Voting Integrity and Verification Act of 2007

Mr. President, I have listened patiently to what has been said. One of the things that has to be stated, if we want to change the rules of the Senate, that is fine, but it is important for the American people to know what a unanimous consent request is. This bill contains 26 separate pieces of legislation where on over four dozen of them we have had no objection whatsoever, ever. Not one time have we raised any objection. But a unanimous consent request says, No. 1, you agree with the legislation. No. 2, you don't think it should be amended. No. 3, you don't think the Senate ought to vote on it. We have a major difference of opinion about what priorities are and what they should be.

I heard the distinguished Senator from New Mexico talk about frustration. Who is watching out for the frustration a child born today, encompassing $400,000 of unfunded liabilities, is going to have when that bill comes due? Where is the worry about the frustration for future generations? People say this is noncontroversial. Let me tell you, it is controversial when you are talking about infringing on the property rights of people without their permission. That is controversial. We have a difference of opinion on that. We think heritage areas and the disclaiming of heritage area has no impact on property rights.

That is absolutely untrue. It does impact. Property rights are a real right guaranteed in this country. We are going to set up boards that will influence, with the money we give them, private property use and utilization without an equal influence by the private property owners. We do have a difference of opinion.

At the end of this fiscal year, September 30, the accrued actual debt on the books for this country will become $10 trillion. We are going to add $3,000--2,800 and some odd dollars--per man, woman, and child at the end of this year to the debt. People say it is noncontroversial. Four dozen of these are noncontroversial. But this idea that we have to authorize, it is either a wink and a nod, or we are totally dishonest with the American people. If we are authorizing it, we intend to spend the money. We wouldn't be authorizing it if we didn't intend to spend the money. My objections are not that we do the right things for protecting our parks or creating the right environments in our forests and ensuring that the great treasures of our country are not protected. I want to make sure they are available. But to claim, when we have a $9 billion deficit in terms of backlogged work in our parks right now, as documented by the U.S. Park Service, $9 billion of work that needs to get done that we can't get done, to say this isn't going to have any impact on it, it is going to have an impact. It is going to delay the maintenance on the very things we say we treasure. So what have we done? What are we doing?

We are having a discussion about a small area that supposedly doesn't cost much money. It hasn't been scored, but those things in it that have been scored, it is over $350 million per year, a third of a billion dollars. What are we talking about? This debate is about whether we face up to the priorities in front of us as a nation. It is not about being against parks. It is not about being against the process. It is about making sure somebody in this body is standing up thinking about the future finances of this country and what we are going to do to our children. This is another example of what I believe--and I know I am in the minority--is a misplaced priority. How do we justify it, when we own, as the Senator from New Mexico said, 30 percent--I thought it was 38.5 percent--of all the land in the country? When we are not taking care of the land we have, how do we justify adding more land? We added 90 million acres to Federal Government property in the last 8 years. That is 90 million acres that are taken off the property rolls of communities and States. We take it away. We control it, and then we don't take care of it. But now we are adding more. We are doing it more.

Let's talk about some of the issues. This is a noncontroversial bill is what we have heard. How about $2 million of our kids' money to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Robert Fulton and the Claremont? At a time when this year we are going to borrow $600 billion, we are going to spend $2 million on a celebration? Why don't we celebrate the fact that we are going to put our kids in debt more? That is what we should be celebrating, if we are so proud of this. How about $2 million to create a commission to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the voyage of the Champlain. Do we have $2 million to throw away? We are going to throw that away on something that is not important, considering where we are in this Nation and the debt and the heritage we are going to leave our children. You bet we have a difference of opinion.

The American people want us to start thinking in the long term, not the short term. Do we look good if we have done all these bills back home? You bet. We wink and nod and say: We are doing it. Either we are going to appropriate the money or we were dishonest with them in the first place. We are going to spend the money. How do we walk out of here and say: We got you what you wanted? We do not really intend to spend the money--unless we really do intend to spend the money, so then it really does make a difference, and we cannot maintain what we have.

There was a very wise historian, his name was Alexander Tytler. This is attributed to him. I am not sure it is really his, but the words were spoken. They are not mine, but it is very apropos for where we are, not just on this

issue; I am not a voice of frustration just on this issue. My colleagues know that. I think it is time for us to start thinking about the long-term in this country and not the short-term politically expedience that says we look good at home.

Here is what Tytler said: A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits--we got you done what you want done at home; whether we can afford it or not does not matter, but we got it done--with the result that a democracy always collapses due to loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

That is the history of the world. We are contributing to our own demise as we think short-term political expediency so we can look good at home, so we can satisfy demands at home.

Will Durant said:

A great civilization is [never] conquered from without

until it has destroyed itself [from] within.

We have now $79 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities that we are getting ready to lay on our kids and grandkids, and we are not thinking a thing about probably $1 billion with this bill of new additional expenditures for next year, if it gets appropriated. It is the price of doing business in Washington. We do not have that luxury anymore. We do not have the luxury of mortgaging the future of our children anymore.

Why is the dollar at a historic low right now? Is it because we are in a slowdown or a recession? Is that it? No. It does not have anything to do with it. It has to do with the world confidence in our ability to repay our debt and the debt the rest of the world sees coming to us, which comes out to, if you were born today, $400,000 over your lifetime. Now, how many of us have children or grandchildren who could absorb just the interest on $400,000? A few, but most of us could not do that.

So this debate is a philosophical debate. I am not worried about being a source of frustration in the Senate. I am worried about the future of our country, and if I create some scrapes and bruises on my way to wake us up to what the American people want us to do--which is think long-term, fix the structural problems, and quit pandering back to our individual desires in the State--this Congress has become a parochial Congress. It is more important to do what is right for your State than it is for what is right for the country. How dare us. That has nothing to do with our oath. None of us has our State mentioned in the oath we take when we accept this office.

So we are about to pass 62 pieces of legislation, none of which had a hearing until after they passed out of the committee--17 hearings post coming out of the committee. As to saying we have to meet this because it is bipartisan, it is a bipartisan failure to think about the future of this country and what is in the long-term best interests of the country, as we satisfy looking good at home to ensure our next election is put ahead of the next generation of this country.

I am not going to participate in that. I am going to continue to work to make sure any piece of legislation that comes to this floor is thinking about the long-term, not the short-term. If that creates ill will among my colleagues, I apologize in advance. I would much rather be remembered as somebody who was interested in protecting the future of our children than playing nice in the Senate. As Phil Gramm said: I didn't come here to make friends, and I haven't been disappointed.

The real fact is, what did we all come here for? We all came here with that in mind, to do what is best in the long-term interests of our country. It is important for us to be reminded when we are not doing that. There can be a difference of opinion about priorities. There cannot be a difference of opinion about the amount of trouble we are in. There is no difference of opinion in terms of trouble. It does not matter how we got here. The fact is, we are here. We are in trouble.

How is it that we put a delegate for an island territory in this bill that has 60,000 residents that we are going to put $5.6 million into over the next 3 years? That we are going to create another delegate-- what does that have to do with natural resources and lands? How did that get in here?

We have added an intermodal transportation center in Trenton, ME. It authorizes the Federal Government to pay 40 percent of it, no matter what it costs. There is no limitation that this will be a competitively bid contract. No matter what it costs, we are on the hook for 40 percent of whatever it costs. And we are on the hook for 85 percent of what it will cost to run it thereafter. The only problem is, there are three other visitor centers within walking distance of this one. But we wanted to do it.

I could go on and on and on. The fact is, this debate is not about process. It may be to you, but it is not to me. This debate, for me, is whether we are going to change our behavior at every point to start thinking about the long-term future of this country.

I have the greatest respect for Chairman Bingaman. He has been an absolute gentleman to me in every way in every dealing. But we have a philosophical difference. He is charged to move bills out, to get things done. Most of them that have no cost he will readily agree I have had no objection to. He knows that. We have not tried to block those. But they are combined with the other bills because they know that is a force to create the votes, to get things that might be somewhat more controversial spending. That is his job. I understand that.

I have no ill will toward anyone. What I have an ill will for--and when I leave the Senate, what I will take to my grave--is not being good enough to convince us to do what we swore an oath to do, and that is to think long-term, think what is best for our country, not what is best for our State; think what is best for our children, not what is best for us; think what is best for our country, not what is best for our party; think what is best for America. We are losing. Consequently, we see it happening in our country.

So it is time to really clarify what this debate is about. It is really not about a lands bill; it is about the philosophy where we continue to work and run like a loose barge in the Mississippi River that does not have a tug associated with it. Are we going to do that? Because that is what is happening.

One amendment I am going to be offering just says we ought to know what things cost. How much land do we have and how much does it cost to have it? We are going to have it objected to, not because it is not common sense but because we are afraid the whole package might not get accepted if something common sense is in it like knowing how much our land costs us, knowing how much land we have, having an inventory, and making a judgment, a metric about what we are doing. Nobody is thinking the big picture. We are thinking the political picture. So here is the amendment. It is not going to go anywhere, most likely, but it absolutely makes common sense that we would do that, that we would know all the properties we own.

We have another amendment that is going to say that citizens have to give their approval when somebody comes onto their land who does not own their land--just basic property rights saying: If somebody is going to set up a heritage area, they ought to get permission to come onto private land, if it is your land and somebody is coming on it. We take that right away in heritage areas. It is gone. They do not have to do it. It is a commonsense amendment that says if you own land, you ought to have the right that is guaranteed you under the Constitution to have your land protected. It is your land.

We have so much unwanted property where all the land agencies want a way to get rid of it, but yet they cannot. They cannot. They do not even have the money to get rid of it. So there is an amendment that says: Let's take 1 percent of the cost of this bill and allow the different agencies to get rid of the excess properties they have. It is not complicated.

The other thing is, we are going to offer an amendment requiring that citizens within a national heritage area are informed of the designation before it happens. If we are going to pass a law that is going to impact somebody's private property, shouldn't we tell them ahead of time? Shouldn't they have notice? Shouldn't they have the

rights guaranteed to them under the Constitution?

I have spoken enough, but I think under the guise of the lands bill I have explained the real problem. There is a difference of philosophy. I will not stop fighting until we start thinking about the long-term problems facing this country.

I will not stop objecting to spending money that we know we intend to spend. We are just playing the game that: Oh, it is not an appropriation. Well, almost 30 percent of the appropriations are not authorized. So you cannot have it both ways. A third of the money we appropriate under the appropriations process is not authorized to begin with. So authorizations actually do not mean anything, do they? Or do they? Yes, they do, because they are not going to get appropriated, or they are, and if they are, we ought to be talking about real money that is going to be spent.

I want to talk for a minute about the backlogs in our parks because I think if the American people knew it, they would not stand for it until we did something. The National Park Service faces, right now, a $9 billion backlog. That is their number. That is not Tom Coburn's number. That is their number, a $9 billion backlog. With this legislation, they are going to take on more responsibility with no increased funds, which means the backlog is going to grow.

The Facilities Management Division of the National Park Service reveals there are at least 10 States where National Park Service maintenance backlogs exceed $100 million per park--$100 million per park. Twenty States have facilities with deferred maintenance exceeding $50 million. That does not include road maintenance, which is far higher. None of these numbers include the road maintenance we have not supplied the money for either.

They maintain 1,466 buildings built before 1900 but do not have the money to maintain them. They have 4,975 buildings constructed before 1950 but do not have the money to maintain them. They have 2,500 fixed assets--2,500 fixed assets--they do not want but this committee will not create a way for them to get rid of. They are still spending money on 2,500 facilities--2,500 different buildings--that they do not want, that they spend money on every year, that they are not using, but they have to keep it up.

The National Park Service has 31 sites in California alone. They have a State backlog, in California parks alone, of $584 million, exclusive of any roadwork. California is home to many of our treasures: Yosemite, Golden Gate, Sequoia.

New York national parks: They face a $347 million backlog--$347 million--home to Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty has a maintenance backlog of $185 million, work that needs to be done on it. We are not doing it.

National parks in Wyoming: a $205 million maintenance backlog. That is Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Devils Tower. Yellowstone has a $130 million backlog. It is one of our great treasured western assets. Everybody who visits there has total enjoyment from it, and yet it has a $130 million backlog which we have not addressed.

There are no increased authorizations for maintenance backlogs. Glacier National Park in Montana, a backlog of $400 million; Washington, DC, home to our monuments, a $371-million maintenance backlog; New Mexico, $41 million; Arizona, $192 million. The National Parks Conservation Association said this: The average budget shortfall among 100 park units is 32 percent. In other words, we are supplying two-thirds of what they need to maintain their parks adequately, and with this bill we are going to be adding to all that and other lands other things they are going to have to be doing because of this bill, but we are not going to address the real needs.

Each of the new projects in this bill will siphon funds away one way or the other, directly or indirectly, from these important projects. Are we good stewards if we add things to be stewards of when we are not caring for the things we have already?

There was a wise man who once said: He who is faithful with small things will be faithful with big things. I would surmise and put forward to this body that we have not been good stewards with what we have already. Yet we are going to add to them.

Amendment No. 4522

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 4522, and I ask unanimous consent that it be read and that Mr. McCain be added as a cosponsor of that amendment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, this is a straightforward amendment. It requires an annual report of the Federal Government detailing the amount of property the Federal Government owns and the cost of Government and landownership to taxpayers.

This is just a small chart that shows the amount of land the Federal Government owns. As my colleagues can see, two-thirds of the Western United States is owned by the Federal Government in one form or another. It recognizes all of the core land, the parkland, the forest land, the heritage areas that are not--it doesn't recognize the heritage areas that we don't own, but it does recognize all the land holdings. Nobody has a metric on what we own. Not any one agency knows what we own in total, nor does anybody know

what it costs us to own it, nor does anybody know what it costs the communities for us to own it because it has been taken off the tax rolls.

Each year, the Office of Management and Budget would be required to issue a public report detailing Federal landownership. The report would specifically include the total amount of land in the United States and the percentage that is owned by the Federal Government; the percentage of all U.S. property that is controlled by the Federal Government--not necessarily owned, but controlled--the total cost of operating and maintaining Federal real property, including land, buildings and structures; a list of all Federal property that is unused and vacant-- because why should we continue to maintain properties that are unused and vacant--including all buildings and structures; and the estimated cost of the maintenance backlog at each Federal agency with regard to their land holdings.

What this will do is give the taxpayers some transparency about the real nature of what we are doing. We are going down an alley blindly. We don't know what the cost is. We don't know what the total is. We certainly don't know what we are creating when we add more to it when we don't know the metrics on what we have already.

One of the things we need is greater accountability on the maintenance. It is strange to me that we can do what we are doing with this bill and not already know this information. Why would we not know what our total land holdings are and what their costs are? There are no requirements under current law to require public disclosure of the amount of land controlled by the Federal Government or the cost of such occupation to the taxpayers. There was an Executive order issued in 2004 that would require some of it to become publicly available, but what this amendment says is it all should be. It is an inventory. Every other organization, including the States, know what they own, and they know the cost to manage what they own. It is called management accountability. Transparency is the thing that leads to accountability.

When the President directly required the Office of Management and Budget to release a high-level report giving a picture of property ownership between 2004 and 2005, the Government decided to stop releasing the information on public domain lands. Wonder why that is. What happened is 90 percent of the lands aren't reported. So this amendment would legally require the Government to release information on all land it owns, how much it costs to maintain, and require the Government to track the growth of Federal landownership around the country.

This isn't hard to do. Once you have the database, all you do is add and subtract. The first year it will be tough. Every year after that it would not be hard at all. It is a computer program.

Governments track the property that individuals own. The Government therefore should disclose the same information about the land holdings that it has. The Government knows what land we own. Why shouldn't the American people know what land the Government owns? It is just common sense. If we want to manage our resources and manage our properties, then we have to know what it is and what it costs, but we don't. We don't use zero-based budgeting. Whatever they spent last year, they just ask for more. At the end of the year, if it is not all spent, they make sure they spend it; otherwise, they are liable to get a cut. So we are not putting the money in based on what we know the need is; we are putting the money in based on a historical record that is obviously failing to maintain our national parks.

I will discontinue with any further debate on this amendment and yield to the chairman of the committee. I would just say commonsense knowledge about what we own and what it costs us is something the American taxpayer ought to have, and to vote against this for some reason because we can't goes back to the same philosophical argument. We are going to have the short-term excuse for the long-term problem, and we are never going to get out of this hole.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, would my colleague yield for just a moment so I may respond?

I want the chairman of the committee to know that we worked very closely with OMB as we developed this amendment. This is not a significant cost because they have been gathering this data to a certain extent already. I would gladly take a second-degree amendment to offset any sensitive

data that might be incurred so it would not be made available.

There is no question there is some cost to it, but the yearly cost is minimal, and OMB has already stated that. The cost of establishing it, yes, I agree, it would be hard. But what my colleague has said is we really don't want to manage all of the properties because we don't want to know. That is the important thing, that we can't directly manage them unless we do that.

So I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I think we will finish well before 2:15. That is my hope. So if we are looking at votes, I hope they will have some notice about that time. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and bring up my amendment No. 4521, and I ask unanimous consent that Senator McCain be added as a cosponsor of the amendment.

I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, the American Farm Bureau and American farmers and ranchers had endorsed all of these amendments at an earlier time. I assume they would again, because it is the same language that was used in the past. Today, the National Taxpayers' Union endorsed these as commonsense freedoms for us.

This amendment is pretty straightforward. It says that if the Government wants to take your land, you ought to be able to say, yes, I agree or you ought to be able to say no. What this bill does is it authorizes the Federal Government--they can still acquire new lands, but if it is going to have an impact on your land--not their land but your land--the citizens ought to get a vote on it. It is called real transparency in government and real participatory democracy.

A lot of Americans are concerned about the excessive Government influence over their land. We can say they are not, but they are. People in my State of Oklahoma, in New Mexico, New York, and every other State have great concerns about property rights. This amendment is intended to address those concerns. It simply requires the citizens affected by Federal Government land grabs, or heritage areas, or others where we are talking about private lands being impacted, to have a vote, to have a say in the matter. It authorizes the Departments of Agriculture and Interior to continue to acquire land by purchase or exchange. It will not affect that.

The amendment would only apply to situations involving Federal eminent domain, when the Government takes property without the consent of the owner, or State and local governments cede private land to the Federal Government. The decision to cede property to the Federal Government may be voluntary by the State and local governments, but such a decision impacts the whole community. So all residents of an area, therefore, should have a voice in the decision to turn over public property that is controlled by bureaucrats in DC.

Do you realize that in all of our Western States, any single bureaucrat has more control in that State than the Governor of the State, where they own the majority of the land? Their implied power is greater than the highest elected official in the State. What they say goes, because it is the Federal Government. So whether it is a park ranger or forest ranger or manager of a forest or the BLM, what they say has more power than what the chief executive of any of those States says. When we look at this, we are saying if the Federal Government is going to take something by eminent domain, the people it will impact should get a chance to say yea or nay.

This goes back to the concept that we have a real right to own and hold property in this country. That is something many countries don't offer their citizens. We ought to be about protecting it at every level.

This amendment would involve local residents in Government decisions about their neighborhoods and communities. Sam Adams profoundly questioned, ``What liberty can there be where property is taken away without consent?'' What liberty is there when your property is taken away without consent or impacted without your consent or your zoning ordinance, because some bureaucracy from Washington funded through a heritage area decided what the zoning ordinances are going to be and has millions of dollars to move it, to your detriment, the private owner of property. What liberty is there when property rights are taken away? This amendment ensures both liberty and consent. It is very straightforward. It doesn't affect Federal transportation projects, national defense, or homeland security.

Delegating property decisions is not unusual. Eminent domain has been exercised through both legislation and legislative delegation. It is usually delegated to another government body. But the power may be delegated to private corporations, as we saw in Connecticut, such as public utilities, railroads, and bridge companies.

This amendment will delegate the final decision to the property holders who are being impacted--real property rights. If we agree as a majority, it happens; if we disagree, it doesn't.

The Supreme Court has approved the widespread use of the power of eminent domain in conjunction with private companies to facilitate urban renewal, for low-cost housing, for deteriorated housing, and the promotion of values, as well as economic development. In Berman v. Parker, a unanimous Court observed:

The concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive.

The values it represents are spiritual as well as physical,

aesthetic, as well as monetary. It is within the power of the

legislature to determine that the community should be

beautiful as well as healthy, spacious, as well as clean,

well-balanced, as well as carefully patrolled.

This ever-expanding government power essentially allows Congress and unelected bureaucrats for any reason to take private property from citizens with little, if any, recourse. What liberty when property rights are not preserved?

This amendment is designed to provide some check on the ever-growing expansion on private property rights within this country.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am going to try to move this debate forward. I see the Senator from Washington. Does she have debate on a specific amendment or comments on the bill?

Mr. President, we are going to try to get through our time agreement. I have two more amendments, if that is agreeable with the Senator from Washington.

I will make one comment on what the Senator from New Mexico said. What I heard him say is there is something wrong with people deciding it. The real concept of our country is we get to decide, and we have bastardized that by saying the Federal Government knows best.

I believe the people out there kind of know how things impact them. I think a plebiscite about what we are doing would be something that almost every American would welcome.

Will there be problems with it? You bet. Democracy is messy, but it is free. Giving them the right to have that answer and to vote, that is something that was guaranteed in the Constitution before we had an activist court that took it away. This is about putting it back.

Amendment No. 4520

I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 4520 be called up, and I ask unanimous consent that Senator McCain be added as a cosponsor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, this is another straightforward, what I believe most Americans would agree with, commonsense amendment. It says citizens within a national heritage area are informed of the designation and that governing officials must receive permission to enter private property. It is simple.

If I am in a heritage area, what happens often now is those who are empowered by the heritage area stake and survey your land, do all these things without your permission to enter your land--your land, not their land, your land. What we do is we broadly give the ability to violate property rights through the heritage area laws so people can access private property without permission. If I am wrong about that, then this amendment would cause absolutely no harm. But the fact is, I am right about it.

This amendment reestablishes the right of private property owners to control who goes on their land, when they go on their land, and what they are doing with their land. It reaffirms that if you have ownership, it is your land, and it does not take that right of a property owner away because it happens to be in a heritage area.

More and more heritage area designations are being made with little knowledge of the landowners involved. S. 2739 establishes three new heritage areas and extends the authorization and funding of several existing national heritage areas.

There is no requirement for the Federal Government to notify the individual within the area of its designation or its meaning. If we are going to have national heritage areas--and I agree at points they are great--do we not have an obligation to tell the landowner their land is getting ready to be subjected to all the parameters associated with a national heritage area? Do we not have the right and the obligation to ensure their property rights are protected as they are brought into a national heritage area?

I believe the Constitution says we ought to do this, we ought to restore what was already there. What is liberty without the rights of property?

I yield back the remainder of my time on this amendment.

Mr. President, in response, I wish to take a moment and read what three experts say about what the Senator from New Mexico said.

James Burling, principal property rights attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation:

The so-called protections for private property are largely

symbolic; so long as regulators can browbeat landowners into

becoming ``willing sellers'' we will continue to see the

erosion of fee simple property ownership in rural America.

With the influx of federal funding, the regulatory pressure

on landowners to sell will, in many cases, be insurmountable.

The legacy we will leave to future generations will not be

the preservation of our history, but the preservation of a

facade masquerading as our history subverted by the erosion

of the rights that animated our history for the first two

centuries of the Republic.

Joe Waldo, president of the Virginia property rights law firm Waldo and Lyle, said this:

The bill before Congress has nothing to do with a

``heritage trail'' but will result in a ``trail of tears''

for those least able to stand up for their property rights.

This is no more than an effort to overreach by the federal

Government with regulations that will restrict homeowners,

farmers and small business people in the use of their

property.

I ask unanimous consent, because of time limitations, to have printed in the Record the rest of these comments.

Mr. President, here is what I would say in response to the chairman's comment. It is not unreasonable to have somebody who does not own your land, has no real business on your land, ask permission to come on your land. That is an absolute subrogation of the rights guaranteed under the Constitution which we are now embracing and say it is fine to not have to get permission. That is not what comes with property rights under the Constitution. If our defense is we do not believe in the Constitution and the rights of private property rights, then I would say we are misguided in what we are doing.

This is a simple way of saying, if we are going to have heritage areas and if I am a private property owner in a heritage area and you want to come on my property and survey, you ought to have to get my permission. You should not be able to come on my land without permission to do so.

The fact is, example after example--and I will submit additionally an article from the Nation magazine on examples of exactly what happens in heritage areas to private property rights. It is called ``An Ugly Heritage.'' I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this article.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 4519 be the pending business. I also ask unanimous consent that Senator McCain be added as a cosponsor.

Mr. President, I will try to do this fairly quickly because I know we are under a time constraint. Amendment No. 4519 requires 1 percent of the----

I will be happy to yield.

Senator McCain.

Senator McCain contacted me and asked me, requested to be a cosponsor of my amendments.

All four of these amendments, yes.

Mr. President, this amendment requires 1 percent of the new spending authorized in this bill to be used to dispose of excess, unused, and unneeded Federal property to offset some of the cost of the bill.

What we know is we have a tremendous backlog in our parks. We have a tremendous backlog in almost every land ownership we have. We have tremendous maintenance needs in the Forest Service and tremendous maintenance needs in BLM. We are suffering to care for what we have.

All this amendment says is take 1 percent--they listed 6,500 different

items they want to get rid of--and use the money to help them get rid of them so they do not continue to spend money maintaining what they don't want and don't need. At a minimum, this bill authorizes $380 million of new spending, which only represents a fraction when we actually see what will happen. We will track this. My staff will track the actual spending that comes out of this bill in terms of appropriations so we will have it for historical reference. My amendment says to take 1 percent for use to get rid of these items and then take them away. When we have gotten rid of the excess items, we would not use the money to do that and that money will go to maintain the public parks we all value so much. It will help offset the hundreds of millions of dollars of new spending in the 2,000 property assets that in the Park Service alone have been slated for disposal but cannot be sold off solely due to the lack of funding to get rid of them.

So all this does is it directs some authorization and says: Park Service, take these 2,000 things, here is some money, get rid of them-- the things you want to get rid of. And everybody agrees we should get rid of them. They haven't because they don't have the money because they have to go through all these various steps under the Federal Government's property rights legislation. But we say to them: Here is the money, so you don't continue to spend money on that, and instead you continue to spend money against this $9 billion backlog in our national parks.

What this does is it allows them to get rid of assets they no longer need. This gives them a way and the funds to do that. It allows them to truly dispose of what they want to dispose of.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, how much time do I have?

Mr. President, I will speak a minute or two, and then I will yield the Senator from Washington 5 minutes.

We actually have a time agreement on the vote, so I am happy to yield the Senator some of my time, is what I am trying do, so I end up finishing. Is there a certain amount of time you need?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from the Congressional Budget Office dated January 31, 2008.

Mr. President, this letter shows a cost of $320 million for these bills over the next 5 years. So this is the Congressional Budget Office. This isn't my paper, this is theirs.

I will spend a few minutes, and then I will yield back my time because I know people want to get to some votes.

Absolutely.

Assuming appropriation. Yes, it does.

If it is not appropriated. But we are not passing these bills under the assumption they are not going to be appropriated. We are passing these bills under the assumption they will be appropriated.

As a matter of fact, the promise is made as we pass this. And either it is a hollow promise you are sending back home so you can say, yes, I did this, and lie to your constituents, or we are going to appropriate the money. It is one or the other. So either we are dishonest with whom we are telling we are doing something for or we absolutely intend to appropriate it. There isn't any other option.

I will finish up by saying this. Obviously, the senior Senator from New Mexico did not hear my earlier comments. We are in tremendous economic straits in the long term. This debate is not about the lands bill. It is about will we change the philosophy, will we honor our oath, and will we start doing what is right in the long term for those who come after us. The heritage we have embraced in this country is one of sacrifice--one generation sacrifices so the next has opportunity. If we keep doing this without regard--we don't know how much we are spending; we don't know how much the monthly costs are; we are not taking care of the parks as we should because we do not have an idea; we have a hodgepodge; we have a barge floating down the river without a tug on it--we are going to make the problem worse. I will remind my colleagues, the true accounting of this year's estimate is a $607 billion deficit. That is over $2,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. Every child born today in this country inherits an unobligated obligation they will have to pay, that they got no benefit from, of $400,000.

Am I frustrating the Senators from New Mexico? You bet. Are our children worth it? You bet. I am not going to stop. I am going to stand and say we are going to think long term, we are going to start protecting property rights, we are going to start thinking about our children, and we are not going to give up because we get lectured because we are not doing it the way we have always done it. The way we have always done it has us bankrupt. It is time for a change. Republicans and Democrats alike, our children are worth it.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent we vote on the amendments in the order in which they were presented.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we yield back all time on all amendments so our colleagues who have planes and things they want to do can get them.

Mr. President, I know my colleague from New Mexico will be here in a few minutes and wishes to make a statement in support of the legislation that is before us now. I will start by making my own statement, a general statement about it. I know Senator Wyden also is here on the Senate floor and wishes to speak on this issue and on this legislation. I know, of course, Senator Coburn is also very nearby and wishes to make a statement as well.

The Senate will consider at this time S. 2739. It is a collection of over 60 noncontroversial bills that have been reported from the Energy and Natural Resources Committee dealing with various public land, national park, water, and territorial issues.

Let me start by thanking Senator Reid, our majority leader, for making it possible for us to proceed with this bill at this time. This has been a priority of his for several months now, to get this legislation before the Senate. He deserves great credit for doing that.

All of the individual bills included in S. 2739 have been passed by the House of Representatives and virtually all of the bills--or their Senate companion measures--have also been favorably reported by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The committee votes on reporting these bills have been unanimous.

Typically, these bills would be considered individually and passed under a unanimous consent agreement. Unfortunately, as most Senators are aware, it has become virtually impossible to get unanimous consent to pass anything this year. So despite the fact these bills generally deal with State-specific issues and have the strong support of the affected congressional delegation, and despite the fact that these bills are noncontroversial--having passed the House of Representatives and having been reported by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support--we have not been able to get them cleared.

In an attempt to move these bills forward, last month I introduced S. 2739, which simply incorporates every bill our committee has reported that has also been passed by the House of Representatives. The package includes roughly an equal mix of Democratic-sponsored bills, Republican-sponsored bills, and bills with bipartisan sponsors. As I have already noted, since these bills have been reported out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee by unanimous votes, there really are not any outstanding issues in dispute. Many of the individual bills that are included in this package have been on the Senate calendar for several months; in fact several were reported by our committee and have been pending on the calendar since January of last year--not January of 2008 but January of 2007. A number of the bills have been approved by the Senate--by unanimous consent, I might add--in previous Congresses, in some cases in several previous Congresses.

While the individual bills in this package may not be controversial, they are nonetheless very important to the individual sponsors, and the Senate has an obligation to try and pass these bills. I would like to take a few minutes to briefly identify some of the provisions included within S. 2739.

The bills included within S. 2739 encompass lands and activities in over 30 States and the District of Columbia. The first provision in the package is Senator Murray's and Senator Cantwell's proposal to designate the 106,000-acre Wild Sky wilderness in Washington State, which the Senate has passed in each of the last three previous Congresses. The Wild Sky wilderness is an important addition to the National Wilderness Preservation, and has strong local and national support.

Another provision in the bill includes language sponsored by Senators Wyden and Akaka to give the National Park Service important new authority to enter into cooperative agreements to protect threatened natural resources in national parks.

S. 2739 also includes additions to the Minidoka National Monument in Idaho and Washington State, the Carl Sandburg National Historic Site in North Carolina, and the Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts, and the bill provides the National Park Service with important new authorities at Acadia National Park in Maine and Denali National Park in Alaska.

It authorizes studies of potential new parks in Missouri, Texas, Arkansas, California, Arizona, and Massachusetts to assess whether any would be appropriate for addition to the National Park System, and it establishes commissions to commemorate significant anniversaries of the Hudson and Champlain expeditions in what are now the northeastern United States.

S. 2739 would designate two new Outstanding Natural Areas to be managed by the Bureau of Land Management: the Piedras Blancas Historic Light Station in California, and the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse in Florida. It also allows for BLM land in Nevada to be transferred for use by the Nevada National Guard.

The package includes a new addition to the Wild and Scenic River System in Connecticut, and a new addition to the National Trails System, the ``Star-Spangled Banner'' National Historic Trail in Virginia and Maryland.

The bill includes authorizations related to new commemorative works in the District of Columbia, including one honoring President Eisenhower, and establishes a commission to study the potential creation of a National Museum of the American Latino, here in Washington.

S. 2739 would establish three new National Heritage Areas: the Abraham Lincoln National Heritage Area in Illinois; the Niagara Falls National Heritage Area in New York, and the multi-State Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and it authorizes studies of potential new heritage areas in Oregon and Kentucky. It would also increase the authorization ceiling for several existing heritage areas.

This bill will help address the water resource challenges facing many regions of the country. There are 16 provisions in the bill affecting States west-wide, including sections that will promote partnerships between the Federal Government, States, and local entities in the area of water, including paying for security costs at Bureau of Reclamation facilities; ensure a better understanding of groundwater resources; facilitate a feasibility study of serious proposals to address water shortages and avoid litigation; transfer Federal property to local ownership and eliminate Federal restrictions impeding water conservation projects; promote water recycling activities; and authorize Federal participation in the Platte River Endangered Species Recovery Program, which is strongly supported in Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming.

Given the critical nature of many of these items, it's important that these water-related authorities be enacted as soon as possible.

S. 2379 also reauthorizes two energy programs at the Department of Energy. One clarifies the Secretary of Energy's authority to make grants to advanced energy efficiency technology transfer centers under the Energy Policy Act of2005, and the other reauthorizes the Steel and Aluminum Energy Conservation and Technology Competitiveness Act of 1988.

The package contains two important measures related to the territories. The first involves the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands--CNMI--to respond to longstanding Federal concerns regarding immigration, labor, and law enforcement--concerns that are greatly heightened following the September 11 attacks. This bill culminates 11 years of congressional and executive branch efforts to extend the U.S. immigration laws to the CNMI including the establishment of Federal border control as anticipated by the 1976 covenant agreement between the CNMI and the United States. The bill also includes special provisions to meet the special needs of the islands' economy. The citizens of the CNMI have been U.S. citizens and members of the U.S. family for over 20 years, but they have been unable to participate in

American democracy as have the other territories. S. 2793 rectifies this by authorizing the election of a Delegate from the CNMI to the House of Representatives, a necessary step if we are to keep faith with our Nation's founding principle of representative government.

The final title of S. 2739 would make numerous amendments to the Compacts of Free Association between the United States and the Pacific island nations of the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau.

As lengthy as that summary of the provisions in S. 2739 was, it reflects only a portion of the bills that have been considered in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee this Congress. This package reflects only a first step of Energy Committee bills that need to be considered this year. As soon as S. 2739 is passed, I will assemble a second package, with a similar number of bills, containing legislation that has been approved by our committee, but which has not yet come over from the other body. Like this package, the second bill will be a wide-ranging collection of authorizing measures.

But regardless of whether the individual items in that package are large or small, all these bills will have been reported by our committee after a full public process. I know many Senators who have bills that will be, in fact, in that second package rather than in this first package and are eager for us to move ahead. I would point out the New Mexico-specific bills I have sponsored will be in that second package; they are not in the legislation before us today. So I share in that desire to move expeditiously, and I look forward to working with Senator Domenici and the majority leader and, of course, the Republican Leader as well to try to get that second package ready for floor consideration as soon as possible.

Senate rule XLIV requires the chairman of the committee of jurisdiction to certify that each Congressionally directed spending item in any bill coming before the Senate has been identified and disclosed on a publicly accessible Congressional Web site. The rule defines ``congressionally directed spending items'' as spending items ``included primarily at the request of a Senator.''

Although I included none of the House-passed bills in S. 2739, primarily at the request of a Senator, in the interests of full disclosure I have provided a list of all spending authorizations for specific amounts targeted to specific localities contained in S. 2739, along with the name of the sponsor of the Senate companion of the House-passed bill.

This list has been made available on the Web site of the Committee of Energy and Natural Resources since March 11 and was previously printed in the Congressional Record on March 11, at page S. 1869.

In addition, I ask unanimous consent that the list, along with my letter to the Majority Leader accompanying the list, be printed in the Record for the information of all Senators.

While I have previously tried to describe all the provisions in the package, I believe the individual sponsors can better describe the merits of some of their specific provisions. I am sure many of them will want to do so.

Passage of S. 2739 will not only allow us to send this to the House and then to the President, it will also allow us to move forward and address the many legislative pending requests within our Energy and Natural Resources Committee that have been awaiting consideration behind this bill.

I think it is important to remember all the individual provisions included in the package were previously approved by the House of Representatives. I know in a few minutes the Senate will also be considering four amendments that have not been approved either in the House or by our Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

To ensure that we do not jeopardize the enactment of S. 2739, I will be opposing all those amendments, and I will urge my colleagues to do so as well, so we can finally pass this bill in a form the House can quickly pass and send to the President for his signature.

As I indicated before, I know Senator Domenici wishes to make a statement.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, let me respond on this particular amendment that the Senator from Oklahoma has presented or called up for consideration.

The amendment does require the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to post an annual report on the Internet that details quite a few different things. First, how much land is ``within the jurisdiction of the United States;'' second, how much of that land is owned by the Federal Government, both in total and on a State-by-State basis; third, a description of how much it costs to maintain all lands, buildings, and structures on an agency-by-agency basis; fourth, extensive information on the number of unused and vacant assets and the value of operating costs for each such vacant asset; fifth, the estimated maintenance backlog of each Federal agency, presumably on these various assets.

The amendment does not just apply to national parks and national forests and reclamation projects and public domain lands which, of course, our committee would have jurisdiction of, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, but also the national wildlife refuges, Indian trust lands, GSA properties, post offices, military bases and facilities, veterans hospitals. And those, of course, are under the jurisdiction of other committees I do not serve on.

To give a sense of the breadth of the amendment, the Office of Management and Budget would have to provide detailed information each year on approximately 1.2 billion real property assets worldwide and over 636 million acres of land.

There is no provision in the amendment to exempt any sensitive information that the Department of Defense might wish to withhold or the Department of Energy or the CIA or any other agency that has a national security responsibility.

While there is certainly room for improvement in Federal property management--and in that regard I agree with the Senator from Oklahoma-- I do not believe we are ready to act on this amendment at this time or adopt this amendment. I believe compliance with the amendment would be very burdensome, time consuming, and expensive, and, of course, it is a responsibility that would have to be updated each year.

My own view is, this amendment, if proposed as a freestanding bill, would not be referred to our committee, not the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. I believe it would be referred to the Homeland Security Committee because they have Government-wide responsibility. We have no idea how much cost would be involved to each agency in compiling this information for the Office of Management and Budget. I assume it would be a substantial cost, and it is not one that I think we should act upon with this bill without any idea of that cost.

So my own preference, frankly, would be that if the Senator wishes to have a report such as this developed, the appropriate way to proceed would be to go to the chairman and ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, ask for a hearing on this proposal, get that committee to look seriously at what can be done to develop this kind of report, what cost is involved in developing this kind of report, whether there are needs that national security would require for putting some exemptions into this report so that we would not be putting on the Internet information that some of our national-security- related agencies would not want posted on the Internet. That would be the approach I would urge on my colleague.

So for all of those reasons, I oppose the amendment and urge my colleagues to oppose it when it comes to a vote.

Mr. President, I believe the Senator from Oklahoma has three additional amendments he wants to present. I believe he has 30 minutes on his side and I have less than 15 on our side. I will defer to him to go ahead, and then I will have a few minutes to respond.

Mr. President, let me speak briefly in opposition to this amendment and explain my understanding of it. This amendment prohibits the three agencies, the Department of Interior, Department of Energy, and the Forest Service, from assuming control--that is the phrasing in the amendment--over any parcel of land except through a voluntary exchange, unless the citizens of the political subdivision in which the parcel is located approve the assumption of control by referendum. Even if the assumption of control by the agency is approved by a referendum, that approval terminates at the end of 10 years, unless there is another referendum that extends it beyond 10 years.

It seems likely to me that the amendment would affect more than just the acquisition of fee title to land. It appears to include the interests in lands, such as rights of way, easements, possibly water rights, taking lands into trust for Indian tribes, and perhaps even friendly condemnations for public purposes.

As I read the amendment, since the only exception is for voluntary exchanges of property, I would think the sale of property--if one of these agencies wants to buy the land and a private landowner wants to sell the land to the agency, it would have to be approved by referendum. The amendment would give counties and communities, political subdivisions, veto authority over any Federal land ownership by these three agencies. I think it would frustrate congressional efforts to purchase or protect lands to make it virtually impossible to provide for any long-term Federal management or protection, such as is attempted in our national parks and monuments, wildlife refuges, historic sites, and wilderness areas. The amendment would adversely impact much more than land designated for conservation purposes. It would also impact Bureau of Reclamation dams, reservoirs, energy pipelines, and DOE facilities.

I think the concept of having to do another referendum every 10 years--I don't know how that would work, frankly. I don't know what would happen if you lose. Suppose the Federal Government goes ahead and acquires land through whatever means for a reservoir. At the end of the 10 years, there has to be another referendum on whether the Federal Government should maintain that land for that reservoir. If the referendum fails, I don't know what we would do with that reservoir at that point. There is not much of a private market for reservoirs. I don't know what action the Government would be expected to take at that point.

For a variety of reasons, I do not think this is a workable amendment, and it is one I urge my colleagues to oppose.

Mr. President, let me speak in opposition to this amendment as well.

This amendment would establish new restrictions for the three national heritage areas that are designated in this bill. It would prohibit the Secretary of the Interior from approving a management plan for a heritage area unless the local coordinating entity, which is usually a nonprofit group that is promoting tourism in this heritage area and developing the management plan, has provided written notification to each individual residing or owning property there.

The amendment also prohibits employees of the National Park Service or the local coordinating entity, usually the nonprofit group, from entering any private property within the heritage area without the written consent of the property owner.

The amendment, in my view, fails to understand what the designation of a heritage area means. Let me read some boilerplate language we put in every one of these national heritage area bills. It says in the bill, and we have this three times in this legislation because there are three heritage areas: Nothing in the subtitle abridges the rights of any property owner, including the right to refrain from participating in any plan, project, program or activity conducted within the heritage area. Nothing in the subtitle requires any property owner to permit public access to the land. Nothing in the title alters any duly adopted land use regulation. Nothing in the title authorizes or implies the reservation or appropriation of any water or water rights. Nothing in the title creates any liability, affects any liability under any other law of any private property owner with respect to any person injured on private property.

There is substantial confusion, I believe, about the idea that there is some great decrement of private property rights by the designation of these heritage areas.

The prohibition against employees of the National Park Service or coordinating entity from being able to enter private property without written permission of the landowner does not make sense, in my opinion. Heritage areas do not involve acquisition of Federal land. The amendment applies to any private land within large areas of the State. We have one in northern New Mexico which I was urged to try to establish--and we were able to establish it--by people who wanted to

promote tourism in northern New Mexico.

Under this language, a member of the Park Service or the coordinating entity would not be able to go to a mall or a restaurant or go to any other private property in northern New Mexico in a three-county area without written consent of the landowner.

In my view, the amendment should be defeated, and I urge my colleagues to vote against it when the time comes.

Mr. President, before we leave this amendment, I wish to make one more point. I read the language that is in the bill in each of these heritage area provisions that says there is nothing that prohibits or restricts the right of the landowner to deny access to his or her private property. That is the case under State property law in every State in the Union.

If I own a piece of property, if I am a private landowner and I don't want people coming on the land, I have the right to deny them access on my land. That includes Federal officials, surveyors, anybody I want to deny the right to come on my land. There is nothing in our legislation that in any way changes that.

Mr. President, let me speak briefly on this amendment and in opposition to this amendment as well.

The amendment provides 1 percent of all amounts made available to the Secretary of the Interior to carry out the various provisions of the legislation--that is to the 60-some odd bills that are included here-- beginning in 2008 and each fiscal year thereafter, be made available to the Director of the Park Service to dispose of assets described in the candidate asset disposition list. This is a list of structures the Park Service intends to demolish or to dispose of.

I think the description the Senator from Oklahoma made contemplated the sale of property. The truth is this is a list the Park Service keeps of buildings they no longer want to maintain. They wish to dispose of these, in the sense of destroying them, or tearing them down.

The amendment is essentially a tax on future appropriations for all of the programs in this package to pay for a specific asset disposal program of one agency within the Department of the Interior. Many of the programs authorized in this legislation have nothing to do with the National Park Service. It makes no sense, in my view, to reduce amounts appropriated for various unrelated programs and to other agencies, especially when the Park Service has never identified funding of its asset disposal program as a problem.

Each year we get a budget from the Department of Interior. They have never requested specific funds for this purpose. Instead, they use their regular construction funding to destroy property, to destroy these buildings when they determine that is a priority for them.

The amendment, of course, in my view also impinges upon the jurisdiction of the Appropriations Committee. I am not on the committee, my colleague Senator Domenici is, but we are essentially saying here that all future appropriations that relate to bills that are part of this legislation shall be taxed by 1 percent for this other purpose. That seems to me an unusual way for the Congress to begin undermining, through an authorizing bill, the appropriations that otherwise should be made by the Congress.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the legislation.

Mr. President, 2 minutes is remaining?

I gather that is in our total hour?

I am glad to yield that to my colleague.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on each of the amendments of the Senator from Oklahoma, if that is appropriate.

Mr. President, we have just now concluded the debate on these amendments. I would yield back the time unless the Senator from Oklahoma wishes to speak.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Madam President, I know the Senator from Washington, Mrs. Murray, is waiting to speak, and I will not take much time except to say Senator Domenici and I obviously had tremendously good help from our staffs. They worked long and hard to put this legislation together and get it into a form where it could be considered by the Senate.

We will seek time later this afternoon to elaborate as to the individual members of our staffs who participated and to thank them for their good work.

I will yield the floor and allow Senator Murray and Senator Cantwell to speak as provided in the unanimous consent agreement.

Mr. President, I wish to thank Senator Bingaman.

I rise today in support of S. 2739, the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008. This bill is a collection of 62 individual measures that were in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that have been considered favorably and reported to the Senate.

Packaging individual bills into a single bill is not typically the way we get the natural resources side of the Energy Committee business done. It is not my preference to do it this way. However, our customary procedure has been turned on its head since the beginning of the 109th Congress, and the fact that we are here considering this bill on the floor today reflects the frustration of many Members in this regard.

I have served on this committee for over 30 years, 4 of those as chairman and the past 2 as ranking Republican member. The recent controversy over consideration of this bill is simply a continuation of the efforts by the junior Senator from Oklahoma, since the beginning of the 109th Congress, to frustrate, in my opinion, the legitimate business of this committee and the Senate in maintaining proper oversight over the stewardship of Federal lands.

While I am pleased my colleague's concern about the unanimous consent process on an earlier version of this bill has been resolved, I nevertheless remain concerned about the ability of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to conduct its business and that of the Members of the Senate. In addition to the 62 measures in this bill, we have reported over 40 other bills that still need to be considered, and we simply do not have sufficient floor time to consider each of those bills individually.

Typically, we have passed these bills by unanimous consent after having worked out any objections by individual Senators to specific provisions. Yet that process we have used for years to get these types of bills passed has ground to a halt because of the generic objections about authorizations from the junior Senator from Oklahoma.

When I, as chairman, and now Senator Bingaman as chairman, have tried to address the objections, we have been met with new ones each time we think we have resolved the issue. Frankly, I believe much of this problem can be attributed to a lack of understanding about the jurisdiction of the committee, the importance of its business in ensuring proper management of our Nation's natural resource treasures. A bit of history would shed some light on the reasons for many Senators' frustration and is certainly something that deserves attention.

The Energy and Natural Resources Committee began as a public lands committee nearly 200 years ago, providing oversight over the lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. It was one of the first standing committees in the Senate. Over the years its jurisdiction obviously has expanded to include energy issues as well, but easily more than half the committee's business continues to be public lands issues.

Those of you who have served on the committee know this includes everything from our national parks and monuments to all the Bureau of Reclamation water projects. The committee oversees the management of the Department of Interior and the Forest Service, of 535 million acres of land, and includes 58 national parks, 88 national monuments, including those on the Mall, and over 428 million acres of wilderness areas. This is over 30 percent of the total area of the United States.

The committee also has oversight of the Bureau of Reclamation projects that include more than 600 dams and reservoirs, including Hoover and Grand Coulee Dams. Our job is to make sure our national treasures are properly managed and that the departments of the executive branch charged with that task maintain a proper balance between the Federal, State, and local interests.

In addition, the committee oversees all matters related to U.S. territories, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Because the jurisdiction is vast, the number of bills the Energy and Natural Resources Committee considers each Congress generally far exceeds that of other Senate committees.

In the 109th Congress alone, a total of 491 bills and resolutions have been referred to the committee for consideration. Most of these measures, as with the measures that are embodied in 2739, the bill currently before us, are required because the administrative agencies either have not taken action in addressing such things as boundary adjustments, land exchanges, or other matters relating to Federal lands, as Senators feel are necessary within their States. But in the 109th, we passed fewer than half of what we should have historically passed in previous Congresses because of the Senator from Oklahoma's objections. I am hoping together we are learning and the Senator from Oklahoma will work with us and understand all these bills are authorization bills, authorizing bills. They do not spend money until something else is done.

Money must be appropriated or spent by some committee or administrative body if it has authority because these bills authorize, they do not appropriate. The futile exercise ignores the balance between authorizing committees and appropriations committees; that is, the futile exercise that has been put upon us by the Senator from Oklahoma over the last 2\1/2\ years.

Let me pursue this point a little further, Mr. President.

The Constitution says, ``No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law. . . .'' Note that the Constitution says, ``appropriations.'' Under most circumstances, an authorization does not compel an appropriation of money from the Treasury. So, as I have attempted to reason with the Senator from Oklahoma, authorizations that involve the HOPE of appropriations occur all the time in this body. Most of the time, appropriations fall far short of the authorized level of spending. A case in point is the decision of Congress to not spend as much money on No Child Left Behind as the authorization bill would have allowed. In some cases, appropriations are made in the absence of authorization. So, clearly, the passage of these lands bills compels no appropriations bill in the future, and, thus, no point of order under the Congressional Budget Act lies against

these bills. My attempts to persuade the Senator from Oklahoma of this fact have failed, leading to this Senator's frustrations. Let's be clear here: these are authorization bills, they compel no appropriations in most cases, and spending to carry out the intent of the vast majority of these bills is contained in the salaries and expenses of the Departments within whose jurisdiction these matters lie. So, the premise of the Senator from Oklahoma--that these bills will inflate spending and increase the deficit--is fundamentally flawed.

As I have noted, most of these measures have no direct cost to the Treasury; rather, they set priorities for the Departments for the use of their administrative budgets that will be appropriated each year. But one of the principal objections the Senator from Oklahoma has raised to all the bills the committee has is they cost too much money or, as he puts it: They will some day cost money.

That may be true. But the Congressional Budget Office reports on most of these bills that the administrative costs to implement them would be negligible. In the rare instance where the bill would require significant resources, no action could be taken unless there were additional appropriations.

So, basically, there have been no reasons for holding up these bills. The business of the Committee that is before us in this bill should have been able to have been taken a long time ago. I do not believe the judgment regarding park boundaries in Wyoming, a land exchange in Arizona, a water project in Colorado, should supplant that of the 23 members of the committee--that one Senator should supplant that.

Those 23 members of this committee make their judgments on information compiled by a professional staff with a combined service of relevant departments in Congress of over 70 years on the Republican staff side alone. They spend a great deal of time on these bills. They know more than anyone else. They give that knowledge to us, the 23 members, and we vote. It is not as if these bills are put together, brought here, much time, effort and money and resources are put into them before they are put together and before we ask the Senate to pass them. I hope we will not find ourselves in this bind again.

We have four amendments offered by the junior Senator from Oklahoma. I have seen them all. I do not think any of them have received appropriate hearings. I do not think any of them have had the study that goes into the bill, that are in this bill before us. For that reason and many others, I do not intend to vote for them.

I do thank the Senator from Oklahoma, the junior Senator, for finally arriving at something that will conclude the matter. It will be concluded today, and many Senators will be pleased and many House members will be pleased, and all I can tell them is: We have tried our best to do this sooner, and we will try our best to do the next one sooner rather than later.

In the face of all of this, I cannot in good conscience vote to delay passage of at least some of the bills that we have worked so hard on in the committee and that are packaged in S. 2739. The amendments the Senator has filed under the unanimous agreement are sweeping generic changes to aspects of Federal land management. While aspects of some of them may have merit, they should only be considered through the committee process where the substance and consequences can be illuminated and debated in hearings. I doubt that there is any Senator, including me, who is 100 percent supportive of every line in these bills that compose S. 2739; but, as with everything else we do around here, there had to be give and take on both sides of the aisle to come to agreement on many of these measures. And since it has not been my experience that we will ever be able to satisfy the junior Senator from Oklahoma, I recommend that we proceed to pass this bill without amendment.

I yield the floor and thank Senator Bingaman for yielding to me.

Will the Senator yield?

To inquire, I heard the Senator ask who be made a cosponsor?

Did the Senator have an opportunity to discuss this with Senator McCain?

Of all these amendments.

I see. I will speak to that in my turn. I thank the Senator.

Might I ask my colleague from New Mexico, how much time do you have left?

For both of us?

I thank my colleague.

Senator, were you going to get some time on an amendment?

Mr. President, first, I want to say to the Senator from Oklahoma that I have nothing but respect for him, and we have talked about the profession he practiced before he was a Senator, saving lives and being a doctor. But I do want to say that I wholeheartedly disagree with his approach to these bills and to what the Senator is doing in the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in producing these bills for a vote. I think the Senator is wrong. I hope the Senate understands what he is doing, and I think if they do, they could each say to him: We appreciate what you are trying to do, but it is the wrong way to do it. It won't work.

Now, if you talk to Senators about what is going on in the Senate, I think most of them will tell you today that the Senate is borderline dysfunctional. We can't get things done. There are too many nuances that have been imposed upon us that we didn't know when we were putting them on that they were going to run us in all different directions, but we are there. So we can hardly get things done. It is kind of a dysfunctional body.

Along comes a bright Senator, and here is a package of bills, and so he looks at them and says: Oh my, this is a way to show I am going to save money. Well, Senator, you have the wrong package of bills. You have got the wrong package of bills. There will be plenty of opportunity for you to save the taxpayers money. Every appropriations bill or facsimile thereof--supplemental--put them together, 10 in 1 or one at a time, but plenty of opportunity for you to save money by attacking pieces of the appropriations bills. That is how you save money.

And for all those who are watching the good Senator from Oklahoma, all they have to do is say: Senator, we think you are on the right track, go after the appropriations bills. I am not asking you to, because I am an appropriator, but I am telling you if you want to save money for the taxpayers, that is what you should do, and there is plenty of opportunity.

I had intended to ask unanimous consent for 5 minutes. Did I not get it?

I thank the Chair.

Secondly, Senator, if you want to save the taxpayers money, then go after the place where the money is that is about to break your country, and that is the entitlements for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If you want to save your taxpayers from ruination, then get involved in reforming those programs so they do not make us go broke. Anybody who knows about your government will tell you, dear Senator, if that is what you want to do, Domenici is right, go after appropriations; that is where money is spent. Go after entitlements; that is where money is spent that is going to break your country.

And to prove to you that this bill does not spend money, all I can do is do it the way the Senate does it and ask the Congressional Budget Office: How much do these bills cost the taxpayers? Senator Bingaman, you asked that, and I don't know whether you already said it, but I am going to repeat it. This is Senator Bingaman's letter. He asked the Congressional Budget Office.

Now, we have to have institutions that take care of things, don't we? The Congressional Budget Office, not the Senator from Oklahoma, is charged with evaluating a bill and telling us about it. You know what they told us about this bill? Not only does it not

cost money, it makes money. This bill will bring into the Treasury in the next 4 years $48 million, because we have authorized the disposition of a couple of boats that were under lease. We said: Okay, go ahead and buy them, and they gave us the money.

So contrary to all the debate about costing money, and the taxpayers going broke, the bill makes money. Now, you can say: Oh no, it doesn't, I have another way of figuring it out. That is what the Senator says. But we can't have another way to do everything around here, another way to figure out what bills cost. We already have enough ways to figure them out, and they have got us so confused with what we have that we don't need any more. But if the Senator thinks he has a new one, and that is to delay this bill and take a piece of it and talk about it and say it is a bad piece that doesn't make sense, that is fine. But don't say you have a new way to protect the great public of America from overspending and that is to take after a lands bill full of authorization that nobody heretofore has thought of taking on for appropriations purposes, because it doesn't appropriate.

The good Senator is phenomenal. He is a phenomenon. But he isn't so great that of all the time in history we have had to look at these land bills nobody has said: We are going to follow each one and see how much it costs. That is one of his amendments, to follow its cost into government. You know what that means? It means there is a whole new set of books we have to set up. His approach will cost more money and wreak more havoc if we have to do that--find out how much they cost, even if he does them himself, as he suggested. He is going to see how much these authorizations cost, if anything, as they reach fruition--if they do.

Now, having said that, each and every one of the amendments offered by the Senator is very erudite. They lend themselves to discussion and debate. But every one of them, Mr. President and fellow Senators, every one of the amendments is so complicated, so full of contortions and turning the government this way and that way, that they ought to at least have a hearing. They haven't had a hearing. They shouldn't be adopted on this bill, where we have carefully had hearings on the bill, had votes on the bill, with 23 Senators participating before we put them in this package.

We should not put these four new ones on, one of which has to do with local government approving the acquisition of property by the Federal Government for parks. Before you can sell your property to the government, local government has to take a vote, and then 10 years later they have to take another vote to see if they were right. Do you understand, in the argument for simplicity of government, for making sure everybody can have their way, we have made government more complex by these amendments than anybody could ever imagine?

I, for one, say my hat is off to the Senator. I hope he finds a new approach, something new to attack to save money, but not a group of lands bills that are authorization bills only, that we have been told by the Congressional Budget Office will cost nothing in the way we handle bills here.

Now, if you want to change the way and have a new way to figure out how much bills cost, then we will have to have a long debate on which way we are going to do that.

I thank the Senate for listening, and I thank the Senate for yielding me some time, and I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for letting me speak as long as I have.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Doesn't that letter say ``if appropriated''?

That means if it is not appropriated, it doesn't cost anything.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 4521

I object.

If we do not do that, what will the order be?

No objection.

Just comments.

Mr. President, I have not had a chance to speak on the bill. If I could--I understand we may be delaying the votes because of other reasons. If I could get 12 minutes to speak, after Senator Domenici, on the bill.

I will speak after.

Mr. President, I was going to ask unanimous consent to speak after all of the votes. I wanted to speak for about 12 minutes, and the other Senator from Washington, Senator Cantwell, wanted to speak for 3 or 4 minutes. I know everyone wants to get to the vote, so I will use my time after the vote.

I ask unanimous consent that following the disposition of all of the votes on this package, on final passage, I be recognized to speak for 12 minutes, and the other Senator from Washington, Senator Cantwell, be allowed to speak for 3 minutes.

Mr President, I move to reconsider the vote.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Vote on Amendment No. 4519

Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Madam President, I thank my colleague from New Mexico for his tremendous work. I rise to thank all of my colleagues for supporting the public lands and natural resources package that was just passed by the Senate.

I, like many of my colleagues, have a vested interest in this bill. It contains my Wild Sky Wilderness Act which will designate over 100,000 acres as wilderness. This proposal is the result of almost 9 years of work by myself and Congressman Larsen of my home State. It has the support of the vast majority of the communities around the area, as well as outdoor enthusiasts, area businesses, and literally thousands of Washington State residents.

Congressman Larsen and I began working on Wild Sky back in 1999 because we were troubled by the rapid growth in Seattle and surrounding areas. We are so fortunate in our State to have unique and beautiful natural landscapes from the peaks of the Cascade Mountains, the northwest rain forest, the Olympic Peninsula to the mighty Columbia River. But many of our special lands could be jeopardized if we do not take action to preserve them now.

The Wild Sky Wilderness area will ensure that 106,000 acres of rolling hills, rushing rivers, and low-elevation forest in Washington State's Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest are going to be preserved for generations to come.

I am immensely proud of this legislation. The Wild Sky Wilderness area is just 90 minutes away from downtown Seattle. It will give more than 2.4 million from Snohomish, King, and Skagit Counties easy access to hike and camp in a distinctive northwest landscape, it will preserve unique low elevation ecosystems, and it is going to give the surrounding towns a great economic boost by increasing the number of visitors.

I am especially proud because so many people in Washington State are so excited about this wilderness proposal. Newspapers have endorsed it in more than 50 editorials, and more than 200 newspaper articles, op- eds, and letters to the editor have raved about it.

This is the fourth time the Senate has considered this bill. Wild Sky in the past has passed the Senate unanimously three times because we saw the value of this wilderness proposal and recognized that this bill is something my State supports.

Last year, for the first time, Wild Sky passed the House, and now passing the Senate, we are so close to making this truly a reality.

With that in mind, I want to take a few minutes to share with my colleagues what they just did. I want them to see some of the benefits this bill offers my home State of Washington and why people in my State are so eager to create the Wild Sky Wilderness.

Since the days when Native people and early settlers harvested salmon and timber from our streams and forests, people who live in Washington State have recognized the importance of our natural heritage. We have a great tradition in my State of respecting and enjoying the natural beauty that surrounds us.

Washington State is home to tremendously natural resources, and we have a proud history of embracing our national parks and our forests. The Wild Sky area is already being enjoyed by many of our citizens who hike or hunt or raft or camp there. And since we proposed designating it as wilderness, literally thousands of people have written Congressman Larsen and me to share their support. Many of those writers told personal stories about their experiences in the Wild Sky area.

Mike Town is a high school science teacher from Duvall, WA. He described introducing his students to a wild salmon spawning site near the Wild Sky Wilderness. Because that river's headwaters are in the proposed wilderness area, the water is still so pristine there that salmon are able to thrive, and today it is the one of the few places left in the Cascades where spawning salmon are still so numerous you could actually walk across the river on their backs.

Mike called that river one of the greatest spectacles in nature, and he said to me:

I cherish the belief that with federal protection for this

area, my teenage students will have the ability to share the

experience of spawning wild salmon with their grandchildren.

So the first reason we are so excited about Wild Sky is because it reflects the values of the people of Washington State.

But another reason this bill has so much support is because we worked hard to accommodate the needs of the users of this area. Very early on in the process, we reached out to all the local stakeholders to gauge their interest and ask if they had any concerns, and we were able to work with them and address many of the issues they raised.

We worked with Longview Fibre, a paper company that had some land in the proposed boundary. As a result, we were able to draw out certain areas and prioritize others that the company was willing to sell.

We heard from local and State snowmobile groups concerned that the boundaries of our original proposal would shut out important riding areas. So we took out a vast majority of those areas.

We ensured that float planes still have access to Lake Isabel.

We worked with the Forest Service and excluded heavily used areas around Barclay Lake and the only two areas where timber sales were being considered.

We made sure that Snohomish County and the Forest Service were comfortable with the emergency communication capability in and around the wilderness area.

And last winter, massive floods altered the path of the Skykomish River and displaced and destroyed parts of that road that provides access through our proposed wilderness area. So Congressman Larsen and I got back together and brought together Snohomish County, the Forest Service, and local advocates to responsibly adjust the boundaries of this wilderness to make sure the road could be rebuilt and remain open for future use.

Thanks to all of this work, we have the support now of many of the locally elected officials and most of the surrounding towns and counties. Local conservation, hunting, and fishing groups back this bill. The Seaplane Pilots Association and many local businesses endorse it, and the Under Secretary of Natural Resources for the Forest Service, Mark Rey, said the President will sign this bill.

Even though many people in Washington State understand and appreciate the value of wilderness, this bill has a lot of support because we were also willing to work with the diverse groups of people who have an interest in how this land is used. This truly was a public process.

Although we, of course, could not meet every single need, we have made every effort to accommodate everyone who engaged in this process, and thanks to this effort, this bill is an example of wilderness done the right way.

I wish to talk about the benefits of Wild Sky because I am so excited about what it offers people who live in my State and those who visit. Several years ago, I took a trip through the area where the Wild Sky Wilderness would be. It is very hard to put into words how beautiful this stunning, amazing area is that is 90 minutes from downtown Seattle.

A significant part of this wilderness is seemingly endless expanses of meadows. Rolling mountains can be seen that are covered with stands of huge old moss-covered trees, and some of those trees are over 100 years old. From the ridges, you have incredible views of the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains.

This area is so unique. And one of the things that makes it unique is its relatively low elevation. About one-third of Wild Sky is below 3,000 feet. So the Wild Sky Wilderness area is going to bring new ecological systems into our wilderness lands that are underrepresented right now.

Wild Sky links our forests and meadows and steep craggy peaks, as you can see, and it is going to create a protected habitat corridor for all the wildlife living in this area. We have wolves and mountain goats, black and grizzly bears, and deer and trout.

Salmon spawning grounds teeming with fish--just like the one my town's science teacher showed his students--used to be very common, but today many of those species are struggling to survive. So at a time when we are asking private landowners to assist in recovering wild fish runs, I believe the Federal Government ought to do everything it can on its own land to help protect and restore that wildlife habitat.

Secondly, Madam President, the Wild Sky Wilderness is going to offer us great new recreational opportunities for people in a growing region. Wild Sky is unusually accessible because of its low elevation, and it is near an urban area. So families looking for a quick and easy access to nature are going to be able to enjoy this very pristine land. Climbers and hikers, hunters and anglers have already sent us letters and e-mails talking about the opportunities that Wild Sky offers.

Mark Heckert, who is a fish and wildlife biologist from Puyallup, wrote to me that he has taken his two sons to camp and hunt and fish in this area. He wrote me about how much he values the outdoors and said he hopes to secure the Wild Sky Wilderness for his children to enjoy. He said to me:

Wild landscapes like those provided in the Wild Sky provide

the stage for a generational right of passage where young

boys and girls can discover their connection to our land.

Creating this Wild Sky Wilderness is going to ensure that Mark and his sons can return to Wild Sky in the years to come.

Finally, Madam President, hikers, climbers, rafters, hunters, and anglers who visit us in the Puget Sound area--and I invite everyone who is listening to come and enjoy Wild Sky--will spend their money as they travel through this area. Recreational enthusiasts will see Wild Sky in the future listed on maps and guide books as a special destination, and those tourists will come and stay in our hotels and our campgrounds and eat in our restaurants and use local guides and outfitters.

In recent years, the outdoor recreation business appears to have stayed healthy, even during bad economic times, and Wild Sky is going to help contribute to that in the future. And, again, I invite all who are listening to come and enjoy this beautiful place that you saw get voted on here in the Senate this afternoon.

Madam President, those are just a few of the benefits of this Wild Sky Wilderness. We have done a lot of hard work on this bill in the last 8 years, and we couldn't have done it without the help of a lot of people. So let me take the last few minutes and thank all of the people across my State and here in the Senate who have worked so hard to get this bill done.

I thank Chairman Bingaman and his great staff, especially Bob Simon and David Brooks, for their help and their unwavering support of Wild Sky throughout all the years.

I thank Senator Domenici, who is leaving us this year to retire. Without him and his hard work on this bill, we wouldn't be here today.

I thank Senators Crapo and Murkowski for all they did over the past weeks and months to move this package forward. I couldn't have gotten here--we couldn't have gotten here--without their hard work.

I thank many of my staff members, especially Doug Clapp, who helped me originally develop this bill many years ago; Jaime Shimek, Evan Schatz, and Mike Spahn. I can't even begin to say all the names of my staff members who over the years have worked with us as we have developed this bill and gotten it over the finish line. I thank all of them.

I recognize the hard work and support of Congressman Larsen and his staff, Senator Cantwell and her staff. She is on the Senate floor this afternoon as well and serves on the committee. I could not have done it without her help and support. I know she has climbed into the Wild Sky and seen it as well as I have and is as excited as I am to be out there to see this completed.

I thank Under Secretary Mark Rey of the administration, who supported this bill for many years.

But above all, Madam President, I thank the people of my home State of Washington who have worked tirelessly to bring this idea from a proposal on a

piece of paper 9 years ago to legislation that was passed in the Senate this afternoon.

I am going to be back when the President signs this bill into law and thank a broader list of people who have been so essential, but as I finish this afternoon I want to note the work of Tom Uniack and Mike Town, and I thank them personally for all their work. They have been so willing to listen and to answer questions and to give tours of the Wild Sky country and have worked with us every step of the way.

Tom and Mike, thank you. All your hard work has paid off, and we now have passed in the Senate a very popular bill.

Wild Sky is going to help my State take a great step forward in protecting our environment. It is going to enhance our economy, it is going to improve our recreational opportunities, and I can tell you, people from my State are eager to get this bill through the House quickly and on to the President's desk to be signed.

We took a major step forward toward this goal today, and, again, I invite all of you who are listening to come to the State of Washington and visit Wild Sky.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, in light of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, today I am introducing legislation to affirm Federal jurisdiction over the waters of the U.S. as Congress intended when it passed the Clean Water Act in 1972. I want to thank Senators Lautenberg, Levin, Kerry, Lieberman, Boxer, Menendez, Sanders, Cardin, Durbin, Reed, Dodd, Kohl, Whitehouse, Stabenow, Carper, Wyden, Leahy, Brown, and Schumer for joining me in introducing this important legislation.

For 35 years, the American people have relied upon the Clean Water Act to protect and restore the health of the Nation's waters. The primary goal of the act, to make rivers, streams, wetlands, lakes, and coastal waters safe for fishing, swimming and other recreation, suitable for our drinking water supply, and available for wildlife and fish habitat, has broad public support not only as a worthy endeavor but also as a fundamental expectation of government providing for its citizens. It is our responsibility to ensure that our freshwater resources are able to enhance human health, contribute to the economy, and help the environment.

We have made considerable progress towards ensuring the Nation's waters are drinkable, fishable, and swimmable. However, today, the Clean Water Act, one of our Nation's bedrock environmental laws, faces new and unprecedented challenges.

Two controversial, closely divided U.S. Supreme Court rulings have reduced the jurisdictional scope of the Clean Water Act, undermining decades of clean water protections and disregarding Congress' intent when it originally passed the Clean Water Act.

At the heart of the issue is the statutory definition of ``waters of the United States.'' Though recent court decisions have focused on dredge and fill permits under section 404, this definition is integral to the Federal Government's jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act as a whole. This definition is the linchpin for state water quality standards under section 302 and section 303, national performance standards under section 306, toxic and pretreatment standards under section 307, oil and hazardous substance liability under section 311, aquaculture standards under section 318, State water quality certifications under section 401, and national pollution discharge permitting requirements under section 402.

In the 2001 case Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. Army Corps of Engineers, SWANCC, in a 5 to 4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court limited the authority of Federal agencies to extend Clean Water Act protections to commercially nonnavigable, intrastate, ``isolated'' waters based solely on their use by migratory birds. While the Court's decision was narrow, the effect of the decision has been much broader: for example, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, 20 percent of the Nation's wetlands outside Alaska are now at risk of losing Federal protections.

Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court announced a sharply divided decision in the consolidated cases of Rapanos v. United States and Carabell v. Army Corps of Engineers that jeopardizes many more of our Nation's waters. Four justices joined an opinion that said only permanent or ``continuously flowing'' rivers and streams and by implication, the wetlands next to them are protected by the Clean Water Act, ignoring the act's text and purpose. This line of reasoning would leave more than half of our Nation's waters without Federal protections. To put these bodies of water into perspective, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, 110 million Americans get their drinking water from sources that include the very intermittent and ephemeral bodies of water that the four justices said were not protected by the Clean Water Act.

Fortunately, five Justices rejected this radical rewrite of the act. However, Justice Kennedy, who provided the fifth vote to send the cases back to the lower courts, offered an entirely different test; one requiring EPA and the corps to show a ``significant nexus'' between a stream, river, or wetland and a navigable water in order for the stream, river, or wetland to be protected. At best, this test is confusing, will be resource-intensive to implement, and is likely to result in many waters Congress always included under the Clean Water Act being left unprotected from pollution.

Fortunately, an unprecedented array of local, State, regional, and national officials, professional organizations, and public interest groups from across the country and the political spectrum have joined in the defense of the Clean Water Act. The unparalleled collection of interested parties includes the attorneys general of 33 States plus the District of Columbia; four former Administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency, Russell Train, Douglas Costle, William Reilly, and Carol Browner; 9 current and former members of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives who were directly involved in the passage of the 1972 act and its reaffirmation in 1977; the Association of State Wetlands Managers, the Association of State Floodplain Managers, the Association of State and Interstate Water Pollution Control Administrators, and the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies; numerous hunting, fishing, wildlife and outdoor recreation organizations and businesses, including Ducks Unlimited, the

National Wildlife Federation, Trout Unlimited, the American Sportsfishing Association, Bass Pro Shops, the Orvis Company, and the Wildlife Management Institute, among others; and a number of local, regional, and national environmental groups. All of these interests filed briefs in the most recent Supreme Court case, expressing strong support of the Clean Water Act's core safeguard: the requirement to obtain a permit before discharging pollutants into waters of the U.S.

With such strong support for the Clean Water Act, which is grounded in the language, history, and purpose of the law itself, I hope that my colleagues will join me in reaffirming Federal protections for streams, headwaters, tributaries, and wetlands that have long been covered by the act.

The issue before us is simple: Does Congress support restoring historic clean water protections as they existed for nearly 30 years prior to the Supreme Court cases? If so, Congress must act. In 1972, Congress established protections for all ``waters of the United States'' and I am pleased to lead the charge in the Senate to reaffirm those protections.

The Clean Water Restoration Act would reestablish protection for all waters historically covered by the Clean Water Act, prior to the SWANCC and Rapanos decisions. The bill could not be more straight-forward. It makes it clear that the Clean Water Act has always covered a myriad of interstate and intrastate waters, by codifying the regulatory definition of ``waters of the United States'' that has been in use since the 1970s. In fact, 30 years ago this month, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized the act's regulations, properly establishing the scope of waters needing to be protected by the Clean Water Act in order to meet the national objective. The Clean Water Restoration Act would codify the regulations the federal agencies have used to enforce the Clean Water Act for over 30 years. This is necessary to prevent the judicial branch from re-defining ``navigable waters'' as something other than the ``waters of the United States.''

The bill's ``findings'' make it clear that Congress' primary concern in 1972 was to protect the Nation's waters from pollution rather than just sustain the navigability of waterways, and it reinforces that original intent. It also asserts Congress' constitutional authority, which extends beyond the Commerce Clause to the Property Clause, Treaty Clause, and Necessary and Proper Clause, to protect the Nation's waters.

While the Clean Water Restoration Act is critical to preventing the courts from rewriting the law and thus further reducing the protections afforded to our Nation's waters under the Clean Water Act, the bill is remarkably simple and does not do many things.

The bill does not prohibit development or other activities that discharge pollutants into waters. Complying with the Clean Water Act requires following a process that seeks to evaluate proposed activities and minimize impacts by ensuring certain pollution standards or environmental criteria are met. The vast majority of permit requests are granted, and most are granted through expedited ``general'' permits rather than individual permits that require site-specific determinations.

The bill does not change the existing permitting process. Rather, the bill will provide much-needed clarity. The Supreme Court decisions have caused a lot of confusion, and the Corps of Engineers nationally has around 20,000 jurisdictional determinations pending. The regulated community, as well as state and federal agencies, will once again have a clear understanding that Clean Water Act protections extend to the same waters covered by the act for over thirty years.

The bill does not change the EPA and Corps' existing regulations or any aspect of the regulatory programs, in fact, as stated above, the bill defines waters of the U.S. based on the regulations that have been in place since the early 1970s.

The bill does not change the activities that are regulated. This means it does not change or overrule current exemptions related to farming, forestry, ranching, and infrastructure maintenance that have been in place since 1977. Activities such as plowing, seeding, cultivating, and harvesting; and constructing and maintaining farm or stock ponds, irrigation ditches, and farm or forest roads have been exempted from permitting requirements and will remain so under this bill.

The bill does not create duplicative State and Federal permitting processes. The Clean Water Act created an important Federal-State partnership, and States can choose to assume from the Corps the dredge and fill permitting program, Section 404, or the EPA's NPDES permitting program for point sources, Section 402.

The bill does not preempt state and local authority under the Clean Water Act. However, without the bill many State programs are in jeopardy because many States developed their own clean water laws so that they hinge entirely on the Federal Clean Water Act, and do not have separate state programs to fully address any voids left by the removal of Federal clean water protections. Also, some states prohibit their state laws from being any more protective than the Federal law. This means that if the Federal Clean Water Act's protections are curtailed, then the State's protections are also reduced.

Statements that this bill would ``expand the scope of the Clean Water Act'' are disingenuous at best. For over 30 years, all ``waters of the United States'' have been regulated and Congress should not stand by while the courts and certain special interests roll back the critical protections afforded by the Clean Water Act.

Congress must provide the needed leadership to clarify the intent of the Clean Water Act. Such action must ensure that all waters of the U.S., waters that are valuable for drinking, fishing, swimming, and a host of other economically vital uses, not just navigability, remain protected. After decades of progress, now is not the time to turn back the clock. I hope my colleagues will join me in reaffirming an important clean water pledge to the America people.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.