The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“ENVIRONMENTAL SLEIGHT OF HAND IN REPUBLICANS' BUDGET DEAL” mentioning the Department of Interior was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E1536-E1537 on July 28, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ENVIRONMENTAL SLEIGHT OF HAND IN REPUBLICANS' BUDGET DEAL
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HON. GEORGE MILLER
of california
in the house of representatives
Monday, July 28, 1997
Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, once again the Republican leadership of the Congress has demonstrated its very strong hostility to policies to promote a strong environmental policy for this country.
I am sure that every Member of this House remembers that when the budget agreement was signed by the congressional leadership and President Clinton, it included at the President's insistence sufficient funding to acquire lands threatened with ruinous development that would present severe dangers to California's ancient redwood forest and to our first national park, Yellowstone. These development plans could result in the cutting of some of the most significant trees in North America--one of the very last ancient stands--and in the locating of a massive mine just upstream of Yellowstone Park.
Now, we included in the budget agreement sufficient moneys to acquire these lands, and then to provide additional acquisitions from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. As you know, some $900 million each year comes into that fund from offshore oil and gas development on Federal lands, and that money by law is to be used for land acquisition. Instead, the Congress has refused to appropriate sufficient funding to keep up with the need to protect our national resources, and a $12 billion surplus has developed in the fund.
The President thought he had struck a deal with the Republican leadership to provide $65 million for the New World Mine lands, and another $250 million for the Headwaters redwood grove, and then an additional $295 million for other long-awaited acquisitions. That was an important part of the budget deal. And, frankly, I would have thought that a party whose environmental reputation is as justifiably low as the Republican Party's would have honored its commitment and its promise.
But instead, the Republicans have reneged on their agreement and, in the midst of the summer when tens of millions of Americans are enjoying our parks and other public lands, the Republicans in Congress have repudiated their commitment. The House bill provides no funding for these high priority park purchases, and the Senate bill is hardly better, adding additional, unnecessary bureaucratic steps that everyone knows will doom the funding.
I hope the public understands this Republican sleight of hand that clarifies once again that leadership's utter indifference to our national parks and other public lands. And I would like to enter into the Record an editorial from today's New York Times that correctly challenges the Republicans in Congress for their failure to keep their promises on environmental protection.
Environmental Promises to Keep
As part of their budget agreement with President Clinton last May, Republican leaders in Congress pledged to provide funds to protect several particularly vulnerable pieces of the American landscape from further degradation. They would give Mr. Clinton enough money to carry forward the largest environmental rescue operation ever undertaken--the restoration of Florida's Everglades. They would also approve generous funds for Federal land acquisition that would allow Mr. Clinton to purchase a potentially ruinous gold mining operation near Yellowstone National Park and to acquire California's Headwaters Redwood Grove from a private lumber company.
So far, Congress has not lived up to its end of the bargain. This puts a special obligation on senior Republicans like the Senate majority leader, Trent Lott, and Senator Pete Domenici, who helped negotiate the budget deal, to remind their colleagues that their party may suffer if they break good-faith commitments. It also means that the Administration cannot relax its vigil. Indeed, Mr. Clinton might think about threatening to veto any spending bills that do not contain the promised funds--a weapon he used to good effect in the last Congress when Republican conservatives tried to dynamite the country's basic environmental laws.
The Yellowstone and Headwaters projects are especially at risk. The House has refused to provide a penny of the $700 million in extra money promised for land acquisitions, including $65 million for the mine and $250 million for the redwoods. The Senate appropriations committee approved the
$700 million but then added a caveat that could doom the Yellowstone and Headwaters purchases. The purchases cannot be consummated, it said, until Congress passes separate legislation specifically authorizing them. That would throw the matter back to the Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which is full of people eager to deny the President an environmental triumph.
The truth is that no separate authorizing legislation is required. The Interior Department and the Forest Service, which would carry out the deals, have pre-existing authority to make the acquisitions as long as the money is there. Mr. Lott and Mr. Domenici must see this mischievous and unnecessary language for what it is--an opening for anticonservationist Republicans to torpedo Mr. Clinton--and make sure it is removed when the bill comes to a floor vote.
The news about the Everglades is much better, at least so far. The appropriations committees in both houses have provided full funding for the Interior Department's Everglades Restoration Fund--a $100 million program aimed primarily at creating buffer zones between the Everglades and two of its greatest threats, the agricultural regions to the north and the exploding urban populations to the east. This is only a small down payment on the Federal share of a restoration effort that may eventually cost $3 billion to $5 billion. But it is an important start.
At the same time, however, both the Senate and House have denied the Administration more than half the $120 million it requested for restoration projects to be undertaken by the Army Corps of Engineers in South Florida. The corps plans a massive replumbing project aimed at replicating the historic flow of clean water from Lake Okeechobee southward to the Everglades and Florida Bay. This is a vital part of the overall scheme and for that reason was specifically promised in the budget agreement. To honor their word, Mr. Lott, Mr. Domenici and their counterparts on the House side. should make sure that these funds are restored.
The Republicans keep saying that they want to spruce up their environmental credentials. Breaking pledges on matters of transcendent interest to environmentalists is not the way to go about it.
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