Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - June 27, 2007)

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Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

The gentleman from Ohio has offered an amendment which is a 4.3 percent across-the-board cut, across all of the agencies here in this bill. And that is about the final desperate or thoughtless way of balancing a budget or of approaching the process of budgeting. After all, the amendments that we have been debating for the last day have been defeated, to throw up your hands, but I suppose that is really progress. At least it is better than trying to reduce the budget down to the level of the President's request in the first place, which was hundreds of millions of dollars even below what the last year's budget was.

But I think you need to look at the core programs. The core programs here are the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Service. Those are the major programs in this budget. The budget for 2007 was a very small increase but not as much as an increase up to the inflationary amount from the previous year's budget, the 2006 budget. So we would have had at least 3 years of budgeting below the inflationary level.

The gentleman's amendment would force all those agencies that cover Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service, which are the places where our Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service serve most of the public, the millions of people of this country who use those facilities, and it would force them to eat the inflation of that, as of now, over a 2-year period, 2006, 2007, and 2008.

What really is happening is that we are having to try to cover for the enormous reductions in the budget from fiscal 2004 to 2005 and from fiscal 2005 to 2006. That is where the major budget cuts have occurred over the last several years. And this budget only partially, partially, replaces for that enormous cut that occurred in those 2 years, way below inflation, serious, real cuts in dollars way below inflation.

Now, I just want to look at a couple of other things not just 3 or 4 years back but a little bit farther. When President Carter left office, the debt of this country was $1 trillion. Twelve years later, after the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, the debt of the country was $4.3 trillion, $3.3 trillion more. When President Clinton left office 8 years later, it was $1.2 trillion above that.

Now, in only 6 years, with you folks on the other side having been in the majority throughout those 6 years, the debt is now up to $8.8 trillion, another $3.5 trillion. Think of it. Under 8 years of President Clinton, the total debt increase was $1.2 trillion, about one-third of the debt increase in just 6 years under the present President and all of that coming under your leadership. The debt increased to that time is all under your majority's leadership.

So I just want to say in the final analysis when you take into account inflation, with this bill, the Department of Interior would still be 11 percent below what the budget was in 2001, when President Bush took office. For the EPA, it would be 16 percent, still below the 2001 budget. And for the Forest Service, it would still be 19 percent below. Those key core programs would still be 19 percent below the budget in 2001.

I oppose this amendment and hope it will not be adopted.

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Mr. OLVER. I thank the gentleman from the subcommittee for yielding me the time.

I'm interested by the amendment. Now, as the gentleman from Georgia has explained it, I, of course, had thought that without instruction the amendment would end up being an across-the-board amendment. But what in fact has happened here is that the gentleman's amendment, without instruction, allows the executive to decide exactly where those $276 million would be cut.

Now, I would consider that a total abrogation of our responsibility for budgeting in article I of the Constitution, where we have taken an oath of office to the Constitution, and where our responsibility is to define where the budgeting for the country will go.

So I think that's, in fact, a far worse thing than it would be if it were a strictly across-the-board kind of budget, senseless as though that would be.

I often find it necessary to be a little bit repetitious. I just want to go back to something that I had pointed out, and that is, that at the end of the Carter administration, when President Carter left office in January of 1981, the debt of this country was $1 trillion. Twelve years later, after 8 years of President Reagan and four of President Bush, father, the debt of the country was $4.3 trillion, more than four times as large in 12 years, but $3.3 trillion increase. In 8 years of President Clinton, the debt was increased by an additional $1.2 trillion to $5.5 trillion.

After now 6 years of Bush, the son, as President, the debt, at present, is at $8.8 trillion, an additional $3 1/2 trillion in just 6 years

Now, I don't know, the gentlemen and women on the other side of the aisle were in the majority through all of those 6 years in this House of Representatives which starts all the budgets. They can't claim that they were out to lunch at all because, in fact, they were here voting for those budgets that increased the debt by $3 1/2 trillion over the last 6 years. So if there is fiscal responsibility, it certainly cannot be claimed either then or now for what is now the minority in this House of Representatives.

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Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to speak to the gentleman who has just spoken. I commend the gentleman who has just spoken. I think he has taken a very responsible, very serious approach to budgeting over the last several sessions, and I appreciate that sort of thing very much.

But I would say that here we are in this instance with an amendment that takes an approach not quite across-the-board, but gives the total responsibility off to the President of the United States to decide where to make any cuts he wishes to make, which, I repeat, is an abrogation of our responsibility under the Constitution that we take an oath to.

I would say that also this is a bad approach because after 40 amendments, each of which has been defeated, and 40 amendments which have had so little merit to them that they have been defeated, many of them by roll call votes, by roll call votes, and the sum total of all those amendments was considerably more than the $276 million, to now throw up your hands and try to do it in a different way, in that kind of a meat-ax approach, to use those words, is not a good thing to do. It is not an appropriate budgeting thing to do.

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