Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2361, Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 2361, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - May 19, 2005)
Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 287 and ask for its immediate consideration.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.
This resolution provides for an open rule on H.R. 2361, the Interior Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2006, and provides for 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations.
For the purpose of amendments, this rule provides for priority recognition to Members who preprinted their amendments in the Congressional Record, and the rule also allows for certain points of order to be raised in the course of consideration of this bill.
Mr. Speaker, this bill deals with filibusters in the U.S. Senate. Actually, Mr. Speaker, it does not, but until you say that magic word the media does not send its attention to the fact that the House is actually continuing on with the input of good government in our processes, so this bill actually, for which I am pleased to stand before the House and support the rule on the underlying legislation, is the Interior Appropriations Act.
I appreciate the hard work and the hard choices that the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Taylor), the gentleman from California (Chairman Lewis), the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks), and many others have put into making and putting this essential funding bill together, which does live within the budget discipline, and in fact reflects the priorities of this Congress.
At the same time, it reflects important committee priorities within the budget itself. We realize that this Congress, this Nation, does not have the money to do everything. But what we decide to do we should do well.
By prioritizing the needs, this provides, for example, an increase in six of the eight EPA programs for the environment. It provides for a $118 million increase for Indian health services, a $25 million increase over last year's funding level for restoration of the Everglades.
These are simply examples. A few others. Provides for National Heritage Area grants and historic preservation, something that to an old history teacher I appreciate. This bill provides important resources to help manage our Nation's public forest resources and our national parks.
It includes, for example, a $70 million increase for the national parks base funding, but at the same time $440 million to help reduce the backlog of national park maintenance. That is how these bills and these monies should be prioritized, to help preserve and enhance these unique national treasures.
It also provides for a record amount of funding to the national fire plan, and gives the Department flexibility in these accounts to help prevent and fight the annual onslaught of raging fires on public lands in the West, which have plagued many areas, especially California in recent years.
I am also pleased in particular that the gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman Taylor) has been diligent in funding the vital Payment in Lieu of Tax Program, or PILT, which so many western and rural counties depend upon for these vital public services.
Since this is an open rule, any Member will be allowed to offer germane amendments. This is a good rule. I think it supports a good bill. I strongly urge their adoption.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of the rule.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, once again with this particular rule being open, it allows any Member who wishes to, to bring an amendment to the floor. It is the wonderful prerogative of the Members to do that. It is also very nice to note that the Committee on Appropriations which is tasked with trying to prioritize needs and fund those that are truly significant in that prioritization, and in this particular situation, the gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman TAYLOR) and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) in a very collegial way have done just that, and have presented a good and balanced bill.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I appreciate the comments from the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), and I commend the gentleman for the one statement he asked us all to do which is to go to our State and local leaders and find out what their priorities happen to be.
I would like to do something unique so far in today's debate and talk about something that is actually in the bill, and something about which we will be debating later, and preface it with the comment of why, when we try to prioritize, should we spend new taxpayer money for new recreation areas and programs when some of the existing programs, long-time recognized, long time in the bill, are not totally and fully funded.
If I could, Mr. Speaker, I come from a western State that has a great deal of Federal land. In fact, 67 percent of my State is owned by the Federal Government. If we add military lands on top of that, it is almost 80 percent owned by the Federal Government. And, unfortunately, my State is not the worst situation. There are States that have more of their land owned by the Federal Government.
Oftentimes I have Members come to the floor and say these lands belong to all of us, but the cost of maintaining those lands is not borne by all of us; it is borne by the citizens who happen to reside within those particular States.
Now I am an old teacher, and as I look at the situation of education, I find a unique phenomenon that the area of this country in which education funding is growing the slowest, the area of this country where the classrooms are the largest, the area of this country where the student population is increasing the fastest, and the area of this country where State and local commitment in tax base is being paid by their citizens all happen to be found in the 13 States of the West. And the common denominator for all is the amount of public lands that happen to be in these particular States.
Those Members east of the Rocky Mountains sometimes do not comprehend the concept because there is very little of your land owned by the Federal Government, and you can maximize the amount of input, but you cannot do it in the West.
One of my counties has an area known as the Black Box, something that no one in Utah would ever try to raft down. One of our good constituent friends from another State decided to come and raft in the area of the Black Box; and, unfortunately, he lost his life doing it.
The problem is my County of Emery had to expend its resources and have their rescue team risk their lives to retrieve the body. All of the money that was budgeted for that year's critical rescue missions was expended on that one individual entering from the east using all of these public lands. All of the cost of that was borne by the citizens of that particular county, which means once again these lands belong to all of us, but the expense attached to these lands do not belong to all of us.
There is a program that we have long had called "payment in lieu of taxes," which recognizes the burden placed upon the West and the burden that should be funded. From the mid-1970s until the early 1990s, virtually no new money was placed in this program. It was flat funding for almost that whole period of time. This Congress put $1.4 million of new money into the burgeoning problem of trying to pay for the Federal lands in the West. Under the direction of the gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman TAYLOR) and others on the subcommittee, that has increased significantly, almost doubling. They have recognized the need, but they have never fully funded the cost imposed on western States through payment in lieu of tax funding.
This last year, this program, traditionally run through the Bureau of Land Management, was taken over by the Department of the Interior with the idea of prioritizing it. They did not. Instead of prioritizing this program, they recommended a cut in this program and increased funding to the administrative overhead of the Department of the Interior.
I commend the gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman TAYLOR) for recognizing the unfairness of this and by increasing the payment in lieu of taxes to last year's level plus $3 million, but it is still not close to full funding.
I am confident and hopeful that we will discuss that particular issue because it is a well-established program. It is not new, and we should be funding those well-established programs fully before we launch into new endeavors.
I commend the gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman TAYLOR) for zeroing out the land acquisition budget except for necessary administration costs because it comes up with the same policy: we do not start buying new land until we fully fund those lands that we already own.
We have an opportunity of expanding this in conference. This is one of the issues in this free-flowing open rule that we will be discussing later on. This is an issue where I commend the chairman for doing what he has done in this bill and urge him to continue on, because the citizens of the West, the kids in the West, the education system of the West have been harmed too long by policies that all of us in Congress for over 30 years have been implementing. It is an unfairness that must be dealt with.
I commend the gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman TAYLOR) and the committee for moving the first step forward. But I hope that we can look at other amendments as this debate goes forward that would look at funding the programs we already have that have been there for many years that desperately need to be fully funded before we launch into others, and that is specifically what an appropriations process should do. It should prioritize our needs. Once again, we can go back to the concept that we cannot fund everything, but what we fund, we should fund well.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
I appreciate the opportunity coming here and discussing this particular open rule that allows for us to discuss the prioritization which is the key element of what we do in every appropriations issue. The gentleman from Wisconsin is free to come here on the floor and talk about whether he believes the prioritization of this committee is accurate or not, whether he believes the Democrat approach would be a tax increase or not. But the same discussion also takes place in another area and it takes place in the committee process before it ever comes to this bill. I am here to still contend that the committee, both Republican and Democrat, did a good job in coming up with a prioritization process.
When the gentleman from Wisconsin talks about the desire for having new land, I do not dispute that nor do I oppose it necessarily. What we are saying is it is part of the prioritization. I would support acquisition of new land once we finally fully fund and take care of the lands we have. This committee has looked into that. This committee put significant new money not just into national parks but to maintain the backlog that we have of maintenance in our national parks. That is prioritization.
This committee recognized by putting PILT up to at least the level it was last year that there is a prioritization that takes place there at the same time. I was saying with PILT, and I will say it again, that what we have to do is fully fund it because it has been looked at for too long, especially when the minority party was in charge here and there were basically no increases in PILT funding, it has been looked at for too long as welfare for the West. It is not. It is rent that is due on that land and if you prioritize the budget, you prioritize those programs first before you expand anything else. I have to commend this committee for actually doing that.
I think there are some areas in which I think they could go ahead and move forward in those particular areas but once again prioritizing those commitments we have already made and fully funding those first. That is what this committee has tried to do. Whether you like or dislike their end product, they should be congratulated for coming that close.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I have to reiterate the fairness of this open rule and urge its adoption because of that along with the underlying appropriation legislation. No bill is perfect. I am sure we can all come up with issues here and there in the appropriations bill or, for that matter, in any other bill we have where we would like to have it come out differently had we had our way, but in judging this bill as a whole and the process that has been through it to get to the point, I believe it is worthy for Members to support this particular piece of legislation.
And then I do want to talk to my good friend from Florida about what we really did with education in Utah. He is summarizing the New York Times, not reality. But other than that, we will forget that point right now. I will talk later to him about that.
Again, I urge Members to support this rule.
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