National Fish and Wildlife Foundation

Floor Speech

SPEECH OF
HON. DEVIN NUNES
OF CALIFORNIA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2011

Mr. NUNES. Mr. Speaker, as Congress closely scrutinizes federal programs to reduce our massive federal debt and deficit, we must take a hard look at troubled, taxpayer-financed programs that play a role in destroying American jobs. The February 25, 2011 edition of The Washington Examiner contained a column by Mr. Ron Arnold that discusses the legislative history and current activities of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation--a non-profit organization authorized by Congress in 1984 pursuant to Public Law 98-244.

Mr. Arnold's column illustrates how Congress originally authorized an average of $100,000 per year in federal taxpayer money to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Yet, more than a quarter century later, the organization receives $53 million annually in federal government funds according to its own records. Some of this money funds zealous and litigious environmental groups whose actions threaten the livelihoods of America's hard-working farmers and ranchers. At a time when American agriculture is threatened by onerous regulation, bureaucratic intimidation, unfair taxation, and high energy costs, our farmers cannot afford to defend themselves from advocacy groups funded by their hard-earned tax dollars.

I urge my colleagues to read Mr. Arnold's column on the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and to question whether the federal government should continue supporting it and other non-profit groups that use taxpayer money to put people out of work.

[From the Washington Examiner, Feb. 25, 2011]
CONGRESS SHOULD STOP FUNDING BIG GREEN LAWSUITS AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT
(By Ron Arnold)

America's taxpayers need to know about a thorny federal program lurking in the Obama budget: the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. It began decades ago as a millionaire's hobby horse and grew into a Frankenstein monster that today feeds millions of taxpayer dollars to green groups that sue the federal government--and thus sue the taxpayer.

I began researching NFWF in a 1995 report on Big Green's federally funded trial lawyers, "Feeding at the Trough" (www.undueinfluence.com/feeding-at-the-trough.pdf).

NFWF's origins are bizarre: Congress created it as a nonprofit corporation in 1984, specifying that it "is not an agency or establishment of the United States Government." President Reagan denounced that double talk when he reluctantly signed the bill, writing, "Entities which are neither clearly governmental nor clearly private should not be created."

The intent for NFWF was to develop private sector support for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a government agency. This perverse purpose allows a well-connected private elite--originally including timber heiress Nancy Weyerhaeuser, oil billionaire Caroline Getty, and now hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones--to carve out government funds, solicit limitless private funds, and funnel the cash to whom they please, including $25,000 to Nancy Weyerhaeuser's son Rick for an anti-logging project he ran in Montana--and $23,500 to a Planned Parenthood-type group in Rajasthan, India, for population control near Ranthambhore National Park.

As it grew, NFWF created one horror story after another. It gave $89,748 to the Grand Canyon Trust, which filed suit and shut down the coal-fired Mojave Power Plant in Laughlin, Nev., and cost 200 Navajo miners their high-paying jobs at the Black Mesa coal mine that supplied the plant.

NFWF gave nearly $442,000 to the National Wildlife Federation and in return got a lawsuit to divert water from generating electricity in Pacific-Northwest power dams--and spill it for migrating salmon. The suit now threatens to remove four vital hydroelectric dams on the Snake River. Another NFWF recipient, American Rivers ($296,700), is also a party to the suit, which is still in court.

The list goes on and on, lawsuits against fisheries, agriculture, energy, construction, manufacturing, the whole economy. NFWF claims that grantee lawsuits do not use federal money. After examining the Internal Revenue Service Form 990 reports of major litigious NFWF recipients, I found no separate segregated accounts for lawsuits--you can't tell federal money from private--making NFWF's claims appear disingenuous at best.

NFWF's original $100,000 "one-time seed money" appropriation has bloated to $53 million in 2009, exactly what Reagan feared when he famously muttered, "The definition of immortality is a government program."

Even though NFWF's wealthy directors should be ideal fundraisers, two-thirds of its income is routinely taxpayer money, and now the Obama administration wants to give it more millions of federal dollars that we don't have.

House appropriators tried to cut NFWF's taxpayer umbilical in 1996. Immediately, a Byzantine cabal of Big Green leaders and hired lobbyists materialized, somehow convincing the appropriators to lay off. Reagan should have added, "Environmental funding is forever."

Last week, a gutsy congressman tried again. Rep. TOM MCCLINTOCK, R-Calif., chairman of the House Natural Resource Committee's Power and Water Subcommittee, introduced an amendment to the House's $1.2 trillion continuing resolution bill to permanently defund NFWF.

Once again, Big Green sent out its minions, and MCCLINTOCK'S amendment failed on a voice vote.

That shouldn't be the end of it. We need congressional hearings to stop feeding taxpayer money into NFWF's funnel. And we need elected officials with the fortitude to instruct the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's insatiable billionaires to stop feeding at the trough.

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