Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012
Floor Speech
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Mr. HOLT. Mr. Chairman, when Americans think of America, they think of our great resources. Now for Big Oil, that probably means the oil that's found on public lands and off our shores, where they can get it for a song and charge a fortune.
But for most Americans, it's the spacious skies and purple mountain majesties. This bill, this legislation that we're considering here now has no appreciation for America's priceless resources. According to the League of Conservation Voters, though, going farther than just beautiful vistas or purple mountain majesties, "This bill is the biggest assault on the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the wildlife and wild places we hold dear to ever come before Congress.'' Continuing, the Clean Water Network or the American Lung Association or the American Public Health Association or Physicians for Social Responsibility, they all go on to point out that the budget cuts or policy riders in this legislation undermine the laws that protect public health and reduce health care costs for all by preventing adverse health outcomes, including cancer, asthma attacks, strokes, and emergency department visits. It is not just for the beauty of this country, although that might be reason enough to try to preserve all of these things; it is for the health of America's people.
This legislation would put children's health at risk at the same time that it would be exempting oil companies from complying with clean air standards. We cannot tolerate this. Unregulated discharge of pesticides into our waterways, withholding funding for wild lands, allowing uranium mining all around the Grand Canyon. Mr. Chairman, this is an unprecedented attack, and not just on those things I've mentioned, not just on lifesaving public health protections and essential pollution control; it's an attack on science as well.
This bill includes reductions in funding for the U.S. Geological Survey, research in climate and land use, scientific research, monitoring, modeling, forecasting. Let me give an example: The LandSat 7 satellite just in the past month has been used to track the largest fire in Arizona's history. Yet because of the cuts that would come to pass through this legislation, the data coming from the LandSat system would go unrecorded, unanalyzed, unused. Talk about false economy.
And it's an unprecedented attack on our public lands. The largest cut in the Land and Water Conservation Fund that most of the Members of this House have seen in their service. And I must say, that's particularly important to a State like mine, New Jersey. My constituents reside in the most densely populated State in the Union, and yet they've demonstrated again and again with their votes their support for open space preservation, for fighting sprawl, for providing their kids, our kids, with safe places to experience the outdoors.
Mr. Chairman, there is a long list of reasons, and you'll be hearing still more about why this is terrible legislation.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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