Preserve America and Save America's Treasures Act

Mr. Speaker, today I speak in favor of H.R. 3981, the Save America's Treasures/Preserve America Authorization Act of 2008.

I want to thank Representative Miller, the co-chair of the Historic Preservation Caucus, for his collaboration on this bill, as well as Senator Domenici and Senator Clinton for their work in moving this bill forward in the Senate.

I also want to thank Chairman Rahall and Ranking Member Young of the House Natural Resources Committee, as well as Chairman Grijalva and Ranking Member Bishop of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands for their work on this bill.

Finally, I want to commend the work of the national historic preservation advocacy groups, many of which have collaborated with our offices in crafting this bill.

To this date, the Save America's Treasures and Preserve America Programs have been authorized through executive order, and I want to point out that through both First Lady Laura Bush's and former First Lady Hillary Clinton's efforts and commitment to historic preservation, these programs have been a success for many local communities.

H.R. 3981 would ensure that these two important programs continue by codifying them into law.

Both the Save America's Treasures and Preserve America Programs have had an enormous impact on historic preservation nationally, as well as in Ohio. Ohio is home to nine Preserve America communities, Dayton, my hometown, being one. In fact, Dayton recently received a Preserve America Grant that will help analyze heritage tourism in the area.

Additionally, since 1999, Ohio has been the home of 45 Save America's Treasures Projects. These projects total nearly $11 million in funding toward bricks and mortar restoration of important Ohio historic assets such as the Paul Lawrence Dunbar House in Dayton; Cincinnati's Union Terminal; the Wright Flyer III in Dayton, Ohio; the Palace Theatre in Columbus; and last, but not least, The National First Ladies Library in Canton, Ohio.

It's certainly interesting to note that the First Ladies Library was a recipient of the two programs started by these two First Ladies.

H.R. 3981 will ensure a stable and continuous funding source is authorized to assist in funding these important projects.

Additionally, the bill ensures that public-private partnerships remain a key aspect to the preservation of important historic assets by requiring non-Federal funds be used in collaboration with these Federal grants.

The authorization of these programs will help highlight the importance of historic preservation as an economic development tool, as well as a core national value.

It is clear that saving our heritage in these buildings and neighborhoods is not just a way to pay homage to our past. It is also an important way to boost our economy in the present, in addition to the future.

This bill enjoys a broad range of support, including many historic preservation organizations and over 55 cosponsors in the House.

Again, I want to thank Congressman Miller for being the lead sponsor of this legislation, as well as the leadership of the Resources Committee for ushering this bill through the committee process.

This bill is also important because many of the recipients are organizations that are staffed by volunteers. These programs recognize their efforts to preserve the fabric of their community and help tell the story of our Nation's heritage. These programs work.

I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this legislation.

July 7, 2008.

Hon. Nick Rahall,

Chairman, Committee on Natural Resources, House of

Representatives, Washington, DC.

Hon. Don Young,

Ranking Member, Committee on Natural Resources, House of

Representatives, Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Rahall and Ranking Member Young: We are

writing as representatives of the national preservation

community in support of H.R. 3981, a bill that would

authorize both the Preserve America (PA) and Save America's

Treasures (SAT) programs. Our organizations support this

measure and we are grateful to Reps. Miller and Turner for

their initiative in authoring this legislation, as well as

their leadership as co-chairs of the House Historic

Preservation Caucus. We hope that Congress will pass H.R.

3981, legislation which is critical to the historic

preservation community.

Despite all of their success and support, the PA and SAT

programs are unauthorized and funded from year-to-year

through the annual appropriations process. We would like to

see Congress authorize SAT and PA with a long-term

programmatic and funding vision that would enable both

programs to work in harmony with the other components of the

national historic preservation program. Authorization would

codify the successful implementation and practices of the

ten-year old SAT program along with its newer partner,

Preserve America, led by First Ladies Clinton and Bush

respectively. While each of these historic preservation

initiatives apply to projects of a different nature--SAT for

``bricks and mortar'' preservation and PA for heritage

education and outreach, it is important that they should be

authorized and mutually supportive of each other to maximize

federal resources and goals in saving the nation's historic

assets. We already know that PA and SAT are working together

at specific locations throughout the country.

While much has been achieved since SAT was established, the

need remains great and we must look to future needs. In just

the first eight years of the program, 2,702 grant

applications were received, representing requests for more

than $1.17 billion in critical preservation assistance. SAT

has provided more than $264 million in federal challenge

grants to 1,024 historic preservation projects through 2007.

These funds have helped bring new life to irreplaceable

historic treasures--including buildings, documents and works

of art--in every state. SAT funds have made a huge

difference, but without Congress' ongoing commitment to the

program, it would be virtually impossible to stimulate the

required dollar-for-dollar non-federal matching contributions

and hard to imagine where else the money would come from to

preserve our national heritage.

That same ongoing need applies to PA projects as well with

grants to support community efforts that demonstrate

sustainable uses of historic and cultural sites, and the

economic and educational opportunities related to heritage

tourism. The first round of Preserve America Grants in 2007

provided 43 applicants with a total of $2.6 million

distributed across the nation. The second round provided

$2.26 million to 29 recipients in 20 states. The importance

of resources to support this effort has not diminished since

then--in fact, it has grown.

SAT and PA reflect the bipartisan and bicameral commitment

that has characterized historic preservation policy in

Congress and the White House over the years. SAT was created

during a Democratic administration and embraced by the Bush

Administration and Congressional Republicans. Likewise, PA

was created during a Republican administration and is now

supported by Members on both sides of the aisle. This is the

strongest signal that authorizing both programs makes sense

when bipartisanship is sometimes an elusive quality. We urge

you to pass this timely authorization.

Sincerely,

Richard Moe,

President,

National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Heather MacIntosh,

President,

Preservation Action.

Mike Polk,

President,

American Cultural Resources Association.

Lu Ann De Cunzo,

President,

Society for Historical Archeology.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Guam and her comments about bipartisan and working together and coming up with a common solution.

Mr. Speaker, I am all for that, but what we've come up with in the past is very limited debate. We've had bills come to the floor with no amendments. We've had bills come to this floor that had no committee hearings. Now, that, to me, is not working together or with bipartisan support.

So, if we want to have this bipartisan discussion, let's have it on the floor. Let's have an open rule on an energy bill, an open rule energy bill. What a great way to preserve what this body was meant to be, a place where representatives of the people came to debate and discuss and to talk about things that were affecting their constituents.

But half the people in America who are represented by Republicans in this body have not had an opportunity to even offer an amendment to some of these energy bills. We've not even had an opportunity to come down and speak on this floor because of the limited debate.

If we want to work out a solution, if we want to hear all the ideas from all 435 Members of this, so all the people in this country can have some input into this process, let's have an open energy bill that went through regular order and went through the subcommittee and the committee process, had a rule that was written where we could all have some input.

I'm for that kind of bipartisan support, and I know you are too because you are a very sweet lady.

Now, let me go on to say one thing: There was a poll that came out today I thought was very interesting. The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen reporting tracking history.

This month, just 9 percent say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Mr. Speaker, I think we need to form a committee to go find that 9 percent of the people to find out where they've been because we are not doing a good job, we are not doing an excellent job. We are doing a very poor job of addressing the needs of the American people and what's affecting their pocketbook and the ability for their family to survive today.

We've got gasoline that is up $1.76 a gallon since the end of 2006. A loaf of bread is up 23 cents, or about 23 percent, than what it was at the end of 2006. A gallon of milk is up almost 30 percent, Mr. Speaker, since the new majority came in. The Dow Jones has lost about 20 percent. The stock market is down $53 billion in the wealth of the stock market. Real net worth is down $2.51 trillion. The real per capita gross domestic product is down. Inflation rate is up. Unemployment rate is up. The real average wage is down, Mr. Speaker. We are not doing a good job.

Part of the reason that bread is high, that milk is high, that the stock market is going down, that inflation is up is because of the oil crisis that we're in right now because we are totally dependent on foreign oil. And I would like to close with this, as a quote from the Department of Minerals Management Service that's in the Interior Department. The director says, ``The agency estimates that offshore drilling could produce 1.8 billion barrels of oil and 76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.'' And we're going to need that natural gas, Mr. Speaker, when these home heating oil and natural gas bills come due for people trying to stay warm this winter. The director would not say how much more oil and gas he thinks the lands could produce, but he said that experience has shown that once companies begin drilling on land, they often find more than expected.

Mr. Speaker, we have about 2.5 billion acres of Federal land and offshore that we could be drilling on; 68 million of that has leases that oil companies have leased. And we certainly--and I say we, I'm talking about the minority--do not think that Big Oil does not play some part in this. But the reality of it is we cannot expect Big Oil to go out and drill on leased land that has no oil or no gas. You do not go grocery shopping at a hardware store.

We need to open up this land that is available, that the Department of Interior, that the Minerals and Management Service says that there is gas and oil there. We need to open up this land to let people drill on, to let people get our natural resources out of the ground rather than us being dependent on going to foreign countries on bended knee with hat in hand asking them to sell us their natural resources when we refuse to use our own.

So Mr. Speaker, I will close with this, that we do want to work. We want a bipartisan solution. Because we think the answer is all of the above, it's more conservation, it's more use of wind and solar, but it's also drilling. It's also using our own natural resources. It's using clean coal. It's using an environmentally sensitive way to get this natural resource out of the ground. And we welcome an open rule bill that comes to the floor that all 435 people and the seven delegates that represent people in our territories and our States in this great country that we live in, to come have an open, honest debate about what we can do to solve our energy policy, to come together, to work together. That's the kind of change that the American people want, not the radical kind of change that has been offered so far in this Congress.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Preserve America and Save America's Treasures Act, which will, as the two speakers already have said, authorize two programs that are critical to the future of America's historic preservation efforts.

I want to thank Chairman Rahall and Ranking Member Young of the Natural Resources Committee, as well as Chairman Grijalva and Ranking Member Bishop of the National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee, for their work in shepherding this legislation, as well as the historic preservation community for their support for this bill.

The Save America's Treasures Program was started as part of the White House Millennium Council chaired by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. The program has provided much-needed bricks and mortar support and has succeeded beyond anyone's expectations, funding America's most threatened cultural treasures for almost 10 years.

The current administration, under the leadership of First Lady Laura Bush, created the Preserve America Program to support community preservation efforts by providing funding for heritage tourism and preservation planning.

The two programs serve different purposes, and together, they provide a comprehensive approach to preservation and community revitalization.

Mr. Mike Turner and I announced the Preserve America and Save America's Treasures Act in the Sewall-Belmont House, just a couple of blocks from here. The Sewall-Belmont House was designated a national historic landmark for its significance in American history. It was the headquarters for the National Woman's Party, led by Alice Paul, and their movement to secure women the right to vote.

Despite that obvious historical significance, it was not long ago that the Sewall-Belmont House was threatened by a leaking roof and by significant other structural damage. The Sewall-Belmont House was the first building to receive funding as a Save America's Treasures project.

In my own district, Save America's Treasures funding has helped preserve the F.W. Woolworth Building in downtown Greensboro. Mr. Speaker, as you know well, on February 1, 1960, four African American students from North Carolina A&T University sat down at the ``white only'' lunch counter and refused to move until they were treated the same as the white customers.

Within 2 months, the sit-ins at Woolworth's inspired similar demonstrations throughout the South involving thousands of protesters. The sit-in at the Woolworth's lunch counter was the moment when the civil rights struggle in this country became a mass movement.

The Woolworth Building and its lunch counter are sacred grounds of the civil rights movement and must be preserved for future generations.

The Preserve America Program has designated more than 500 neighborhoods, cities, and towns throughout the United States as Preserve America Communities and has awarded grants since 2006. Earlier this year, the Department of the Interior made its first round of 2008 grants of $2.9 million to 43 projects in 25 States. This September they will award an additional $4.3 million in grants. The projects support heritage tourism, the commercial revitalization of neglected downtowns, and the reuse of historic properties.

Mr. Speaker, America's historic places remind us of who we are. They remind us of our history. We cannot cheat our children of that connection with their past, that understanding of who they are.

The Preserve America Program, through its grant opportunities and community designations, ensures that important communities and neighborhoods will survive for future generations.

Historic preservation helps revitalize cities, towns, and rural areas nationwide where dramatic population shifts, outdated planning, and the loss of manufacturing jobs have made market-driven reinvestment impossible without some assistance.

Rehabilitation of vacant and underused historic structures can attract new investment in growing communities. Whether it is preserving main streets of downtowns, or reusing historic properties as affordable housing, preservation makes history come alive in communities throughout the country.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that the House is now considering these two successful programs. Through passing this bill and authorizing these programs, Congress can affirm our commitment to saving our natural heritage, our historic heritage, and revitalizing our communities.

Once again, I ask my colleagues for their support for the Preserve America and Save America's Treasures Act.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3981) to authorize the Preserve America Program and Save America's Treasures Program, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, both the Preserve America and the Save America's Treasures Programs provide Federal matching grants for important historic preservation projects. Preserve America provides grants for interpretation and education regarding historic resources, while the Save America's Treasures Program provides grants for rehabilitation in restoration work.

Both programs, Mr. Speaker, are enormously successful because they leverage limited Federal dollars for much larger State, local, and private investment in preserving and interpreting our history and our heritage. These programs were created by executive order, and this legislation simply provides statutory authorization for both of these programs. H.R. 3981 is a top priority for the Bush administration.

I ask my colleagues to support passage of this measure.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Miller), the bill's sponsor.

Mr. Speaker, I have no additional requests for time, and I would reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the Democrats have been on this floor for weeks watching our colleagues from across the aisle defend multinational oil conglomerates. The fact of the matter is that the energy challenges that our Nation faces demand more than rhetoric and battles on the floor of the House. Certainly, our constituents who are feeling the energy pinch deserve more.

We need to put our energies into finding common ground to achieve real, workable solutions to our energy problems, and toward that end, we need to be working on our energy challenge from two ends at the same time, furthermore, the supply end and the conservation end. By doing so, we can work without partisanship to bring relief to the American people. And that, just like the underlying bill, would preserve America's true treasures and the treasures are our people.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman keeps talking about opening up more land. Well, the fact is 80 percent of the oil available on the Outer Continental Shelf today is already open for leasing, but the oil companies haven't decided it's worth their money to drill there.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I again urge Members to support this worthwhile bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, we're talking about preserving America, but we need to preserve the economic viability of America, and as long as we're paying $4.10 a gallon, we're not going to be an economically viable Nation. It's going higher and higher.

In the last bill's debate, we talked about monkey bites, shark bites, and there was an accusation of the energy production companies are biting people. But what's biting people in their pocketbooks and their wallets is this high cost of gasoline, high cost of energy.

Until we start dealing with this issue, we're going to continue to have problems in this country. We're going to continue to have economic problems, and it's absolutely critical that we deal with what's on America's mind, and that is energy costs.

As we head into the fall and winter, not too far off, people are going to have a hard time heating their homes. Poor people and retirees are going to have a hard time buying the heating oil.

The problem is the shortage of energy supplies here in America, and until we start making energy supplies more available to the American public, we're going to continue to have higher and higher costs.

We can't just talk about conservation. We can't just talk about solar and wind. We've got to talk about those things certainly, but that's only a minute part of the answer. We've got to develop nuclear energy.

Just below my district, Plant Vogel in Georgia is having a hard time getting permitting for two nuclear reactors. They're being blocked by the radical environmentalists and through the inane permitting process that's going on today. We need to get those reactors online. We need to get oil, coal, gas, propane, all more available so that people can have an economic future that makes sense.

So, as we talk about preserving things, let's preserve our families. Let's preserve our pocketbooks. Let's have money to spend to create a stronger economy. Not focus on these other things, as important as some feel that they may be. But the most important thing to America today is energy and the high cost of energy.

We need to do something about that. We shouldn't go home until we solve the energy problem of America, and we're not doing the American public justice when we continue talking about all these other things except energy. We need to focus on energy. Let's drill for oil. Let's drill now.