Native American Veterans' Memorial Amendments Act of 2013

Mr. President, today I rise to introduce legislation in the Senate that would prohibit the use of racial profiling by Federal, State, or local law enforcement agencies. This legislation is entitled the End Racial Profiling Act, ERPA, 2013. I thank my colleagues who have joined me as original cosponsors of this legislation, including Senators Durbin, Blumenthal, Coons, Harkin, Menendez, Stabenow, Levin, Mikulski, Warren, Boxer, Gillibrand, Lautenberg, and Hirono.

Last year, the Nation's attention was riveted to the tragic, avoidable death of Trayvon Martin in Florida in February 2012. As we all know from the news, an unarmed Martin, 17, was shot in Sanford, FL, on his way home from a convenience store, while carrying a can of iced tea and a bag of skittles.

After the tragedy, I met with faith and civil rights groups at the Center for Urban Families in Baltimore to discuss the issue of racial profiling. Joining me were representatives from various faith and civil rights groups in Baltimore, as well as graduates from the center's program. I heard there first-hand accounts of typical American families that were victims of racial profiling. One young woman recounted going to a basketball game with her father, only to have her dad detained by police for no apparent reason other than the color of his skin.

That is why I was pleased that the Justice Department, under the supervision of Attorney General Eric Holder, announced a Civil Rights Division and FBI investigation into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. I join all Americans in wanting a full and complete investigation into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin to ensure that justice is served. There are many questions that we need answered.

Was Trayvon targeted because he was black? The State of Florida has already charged the shooter with second-degree murder, and the defendant will be given a jury trial of his peers, which begins next month in State court.

Trayvon's tragic death leads to a discussion of the broader issue of racial profiling. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing entitled ``Ending Racial Profiling in America'' in April 2012, which was chaired by Senator Durbin.

At the hearing I was struck by the testimony of Ronald L. Davis, the Chief of Police of the City of East Palo Alto, CA. I want to quote part of Chief Davis' testimony, in which he stated that:

[T]here exists no national, standardized definition for

racial profiling that prohibits all uses of race, national

origin, and religion, except when describing a person.

Consequently, many state and local policies define racial

profiling as using race as the 'sole' basis for a stop or any

police action. This definition is misleading in that it

suggests using race as a factor for anything other than a

description is justified, which it is not. Simply put, race

is a descriptor not a predictor. To use race along with other

salient descriptors when describing someone who just

committed a crime is appropriate. However, when we deem a

person to be suspicious or attach criminality to a person

because of the color of his or her skin, the neighborhood

they are walking in, or the clothing they are wearing, we are

attempting to predict criminality. The problem with such

predictions is that we are seldom right in our results and

always wrong in our approach.

After the hearing I was joined at a press conference by Baltimore's Rev. Dr. Jamal Bryant, a leading youth activist and advisor to the Trayvon Martin family. He echoed the call to end racial profiling by law enforcement in America:

This piece of legislation being offered by my senator,

Senator Cardin, is the last missing piece for the civil

rights bill from 1965 that says there ought to be equality

regardless of one's gender or one's race. Racial

profiling is in fact an extension of racism in America that

has been unaddressed and this brings closure to the divide in

this country.

I have called for putting an end to racial profiling, a practice that singles out individuals based on race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion.

My legislation would protect minority communities by prohibiting the use of racial profiling by law enforcement officials.

First, the bill prohibits the use of racial profiling by all law enforcement agents, whether Federal, State, or local. Racial profiling is defined in a standard, consistent definition as the practice of a law enforcement agent relying on race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin as a factor in their investigations and activities. The legislation creates an exception for the use of these factors where there is trustworthy information, relevant to the locality and time frame, which links persons of a particular race, ethnicity, or national origin to an identified incident or scheme.

Law enforcement agencies would be prohibited from using racial profiling in criminal or routine law enforcement investigations, immigration enforcement, and national security cases.

Second, the bill would mandate training on racial profiling issues, and requires data collection by local and State law enforcement agencies.

Third, this bill would condition the receipt of Federal funds by state and local law enforcement on two grounds. First, under this bill, state and local law enforcement would have to ``maintain adequate policies and procedures designed to eliminate racial profiling.'' Second, they must ``eliminate any existing practices that permit or encourage racial profiling.''

Fourth, the bill would authorize the Justice Department to provide grants to State and local government to develop and implement best policing practices that would discourage racial profiling, such as early warning systems.

Finally, the bill would require the Attorney General to provide periodic reports to assess the nature of any ongoing discriminatory profiling practices.

The bill would also provide remedies for individuals who were harmed by racial profiling.

The legislation I introduce today is supported by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, NAACP, Rights Working Group, ACLU, and numerous other national, state, and local organizations.

Racial profiling is bad policy, but given the state of our budgets, it also diverts scarce resources from real law enforcement. Law enforcement officials nationwide already have tight budgets. The more resources spent investigating individuals because of their race, religion, national origin, or ethnicity, the fewer resources directed at suspects who are actually demonstrating illegal behavior.

Using racial profiling makes it less likely that certain affected communities will voluntarily cooperate with law enforcement and community policing efforts, making it harder for our law enforcement community to combat crimes and fight terrorism.

Minorities living and working in these communities in which racial profiling is used may also feel discouraged from traveling freely, which corrodes the public trust in government. This ultimately demonizes entire communities and perpetuates negative stereotypes based on an individual's race, ethnicity, or religion.

Racial profiling has no place in modern law enforcement. The vast majority of our law enforcement officials who put their lives on the line every day handle their jobs with professionalism, diligence, and fidelity to the rule of law.

However, Congress and the Justice Department can and should still take steps to prohibit racial profiling and finally root out its use.

I agree with Attorney General Holder's remarks to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee where he stated:

In this Nation, security and liberty are--at their best--

partners, not enemies, in ensuring safety and opportunity for

all . . . In this Nation, the document that sets forth the

supreme law of the land--the Constitution--is meant to

empower, not exclude . . . Racial profiling is wrong. It can

leave a lasting scar on communities and individuals. And it

is, quite simply, bad policing--whatever city, whatever

state.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the ``equal protection of the laws'' to all Americans. Racial profiling is abhorrent to that principle, and should be ended once and for all.

As the late Senator Ted Kennedy often said, ``civil rights is the great unfinished business of America.'' Let us continue the fight here to make sure that we truly have equal justice under law for all Americans. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. President, authorized under P.L. 105-312 in 1998 and reauthorized by P.L. 107-308 in 2002, the Chesapeake Bay Gateways and Watertrails Network helps several million visitors and residents discover, enjoy, and learn about the special places and stories of the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. Today I am introducing legislation to reauthorize this successful program.

For visitors and residents, the Gateways are the ``Chesapeake connection.'' The Network members provide an experience of such high quality that their visitors will indeed connect to the Chesapeake emotionally as well as intellectually, and thus to its conservation.

The Chesapeake Bay is a national treasure. The Chesapeake ranks as the largest of America's 130 estuaries and

one of the nation's largest and longest fresh water and estuarine systems. The Atlantic Ocean delivers half the bay's 18 trillion gallons of water and the other half flows through over 150 major rivers and streams draining 64,000 square miles within six states and the District of Columbia. The Chesapeake watershed is among the most significant cultural, natural and historic assets of our nation.

The Chesapeake is enormous and vastly diverse--how could you possibly experience the whole story in any one place? Better to connect and use the scores of existing public places to collaborate on presenting the many chapters and tales of the bay's story. Visitors and residents go to more places for more experiences, all through a coordinated Gateways Network.

Beyond simply coordinating the Network, publishing a map and guides, and providing standard exhibits at all Gateways, the National Park Service has helped Gateways with matching grants and expertise for 200 projects with a total value of more than $12 million. This is a great deal for the Bay--it helps Network members tell the Chesapeake story better and inspires people to care for this National Treasure--and it's a good deal for the Park Service. In this legislation, we cap the Gateways authorization at just $2 million annually. It serves all 150+ Gateways and their 10 million visitors. No other National Park can provide such a dramatic ratio of public dollars spent to number of visitors served.

With the National Park Service's expertise and support, Gateways have made significant progress in their mission to tell the bay's stories to their millions of members and visitors, extend access to the bay and its watershed, and develop a conservation awareness and ethic. It is time to reauthorize the Chesapeake Gateways and Watertrails program. It is my hope that the Congress will act quickly to adopt this legislation.

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

Mr. President, we rely on our public schools to prepare the next generation for success as citizens, workers, and innovators. We have asked educators to raise the bar and educate all students to internationally competitive college and career-ready standards. To achieve these goals, we need to focus on the professionals who have the greatest impact on student learning at school--teachers and principals.

Today, I am pleased to be reintroducing the Educator Preparation Reform Act with Representative Honda to improve how we prepare teachers, principals, and other educators so that they can be effective right from the start. We have also reintroduced the Effective Teaching and Leading Act to support teachers, librarians, and principals currently on the job through a comprehensive system of induction, professional development, and evaluation.

The Educator Preparation Reform Act builds on the success of the Teacher Quality Partnership Program, which I helped author in the 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. The legislation we are reintroducing today places specific attention and emphasis on principals with the addition of a residency program for new principals.

Improving instruction is a team effort, with principals at the helm. This bill better connects teacher preparation with principal preparation. The Educator Preparation Reform Act will also allow partnerships to develop preparation programs for other areas of instructional need, such as for school librarians, counselors, or other academic support professionals.

The bill also revamps the accountability and reporting requirements for teacher preparation programs to provide greater transparency on key quality measures such as admissions standards, requirements for clinical practice, placement of graduates, retention in the field of teaching, and teacher performance, including student learning outcomes. All programs--whether traditional or alternative routes to certification--will be asked to report on the same measures.

Under our legislation, states will be required to identify at-risk and low-performing programs and provide them with technical assistance and a timeline for improvement. States would be encouraged to close programs that do not improve.

The Educator Preparation Reform Act refocuses the state set-aside for higher education in Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act on technical assistance for struggling teacher preparation programs and the development of systems for assessing the quality and effectiveness of professional development programs. At the same time, it allows for activities to support the development and implementation of performance assessments to measure new teachers' readiness for the classroom and enhance professional development in the core academic areas.

We have been fortunate to work with many stakeholders on this legislation. Organizations that have endorsed the Educator Preparation Reform Act include: The Alliance for Excellent Education, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, American Association of State Colleges and Universities, American Council on Education, American Psychological Association, Association of American Universities, Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, First Focus Campaign for Children, Higher Education Consortium for Special Education, Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, National Association of Elementary School Principals, National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Association of State Directors of Special Education, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, National Science Teachers Association, National School Boards Association Opportunity to Learn Action Fund, Public Education Network, Rural School and Community Trust, Silicon Valley Education Foundation, Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children, American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, The Higher Education Task Force, National Association of Elementary School Principals, and National Association of Secondary School Principals.

I look forward to working to incorporate this legislation into the upcoming reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act. I urge my colleagues to join in this effort and support this legislation.

Mr. President, today I am reintroducing the Effective Teaching and Leading Act to foster the development of highly skilled and effective educators.

In the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA, building the capacity of our Nation's schools to enhance the effectiveness of teachers, principals, school librarians, and other school leaders must be among our top priorities.

Decades of research have demonstrated that improving educator and principal quality as well as greater family involvement are the keys to raising student achievement and turning around struggling schools. To strengthen teaching and school leadership, the Effective Teaching and Leading Act would amend Title II of ESEA to provide targeted assistance to

schools to develop and support effective teachers, principals, school librarians, and school leaders through implementation of comprehensive induction, professional development, and evaluation systems.

Every year across the country thousands of teachers leave the profession--many within their first years of teaching. An estimate by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future of the nationwide cost of replacing public school teachers who have dropped out of the profession is $7.3 billion annually.

There are proven and well-documented strategies to support teachers that will keep them in our schools. Evidence has shown that providing teachers with comprehensive mentoring and support during their first two years of teaching reduces attrition by as much as half and increases student learning gains. The Effective Teaching and Leading Act would help schools implement the key elements of effective multi- year mentoring and induction for beginning teachers.

The bill also significantly revises the definition of ``professional development'' in current law to foster an ongoing culture of teacher, principal, school librarian, and staff collaboration throughout schools. All too often the available professional development still consists of isolated, check-the-box activities instead of helping educators engage in sustained professional learning that is regularly evaluated for its impact on classroom practice and student achievement. Effective professional development is collaborative, job-embedded, and informed by data.

It is also clear that evaluation systems have an important role to play in educator development. Through Race to the Top, ESEA waivers, and other initiatives many states and school systems are focusing on reforming their evaluation systems. When evaluation is done right, it provides educators with individualized ongoing feedback on their strengths and weaknesses and offers a path to improvement. The Effective Teaching and Leading Act would require school districts to establish rigorous, fair, and transparent evaluation systems that use multiple measures, including growth in student achievement.

Principals and school leaders also play a leading role in school improvement efforts and managing a collaborative culture of ongoing professional learning and development. Research has shown that leadership is second only to classroom instruction among school-related factors that influence student outcomes. As such, this bill would provide ongoing high-quality professional development to principals and school leaders, including multi-year induction and mentoring for new administrators.

Recognizing the importance of creating career advancement and leadership opportunities for teachers, the Effective Teaching and Leading Act supports opportunities for teachers to serve as mentors, instructional coaches, or master teachers, or take on increased responsibility for professional development, curriculum, or school improvement activities. It also calls for significant and sustainable stipends for educators that take on these new roles and responsibilities.

The bill also requires school districts to conduct surveys of the working and learning conditions educators face so this data could be used to better target investments and professional development support.

Improving teaching and school leadership is not simply a matter of sorting the good teachers and principals from the bad. What is needed is a comprehensive and integrated approach that supports new teachers and leaders as they enter the profession; provides on-going professional development that helps them improve and their students achieve; and that fairly assesses performance and provides feedback for improvement. This is the approach taken by the Effective Teaching and Leading Act.

I worked with a range of education organizations in developing this bill, including the Alliance for Excellent Education, American Federation of School Administrators, American Federation of Teachers; American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education; Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development; National Association of Elementary School Principals; National Association of Secondary School Principals; National Board for Professional Teaching Standards; Learning Forward; the National Commission for Teaching and America's Future, and the New Teacher Center. I thank them for their input and support for the bill.

I thank Congressman Mike Honda of California for introducing the companion bill in the House. I encourage my colleagues to cosponsor the Effective Teaching and Leading Act and work for its inclusion in the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Military Crime Victims Rights Act of 2013. There are 26,000 victims of sexual assault in the military every year; at least last year there were that number estimated. But only a fraction, some 3,000-plus, were reported.

This measure encourages more accurate and complete reporting of all kinds, by guaranteeing all victims of crimes in the military the basic rights that victims have in civilian courts under current law. These rights are not a matter of discretion, they are a legal right that victims of crimes in our Federal courts enjoy. My proposal is essentially to apply these same rights, guarantee them, in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice fails to afford these basic rights. They are rights of decency and fairness to crime victims. It requires many of these victims to endure humiliating and insulting obstacles in their quest for justice, so it naturally discourages them from coming forward and reporting these acts, most especially the act of sexual assault.

Those rights that I believe should be applied under the Uniform Code of Military Justice are, for example, the right to protection from the accused, notice and opportunity to speak at trial, the right against unreasonable delay in trial proceedings. Those are a few of the rights that would be guaranteed. They are standards of decency and fairness that are essential to effective prosecution and the goals of good order and discipline in the military.

These fundamental rights are well-established in the civilian courts and well-esteemed by prosecutors and defendants as well as the victims, because they enable the justice system to function more fairly and effectively. Few would imagine going into a civilian court in a criminal trial without the statutory right to be protected from the accused, protection against physical threats or intimidation. Few would imagine going into a civilian court and being denied the right to appear and to speak when one's history, one's personal and sexual history is an issue in the trial. Few would imagine the denial of a right to be heard in the course of sentencing. Few would imagine unreasonable delay and permission for the accused to actually leave the country and be unavailable for the trial and thereby have that unreasonable delay. Yet in the military court, these events are routine and expected. This bill would correct that failing.

There is no reason military sexual assault victims should be given less respect or fewer rights than civilian victims of the same offense. The key to deterring crime is prosecuting and punishing it effectively, which requires reporting by victims. More than reporting, it requires cooperation. We know for a fact that victims denied rights and respect will simply not report sexual assault in the military. They fear retaliation and discouragement of many kinds in reporting serious crimes of all kinds. If sexual assault is not reported, it cannot be prosecuted. If it is not prosecuted, it certainly cannot be punished or deterred.

I became involved in this issue of victims rights in the military because of a constituent who came forward to me. I became involved in her case because she was denied basic justice. Her case was delayed. She was a victim of sexual assault in the apartment of an officer stationed in Rhode Island. She never had the opportunity to speak in court in a timely way. Her credibility was directly put at issue. She had no opportunity to rebut, in effect, the charges

brought against her. So often the victim is the one on trial. So often she or he is forced to relive that brutal, vicious predatory act of criminal conduct simply to bring charges and seek justice.

She is seeking justice not only on her own behalf but on behalf of the Nation, because it is clearly the experience, as proven by solid evidence, that a sexual offender repeats that offense. The rate of recidivism is higher for sexual offenses than any other kind of crime.

Last year I requested that the Department of Defense investigate both their failures to afford victims the right to be heard during public proceedings and victims' rights to be free from unreasonable delay and the lack of remedies available to victims. The report I received as a result of that request explained, in February, that the Department of Defense does not include the full list of crime victims rights in its directive because it references a repealed statute, one from 1990, rather than the more recent one passed by Congress, the United States Justice for All Act of 2004.

That is why still today our military services, each of them, is operating on out-of-date and inadequate victim protection. The reason is not military necessity; it is simply ignoring the law that exists right now in spirit if not in letter. My bill would correct the letter of the law to guarantee these rights.

I appreciate the investigation conducted by the Department of Defense General Counsel Robert Taylor and the military's commitment to revising their out-of-date directives and instructions, but we need a statutory remedy now, so people whose rights are violated will have a remedy, so they will have a recourse and relief when their rights are violated.

This victims bill of rights has proved feasible and effective in the civilian justice proceedings involving the very same offenses.

The rights are not novel or untested, they are well established and esteemed.

I ask today for support from my colleagues in passing this measure. It is a basic, commonsense measure. It requires a military judge--just like their civilian counterparts--to take up and decide any motion asserting a victim's rights right away. It requires an ombudsman within the Department of Defense just like the ombudsman for crime victims' rights in the Department of Justice. It requires training for judge advocates and other appropriate members of the Armed Forces and personnel of the Department to assist them in responding more effectively to the needs of victims' rights. It requires trial counsel in a military case to advise the victim that he or she can seek the advice of their own attorney with respect to these rights.

We have an opportunity and an obligation to stand for those who stand for us and defend us, and I refuse to disappoint them. I look forward to working on enacting this proposal with my colleagues in the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. military. And I would welcome the views of the response systems panel established by Congress when they have views they wish to impart.

We have the best and strongest military force in the history of the world, in the history of our Nation. Our men and women in uniform deserve a military justice system worthy of their excellence.

Mr. President, today I am being joined by my colleagues Senators Collins, Merkley, and King on the introduction of the Storage Technology for Renewable and Green Energy Act of 2013 or the STORAGE 2013 Act. The purpose of the bill is to promote the deployment of energy storage technologies to make the electric grid operate more efficiently and help manage intermittent renewable energy generation from wind, solar, and other sources that vary with the time of day and the weather.

Traditionally, peak demand has been met by building more generation and transmission facilities, many of which sit idle much of the time. The Electric Power Research Institute's White Paper on storage technology observed that 25 percent of the equipment and capacity of the U.S. electric distribution system and 10 percent of the generation and transmission system is needed less than 400 hours a year. Peak generation is also often met with the least efficient, most costly power plants. Energy storage systems offer an alternative to simply building more generation and transmission to meet peak demand because they allow the current system to meet peak demands by storing less expensive off-peak power, from the most cost-efficient plants, for use during peak demand.

The growth of renewable energy from wind and solar and other intermittent renewable sources, like wave and tidal energy, raises yet another challenge for the electric grid that storage can help address. These renewable sources deliver power at times of the day or night when they might not be needed or fluctuate with the weather. Energy storage technology allows these intermittent sources to store power as it is generated and allow it to be dispatched when it is most needed and in a predictable, steady of stream of electricity no longer at the vagaries of weather conditions. And equally important, it allows this intermittent generation to more closely match demand. Instead of trying to find a place to sell power at 3:00 am in the morning when demand is down, wind farms for example would be able to sell their power at 3:00 pm in the afternoon when demand is up.

The STORAGE 2013 Act is substantially similar to the STORAGE Act of 2011 I introduced last Congress. It offers investment tax credits for three categories of energy storage facilities that temporarily store energy for delivery or use at a later time. The bill is technology neutral and does not pick storage technology ``winners'' and ``losers'' either in terms of the storage technology that is used or in terms of the source of the energy that is stored. The electricity can come from a wind farm or it can come for a coal or nuclear plant. Pumped hydro, compressed air, batteries, flywheels, and thermal storage are all eligible technologies as are smart-grid enabled plug-in electric vehicles.

First, the STORAGE 2013 Act provides a 20 percent investment tax credit of up to $40 million per project for storage systems connected to the electric grid and distribution system. A total of $1.5 billion in these investment credits are available for these grid connected systems. Developers would have to apply to the Treasury Department and DOE for the credits, similar to the process used for the green energy manufacturing credits the ``48C'' program. This is a 20 percent credit so that means the actual cost of the project that would be eligible for the full credit would be $200 million.

The act also provides a 30 percent investment tax credit of up to $1 million per project to businesses for on-site storage, such as an ice- storage facility in on office building, where ice is made at night using low-cost, off-peak power and then used to help air-condition the building luring the day while reducing peak demand. This is a 30 percent credit so the cost of the actual projects that would get the full credit amount would be around $3.3 million.

One change from last year's version of the bill is that the minimum size for storage systems to be eligible for this credit is now 5 kWh, whereas it was 20 kWh before. 20 kWh is a reasonable size or industrial energy consumers and big-box stores, but a 5 kWh limit is a size that makes sense for small businesses. This change will allow small businesses to participate in pioneering storage on the grid, and will incentivize storage companies to create leasing models for residential users. Leasing models are proving very successful at increasing grid- connected residential solar, and this credit will open up a whole new market for storage to follow suit.

But if homeowners want to install storage on their own, they will be able to. The Act also provides for 30 percent tax credit for homeowners for on-site

storage projects to store off-peak electricity from solar panels or from the grid for later use during peak hours.

As the EPRI white paper noted ``(d)espite the large anticipated need for energy storage solutions within the electric enterprise, very few grid-integrated storage installations are in actual operation in the United States today.'' The purpose of the STORAGE 2013 Act is to help jump start the deployment of these storage solutions so that renewable energy technologies can increase their economic value to the electric grid while reducing their power integration costs as well as to improve the overall efficiency of the electrical system.

I urge my colleagues to take a closer look at what storage technologies can do to help reduce the cost of electricity and improve the performance of the electric grid and renewable energy technologies. If they do, I am confident my colleagues will join Senators Collins, Merkley, and King in supporting this bipartisan legislation.

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

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

Mr. President, today I rise to introduce the Gold Butte National Conservation Area Act of 2013. This legislation will designate the Gold Butte National Conservation Area in Southern Nevada and designate wilderness within Gold Butte.

I am proud to introduce this important bill, which has been in the making for at least a decade. The establishment of the Gold Butte National Conservation Area has been supported by Clark County, the City of Mesquite, Friends of Gold Butte, the Moapa Band of Paiutes, the Nevada Resort Association, and thousands of Nevadans.

By establishing the Gold Butte National Conservation Area as a unit of the National Landscape Conservation System, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, we will conserve, protect and enhance this unique part of Southern Nevada's landscape.

The proposed National Conservation Area is located in Clark County, south of the City of Mesquite and surrounded on three sides by the Lake Mead National Recreation Area and the Grand Canyon Parashant National Monument in Arizona. Gold Butte, deemed by locals as ``Nevada's piece of the Grand

Canyon'', is recognized for its amazing sandstone formations, critical habitat for desert tortoise, mining heritage and the ancient Native American rock art that is so prevalent throughout the area. The land is home to a number of rare plants and animals such as desert tortoise, desert bighorn sheep, golden eagles, and bear poppies. The legislation will also protect current uses which include camping, hunting, hiking and riding off-highway vehicles on previously designated routes.

Gold Butte is named for the mining town of the same name comprised of approximately 1,000 miners in the early 1900s. Long since abandoned, Gold Butte shows the remnants of an early pioneer history of ranching and mining. Even before the early settlers, however, Native Americans depended on this area. The evidence of ancient people can be found nearly everywhere in Gold Butte--petroglyphs, agave roasting pits, hunting blinds, rock shelters, stone tools, pottery shards and charcoal are found across the landscape.

For decades, the Gold Butte area has been a special place for those in the surrounding community. Over 10 years ago people started noticing the impacts of increased unmanaged visitation such as litter, fires, waste and degradation of cultural and natural resources. Unfortunately, these human impacts were becoming a common occurrence in Gold Butte. It was then that a group of conservationists, sportsmen, archaeologists, tribal members, ranchers and community members formed Friends of Gold Butte and started advocating for a higher level of protection for the area. Since 2000, Friends of Gold Butte has worked to create and shape a proposal for protection of these important resources.

The National Conservation Area will also benefit the local economy by bringing tourists and outdoor enthusiasts to explore the natural beauty of this desert landscape. Nevada already benefits from $14.9 billion annually in consumer spending directly related to the outdoor recreation industry, which directly supports 148,000 jobs. Designation of the Gold Butte National Conservation Area will draw more people to the area and bring in vital tourist dollars to the City of Mesquite and to Clark County.

The legislation also designates wilderness areas within the Gold Butte National Conservation Area. These wilderness areas provide key habitat for a number of critical species, protects the cultural resources and the many primitive places in Gold Butte.

The Gold Butte National Conservation Area Act is an ambitious piece of legislation, built on years of hard work by local advocates and stakeholder input. It protects vital natural and cultural resources and preserves an important area of recreation for future generations.

I understand that more work will need to be done on this bill and I anticipate feedback by stakeholders to improve the legislation.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to move this important legislation through the legislative process.

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