Billy Tauzin

Mr. TAUZIN

Mr. TAUZIN. I thank the gentleman. One of the reasons why I think this has been a do-something Congress that has been unrecognized is that much of what we have done and completed went to the White House and got vetoed. We have got to remember that. We did pass Medicare reform through both houses of this Congress and it got vetoed. We did pass a balanced budget bill for this country and it got vetoed. We passed a Medicaid reform bill and it got vetoed. We passed welfare reform twice and it got vetoed. We passed product liability reform and it is scheduled to get vetoed. We had a liability reform bill dealing with securities laws. That got vetoed. We mustered a two-thirds majority to override on that one, but most of these bills have been vetoed. We do not have a two-thirds majority to override. But this Congress has produced and believe me, if we could, this Congress would produce a complete repeal of the IRS and the income tax, as our bill would do, and the whole mess of guilty until proven innocent and double taxation and the awful mess the IRS has created for this country. If we could appeal it this year and substitute an alternative tax system that was fair and made sense for Americans, I would love to see it done this year. We have at least put an idea on the table. That is part of what this Congress has been all about, putting new ideas, new reform concepts on the table, passing many of them, as the gentlemen from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox] has pointed out, some of which has become law, many of which we are still fighting over because they have been vetoed. But we are going to keep up that fight until we win those reforms.

Mr. TAUZIN. The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox] said something worth repeating. At one of the town hall meetings during the break, it happened to occur on the 4-year anniversary of my father's death. I spent that morning with my mother. We recalled together how one of the things my dad had always asked me to try to do as his Congressman, as his son and friend, was to do something about that awful income earnings limitations that we put on seniors under Social Security. My father was living under Social Security until his death, and the idea that we told him and other seniors, ``Don't go try to earn more money to have a good life, because we're going to take your Social Security away if you dare go out and continue to work,'' was an insult to him. One of the sterling accomplishments of this Congress has been to raise that earned income limitation now to $30,000, so now seniors can earn up to $30,000 without affecting their Social Security check. I remember telling the audience that night, I said, ``Dad, this one's for you.'' This one is for all the seniors who have been asking us to do that for so long, and to stop this awful tax on their Social Security benefits that was imposed during the early years of the Clinton administration, and this House did that. It has repealed the tax on the Social Security checks that seniors get around the country. I hope, frankly, we can see that enacted into law in a much bigger income tax reform that all Americans can benefit from before this Congress is over.

Mr. TAUZIN. I want to thank the gentleman for joining us and congratulate him on an excellent statement. My mother is on Medicare. I got a wonderful call from her just today telling me that she is finally out of the hospital, been discharged, doing well. She is a twice cancer survivor on Medicare. Do not think for a second that I am going to not do everything I can to make sure Medicare does not go bankrupt, for her and for everybody's mother and father that we cherish and love as much as I love my own mother. The bottom line is, we cannot let that system go bankrupt. If we do not face that problem head on, as the gentleman has said, and provide new solutions for it while at the same time increasing the benefits per beneficiary, as our plan did, and preserve for every Medicare recipient the right to go to the doctor of their own choice and to stay in the Medicare system if that is what they choose, if we do not do that kind of a reform, how are we going to save this system? And if we do not save it, 7 years from now, when it is about to go bankrupt, are we going to let that happen? No. We know what is going to happen around here. There will be a doubling of the payroll taxes to save it, and then the next generation will be threatened with bankruptcy. We will have been imposing an undue burden on the children and grandchildren to save a system that we should have saved and could have saved today, and the gentleman is so right in that regard. When it comes to the business of finding common sense in America, I agree with him. The best common sense resides in those town hall meetings back home. That is where I really learn the truth about many of the issues we debate here in Washington. That is where folks really tell us how the real world works and where the good ideas are, and more of us I think ought to spend time in those town hall meetings and less time here in Washington.

Mr. TAUZIN. Even accounting for the increase in seniors.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I would ask the gentleman, did he mention the success this House had in passing a health care reform bill this year? That came from our committee as well. For the first time, we finally got a bill out of this House that deals with the terrible issue of portability, as Americans move from job to job and lose their insurance. This bill now says you can take your insurance with you when you move jobs. It also takes care of this terrible problem of preexisting conditions. When you move from one job to the next, you might not have been able to get insurance for the thing you had, that you had coverage for at your old job. That bill dealt with that preexisting condition problem, and made other good cost-saving reforms in malpractice insurance, in paperwork reform, waste, fraud and abuse. It was the first real targeted effort to begin the process of reforming insurance for medical care in America, and reforming the availability and affordability of those systems for more Americans.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, in all this process of RDA reform, we have to keep our eyes, again, on the ball. The ball in this case is to make sure that food products Americans enjoy are safe products. That has to be our preeminent goal. Our second preeminent goal ought to be to make sure as we regulate good and drugs in America, that we do have a climate where new inventions and developments can reach consumers as rapidly as possible after they have been appropriately tested, so Americans do not have to run to other countries to get treatments that should be available in America, so that new devices and new drugs and new treatments can be available to citizens here, and so that in fact they can be available at an early date to save a life or prolong a life. FDA reform is critically needed in that regard. I want to join you in the hope that we can accomplish that before the year is out.

Mr. TAUZIN. Yes, but you would not believe that by listening to some of this debate on the floor. The fact of the matter is there are quite a number of lobby groups in this town on both sides of this equation who have very special interests. There are environmental lobby groups who have very special interests in keeping a fight going, raising more money and fighting some more. There are other groups out here who obviously would like to not see any environmental protection in the land. Neither one is right. What we have to do is find the balance to make sure that neither one of the lobby groups sneak away with the issue and we never get anything done, but that in fact Americans get a cleaner, healthier, and safer place to live in out of this maze of regulation and legislation. The bottom line is we ought to be asking the simple question, does this work. If it does not work to bring us a cleaner, healthier place, if it does not work to save a species, if it does not work to really protect wetlands, then let us build a better system. Let us build one that makes common sense and works and delivers for Americans what they are paying for, which is cleanup of hazardous sites, which is protection of endangered species, which is protection of valuable wetlands, and protection of the clean water and the air and the lands upon which we live. If we deliver on that promise, it will be the best bipartisan gift we can give to America, not only on this Earth Day, but on every Earth Day. But if you listen to some of the debate on this floor, I mean, you would believe that some of us really do not want clean air and clean water and a clean place for our families. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is we all want it, we just disagree on how to achieve it. We disagree on how in fact to attain that good environment for our families. In the end, that is a debate that we ought to have, but we ought to do it with a little less of this partisanship, a little less of this acrimonious sort of name-calling and get-ready-for-the-next-election, which seems to preoccupy this Chamber too much. If we remember as we approach Earth Day that we have a common goal here to make regulations work for the good not only of our environment but for the citizens who live in it, then I think we will be on solid ground.

Mr. TAUZIN. Of course it would. That is what we are trying to do in this reform. In short, we are trying to bring commonsense environmentalism to America. We are not trying at all to back away from our commitment to the environment. I believe, and I know most Members of this House believe, that we are here as guests on this planet and that we share it with other forms of life, and we all breathe the same air and drink the same water. We all cherish clean water and safe environments for our family. But we ought to have commonsense regulation out of this Federal Government, and very often we do not. We end up wasting the money, the precious dollars that ought to go to cleaning up places in America and making it a safer, healthier place for our children.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, why they do that, the reason they spend so much time in court battling over liability, is that the current law as it is written has this so-called deep pockets provision in it. So if you contributed 1 percent of whatever is in that site, you could be liable for 100 percent. If you are caught having contributed that 1 percent and you are told that the other parties are not found liable, you are going to have to cough it all up, you are going to try your best to bring them all to court and fight over that liability forever. The result is the government spends the taxpayers' dollars in that courtroom, the private parties spend interminable amounts of time and money in that courtroom, and in the meantime the citizens out there waiting for the cleanup to occur wait and wait and wait, and the money is wasted and no cleanup occurs. That is what is wrong with this system. It lacks common sense. If we had a system, for example, that said if you are known to have contributed 20 percent and you are willing to put up your 20 percent cost up front without a legal fight, so we can take that 20 percent and go start cleaning up that site, would that not make better common sense?

Mr. TAUZIN. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I particularly wanted to join you because I listened to the special order that preceded you, and if you were to listen to that special order, you would assume that much of the regulatory reform efforts that you just referred to that were conducted during the previous year in this Congress were somehow aimed at destroying the environment, creating dirty water and dirty air and somehow making life unsafe and unhealthy for us, when nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is, as we approach Earth Day and we celebrate a much cleaner environment for America, the fact is that we ought to reflect upon what we fought for earlier this year, that some of which remains yet undone and some of which needs to be accomplished in this session of Congress or the next. Now, one of that is regulatory reform. Now, again, if you would listen to that special order that just occurred, you would think, for example, that the clean water bill that this House produced was somehow a partisan special-interest piece of legislation that was not designed to do anything about clean water in America. The truth was that it was supported by a large majority of this House, bipartisan in nature, Democrats joining Republicans, attempting to bring some rationality to the section of laws that deal with clean water regulations in America, particularly trying to define wetlands in a way that we can properly respect the preservation of real wetlands and at the same time respect the rights of property owners and people in America who are affected by those regulations. Now, the properly rights bill itself was one that was supported by many Democrats in this House, and we sent it down to the Senate. It was a bill that simply set up due process rights for property owners who were affected by some of the regulations dealing with either the Endangered Species Act or the pull for wetlands regulations. In regulatory reform, you will recall that when this House passed its regulatory reform bill, the Republican majority was joined by many Democrats who agreed with us that it was time to put some risk-benefit cost analysis into the process by which the government makes regulation. Why? Because we simply want to make sure that regulation makes common sense, that you look at the real risk you are going after, analyze it carefully and look for the least-cost method of achieving a reduction of that risk in our society, making sure, in fact, that regulations issued by bureaucrats made common sense. Was that an attack on the environment? Of course not. We want a safer, cleaner, healthy environment for America, but we simply want the regulators in Washington, who are sometimes out of control, sometimes not living in the real world, to simply take people into account and to make their regulations make common sense. This House overwhelmingly endorsed that proposal and sent it down to the Senate. We have still not seen that enacted into law. But we stand for those propositions tonight as we did earlier this year. We stand in this week when we celebrate the planet and clean air environment, we stand for a cleaner healthier, safer place for Americans to live, but one in which Federal bureaucrats start treating people with a little less arrogance, when they start making regulations that take risk and cost into account, that they start respecting property rights in America, that they start respecting the very people they are supposed to serve in America rather than ramming regulations down their throat that sometimes do not make sense. In short, we are looking for more effective environmentalism, more effective regulatory structures that really work. We are looking for as much voluntary agreements and conservation, voluntary agreements, as possible, consultation with local folks, bringing, in fact, environmentalism back home where it belongs instead of here in Washington in some Federal agency. I remember recently when Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of Interior, visited Louisiana, he went down and talked about the Republican assault on the great outdoors. My comment was, Mr. Babbitt, you don't understand something. Sir, we love the great outdoors as much as you do, perhaps more than you do, in Louisiana. We grew up in the great outdoors. It's the great indoors that we complain about, the indoors where all these Federal bureaucrats who have lost sight of reality and make all these regulations that just don't make sense that Americans can't live with and that in many cases disrespects constitutional rights, civil rights, like the right to own private property in our country. And so as we fight to balance those things, as we fight to bring some common sense to regulatory reform, respect for property rights, and some regulations dealing with wetlands and clean water and clean drinking water that indeed are based on good risk analysis, cost- benefit analysis; in other words, regulations that achieve their results more accurately for Americans. As we make that fight, we will also celebrate with our colleagues on the other side Earth Day this week. We are going to try to see to it in the coming weeks and months, for example, that we make a new Superfund law for America, one that does not waste all the money that is collected in a courtroom with lawyers and others making all the money in the system and nothing getting cleaned up. The President in his State of the Union address, his first State of the Union address, pointed out to us how awful that was, and called upon us to change that law. We are going to try to do that, Jon, to pass a good Superfund law, a good clean drinking water law, and get the Senate, hopefully, to agree with us eventually on good, safe, clean water acts and property rights and regulatory reform.

Mr. TAUZIN

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, the tax man cometh tonight, and if there was ever a more abominable tax system than the American income tax system, we have yet to see it on the face of the planet. It came to use by a two-thirds vote. It did not come to this Chamber, to this body, to the American public except through a constitutional amendment that required a two-thirds vote. The first attempt to pass an income tax was declared unconstitutional because our Constitution prohibited an income tax system in our country as it was first written. So what is wrong with requiring that changes should come only with a two-thirds vote? We are not saying taxes cannot be raised in America. We are simply saying they should not be easily raised, no more easily than the American public was first inflicted with this system with a two-thirds vote when the 16th amendment was proposed and later adopted. I wish we were debating the repeal of the income tax system tonight. We have such a bill before this body, House bill 3039, a bill to establish an alternative tax system for America. This system taxes Americans twice on the same money, once when you earn it and again when you spend it, when you pay all the business taxes, when you consume American products. It taxes only American products, not products made from overseas and imported here. It is a lousy system. It costs small businesses $4 to conform to the Code for every dollar they send in tonight, and we are paying all of that cost. We are told $300 billion worth of man-hours is spent in complying with this Tax Code. We ought to get rid of it. But at least we ought not raise taxes more easily than this country was inflicted with income taxes, and that was with a two-thirds vote of the Congress and a confirmation by the legislatures of the 16th amendment. I remind you, the income tax was declared unconstitutional once. It was repealed in prior history in this country by Congress. Americans hate it. They have a right to hate it. It is a lousy system, and we ought to at least make it more difficult to raise taxes under that system in America.

Mr. TAUZIN

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, let me first make a confession: I am a former trial lawyer. I still hold a law degree. Let me also disabuse you all of a notion: This House is not composed of a majority of lawyers. Only 170 Members of this House admit or believe they have a law degree; 435 Members, 170, that means three-fifths of this House are not lawyers. That surprises most people. They think it is the other way around. Many of the lawyers in this House rise as I do today in support of these commonsense legal reforms, and it is to the lawyers in the House I want to speak for a minute. We have a responsibility to the legal profession. We were educated in it. Many of us practiced in it. Our obligation is to make sure that it is a good profession, that it works well, that justice arises out of it. And when the law and when the practice of the law is such that it encourages frivolous lawsuits, that it encourages the pursuit of deep- pocket defendants instead of responsible parties, when it does not make people personally responsible for their own actions, as this bill does when it says if you are drunk or on drugs and you have an accident and that is the real cause of the injury you ought not be able to sue someone and collect, when we in this body are prepared to write comonsense legal reform, lawyers ought to be the first ones to rise and say we are prepared to do it. We did that on security litigation reform. We passed that bill by a two-thirds vote of this House and the other body. The President vetoed it. We overrode his veto. We passed good commonsense medical reform, malpractice reform yesterday in this House. I hope we see that through to finish. If we pass this bill today and send it to the President, I hope he will do something very important. If lawyers in this House can say yes to commonsense legal reform, then the President ought to be able to say no to some of his trial lawyer friends, and he ought to sign this good bill when it hits his desk.

Mr. TAUZIN

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, this year marks the fifth anniversary of the Persian Gulf war--a war fought over oil in foreign lands. Although the U.S. troops and our allies displayed remarkable sophistication and prowess in bringing Sadam to his knees, our national security concerns remain and our position has weakened. In 1991, America imported 45 percent of the U.S. demand for oil; 5 years later our dependence has grown. Today we import over half, 52 percent of our annual consumption. The time has come for the Nation to decide to give our young men and women the option to take U.S. jobs on U.S. soil or go to war to protect foreign oil on which we are so dependent. Our first commitment should be made to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and its mandated 1 billion barrel mark. The mere threat of drawing down these reserves calmed the oil and gas markets and stabilized the price during the Persian Gulf war crisis. Instead of preserving this stockpile we have reduced the minimum fill level, ceased the purchase of new oil, decided to sell 7 million barrels of oil, maybe as many as 100 million barrels, and lost the use of a 75 million barrel facility at Weeks Island which is in my district. It is time to move in the other direction. We must create incentives to produce domestically and keep jobs at home instead of driving companies and employees abroad. I encourage Congress and the administration to move forward with the technical suggestions that the oil and gas caucus presented to President Clinton, as well as, sign in to law a commonsense regulatory reform bill, the royalty simplification and fairness bill, and the Coast Guard authorization bill which contains important language dealing with OPA `90's financial responsibility section. In addition, we should reject the EPA's efforts to expand the toxic release inventory to include certain oil and gas wastes, speak out against efforts to increase taxes on oil and gas production and reject mandating an OCS moratorium. I ask that you join me and many Members in both bodies to enact these legislative and regulatory changes. We must send the message that America's dependence on foreign oil comes at the price of U.S. lives and U.S. jobs.

Mr. TAUZIN

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, one of the things the gentleman from California [Mr. Pombo] has talked about at a number of our hearings was the fact that, overall, there are 4000 species waiting to get listed right now under the Government command and control system. Most of them are bugs. While we talk about the Endangered Species Act protecting beautiful animals, like pumas and bears and eagles, that actually the next listings, the next big round of listings, will be all kinds of insects. People's properties and values and their lives are going to be affected now dramatically because of the presence or absence of an insect anywhere near their home. Mr. Speaker, this law is beginning to have effects that nobody calculated. If we do not somehow restore some common sense to it so that we can get more cooperative agreements in here and more good science behind some of these decisions, we are going to have some real problems in this country.

Mr. TAUZIN. They were not French speaking; were they?

Mr. TAUZIN. on vacation.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, a perfect example, this black bear deal in Louisiana. Not only was the conservation program working without any mandates from the Federal Government, not only was the black bear recovering nicely, but, believe it or not, the Department of the Interior was not happy with that. They instead came in and proposed a $3 million critical habitat area. They were going to impose it without any public hearings. They would not tell landowners what it would do to affect the use of their property. In fact, they could not explain what the differences were going to be when they mandate this critical area. Well, we insisted on some public hearings. We finally got a couple, and we literally brought to light the fact that the program was working without the Federal Government mandating and controlling and creating critical areas. Landowners were volunteering. The partnership, Mr. Young, was working.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Alaska [Mr. Young] not only for yielding time but for having this special order. It is important because I think all Americans love and appreciate the great outdoors. We appreciate the diversity of animal and plant life not only in America but on the planet. We all have an interest in preserving it and making sure that we do not lose it. When you come to areas like Alaska and Louisiana, you have a special appreciation for it, because of the land, the water, the species that inhabit them are special to us. I grew up in the bayou country of south Louisiana where we are extremely close to nature. Nature was not just something we experienced by watching the Discovery Channel. It was part of our lives every day. To see anything go extinct is nothing that is very pleasant and certainly something we all want to avoid, not simply for the esthetics of it, but for the importance of it in terms of life on this planet. Life should be precious to all of us. The life of a species ought to be one of the things we deeply cherish and want to protect. Mr. Speaker, the question is not whether we love the great outdoors and whether we appreciate the great outdoors. The real question is whether the great indoors is working well enough to preserve the great outdoors. The great indoors is the Interior Department, and so great indoors is where bureaucrats work night and day turning out the regulations we all have to live with that most concerns us. Mr. Speaker, what I think we are about is asking for reforms that bring common sense and effectiveness, user friendliness, to the environmental laws, the endangered species laws, of this country, not simply because we do not like bureaucrats, but, Mr. Speaker, more importantly, because rules and regulations ought to, No. 1, make common sense, because we will understand them better, appreciate them more, and they will work better; No. 2, they ought to be user friendly. That is, the people they affect ought to be taken into the equation. They ought to be considered. Public hearings, good science behind the decisions, explanations and a chance for people to have an understanding of why this rule is important to protect a species and perhaps change the way somebody is using and enjoying their property, for example. The rules in the end ought to be not only good common sense and user friendly, but they ought to be effective, to carry out the purposes they intend. A good example in Louisiana right now is a thing called the black bear conservation effort going on in our State. It is a voluntary land management plan that landowners have entered into voluntary agreements with conservationists to help propagate the species of black bear that resides in Louisiana. The results have been dramatic. Without Government intervention, without the Government coming in and declaring critical areas and coming down with all kind of rules about what you can do or not do with your property, landowners and conservationists are working cooperatively today to bring back a species, a subspecies of bear, that some said was threatened or perhaps endangered. The result is that we are getting an effective recovery. Part of our commonsense plans to reform endangered species is to do just that, to put some good science into the equation that makes sure public hearings, that people have a chance to see and know what is going on, to make sure the regulations make common sense, that they are tested on the basis of effectiveness and cost benefit to make sure that we stress voluntary agreements first before we talk about command and control decisions out of Washington, DC, and then to test the bottom end result. Is it working? Is it recovering the species? Are we happy as a user family of American citizens who use this planet alongside the other species that inhabit this Earth? Are we happy together? Is it working out? If we test it on that scale, the current law fails us pretty badly. If we test it on a scale of what we could accomplish, if we change the law in those respects, if we brought commonsense environmentalism to this Chamber, if we made our rules and regulations user friendly, and if we test it on the basis of how well they are recovering species, what good effect they are having, then I can guarantee you folks like the gentleman from Alaska [Mr. Young] and the gentleman from California [Mr. Pombo] and I would not only be happy with the results, but Americans generally, whether you call yourself an environmentalist, conservationist, or whatever else you want to call yourself, we would all be happy to know that the laws are working, that they are appreciated, and that landowners and other effective groups are partners and friends of the act rather than having made enemies of the act and, therefore, fighting its effect instead of working with it. Mr. Speaker, it is the kind of goal we hope to achieve. I think special orders like this, where we talk about the value of changing the law and making it better, are extremely important if we are ever going to get to that point, and we get past the politics and all the demagoguery, and we talk realistically about how we can build a better environmental law for America that protects species, and does make common sense, and takes people into account, and landowners, and values of their property, into account as we go about recovering their species.

Mr. TAUZIN. You mean a biologist could nominate a species, and on the basis of his information could get listed and impact millions of Americans?

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is saying that the land was put off limits even before the listing?

Mr. TAUZIN. Just because somebody--

Mr. TAUZIN. I want you to think with me, if we were able to change the law, if we could get something past this Congress and signed by the President to bring some commonsense environmentalism to endangered species laws, and we had a situation where landowners would be encouraged to invite endangered species on their property and encouraged to enhance the conservation capabilities of their properties so these species could grow and actually enhance the population significantly, if had that kind of law in place, instead of the one that tells the landowner, ``You had better not find an endangered species on your property or we will shut you down; you had better not invite one on, because we will shut you down; you had better not even try to improve your property for species because we will shut you down,'' if we have that kind of law, which we do today, and we had the chance to build a better law that encouraged landowners to do the right thing, why would we not do that?

Mr. TAUZIN. In fact, Mr. Speaker, not only are we not doing the right things, the law encourages landowners to do the wrong things, as the chairman of the committee pointed out. We heard the testimony of one landowner whose father left him this beautiful property that they had develop over years, and all of a sudden, a woodpecker arrived. They discovered woodpeckers on the property they had enhanced. Now he is clear-cutting the rest of his property to avoid what he calls an infestation of an endangered species. Instead of doing the right thing, as his father had done for many years, he is clear-cutting now.

Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, the biggest absurdity in my mind though, it is a fact that all of these decisions are being made without the benefit of good science. The law right now says that a listing can occur with what is called best available data, B-A-D. Bad science, whatever is available. If you only know a little bit, and that tells you it is endangered, then you have to list it under the current law. You do not need to do the research and find out whether or not, in fact, there are other populations of this animal or plant or insect somewhere else. Mr. Speaker, we are driving, in effect, the whole body of regulations that are becoming increasingly difficult for Americans to live with on the basis of bad science. We do it without public hearings in many cases. We do not consider cost-benefit ratios. We do not consider whether the regulations we impose make common sense. We simply must impose them once that listing occurs on the basis of bad science. Now, you cannot tell me that kind of a law makes good sense, to say that you are going to list something with bad science. Then you are going to have rules and regulations made without the benefit of public hearings and that in the end you are going to make a regulation that impacts dramatically the lives of people without ever considering the cost, without looking for the least-cost alternative, to find the best way to save that plant or animal without putting people out of work, or taking their property away from them, or putting in jail, as the gentleman from Alaska [Mr. Young] said, smashing a bug.

Mr. TAUZIN. He had to do it to protect his value.