Don Young

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, as many of my colleagues know, we were going to take up the contempt report following this vote. We have decided not to do that until a later time. It is not because of the issue. It is because of the number of people that saw fit to leave this body on both sides of the aisle to return to their homes. It will be considered next time.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I move that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 6 p.m. tomorrow.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, S. 1670 will expand the boundary of Fort Matanzas National Monument in the State of Florida by approximately 70 acres. The monument was established by Presidential Proclamation in 1924 under the Antiquities Act. The two tracts of land, which are adjacent to the monument boundary, were donated to the United States in the mid-1960s. A third tract of land comprising 1.6 acres was erroneously omitted from the legal description of the monument at the time of its creation. However, it has been managed as part of the monument despite the fact that the United States does not hold title, although the local tax assessor regards it as Federal property. S. 1670 will expand the monument boundaries to include these three parcels. I urge support of the bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the Senate bill (S. 1670) to revise the boundary of Fort Matanzas National Monument, and for other purposes.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2903) to assist in the conservation of coral reefs, as amended.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2903 will help manage and conserve America's fisheries and benefit marine mammals. Because of the press of time before we adjourn and the limited number of legislative days, we have folded together nearly a dozen previously House- or Senate-passed fisheries conservation measures. These bipartisan provisions include the reauthorization of the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act and the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act, a grant program from marine mammal stranding networks, and a study of eastern gray whale populations. All these measures deserve our support. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the Resources Committee and author of title XV of H.R. 5528 as passed by the House, I wish to make a statement to provide factual background and clarify congressional intent as to the meaning and implementation of that title. The Secretary of Interior has created allocation pools for acreage entitlements of regional corporations under sections 14(h)(1) and 14(h)(8) of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) and conveyances to one regional corporation under section 14(h)(1) may have the effect of reducing the entitlements of all other regional corporations under section 14(h)(8). Chugach Alaska Corporation (Chugach) currently has significant entitlement remaining under its section 14(h)(1) allocation and the Secretary believes Chugach is over- conveyed under its current section 14(h)(8) but allocations under section 14(h)(8) have not been finalized. In the event that any acreage ultimately conveyed to Chugach as a result of title XV would have the effect of reducing the section 14(h)(8) allocations of other regional corporations under current regulations, section 1506(a) provides that such reduction shall be charged solely against Chugach's final section 14(h)(8) allocation, notwithstanding such current regulations, or other applicable law.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 2903 and S. 1670.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in support of S. 2485, the St. Croix Island Heritage Act. This bill directs the Secretary of the Interior to provide assistance in planning and constructing a Regional Heritage Center in Calais, Maine. St. Croix Island is located in the St. Croix River between Maine and Canada. It is the only international historic site in the national park system. In 1604, the French landed on the island and began construction of a settlement, which became the first permanent settlement in the New World. In October 1998, the National Park Service completed a general management plan to manage and interpret the St. Croix Island international historic site. In the year 2004, the U.S. and Canada will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the settlement of the St. Croix Island. This bill will facilitate the development of a Regional Heritage Center in downtown Calais, Maine, to be a central focus point for this celebration. The bill authorizes $2 million for the planning and construction of the heritage center and requires a dollar-for-dollar match by non- Federal sources. I believe that this bill has merit, and I support its passage. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 663, I call up the Senate bill (S. 2485) to direct the Secretary of the Interior to provide assistance in planning and constructing a regional heritage center in Calais, Maine, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1653) to approve a governing international fishery agreement between the United States and the Russian Federation, as amended.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton).

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. H.R. 1653, as amended, the Pribilof Islands Transition Act, was passed by the House in June 2000 with 400 aye votes. Unfortunately, the other body has not yet acted on it. The Pribilof Islands, St. Paul and St. George, are located in the Bering Sea and serve as the breeding ground of the North Pacific fur seal. The islands were settled when Russian fur seal traders forcibly kidnapped, relocated and enslaved Native Alaskan Aleuts to conduct fur seal harvests. This bill compensates local communities for expenses they incurred when the Federal Government, formerly the sole landowner and employer on the islands, withdrew its jobs and municipal services. It also authorizes funds to complete the environmental cleanup of the mess the Federal Government left on the islands during its 120-year reign. Finally, the bill establishes what NOAA must do before its responsibilities on the islands are terminated. This bill makes good on our promises to a group of Native Americans who served as virtual slaves to this country's government for 120 years. I urge support of this legislation. It is long overdue. This measure also includes coral reef conservation provisions previously passed by the Senate. Coral reefs are threatened by a variety of natural impacts and human activities including coral disease, hurricanes, destructive fishing practices, pollution, and changing ocean conditions. Despite these threats, coral reefs support the economies of many local communities and are essential habitat for many of this nation's recreational and commercial fisheries. This legislation establishes new Federal-State-local partnerships to work on conservation and restoration programs. It authorizes Federal matching grants to protect and restore these valuable natural resources. It also authorizes NOAA to conduct mapping, monitoring, assessment, education, conservation, and management activities relating to coral reefs. Title IV would authorize a study, subject to appropriations, to determine the environmental and biological factors causing the recent die-offs and strandings of gray whales from the eastern Pacific stock. In addition, the study should include information from studies of the western Pacific stock of gray whales to the extent practicable. This study will give marine mammal scientists information on a number of issues regarding gray whales including, among other things, whether the eastern Pacific stock has reached the carrying capacity of the eastern Pacific Ocean. The language authorizes $290,000 for Fiscal Year 2001 and $500,000 for each of Fiscal years 2002, 2003, and 2004. Title V would make two additional catcher vessels eligible to participate in the Bering Sea pollock fishery cooperatives authorized under the American Fisheries Act. I urge my colleagues to vote ``aye'' on this measure. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I do rise in strong support of this legislation. I am a little bit chagrined my good friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), recognized the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) and thanked him for his support but forgot the chairman, except later on. There is a priority here, and I always worry about that. Other than that, this is a good piece of legislation. The gentleman is absolutely correct. The idea that a fish, or a shark, could be caught, and they have enough bad times the way it is, but to take just the fins, et cetera, and return them to sea to die a very hideous death is beyond my comprehension. Whatever can happen, sometimes these types of pieces of legislation can have good intentions and they are not implemented by the State Department, because we have to recognize we have a lot of rules about how one sees interception now with our salmon in Alaska, and yet we have documentation where the Coast Guard has identified the death curtains at high seas and the Coast Guard tries to implement and enforce our international agreement and the State Department tries to pull them off and say we do not want an international incident. I will say again, I voted against trading with China and I will say again the Chinese Government is the guiltiest one of all of catching these fish at high seas with these huge, long nets. Until the State Department sees fit to enforce those type of laws, these sound good and feel good on the floor of the House; but we have to have someone with a little backbone and an administration that will say, all right, this is the law, this is an agreement we reached and enforce those laws so that we can stop the heinous-type action with shark finning, and of course, with catching the fish at high seas. Mr. Speaker, I urge support of the legislation.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I wish to provide this clarification of legislative intent to Section 761 of H.R. 1000, the FAA Reauthorization bill, P.L. 106-181, enacted earlier this year. Section 761 provides a process for land exchanges to facilitate a railroad track realignment and straightening project through Elmendorf AFB and Fort Richardson, Alaska. Track is to be relocated further away from the runway landing clear zone, ammunition storage areas, and other military facilities. It will also provide safety and operational benefits for the combined passenger and freight rail line. The small land parcel segments that need to be exchanged on a nearly acre-for- acre basis will be between the state-owned Alaska Railroad on the one part, and the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretaries of the Army, Air Force, or such other federal agencies as may be necessary, on the other part. Of course, it is the intent of Section 761 that matters needed to facilitate these land exchanges between the federal agencies and the state railroad, as well as the overall purposes of this project, are necessarily implied therein. For example, it will obviously be necessary on a temporary basis during surveying, preliminary engineering, and construction, for one or more of these entities to be present simultaneously on each others' parcels of land, regardless of the exact dates legal title may be transferred. The railroad may, by necessary implication, locate and construct its new track facility without the need for a separate fee or use permit being processed under the usual federal land management statutes. Section 761 already authorizes the applicable Secretary to impose additional terms on the railroad as appropriate to protect the U.S. interests. Further, while Section 761 did not directly amend The Alaska Railroad Transfer Act of 1982, under which the federally-owned railroad was sold to the state, once again, it is logically and necessarily implied that the reversionary provisions of the 1982 Act will not apply to land segments given up by the railroad to facilitate this project. Instead, the reversionary provisions will transfer and apply to the new land acquired by the railroad from the federal entities in the exchange. Finally, Section 761 had no intent to imply any derogation of the permanent withdrawal and agreement under Section 1425 of ANILCA, P.L. 86-487, as to any of the lands being exchanged. It is the intent of Section 761 that the lands received by each grantee, either the railroad or the federal entities, shall have in its hands the same status with respect to Section 1425 of ANILCA and the agreement as did the lands granted in exchange by each such grantee. Further, it is intended that any land or interest reconveyed by the railroad to a federal agency will be automatically considered a part of the surrounding public land withdrawal without need for further administrative action respecting those lands.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, in the event that the amendment is agreed to, I ask that the question on adoption of the resolution be divided within section 2 so that refusal of each of the three named individuals will be voted on separately.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I filed a supplemental report yesterday. It changes only a technical error on the cover page of Report 106-801 filed by me on July 27, 2000. Digressing from my statement. My colleagues in this body, this is a very serious time, and I hope that Members will take the time to listen to both sides of this argument and make a decision by voting favorably on this resolution. The resolution now before the House reports the refusal of three subpoenaed witnesses to answer questions at hearings of the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources of the Committee on Resources, chaired by the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Cubin). The questions were critical to the committee's oversight. Every Member of this House, Democrat, Republican and Independent, should support this resolution. If not, we undercut the future capability of this Congress and future Congresses to get information we will need to do our job required by Article One of the Constitution. The resolution is about whether the authority of a subpoena from a House committee means anything or whether it can be ignored. If Members think a subpoena means something, then they will vote for this substitute resolution. If they think committees, in their oversight roles, not the witnesses, should define the questions at a hearing, then they will vote in favor of reporting the facts relating to the refusal of Ms. Brian, Mr. Berman, and Mr. Banta to answer questions posed by the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Cubin) and her subcommittee. On institutional grounds alone, every Member, Democrat, Independent, Republican, should support this contempt resolution. Every Member should also support the report on the merits as well. Mr. Speaker, this all started 18 months ago, when the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Cubin) and I read alarming press reports. These reports detailed government employees within the departments we oversee being paid and using proceeds from a whistleblower lawsuit called Johnson and Shell. That successful whistleblower suit is now basically settled. It returned over $400 million to the U.S. Treasury. But serious questions about the payments to Federal employees from the whistleblower share of the Johnson and Shell settlements forced us to launch an oversight review in the process. We issued document requests and, as we learned more about the payments, we scheduled hearings. In those hearings, the gentlewoman from Wyoming exposed details of a secret plan hatched years earlier by a group called POGO, the Project on Government Oversight. The plan was to pay two government oil royalty experts huge, and I mean huge, sums of money from the Johnson and Shell settlement. POGO used the Federal employees to learn information about the court- sealed Johnson and Shell lawsuit. I repeat, the court-sealed Johnson and Shell lawsuit. And then POGO filed its own suit making the same allegation on top of the Johnson and Shell lawsuit. Settlement proceeds from POGO's share were then funneled to the government insiders. The gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Cubin) and her subcommittee discovered how POGO had already split nearly a million dollars from Federal employees. She discovered their written agreements. She discovered their plans to take $7 million in total from the whistleblowers' lawful reward. She discovered their plan split the bounty with the Federal Government employees. She discovered how the Department of Justice told POGO not to make the payments. May I stress that again. She discovered how the Department of Justice told POGO not to make those payments. The Committee experienced major, major stonewalling from those cited in this resolution while inquiring about the scheme. The culprits say that they, not Congress, determine what the American people will know about the largest payoffs ever accepted by Federal employees. That stonewalling probably constitutes a Federal misdemeanor known as contempt of Congress. A vote by the House is required to begin enforcement and condemn the payoffs, which is why we consider the report and resolution today. That oversight review included examining whether the two federal insiders, Robert A. Berman of Interior or Robert A. Speir of Energy, sold Government secrets or exercised influence to favor those who paid them. The Committee on Resources, under its rules, authorized me to issue subpoenas on this manner. After it became clear that the key players would not provide good-faith cooperation to the subcommittee of the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Cubin), I issued subpoenas for important documents. Later, the participants refused requests for voluntary interviews. So I issued subpoenas for witnesses to appear before the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources chaired by the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Cubin). Those subpoenas did not mean much to the key players in this scandal. They were denied. The gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Cubin) and the subcommittee were very fair. Her subcommittee's oversight, as far as it could go, was an excellent example, I believe, of responsible Government. Under the statute, if the House adopts this report, the Speaker is authorized to present the facts to the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. Consistent with the constitutional separation of powers, we do not weigh the evidence of refusal to comply with subpoenas against the reasonable doubt standard of proof. Our obligation is to report the facts as we know them. To fail to make this report will surrender authority over oversight to witnesses rather than reserving it to the House as placed by the Constitution. To put it simply, these parties have left no choice for the Congress. They refuse to comply. May I remind Members on both sides of the aisle, if they do not adopt this resolution, if they do not adopt this report, if they do not adopt what I am asking today, future Congresses will be thumbed at and told to forget their role as oversight. These people offered and accepted the largest payoffs ever made by Federal bureaucrats. But they claim the arrogant, self-serving privilege to tell the United States that they may not ask certain questions about their agreement, what they knew, and how they knew it. They say to us, we will not tell you how we used Government insiders to learn information. We will not tell you how we used Government employees to leach settlements from the true whistleblowers in the Johnson suit. They say, we will not tell you about our secret agreements to make payments to Federal oil policy insiders who helped them. To protect our mandate as Members of the House, our mandate to gather information and facts needed by the people to legislate and oversee Federal agencies, as I have said before, we, as a Congress, must adopt this resolution. We must stand up for the people's right to know what happened in this payoff. The substitute resolution I have offered will authorize the Speaker to certify to the U.S. Attorney only the refusal of Henry M. Banta, Robert A. Berman, and Danielle Brian Stockton to answer questions while appearing under subpoena before the Committee. This is done in light of new evidence suggesting that POGO and Banta paid Berman for influencing regulations. And that documentation is in the report. This is a very serious felony. There is no longer an interest in grouping Mr. Rutter and the other officers or directors of the corporation known as POGO with serious felons. Nor does the Committee on Resources wish to needlessly compound the charges by having Banta and Stockton face two misdemeanor counts each along with the serious charges which now seem certain. My colleagues will hear that this is all about big oil, it is about a so-called whistleblower. This is nothing to do with the whistleblower. In fact, the whistleblower testified before our committee that the suit was filed on top of his so they could gather the money to be paid to these Federal employees. It is probably one the most corrupt actions by Federal employees under a sealed document where they issued information that was confidential to, in fact, receive reimbursement. This is about this Congress and the next Congress and the Congresses in the future. If we do not adopt this resolution, then we have said to ourselves that this Congress no longer counts in seeking the truth. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I yield 8 minutes to the good gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Cubin), the chairman of the subcommittee that conducted most of the hearings.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie), a member of the committee that really sat in on this program.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this is not about the whistleblowers. These were people that divulged information; they were not the whistleblowers, and this constant smoke screen actually disturbs me, because nobody read the report. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Brady), who also sat on the committee that had these oversight hearings.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, again, the gentleman from California misstates. These were not whistleblowers; these were Federal employees divulging confidential information. The whistleblower himself says that they did the wrong thing. That is not a whistleblower. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin). (Mr. TAUZIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)