Floor Statements

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chairman, the gentleman from California would be correct, that ranchers and farmers should be able to pay to deal with the predator situation. The problem is, they're not allowed to.

The Federal Government doesn't allow people to kill predators that are attacking their livestock. So consequently, here's another situation just like we discussed yesterday, where the government puts restrictions on ranchers and farmers so they cannot protect their own livestock. So the taxpayers--because of their demands that ranchers and farmers not protect their own livestock, the Federal Government steps in.

In addition, though, wildlife strikes on airplanes cost U.S. commercial aviation $700 million a year. One part of Wildlife Services is when USDA works with 822 domestic airports, as well as Department of Defense air bases in the U.S. and in Iraq and in Afghanistan. So part of this is to assist with efforts to prevent conflict between wildlife and commercial aviation flights, some of which can be quite devastating and deadly.

Furthermore, there's been an $18 million loss of sheep and lands to predators, or $111 million when you add cattle and calf losses. Absent predator management, losses would explode, and that would drive family farms and ranchers out of business.

This is a very balanced program in terms of the approach it takes to shared responsibility between airport managers and Wildlife Services, ranchers and farmers and Wildlife Services. It requires a tremendous cost share or matching program at greater than 40 percent. The Wildlife Services Division

has more than 2,500 cooperative agreements in place across the United States.

Madam Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Peterson), former chairman of the Ag Committee.

Madam Chairman, I now yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lucas), the chairman of the Ag Committee.

Madam Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the gentleman's amendment.

Madam Chairman, I make a point of order against the amendment. It is violative of clause 2 of rule XXI because it proposes changes that require a new determination that is not within the purview and scope of the current bill.

I respectfully ask for a ruling from the Chair.

Madam Chair, the committee would be very pleased to work with the gentleman from New Mexico and myself in particular since my daughter is a new resident of your State.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would remove the restriction only on the fee-for-service horse meat inspection portion. Since fiscal year 2006, Congress has prohibited the use of Federal funds to inspect horses. However, the USDA allowed for a fee-for- service program for mandatory inspection of horses destined for food until 2008, when Congress prohibited the program through an appropriations rider.

Before these bans, horse processing was a $65 million a year industry and owners could receive about $400 to $800 when selling a horse. I am offering this amendment because owners should have the option of selling their horse for processing under their personal property rights. It is not the Federal Government's role to ban this option. The decision to allow for processing should be made by the States.

The Senate Committee on Appropriations has directed GAO to examine the effects of this ban on the welfare of horses and on the agriculture industry. This report was expected by March 1 of 2010. Over a full year later, we still have yet to be delivered a final report from GAO, but expect one within weeks of this debate. It is important that this analysis be considered when determining whether to consider this ban.

In particular, the GAO was asked to examine how many horses are now being shipped to Mexico and Canada for slaughter, which outside analysis has confirmed is increasing. With the increased exporting of animals comes the concern of longer transportation times to slaughter and reduced inspections by USDA of travel conditions. USDA has no authority to ensure humane treatment once horses cross the border to Mexico or Canada, and there is no reason to believe horses are receiving better treatment by continuing this ban.

Additionally, there continue to be reports of increased animal abuse during the reduced options for unwanted horses. I can assure you this is true in my home State of Wyoming. Recently, 100 horses have been seized from a western Wyoming ranch where they were being starved and had to be transported to the eastern side of the State to the State's Cheyenne stockyards. While the state veterinarian is caring for the animals currently, the options for selling these horses are limited.

There is just no place to send unwanted horses, and neglect will continue to rise across the country without a viable alternative. In fact, the Wyoming legislature this year made it a crime to release a horse on to public lands. Now, the reason people do that is because there is no other way to get rid of an unwanted horse. There is no opportunity to sell them into this meat market, so people are turning them loose with the feral horses, the wild horses, further exacerbating the Federal wild horse problem.

Congress needs to examine these concerns, and the GAO report should provide us the information needed to make an educated decision on this matter.

Now, I plan to withdraw my amendment after discussing this issue, but would like to provide my colleagues with the opportunity to present their States' concerns with this ban and to ensure moving forward we examine the GAO report before finalizing any appropriations language for fiscal year 2012.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Virginia inadvertently misrepresented the terms of this amendment. They only applied to the fee-for-service component.

With that, Mr. Chairman----

I am asking for unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

Now I am not going to withdraw the amendment. I will ask for a vote.

Before I withdraw the amendment, I wish to correct that this amendment has never been considered in committee or on the floor. This amendment only applies to the two lines in this horse inspection issue which deal with an individual's right to pay their own money to have a horse inspected. There are no taxpayer dollars involved in this amendment. I'm only striking the two lines that now you're even not allowing people to pay their own money to have a horse inspected.

With that opportunity to correct the record, Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise with great temerity in opposition to the amendment by the great gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. Chairman, I would note that over the last 2 days we have heard how ag credit and rural housing have had deep cuts in this bill, and yet now we have an amendment that would cut more from them and would impart those funds on a program that between fiscal year 2004 and the current fiscal year has experienced a net budget authority increase of $2 billion, a 121 percent increase, and over the same time period, direct appropriations increases of over $1 billion, or 75 percent. Implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010 would require an additional $1.4 billion in new budget authority. If the President's budget request were adopted, the result would be a 156 percent increase for FDA since 2004.

This level of spending is unsustainable. While the recommended funding level for FDA in this bill is an 11.5 percent decrease below the amount provided in the fiscal year 2011 continuing resolution, the subcommittee's overall allocation was reduced by 13.4 percent. Hence, this program suffered a smaller reduction than other programs within the budget.

Once again, with these massive increases in budget authority and in actual spending through direct appropriations over the time period 2004 and the current fiscal year, Mr. Chairman, and given the fact that ag credit and rural housing have already taken the types of deep cuts that are referenced in the rest of the bill, I urge my colleagues to defeat the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Respectfully, my chairman and I disagree on this issue.

I raised this in our subcommittee of Appropriations, and his superior abilities to convince the subcommittee prevailed. But I weigh in on the side of Mr. Gibson and Mr. Gosar, and let me tell you why.

The information that the committee chairman has is correct insofar as it gives you numbers on broadband access that will allow you a speed of receiving service that is so slow that it is basically 20th century rather than 21st century communications. For example, under the speed at which the numbers that the gentleman from Georgia has derived cover, this 99, 98 percent coverage, it would take you 9 hours to download a movie. Now, who's going to do that?

But with this digital world we're in, the kinds of data that need to be unloaded in order to be a lone eagle, to have a business, to have the type of broadband access that my colleague from Arizona would like the Native Americans in his State to have, would require a much faster broadband service. And when you look at the speed of the broadband service that is consistent with having a robust community that has real broadband service, my State is at the rock bottom. Less than half of the people in my State have the kind of robust service that is typical of urban areas or suburban areas.

The same could be said for my colleague from Arizona and the areas of his State where Native Americans so desperately need the opportunity to market products over the Internet. So I encourage my colleagues to support the position of my colleagues, Mr. Gibson and Mr. Gosar. And I rise in support of their amendment.

I yield to the gentlelady from Ohio.

With the Chairman's leave, I would consent.

Would you consent to a departure as I use the remainder of my 5 minutes to discuss the issue of the stockyards and the GIPSA rule?

I yield to my colleague from Ohio.

I move to strike the requisite number of words.

I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, the chairman of the subcommittee informs me that he will accept the amendment.

I object.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the gentleman's amendment. I don't have a copy of it.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to focus on what this bill does and what it does not do.

First of all, it increases spending because mandatory programs are growing. The mandatory programs, like SNAP and Child Nutrition, are growing so rapidly that they exceed the cuts in the discretionary programs in this bill. So while my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are talking about the dreadful calamity associated with the cuts in this bill, the fact of the matter is food programs get more money under this bill, and that's because they are mandatory programs. The committee has no control over them. The only thing we have control over are the discretionary programs.

SNAP is projected to grow almost $6 billion, and Child Nutrition is projected to cost an additional $1.45 billion. Now, those and other mandatory spending add up to an additional $282 million over the costs of fiscal year 2012. So to call this a cut is not acknowledging the additional spending that is mandatory and that is in the SNAP program and the Child Nutrition Program.

Now, we, as Members of Congress, who are facing 1.2, 1.3 trillion more dollars in spending every year than we take in and are racking up 14, soon to be more, trillion dollars in debt, this year we have now exceeded, in our national debt, the entire GDP of this country for 1 year.

We cannot go on like this. We're destroying the country with spending. That's the moral imperative that we're discussing today.

Consequently, let's keep our eye on the ball. We're not destroying spending for people in need. We're actually increasing it, $6 billion for SNAP and almost $1.5 billion for Child Nutrition. We've saved it in other areas. The Agriculture Committee's budget includes a variety of priorities, including traditional agriculture spending like research, animal and plant health and conservation, nutrition, food aid and safety, rural development, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Spreading funding across this spectrum is a balancing act, and I would like to thank Chairman Kingston for his leadership on this bill.

I thank the gentleman.

Madam Chair, this is my third year in this Congress. During my first 2 years, the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, and during that time the subsidies or tax loopholes for the rich, for the oil companies, for these bailouts of Wall Street were going on just like they allege they are now. And did they do anything about it when they controlled the entire government? No. Nope. They didn't do anything.

Instead, they created massive new entitlement programs. Instead, they did TARP part two without accounting for part one. They did massive bailouts of the auto industry. They created huge new health programs. They gave massive blank checks to bureaucrats. They increased spending at the EPA, one agency, by 39 percent in 1 year. It is incredible. They taxed, they spent, yet they didn't go after the very people that today they allege are the source of the problem.

Now, when the Republicans were elected in the House to do what the American people felt needed to be done, which is to grapple with spending first, spending being the problem in our country, amassing a huge amount of debt, deficits, borrowing money from foreign countries, risking our own credit rating, risking our own ability to borrow money, risking the value of our currency, now they are alleging we are addressing the wrong targets.

Madam Chair, this very budget we are debating today increases spending for food programs. It increases funding for both food stamps and school lunch. It increases it more than we are cutting spending for WIC and other programs. It increases spending for the human needs that are legitimate for the people in this country by over one-quarter of a billion dollars.

Madam Chair, I allege that this is a responsible budget, that we are beginning to get off that unsustainable path of spending that even the President acknowledges and get back on a path where we can live more reasonably, where we can protect our currency, where we can protect our job market, where we can protect our tax structure and improve it in a way that makes America strong for our grandchildren.

I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, the speakers have chosen to cut $562 million out of WIC, which would have carried forward into this year, and this year would have carried forward into next year. That's because the WIC Program has a 2-year carryover. So, when the previous speakers voted to cut WIC by $562 million, they truly were cutting money that could have been available now.

The reason they chose to cut that is they found a higher priority expenditure than WIC, and when they made that choice, they took that money out of the program, money which could have been available now. They did that based on real numbers of WIC participation, not on estimates. They did it on real numbers, and the real numbers showed that WIC participation was in decline.

We are now looking at about 8.3 million per month in WIC participation with about 9 million per month fundable via contingency. We are looking at funding WIC at 87 percent of what it has been. We're not looking at decimating it. We're not looking, like some people have said on the other side, at levels that will cause children to go hungry or to starve, as one of the people said on the other side of the aisle. We're funding it at 87 percent of the level it has been. In addition, there are State food programs. There are county food programs. There are city food programs. There are religious organization food programs. There is the Salvation Army--501(c)(3)-type programs--neighborhood programs, Meals on Wheels programs, food banks; and there are goodhearted, wonderful Americans who help their neighbors in need.

This is an adequate budget in tough economic times. In addition, as I said earlier, we are funding a net increase in food programs because we are increasing the amount of money that will go to food stamps and school lunches.

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

In reclaiming my time, I do not believe that cotton farmers in either the United States or Brazil are more important than WIC Program participants.

Mr. Chairman, our committee is only able to look at discretionary spending. We cannot look at mandatory spending, and we cannot look at programs that are subject to the 5-year farm bill, such as subsidies for farmers. I think subsidies for farmers can go by the wayside, and I hope that when the Ag Committee meets to restructure the 5-year farm bill that they will do away with farmer subsidies.

I think it is ridiculous that we are paying cotton growers subsidies in this country that violate the World Trade Organization to an extent that we then have to subsidize Brazilian cotton growers in order to rectify our violation of the WTO. That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. I wish we could have addressed that in this bill.

I wish we could have addressed the categorical eligibility that is available. Once you qualify for one type of Federal program, you're eligible for all of them whether you need them or not. I wish we could address how much money people get on earned income tax credits. I wish we could make sure that 100 percent of the people in this country paid a little bit of tax and that the rich people paid a lot more.

None of that is true, and none of that is within the purview of the Appropriations Committee with regard to discretionary spending.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to strike the last word.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle did not produce a budget. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle did not raise taxes on the mineral industry as they now assert we should. My colleagues ran this House for 6 years. My colleagues ran this House with a Democratic President and a Democratic U.S. Senate. The things of which they argue are the fixes are things you did not do when you were in control of all three: the House, the Senate, and the Presidency.

Without a budget, with the Keynesian philosophy that you attempted to implement, and it was worth a try but it failed, the massive increases in spending, in social programs, in entitlement programs, the massive increase in spending that amounts to ObamaCare, the massive stimulus bill, the massive efforts that you made, all the time asserting that you had something called Pay-As-You-Go, PAYGO, when, in fact, there were more exceptions to PAYGO than the rule ever provided. You took half a trillion dollars out of Medicare. You destroyed Medicare. You destroyed it.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Reclaiming my time from the gentleman, the crisis is worse than the people realize, and, in fact, in some respects, the people are way ahead of us on this, which is why the people of this country chose to elect fiscal conservatives to run this House during the current Congress, and we presented to the American people what we intended to do, which is cut spending.

We told the American people we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. The American people chose to give my party the opportunity to lead and to exhibit the fiscal restraint that the American people voted for in the last election. We are now exercising that fiscal restraint in a way that preserves 87 percent of the funding level of the WIC program that is currently being alleged that we are destroying.

Now, there are millions and millions of Americans who are functioning in this recession on 87 percent of what they used to make. In fact, we know that small businesses all over this country who are the drivers of our economy, the creators of jobs, are functioning on far less than 87 percent of what they used to make.

It is time for this House to exercise this fiscal restraint in a way that is sensitive to the needs of the people in this country, that we told the American people in November we would do.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Announcement by the Acting Chair

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I yield to the gentleman from Utah.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I rise to oppose the amendment not because it is unworthy, but because I believe that there are funds elsewhere in the bill that could be used to cover the services and research that the gentleman requests. I refer the gentleman to page 10, the National Institute of Food and Agricultural Research and Education Activities. Those activities include: for ag experiment stations, $600,800,000; for grants payable to eligible institutions, $48 million, provided that each institution receives no less than $1 million; for special grants, $1.2 million; for competitive grants for integrated pest management and biological control, $14 million; for competitive grants, $229.5 million to remain available until expended.

This is sloshing with research dollars, sloshing. I think there's plenty in this bill to cover the worthy research that the gentleman has requested, so I urge my colleagues to defeat the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

It appears from the text of this program, the Ag Marketing Service, that the $77.5 million appropriated may be derived from fees that are collected for the cost of standardization activities as established by regulation, because, if you look on page 18, line 9, it reads: not to exceed $61 million from fees collected shall be obligated during the current fiscal year for administrative expenses.

My question then is: Is this a fee-for-service program rather than a generally funded, taxpayer-funded program?

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I ask unanimous consent to reclaim my time.

I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Offered By: Mrs. Lummis

Amendment No. 74: Page 89, beginning at line 14, strike

section 547.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Thank you.

My amendment would strike section 547, which would devote border security dollars to environmental mitigation along this country's southern border.

The Border Patrol has unlimited access to private property, but the Border Patrol cannot always patrol Federal land, even if it is a known corridor for illegal traffic, including trafficking of humans and trafficking of drugs.

Some permits, which are required to be issued by the Department of the Interior to the Department of Homeland Security for Border Patrol, take months to approve. Others are not granted at all. But when the Department of Homeland Security, our Border Patrol, is given access, Federal land managers force the Border Patrol to fork over money for environmental projects that may or may not have anything to do with the constitutional obligations of our Border Patrol.

Madam Chairman, these are American taxpayer dollars. And more than that, they're dollars for border security, which I again repeat is a constitutionally delineated function of the Federal Government. But under section 547, these tax dollars are paying for the unreasonable demands placed on the Border Patrol by Federal land managers--one Department of the government, the Department of the Interior, taking dollars from another, the Department of Homeland Security, for a function that is required in the Constitution by the Border Patrol.

I appreciate the chairman's staff taking time to try to work this out with my office and with the Natural Resources Committee, the standing committee that is responsible for supervisory control of the Department of the Interior. I regret that we were not able to come to resolution of this issue before floor consideration.

So I'm moving to strike this provision with the hope that we can continue to work with Chairman Simpson, who is the subcommittee chairman of the Appropriations Committee on Interior and the Environment, and Chairman Hastings, who is the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee in the House, to come up with a better approach to solving this problem of Border Patrol access to Federal lands.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Offered By: Mrs. Lummis

Amendment No. 74: Page 89, beginning at line 14, strike

section 547.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New Mexico for yielding. I appreciate his leadership of the Western Caucus and look forward to this robust discussion tonight.

The West is rich in natural resources. And natural resources, their good stewardship and using them for the benefit of our country is what the West does best.

This administration is turning its back on the stewardship that is available in the West as we produce our natural resources and, instead, is taking away the jobs, the environmental progress, and replacing it with further dependence on foreign energy from places like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

We can produce our own energy in this country. Between the resources of Canada and the United States, we can produce enough energy for us to meet our foreseeable needs. But that requires us to use the technologies and the jobs associated with those technologies that will create tens of thousands of jobs, in fact, hundreds of thousands of jobs. Instead, we are actually going in exactly the opposite direction. Let me give you an example.

Fracking technology is advancing dramatically the ability of America to recover its rich natural gas resources, and it allows us to do so by casing a well with perforations. There is an explosion that cracks the tight sands or the rock. Then fluids are forced into these gaps in the rock, keeping the seams open, allowing this gas or oil to percolate back up the well casing and be produced, allowing Americans to use American-grown energy. But the attack on fracking technology is based not on science but on the idea that fracking could damage drinking water.

None of us want to see our precious drinking water polluted by contaminants that some people believe are being used in fracking fluids.

The States know their own geology better than anyone in Washington could and the very diverse geology that is different from State to State. You are going to be hearing later this evening from G.T. Thompson, a Member of Congress from Pennsylvania, where the Marcellus shale formation is being produced. I am going to talk about the use of fracking technology in my State, where the geology is very different from the Marcellus shale, but where it can be used in a responsible manner to produce American oil and gas with American jobs.

The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, recognizing the concern that our drinking water could be imperiled, set about and created a set of rules and regulations to disclose the contents of fracking fluids and the processes that are being used by companies that are fracking wells in the State of Wyoming. Those rules are being used to provide people with the information that is needed to assure them that fracking fluids are not contaminating our water.

Furthermore, there have been repeated stories, using an example from Wyoming, in Pavillion, Wyoming, of an area that some argue was fracked to the detriment of local water wells. Well, we are learning more and more about those water wells. And what we are finding is, out of over 100 water wells in the area, only about one-fifth of them are permitted, and some of them are not even cased. Well, this allows for the natural percolation of gas into water that has nothing to do with fracking.

If we look at the science and apply it correctly, using good stewardship principles, we can produce oil and gas and have good drinking water.

I even have a photograph from someone in my home State, Mr. Speaker, that has a flame coming out of a pond. The flame is a consequence of a natural methane seep coming out of the water that has been on fire as long as this gentleman can remember. These are natural phenomena.

We need to make sure that we are assuring people in this country that drinking water will be safe at the same time we recover these resources. Those very assurances require scientists, they require environmental companies, they require fracking experts; more jobs, more oil and gas, more diverse energy for the American economy.

Of course, clean burning natural gas provides us also an extension of the air quality that we value so well. These are American jobs that can be saved, nurtured and grown, and used successfully all over the United States, on and off shore.

Mr. Speaker, you just acknowledged a project in the Beaufort Sea, which is off of the coast of Barrow, Alaska, 87 miles. Shell has put $4 billion, as you pointed out, into preparing to produce that resource, and still does not have a permit to produce it. At some point, those investments begin to devalue

their sunken costs in a way that may make companies like Shell look elsewhere. That takes jobs away from America and into countries where we are competing for jobs, and in places that sometimes are not our best friends when it comes to foreign policy and human rights.

So, Mr. Speaker, let's produce oil and gas with American jobs, with good pay, with good benefits, and with the residual goal of having an all-of-the-above energy policy that benefits the West and the country as a whole.

Madam Chair, the Equal Access to Justice Act restrictions in this bill is necessary to avoid costly delays to domestic energy development based on the political agenda of a few groups.

EAJA was established in 1980 as means for small businesses and individuals to seek judicial redress from wrongful government action.

It allows for party's to seek reimbursement of attorneys' fees from the taxpayers.

Payment of these fees comes directly of out agency budgets, in this case the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

EAJA was intended to allow people and small businesses with ``limited financial means'' the ability to sue the Federal Government without having to worry about the costs associated if they prevail.

However, it is being abused by deep-pocketed organizations with a political agenda.

For example, in 2005 the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council received nearly $200,000 dollars in taxpayer dollars after suing the Federal Government on an offshore energy project in California.

The Sierra Club has annual revenue of $85 million dollars, and the Natural Resources Defense Council has annual revenue of over $100 million dollars.

There is no justification for forcing the American taxpayer-- particularly those on the gulf coast--to pay the attorney's fees of political advocacy organizations that have ample funds of their own.

That is not what EAJA was intended to accomplish, and restricting its use in this bill is both necessary and appropriate.

Environmental groups can continue to sue to their hearts' content-- and they will because suing the Federal Government is their modus operandi--but taxpayers shouldn't have to foot the bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I along with Representative Gwen Moore from Wisconsin, submit the following statement on H.R. 1, the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act for 2011.

As Co-Chairs of the bipartisan Women's Caucus, the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)

is important to us. It is a program that has and continues to serve over 9 million women, infants, and children monthly, providing food, education and access to health care. Many of the women and children who use these services are at-risk for poor nutritional diets and WIC provides them with greater access to nutritious foods as well as preventative services to improve their families' health over the long- term.

At caucus meetings, we have discussed this program and the impact of reduced spending on women across the nation. It is important for this Congress to advance ways in the upcoming budget that can ensure benefits are provided to constituencies with the greatest need.

WIC is the largest discretionary program under the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and as such has been targeted for cuts in the continuing resolution. For the pregnant, postpartum and breast-feeding women who participate in WIC, as well as for their under-five children, we look forward to working together on solutions acceptable to both sides of the aisle.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 66, I was at a constituent meeting. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the staff of this House of Representatives. We adjourned this morning at 3:48 a.m. with a staff that diligently stayed and worked these amendments, the staff outside that provides security. It is an amazing effort by the people who serve this country as the staff members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and I want to take this opportunity to thank them for their outstanding service.

Mr. Chairman, I'm here to propose an amendment and tell a story about laws, and it is ironic that these two proposals came up simultaneously.

In 1980, a law was passed called the Equal Access to Justice Act, and it allows Americans who are being challenged by the Federal Government to recover their legal fees if they successfully sue the Federal Government when the Federal Government has wronged them. It is a very fair law.

The problem is, in 1995, the Federal Government quit keeping records on who is receiving payouts and how much under the Equal Access to Justice Act. Consequently, this law has been hijacked by certain groups who use it to sue and recover judgments. For example, there are 14 environmental groups that have recovered $37 million by filing 1,200 lawsuits for which they've recovered judgments and even legal fees under settlements with the Federal Government, thereby fueling the fire of suing the Federal Government over sometimes procedural issues.

There's a group at Virginia Tech University who, through the FOIA law, the Freedom of Information Act, has uncovered how many abuses there are of this law and how many unintended consequences there are of the use of this law by certain groups, and we need to have a 6-month moratorium on expenditures and payouts under EAJA so we can get information about who's receiving this money, what the lawyers are being paid per hour, and who it's going to, how many environmental groups are actually paying for their organization by routinely suing the Federal Government to stop certain activities on Federal lands.

This is taxpayer money that's being used for this purpose; and in light of my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle's enthusiasm for sunshine, for full disclosure, for knowing where taxpayer dollars are going, I strongly encourage you to support my amendment.

Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chair, I rise to correct some of the statements that were just made. In my home State of Wyoming, we have more than 30,000 wild horses. The wild horses have no natural predators. And I have ridden BLM wild horses. My sister adopted two of them. I've ridden them. We've used them on our ranch, and I know whereof I speak.

Wild horses overgrazing our fragile ecosystems in the West on lands that were not conducive to the type of grazing that occurs when a hoofed animal that does not have a split hoof is grazing causes the soil to be tamped down. Horses are a solid-hoofed animal. When they run, they tamp the soil. When we have our sparse rains, it runs off, thereby causing soil erosion and causing difficult grazing situations.

The natural grazers on that land for millennia were split-hoofed animals such as elk and bison, and that is why sheep and cattle are more conducive to protecting the grazing of that sparse fragile resource than a solid-hoofed animal. When you put too many solid-hoofed animals tamping down that fragile grass with a very shallow reservoir of top soil, you cause overgrazing and you are loving horses in a way that causes the fragile grass ecosystem to the Western States to die.

It is this Congress that has caused the problems by saying that we cannot slaughter horses. Yet we're not supposed to keep them in pens. We're supposed to allow them to overgraze the West.

When the gentle people east of the Mississippi will take these excess horses into their backyards, I will support this amendment. Until then, I oppose efforts by those well-meaning people that measure animal unit months by the acre and we measure acres by the animal unit month.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairman, in December, I voted for that historic agreement between President Obama and Congress to keep American taxes low and to extend unemployment benefits. Now we are here to debate how to pay for that, and I have an idea about how to help pay for that.

My amendment, No. 193, would strike the remaining funding for this 6 months in this year totaling $35 million from the budgets of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the BLM and the Forest Service for the purpose of buying new Federal land. There are many alternatives to buying land with cash that would allow them to continue using Yankee ingenuity, and those include land exchanges.

In my own State, we have over half a million acres that have been designated for disposal by Federal agencies because these lands don't fit into

good land management, yet there are other lands that these same Federal agencies would like to acquire. They can do exchanges. They can do sales of this land that is designated for disposal and purchase other lands that work better for the fragmented land ownership patterns that we sometimes experience in the West. This is a much better alternative to using $35 million to pay cash to buy new land that adds to the management base and responsibility. At the same time, it would free up land that would be disposed of for people to buy and begin to earn a living on.

So this is a way to create jobs, not to burden the Federal Government, and to recognize that good stewardship and good conservation can be practiced by good Federal and private partnerships. Those are the opportunities that are available if we adopt this amendment. It saves the taxpayers money and it helps pay for those people receiving unemployment benefits, and this is a win-win amendment.

It is only a moratorium, and when we begin the next fiscal year, we would have an opportunity, from having reviewed projects between the Natural Resources Committee and the Interior Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, and have a better understanding of the ultimate goal of our land acquisitions programs within these Federal agencies.

So, Madam Chairman, I urge adoption of the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, first of all I want to thank you personally, as well as your colleague from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz) and also Mrs. McMorris Rodgers of Washington, for your work on this amendment.

The continuing resolution as written would reinstate a 2009 Fish and Wildlife determination that the gray wolf in Montana and Idaho should be removed from the endangered species list. This amendment would replace that 2009 determination with an earlier-approved Fish and Wildlife determination, the one made in 2008, and that expands the scope of delisting of the gray wolf to include the full range of the Northern Rockies wolf.

Mr. Chairman, after gray wolves were introduced in 1995 into Yellowstone National Park in my home State and placed on the endangered species list under section 10(j), which is the nonessential experimental population section of the Endangered Species Act, a list was determined about what it would take to recover the species, when would we consider it recovered, and it was determined by experts at the time that the recovery would be complete if the population of wolves grew to 300 wolves with at least 30 breeding pairs. That was the target, that was the goal, 300 wolves, 30 breeding pairs.

So how many wolves are there today, Mr. Chairman? Here we are, 16 years later. There are more than 1,600 wolves and 113 breeding pairs. By every reasonable definition, the wolf has recovered, and yet these wolves remain on the endangered species list. They remain protected, even as they overwhelm and decimate other wild game herds. For example, in the Grovont, the moose population in terms of young calves has declined 90 percent, 90 percent, and it is due to wolf depredation.

Wolves remain protected in each State because of court determinations, not because of science, and it is now time to be honest about the wolf and its recovery. Its continued inclusion on the endangered species list has everything to do with special interests and emotion and nothing to do with science. Organizations that repeatedly sue the government at taxpayer expense orchestrate these strategies and make people believe that the wolf is not recovered. The simple truth is the wolf is doing very well.

Lest anyone be confused, my amendment will not create an open season on wolves. It will return management of the wolf populations back to the States, and they are the ones who suffer the effects of the wolves. It will allow for appropriate management of wolf herds, wolf herds by any definition, that have fully recovered.

So it is time to be honest. It is time to delist.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Point of Order

Offered By: Mrs. Lummis

Amendment No. 193: Page 264, line 3, after the dollar

amount, insert ``(reduced by $2,750,000)''.

Page 264, line 4, after the dollar amount, insert

``(reduced by $2,250,000)''.

Page 264, line 23, after the dollar amount, insert

``(reduced by $15,055,000)''.

Page 264, line 24, after the dollar amount, insert

``(reduced by $2,500,000)''.

Page 278, line 3, after the dollar amount, insert

``(reduced by $9,100,000)''.

Page 278, line 4, after the dollar amount, insert

``(reduced by $3,400,000)''.

Page 359, line 13, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $35,055,000)''.