National Landscape Conservation System Act

NATIONAL LANDSCAPE CONSERVATION SYSTEM ACT -- (House of Representatives - April 09, 2008)

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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

You know, there was a time when Pete Rose was trying out to make a baseball team, and the scouting report said that ``Rose can't make a double play, he can't throw, he can't hit left-handed and he can't run.'' The first time Fred Astaire tried to make a movie preview, the report coming back on Fred Astaire was, ``he can't act, he's slightly bald, and he can dance a little bit.'' The Boston Red Sox were reviewing a new outfielder, and the scouting report came back saying, ``he's not the Red Sox type.'' The guy they were actually scouting was Willie Mays. Which simply means, in life, sometimes what we see and sometimes what we're told is not necessarily the reality of situations. As groups and individual Members of Congress are starting to see this bill for what the details are is one of the reasons why we see some of those groups peeling off on their support.

Why, some of the issues we raised in committee, it was said they're not really issues, now there are amendments that have been proposed by the majority party to deal with those so-called ``nonissues.''

It is said all we're trying to do here is codify and make permanent an institution that's already in existence, but it is much, much more than that. My freshman year, the goal of the freshman class was to try to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in government. Sometimes I wish we were still doing this because today we have reached the mother lode of waste, fraud and abuse.

This is an entity, the National Landscape Conservation System, which spends money, but it does not hire anyone, it does not fire anyone, it does not write regulations, it does not repeal regulations, it doesn't administer any land, it doesn't manage any land. For the life of me, we have been trying to figure out what this thing does other than spend $50 million a year to encourage and to bring attention to certain particular areas.

We are told that this bill would not change any of that. This bill apparently does nothing to an entity that does nothing. But I'm going to portend to you that the reason this entity has been so successful so far is simply because it's been under the auspices of the Secretary of the Interior. But if, indeed, we codify this and put this into statute, an entity right now which sticks out on a flowchart like a sore thumb that doesn't really do anything will change, it will change significantly, and all of a sudden it will start to do something. And that's where the danger arises. Because when we wrote down the values of this supposed new system, they are extremely vague, which means, first of all, it opens us up to lawsuits right and left. If the amendment that will be offered later does not pass to try and limit the impact of those lawsuits, we are offering this Nation a great deal of harm and potential peril.

We have spent $50 million every year on what can best be called a redundant organization, but it actually should be changed. And the question obviously is, will we be spending more in this society? Now, once again, the proponents say nothing will change, it's not going to cost more, CBO says it's not going to cost more, there will be no regulations. The chairman of the subcommittee that sponsored this bill was asked once again at one point in time, will this create more cost, more regulation, and the answer was simply this: Well, you go in to establish the system, and then you go to step two. What that step two is is the fear that happens to be here. The values that have never been identified in this legislation dealing these parts of land deal with such issues as recreation. Amendments to actually define that were not allowed to be discussed. It deals with border security. Amendments to define that were not allowed to be discussed. We will have another border security amendment which, in my estimation, does anything more than establish the status quo as our policy when the status quo is not sufficient.

We will have discussions over grazing issues and energy issues. We should have had discussions over private end holding issues. All of those should be defined as part of the values that we are talking about here.

The Department of Interior has been very positive about this. They said they support this concept because it allows them to do what has always been done that is the difference between BLM monuments and parks versus national park monuments and parks, and that is, the value of multiple use. But in committee, when we tried to amend the language so that multiple use was a value to be maintained, it was defeated on a party line vote. And when we went to the Rules Committee and tried to make sure that we had a chance to discuss this, to put in multiple use as the value that is significant, it was again denied the ability even to discuss that on the floor. And that is the sum and substance that is different.

Now, we are dealing with a system that impacts people and their lives. It was said by Sir Henry Maine, ``Nobody is at liberty to attack civil property and say at the same time they value civilization because the history of two can never be disentangled.'' And that is where we're at.

Unless this bill is significantly modified, this bill will do harm to people. Unless this bill is changed and this system is moved back, it will do significant harm to people.

We have problems within this entity right now. Rather than solve any of these problems, it provides vague and fluffy language that will make the situation worse. It does not solve the problems, but it does create a permanent statutory entity without any solutions and, indeed, goes the other direction and makes permanent solutions to our problems more difficult actually to accomplish.

This simply is a bill whose time is not now. This is a bill that does not tell us exactly what to expect. It opens up the Federal Government to all sorts of potential lawsuits, and doesn't actually come up with a value that makes BLM land different than Park Service land, which is multiple use. That phrase has to be in that bill if this bill has any chance of having any some rationality of purpose.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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