Hearing of the House Appropriations Committee - FY 2014 Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill

Hearing

Congressman Jim Moran, Ranking Member on the Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, delivered the following prepared remarks at the full Appropriations Committee markup of the Fiscal Year 2014 Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill:

"The better we understand the way the natural world works, the more we realize that it's all mutually interdependent. If you ignore or destroy one part, it affects other parts. Sometimes irretrievably. We also know that nature teaches us that there is no static state, if something is not growing, it's dying. Now humans, and the societies they create, are organisms as well, and share that characteristic. But because of what we call the human spirit, we have greater control over our individual and collective destinies.

"But that comes at a price. In fact, the real tragedy of human lives doesn't happen with last breath we take, but rather with what we let dies inside us while we are still breathing.

"I say that because I fear that this dynamic applies to America today.

"The American government has helped build a great nation, arguably one of the greatest in the history of civilization. And this Appropriations Committee has largely been the instrument of much of that greatness. We helped build the ports, canals, the rails, the highways, the bridges, the transit systems, the airports, subsidized much of the housing, the health care, the education and the training of our human resources and preserved and nourished our natural resources. And we protected it all with the mightiest military ever assembled.

"But now this very committee which used to be the most powerful, most important in the government is presiding over our country's decline. It's been death by a thousand cuts, not only this year and last; this is expected to continue for the better part of the next decade.

"Today, on the floor, we'll cut 45 percent from community development, 30 percent from housing, 33 percent from our East Coast rail system. Education is slashed, as is health care research and on and on and on. We are eating our seed corn in the interest of lower taxes and protecting entitlements at all cost.

"This should be one of the greatest periods of economic growth in our history. The stock market is at record highs, as is our private sector productivity. Profits this quarter and year for many of our large corporations were at unprecedented levels. And interest rates are at historic lows. All we need to fulfill our economic and social potential is to allow the public sector to be able to contribute its role of educating and training and building and inventing and protecting the vulnerable people and places of our great nation.

"Now let me focus on a role for government that this committee has singled out for especially harsh treatment -- and that's the environment.

"We have a public responsibility to protect our environment for future generations. This country's natural resources are extraordinary. We have been blessed. But while we have tremendous natural resources that can be converted to our economic benefit, just like in Dr. Seuss' story of the Lorax, we can lose it all if we don't value and sustain our natural resources.

"It is Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and even Richard Nixon, who established the Environmental Protection Agency, and Abe Lincoln, who saved Yosemite, and Ulysses Grant, who saved Yellowstone, whose shoulders we should be climbing upon.

"This bill devalues our precious natural resources and with 31 riders it prohibits the government from protecting and cleaning our air and water. It eliminates 20 programs and agencies funded by this bill -- that took a lot of thoughtfulness.

"And our arts and humanities we cut in half. Winston Churchill, while under pressure to cut funding for the arts and museums during the bombing of London in World War II so as to be able to put it into England's military defense, refused and responded by asking "then what are we fighting for if not for the survival of our civilization?"

"This bill cuts funding for the Woodrow Wilson Center, a small agency with a big impact. I challenge anyone to attend a Wilson Center seminar without coming away more informed and enlightened.

"This bill is a disgrace and this markup as a result is going to be long and ugly, Mr. Chairman. It is our responsibility to make this hard. If we are going to go down, we are not going to go down easily, not when the stakes are so profoundly important to our country."

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