Mike Simpson

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. I thank the chairman, and I thank the gentleman from California for his comments. I agree with him fully. The chairman made a good point that, unfortunately, this money that is spent on litigation is money that could go, it is taxpayers' money to start with, and could go to protecting the environment. When I met with Chief Dombeck a couple of years ago and talked with him about some of the problems we were having in Idaho in our natural forest, he said to me one of the problems they have in the Forest Service is making a decision, because they know that no matter what decision they make, they are going to be sued. Last year in this article from the Sacramento Bee, during the 1990's, the government paid out $31.6 million in attorney's fees for 434 environmental cases brought against Federal agencies. The average award per case was more than $70,000. One long-running lawsuit in Texas that involved an endangered salamander netted lawyers for the Sierra Club and other plaintiffs more than $3.5 in taxpayers' funds, as the chairman has already pointed out. That is money that could be used for other environmental purposes and actually cleaning up the environment and taking care of the backlog in maintenance we have in our National Forests and in our National Parks. Again, it is taxpayer money. One of the main arguments for the roadless issue was that the Forest Service did not have the money to maintain the roads that they currently had, and so if they couldn't maintain those, how could they justify building more roads, so we might as well make them roadless. If we are spending all that money on lawsuits, then certainly we do not have the money to take care of the roads. One of the things that was interesting in this series of articles is that the effect of these things are actually damaging to the environment oftentimes. Let me read a portion of these articles. Wildfire today is inflicting nightmarish wounds, injuries made worse by a failure to heed scientific warnings. For example, and there are three of them here that they list. In 1994, Wallace Covington, a Professor of Forest Ecology at Northern Arizona University and a nationally recognized fire scientist and a colleague warned that the Kendrick Mountain wilderness area in northern Arizona was so crowded with vegetation that it was ready to explode. ``Delay will only perpetuate fuel build-up and increase the potential for uncontrolled and destructive wildfires,'' they wrote in a scientific analysis for the Kaibab National Forest. Some thinning was done, but not enough. Last year, a large fire swept through the region carving an apocalyptic trail of destruction. What happened is much worse ecologically than a clear cut, much worse, Covington said, and that fire is in the future. It is happening again and again. We are going to have skeletal landscapes. The other example, listening to fire and forest scientists, Martha Ketelle pleaded in 1996 for permission to log and thin an incendiary mass of storm- killed timber in California's Trinity Alps. ``This is a true emergency of vast magnitude,'' Ketelle, then supervisor of the Six Rivers National Forest, wrote to her boss in San Francisco. ``It is not a matter of if a fire will occur, but how extensive the damage will be when the fire does occur.'' Because of an environmental appeal, the project bogged down. Then, in 1999, a fire found its way into the area. It spewed smoke for hundreds of miles, incinerated Spotted Owl habitat and triggered soil erosion and key damage in a key salmon spawning watershed. These stories are something I hear about daily as I go back to Idaho from my resource advisory group and my ag advisory groups and I talk to them. We did more damage last year in Idaho with the Nation's largest wildfires. We did more damage to the environment, to salmon habitat, to spawning habitat, than was done by any logging practices that ever have been done. And today as the snow melts and the rains come, hopefully the rains come, that erosion is going to filter down into those streams and it is going to cover the beds, and consequently you are going to have a difficult time with managing salmon habitat. So, oftentimes these efforts to address these environmental concerns, the potential for catastrophic wildfire, today the Forest Service says something like 35 million acres of our National Forests are at risk of catastrophic wildfires. These are not just fires, but these are cataclysmic fires that burn everything, they burn so hot. They burn the micro-organisms, they sterilize the soil down to as much as 18 inches, and for years and years those forests never recover, if they ever do recover. We still have spots in Idaho from the 1910 fire that nothing will grow on. We do more damage to the environment by not proactively managing it. Of course, every time you try to do that, there is an environmental lawsuit from someone. Now, they say, well, maybe we can do thinning if it is not for commercial purposes, as if commercial or business or profit adds some damage to the environment that thinning just to thin does not do. Of course, there are the Sierra Club groups that want no cut. The fact is we have to proactively manage these forces, and we can do that. It was managed by fire before. Now we have to get in and do some management so that we do not have these catastrophic fires. Unfortunately, at every step of the way, we are fought by groups who think that man should not touch the forest, that they should be left as natural as they ever were before we came.

Mr. SIMPSON. I thank the chairman of the committee for yielding the time and for setting aside this hour to talk a little bit about what is happening in the environmental community. As the gentleman from Utah has suggested, I think all of us are environmentalists. In fact as he once said that in college he gave his money and dues to the Sierra Club, I believe it was, I gave money to the Idaho Conservation League because I believed in what they were doing and in fact in many things that they are still doing, I think they are doing a good job but like most environmental groups or groups that call themselves environmental groups, they have stepped over the edge. They have gone beyond simple environmental issues and trying to save our environment. Before I get into that for just a minute, I want to talk for a second about another environmental issue that was just talked about previously by the minority party here in their hour that they reserved and that was the energy policy which deals with the environment as much as these issues that we will be talking about here today. I was glad to hear that the Members suggested that we need a bipartisan effort in energy, a solution to the energy problem that we have in this country. They were, it seemed, very critical of the Bush administration and some of the stances that he takes, but I will tell you that when the report comes out and in our conversations with Vice President Cheney, conservation will be a part of the report, renewable, sun and wind power will be a part of the report, new sources of energy, discovering new sources of oil and coal and natural gas will be a part of the report, nuclear energy will be a part of the report. New technologies such as fuel cells will be a part of the report. They suggested geothermal power. Geothermal is a power that is used in some areas. But if we look at some of the things that the Democratic Party has done just recently on TV, I saw the chairman of the Democratic National Committee on TV slamming Bush for his energy policy and holding up a picture of Yellowstone National Park with an oil well over it and said, this is Bush's policy. Then next was one of the Grand Canyon with an oil derrick over the top of it saying this is what Bush wanted, drilling in our national parks. Nobody has suggested drilling in Yellowstone. Nobody has suggested drilling in any of our national parks. They have said that we ought to look in our national monuments which we do drilling in now and look at the reserves we have there such as the ANWR and other places. And then the DNC put on a commercial which suggested a young lady holding up a glass of water and saying, ``Mommy, could I have more arsenic in my water?'' And then there was a child with a hamburger saying, ``Could I have more salmonella in my hamburger?'' It seems to me that the DNC has taken on the same characteristic that the extreme environmental movement has taken on where raising money has become more important than the truth. They will say anything to try to discredit this President and the policies that he sets forward. That is exactly what the extreme environmental movement has done. They have stolen the true grass-roots environmental movement. This series of articles that was written in the Sacramento Bee newspaper, and I would commend them to anyone who wants to look at how these groups are funded and some of the things that they are doing, I would like to go through some of the provisions of these articles and some of the things that they are doing because I think it is important for the American people to know where that $15 that they are contributing or that $25 or $100 or $10,000 that they are contributing to some of these groups is going and what they are going for. One of the concerns is that, as I said earlier, the extreme environmental movement has taken over the grass-roots environmental movement. It is no longer about saving the environment; it is about raising money. They spend an awful lot of their funds raising money. One of the letters written by the Defenders of Wildlife says: ``Dear Friend, I need your help to stop an impending slaughter. Otherwise, Yellowstone National Park, an American wildlife treasure, could soon become a bloody killing field. And the victims will be hundreds of wolves and defenseless wolf pups.'' So begins a fund-raising letter from one of America's fastest-growing wildlife groups, Defenders of Wildlife. Using the popular North American gray wolf as the hub of an ambitious campaign, Defenders has assembled a financial track record that would impress Wall Street. In 1999, donations jumped 28 percent to a record $17.5 million. The group's net assets, a measure of financial stability, grew to $14.5 million, another record. And according to its 1999 annual report, Defenders spent donors' money wisely, keeping fund-raising and management costs to a lean 19 percent of expenses. But there is another side to Defenders' dramatic growth. Pick up copies of its Federal tax returns and you will find that its five highest paid business partners are not firms that specialize in wildlife conservation. They are national direct mail and telemarketing companies. You will also find that in calculating its fund-raising expenses, Defenders borrows a trick from the business world. It dances with digits, finds opportunity in obfuscation. Using an accounting loophole, it classifies millions of dollars spent on direct mail and telemarketing not as fund-raising but as public education and environmental activism. Take away that loophole and Defenders' 19 percent fund-raising and management tab leaps above 50 percent, meaning more than half of every dollar donated to save wolf pups helped nourish the organization instead. That was high enough to earn Defenders a D rating from the American Institute of Philanthropy, an independent, nonprofit watchdog that scrutinizes nearly 400 charitable groups. It is interesting when one looks down the list of some of the groups, some of the environmental groups did very well. The Nature Conservancy was an A minus; Environmental Defense was a B; Greenpeace was a D; Defenders of Wildlife was a D. That is based on the amount of money they actually give to the cause for which they are raising the funds; how much of it goes into their organization to support fund-raising. So many of the dollars that people are giving, because they read these articles in the newspaper that support protecting wolves and other types of things, people send in their $15 or so. Much of that money, over half of it in many cases, does not go to saving wolves; it goes to raising more money or to the organization or, as the chairman suggested, to the salaries of some of these individuals in these organizations. One of the other things that sort of concerns me, well it concerns me a lot, is the massive waste in this fund-raising. The Wilderness Society mailed 6.2 million membership solicitations; an average of 16,986 pieces of mail a day. This is mail fatigue. The letters that come with the mailers are seldom dull. They are steeped in outrage. They tell of a planet in perpetual environmental shock, a world victimized by profit-hungry corporations, and they do so not with precise scientific prose but with boastful and often inaccurate sentences that scream and shout. Some of the examples were given in the Sacramento Bee. From the New York-based Rain Forest Alliance, ``By this time tomorrow, nearly 100 species of wildlife will tumble into extinction.'' The fact is, no one knows how rapidly species are going extinct. The Alliance figures an extreme estimate that counts tropical beetles and other insects, including ones not yet known to science, in its definition of wildlife. Another example from the Wilderness Society: We will fight to stop reckless clear-cutting on national forests in California and the Pacific Northwest that threatens to destroy the last of America's unprotected ancient forests in as little as 20 years. Fact: The national forest logging has dropped dramatically in recent years. In California, clear-cutting on national forests dipped to 1,395 acres in 1998, down 89 percent from 1990. From the Defenders of Wildlife again, ``Will you not please adopt a furry little pup like Hope?'' Hope is a cuddly brown wolf. Hope was triumphantly born in Yellowstone. Fact: There never was a pup named Hope. Says John Valerie, Chief of Research at Yellowstone National Park, ``We do not name wolves. We number them.'' Since wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone in 1995, their numbers have increased from 14 to about 160. The program has been so successful that Yellowstone officials now favor removing animals from the Federal endangered species list. One of my favorites that I want to talk for just a minute about again comes from the Defenders of Wildlife, and I wish I had some blow-ups of it, but it is a poison alert. ``Wolves in Danger,'' one of the sections that runs in the newspaper or letter that goes out to individuals, a fund-raising letter. Another one that says, ``a special gift when you join our pack,'' and it has pictures of these cuddly wolves. More than 160 million environmental fund-raising pitches swirled through the U.S. mail last year. Some used the power of cute animals to attract donors. The problem is that in many cases those campaigns were less than honest. And this was the pitch, and this is the one that caught my attention, in Salmon, Idaho, which is in my district. In Salmon, Idaho, antiwolf extremists committed a horrible crime; they killed two Yellowstone wolves with lethal poison, compound 1080. ``Please do not allow antiwolf extremists to kill our wild wolves. These wolf families do not deserve to die. Please, we need your help now.'' And then, of course, they solicit a contribution. The fact is, the two wolves were not Yellowstone wolves but wolves reintroduced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service into central Idaho, against the objections of the State of Idaho to reintroduction of those wolves. Some wolves were killed illegally, but the population of wolves continues to increase at a pace faster than Federal wolf recovery officials had anticipated. The government expects to remove wolves from the Federal endangered species list in 3 to 4 years. In fact, in Idaho we have already met our commitment of 10 mating pairs. The problem is that they take Montana and Wyoming together and say we have to have 30 breeding pairs within the entire region. Wolves are overpopulating Idaho better than anyone had anticipated, and they are using these instances, this group, Defenders of Wildlife, to raise money to try to save wolves. Unfortunately, much of the pleading that they do with the American public at best can be called dishonest. I, like the chairman, want to save the environment. We want to make sure that what we do is compatible with the species and protecting species. But we also think that human beings play a role in this environment and in our world, and that human beings ought to be considered in this whole equation. Look at what the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden) is going through right now, where they have taken 170,000 acres of 200,000 acres of irrigated land that will not have water this year because a judge has ruled that the sucker fish that they are trying to protect is more important than those people.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, on November 9, 2000, former President Bill Clinton issued Presidential Proclamation 7373 to expand the boundaries of the Craters of the Moon National Monument. Prior to Clinton's proclamation, the monument, which was established by President Coolidge in 1924, comprised 54,440 acres. Former President Clinton's proclamation expanded the boundaries to include approximately 661,287 acres of additional Federal land. The area is managed by the Secretary of Interior through the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management. The National Park Service manages approximately 410,000 acres of the expansion, while the Bureau of Land Management manages the remaining 251,000 acres. When the monument was expanded, it was understood both by the congressional delegation and by the Governor of the State of Idaho that continued access to hunting would be maintained in the expanded area. However, when the proclamation was issued, hunting was restricted in the area of the expansion which was managed by the National Park Service. Under this legislation, areas that were open to hunting before the expansion will remain open to hunting. In addition, the amended bill includes language requested by the administration to ensure that the Secretary has appropriate oversight, in cooperation and consultation with the State of Idaho, over hunting activities within the expanded area managed by the National Park Service. Finally, the bill, as amended, designates the expanded area under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service as a national preserve rather than a national monument. Unfortunately, due to the outmoded and antiquated national monument process, there was not a formal means by which the State of Idaho, the congressional delegation, and the general public could comment on the proposed monument expansion. While the Idaho Fish and Game Department expressed their interest in working with the Secretary of Interior to allow for appropriate wildlife management in the expanded area, their concerns largely went unheard. When the Idaho congressional delegation and the Governor spoke with the Secretary of the Interior regarding the Craters of the Moon expansion, we were led to believe, as I mentioned earlier, that hunting would not be affected. However, when that proclamation was issued, it was realized that current Park Service regulations preclude hunting in the area of the expansion managed by the National Park Service, therefore denying access to traditional hunting grounds. H.R. 601 is about fairness and ensuring that Idahoans are not locked out of traditional hunting areas. H.R. 601 has the support of the Idaho Fish and Game Commission, the Idaho Fish and Game Advisory Committee, Idaho Wildlife Council, Idaho Wildlife Federation, and local county commissioners. It is a bipartisan bill. It has broad bipartisan support and is also supported by the administration. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley), for his work on this and the staff, the majority staff's work on this, and also the ranking member, the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen), for her work, and the minority staff's work on this piece of legislation. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 601.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Chairman, I was unavoidably detained and missed rollcall vote No. 60, on the Traficant amendment. Had I been here, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained and missed rollcall vote No. 61, on passage of H.R. 247. Had I been here, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order at any time without intervention of any point of order to consider in the House the joint resolution (House Joint Resolution 126) making further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2001, and for other purposes; that the joint resolution be considered as read for amendment; that the joint resolution be debatable for one hour, equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Appropriations; and that the previous question be considered as ordered on the joint resolution to final passage without intervening motion except one motion to recommit.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 534, final passage of S. 2796, the Water Resources Development Act of 2000; I was inadvertently detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the Senate bill (S. 2773) to amend the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 to enhance dairy markets through dairy product mandatory reporting, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on S. 2773.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the Senate bill (S. 1705) to direct the Secretary of the Interior to enter into land exchanges to acquire from the private owner and to convey to the State of Idaho approximately 1,240 acres of land near the City of Rocks National Reserve, Idaho, and for other purposes.

Mr. SIMPSON. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, if I might just respond. One of the reasons that the State of Idaho must be the middleman in this is because Public Law 100- 696, title III, specifically limits the National Park Service acquisition of this State property to only by donation or exchange. Consequently, the purchase of the Castle Rock Ranch being able to exchange that for the land in the Hagerman Falls Fossil Bed is the only way that the Federal Government can then acquire that state-owned endowment land, which is the fossil beds. That is the reason for this Byzantine method of land exchanges which is necessary for this. I appreciate the support of the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

Mr. SIMPSON. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include therein extraneous material on S. 1705.

Mr. SIMPSON. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, Senate 1705 authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to acquire the Castle Rock Ranch in the State of Idaho. On completion of the acquisition, the Secretary will convey the Castle Rock Ranch to the State of Idaho in exchange for approximately 500 acres of State land located within the Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument. The City of Rocks National Reserve is located in south central Idaho. Most of the reserve is owned by the National Park Service with parts of it being owned by the State of Idaho, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and private landowners. The reserve contains distinctive and majestic rock formations. These unique geological rock formations provide world-class rock climbing opportunities, in addition to other recreational opportunities. Additionally, the site has unique historical significance. The California Trail, one of the major trails for westward expansion, passes through the reserve. The State of Idaho manages the reserve under a cooperative agreement with the National Park Service. The Castle Rock Ranch, an approximately 1,240 acre ranch, is located near the City of Rocks. The property gets its name from historic rock formations found in the area, in particular, the Castle Rock formation that has already been designated a National Historic Site on the National Historic Registry. These extraordinary rock formations are ideal for rock climbing. In addition, the ranch contains irrigated pasture land. Once the State acquires the ranch, they will create a new State park, opening up rock formations for rock climbing, and providing camping and hiking opportunities. Furthermore, the State can then trade irrigated land for dry land inholdings within the national reserve. This will allow local ranchers to acquire irrigated land and allow the State to consolidate inholdings within the reserve. The Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument contains important fossil deposits from the Pliocene time period, 3.5 million years ago. Additionally, the fossil beds contain the largest concentration of the Hagerman Horse fossils in North America. While the State of Idaho owns the actual fossil beds, the National Park Service runs and maintains the facility. The State wants to divest its interest in the fossil beds and acquire the Castle Rock Ranch. Additionally, the National Park Service wants to acquire the fossil beds. Transferring the fossil beds to the National Park Service will make it easier for everybody to protect this important area. In the end, the National Park Service will consolidate the Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument, the State of Idaho will create a new State park, and inholdings will be consolidated at the City of Rocks National Reserve, and local ranchers will have access to irrigated pasture land. This legislation has the support of the National Park Service, the State of Idaho, the Conservation Fund, the Access Fund, local legislators and area residents. I thank my colleagues for their support and urge their support of Senate 1705. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SIMPSON. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, tragic events often imprint on our minds vivid memories. Most Americans remember exactly where they were when President John F. Kennedy was killed or when the Challenger spaceship exploded. I believe Americans will remember where they were when two high school students in Littleton, Colorado, killed 13 innocent people. As the Representative for Idaho's Second Congressional District, I clearly remember when I learned of the Columbine massacre. I was voting on a series of bills when a member of my staff pulled me to the television. I watched as students ran out of the school accompanied by SWAT teams. I witnessed a young man breaking a second store library window and falling into a fireman's arms in order to escape the rampage. These images will haunt America forever. Unfortunately, school violence is too common today. In 1940, public school teachers ranked the top seven disciplinary problems in public schools. They were talking out of turn, chewing gum, making noise, running in the hall, cutting in line, dress code violations and littering. In 1990, the problems had changed to drug and alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, robbery and assault. In the last 12 months alone the number of children bringing weapons to schools in Idaho is up more than 25 percent. Our problems have changed significantly and so must our solutions. After the Columbine tragedy, I decided a dialogue must begin on the local level to bring about positive change rather than focusing on Federal legislation. I organized three town hall meetings in my district called Saving Our Schools, or SOS meetings. I invited the student body presidents to participate in a panel about school violence. Each president from the surrounding schools also signed an antiviolence pledge that they took back to their high schools. Today, it is my pleasure to report that more than 5,000 students from over 40 Idaho high schools in my district took the pledge. The pledge reads: ``I pledge to keep my school and community safe by never using violence to solve my disagreements and taking personal responsibility for my actions.'' Some of those Idaho high schools include Aberdeen High School, Blackfoot High School from which I graduated, Buhl, Burley, Butte, Castleford, Firth, and on and on. The maturity and perception of the students during the town hall meetings and assemblies impressed me. Idaho holds top-notch students who care about their schools. School violence is not going away, and there is not just one answer. But my hope is that schools and communities will look for answers tailored to their needs to ensure schools are places of learning, not of fear. I encourage my colleagues to initiate similar dialogues with the students, parents and school officials in the communities of their districts before tragedy strikes, not after. As we begin another school year, I hope my House colleagues will urge the students in their districts to take the pledge against violence in our Nation's schools.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I want to compliment my colleague, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Sherwood), for his work on this legislation that was introduced, as was mentioned, in March of 1999. It has been over a year and a half that he has been working on this important piece of legislation. Mr. Speaker, by designating the Lackawanna Valley of Pennsylvania as a national heritage area, this important legislation would ensure the conservation of its significant historical and cultural resources. The Lackawanna Valley was the first heritage area site, as has been mentioned, designated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and is a nationally significant historic area, as documented in the U.S. Department of Interior's Register of Historic Places. The Valley represents the development of anthracite coal, one of North America's greatest natural resources. From early in the 19th century, Pennsylvania's coal provided an extraordinary source of energy which fueled America's economic growth for over 100 years. At the center of the world's most productive anthracite fields, the Lackawanna Valley witnessed the inception, spectacular growth, and eventual deterioration of an industry which led the United States to unparalleled prosperity. The Valley's current mix of ethnicity, its combination of dense urban areas and isolated settlements, and the desolate remains of coal mines surrounded by beautiful countryside are a microcosm of our legacy from the industrial revolution. As these contrasts illustrate, the industrial era was not without both human and environmental costs. Thousands of immigrants worked in the deep mines under horrible conditions. Death and injury were commonplace. With no survivor benefits or disability compensation to withstand these calamities, anthracite miners created the Nation's first labor unions and they fought for the implementation of child labor laws, workplace safety, pension security, and fair labor standards. The new Americans who populated the Lackawanna Valley established strong communities, where ethnic ties were reinforced by church and fraternal societies that created a sense of security noticeably absent in the mines. The Valley's remaining ethnic neighborhoods are a testament to a pattern of urban growth that was once common in U.S. cities but is now disappearing. The landscape of the Valley conveys the story of the industrial revolution most clearly. Miles of tracks and hundreds of industrial sites and abandoned mines are daily reminders of the importance of the region to industry. Heritage sites like Pennsylvania's Anthracite Heritage Museum, the Scranton Iron Furnace Historic Site, the Lackawanna Valley County Coal Mine, and the Steam Town National Historic Site help to commemorate this struggle. These sites provide the framework for historic preservation which will be cemented by this proposed legislation. I must say, Mr. Speaker, this is not just historical preservation that is written down in a book, like this, talking about the Lackawanna Valley, this is historic preservation that future generations can drive through, walk through, can touch and feel. This is true historic preservation for future generations. Again, I compliment my colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr. Sherwood) for his outstanding work on this legislation and his dedication to making sure this becomes law this year.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. House Resolution 3986 authorizes the study of the feasibility of exchanging water diverted from the Yakima River for use by two irrigation districts for water from the Columbia River. The study would be conducted as part of the Yakima River Basin Water Enhancement Project. The legislation will promote salmon recovery in the Yakima River without reducing the amount of water available to irrigators. Mr. Speaker, one of the most contentious and divisive issues in the Pacific Northwest is that of salmon recovery. The desire to restore salmon runs is one that is universally shared in the Pacific Northwest. It is vital to the historical culture of the region. The difficulty that arises is one of how best to go about salmon recovery, taking into consideration the species, the environment, local and regional economics and so forth. There are some that have been pushing for the immediate extreme measure of removing the four lower Snake River dams on the Snake River while others, myself included, believe we should take some common sense steps toward salmon recovery before we consider the extreme measure of removing dams. H.R. 3986 is one of those steps. In itself, it will not recover salmon. But the study that it authorizes may be one of the pieces of the salmon-recovery puzzle. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) be allowed to control the time for the majority.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 581, I call up the bill (H.R. 3986) to provide for a study of the engineering feasibility of a water exchange in lieu of electrification of the Chandler Pumping Plant at Prosser Diversion Dam, Washington, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 3986.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I would just point out that these bills ought to be based on their merits. This is a good bill. The gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) has recognized that this is a good bill, and we ought to consider it and not vote against it simply because he does not like the procedure by which the bills have come to the floor. Last week we have, as I understand it, in the Committee on Resources asked the minority party for bills they would like to have put on the agenda, no bills were proposed from the minority party to put on the agenda, and, consequently, none were. As I said earlier, we have five Republican bills tomorrow. A third of the bills that are on the agenda are Democratic bills, and I am glad that the gentleman forwarded those to us so we could consider them tomorrow, and they will be considered in a fair and appropriate manner. Mr. Speaker, we will not reject them simply because they come from the minority party. We will look at them on the merits of the bill itself, so I would urge the Members not to get into this debate of killing bills simply because they are from one party or the other, but look at the bills on the merits of the bills. I do not think the people of this country expect us to get into these types of partisan debates about whose bill it is. I expect that they expect us to look at the merits of the legislation and pass them if they are good bills, and this is a good bill, as admitted by the gentleman from California. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I just want to say that this is a good piece of legislation, and I think both sides recognize that this is a good piece of legislation. We can wrap all the rhetoric around this that we would like, we need to pass this bill and do what we can to help save the salmon. I hope the Members will support this. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Again I would point out, the gentleman raises an issue which ought to always be of concern from the minority side of the aisle, whoever is in the minority. But again I would point out that bills under consideration by this Congress, 23.4 percent have been Democratic bills. The last time his party controlled this body, 11.8 percent of the bills were Republican bills. I think that we have been more than fair. He said that last week there were 16 bills and none of them were Democratic. I would remind the Member that one of them was from the minority leader in the Senate, Senator Daschle. I believe that that is a member of his party.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I find it interesting that the gentleman from California urges his Members to vote against a bill which he considers to be a good bill simply because he disagrees with the procedure and the proportion of bills that have been presented on the floor from each party. He calls that a gross disparity. Yesterday, there were five bills considered on this floor that were Republican bills out of the Committee on Resources and four bills that were Democratic bills that were considered on this floor out of the Committee on Resources. I would point out to the gentleman from California that in this Congress, we have had more than twice as many Democratic bills on this floor under the suspension rule as there were the last time his party controlled this body. More than twice as many. I think that we have been more than fair with the minority party under the suspension rule and the number of bills that come out. In fact, the gentleman recognizes that tomorrow over a third of the bills on the agenda in the Committee on Resources are from the minority party. So while the gentleman raises an issue which is always of concern to the minority party, and rightfully of concern to the minority party, I think he makes a fallacy in his argument that we have not been fair to the minority party. I wish he would reconsider and look at the merits of the bills rather than the procedures by which they get here. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.