 percent we are going to have to take care of in other legislation. But the whole attempt here is being undermined, I believe, by moving the threshold to 30, because the Constitution is clear that you cannot take private property without compensating for it, whether at 10 or 30 or 50 or whatever number you want to plug in. And because we are setting up a different method of being reimbursed, a different method of being compensated, I felt that it was important that we do that.

Mr. POMBO. The original way, a year and a half ago, when we first started working at this, was at 1 percent, yes.