Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. Mr. President, what is the matter now before the Senate? Mr. President, I am going to send an…
Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, what is the matter now before the Senate?
Mr. President, I am going to send an amendment to the desk. I have spoken with both leaders. I have not spoken with Senator Burns. I have spoken through his staff to him. I have spoken, of course, to Senator Dorgan. I am sending this amendment to the desk with the understanding that we will not vote on it until after the caucus on Tuesday. The reason for that is this is a very important amendment for this side. We want to make sure we have the opportunity on Tuesday to speak on it, all 49 members of the Democratic caucus, prior to the vote.
Amendment No. 1731
(Purpose: To prohibit the use of funds for initiating any new
competitive sourcing studies)
Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk not only on my behalf but on the behalf of Senators Lieberman, Landrieu, Kennedy, and Murray.
Mr. President, this is a very short amendment, but it affects the lives of thousands and thousands of people who work for the Park Service. It affects the lives of every American who enjoys the great resources of our country.
The amendment I sent to the desk will stop this administration from moving forward to privatize our national parks, forest lands, and other public lands. It would nip the administration's ill-conceived privatization plan in the bud.
More specifically, this amendment prohibits the expenditure of funds on new outsourcing studies. These are privatization studies for the agencies funded in this bill. These agencies were created to protect special places in nature as a legacy for future generations. They should be managed for posterity and not managed for profit.
The House of Representatives has agreed that privatization is a bad idea. It included this language in the Interior appropriations bill that passed in July. The Nation's hard-working public servants who care for our forests and parks not only collect fees and maintain parks, but also give directions, fight wildfires, and help injured visitors.
Volunteers who love our public spaces provide tens of thousands of hours of work for these agencies every year. Will contractors receive volunteers? Will there be volunteers for these people who are working for profit in our national resources, our national treasures? It is very unlikely.
While the administration's plan has been marketed as a cost-saving measure, just the opposite is true. Privatization will waste taxpayer dollars. Privatization studies may cost as much as $8,000 per position studied. This means that next year, the agencies funded in this bill could waste as much as $26.4 million on these studies, studies for a wrongheaded idea that is bad for our parks, forests, the people who care for them, and the people who visit these parks.
Also, these contractors lack the knowledge of the sites that public servants possess. They are at the sites for one reason: Not people, but profit. I have nothing against profit motive. I think it is great selling cars, books, shoes, clothes--virtually everything. I certainly don't think it is a good idea to privatize our beautiful resources, our national treasures.
At a recreation area in Nevada, a contractor designed metal courtesy docks to be built in an area where temperatures reach up to 120 degrees in the summer. These docks would have burned visitors in the months when the docks were the busiest. The discarded design cost $21,000 in taxpayer money, and instead of building five courtesy docks as intended, the recreation area only had funding to build two docks.
Nevadans visiting our public places, Americans visiting our public places want professionals enriching their experience by directing them to famous sites and the best-kept secrets of our parks.
These are a few things people have written to me about on this subject. Zephyr Cove, NV, is in the Lake Tahoe region. It surrounds Lake Tahoe. This is not a public employee, but she says:
I'm one small voice, but I'm convinced that privatization
of our National Park System would be another step to
demolishing what little resources we have now and what we can
hope to gain in the future to hold and treasure for future
generations.
She says further:
Many of the Park Service personnel are neighbors and our friends. They care deeply about what they do. Their pay is relatively low for the expertise they have. They do it because they know the value of protecting our parks, wildlife habitats, and environment.
I do not know for sure if the administration's true agenda here is to undermine that commitment to our national parks, forests, and other public lands. I don't know that, but that is what many feel.
An editorial in The Tennessean believes that. Editorializing recently against this plan, the paper had this to say:
. . . privatizing the professionals on whom the parks depend
to manage resources will rid the administration of those
pesky folks who keep pointing out what harm has been done by
President Bush's reckless environmental policies.
This is an editorial that was written in The Tennessean on August 29, 2003.
We have heard not only from newspapers around the country and people who don't work for the public entities, but we also heard from public custodians of our treasures. I am not going to use their names here, of course. They might somehow be harmed at work.
One public employee writes:
The depth and breadth of loyalty that is inherent to the
average [public] employee cannot be contracted out.
And he is absolutely right. The public employees my amendment would honor share a lot in common with Members of this body, our staffs, our police, and others who work here. They, like us, sought their jobs to serve other people and to advance positive goals and ideals. It is that motivation and loyalty that cannot be outsourced no matter how much money we throw at studying it.
The privatizing concept, as set forth in The Tennessean, says it all:
. . . privatizing the professionals on whom the parks depend
to manage resources will rid the administration of those
pesky folks who keep pointing out what harm has been done by
President Bush's reckless environmental policies.
Loyalty, public service, and dedication to our public lands cannot be outsourced. It cannot be privatized.
I hope people understand these great national parks we have. These are treasures. These national parks are the envy of the world. Nevada is fortunate, but we only have one national park. It is a wonderful place, Great Basin National Park, a very new national park. It is small by national park standards, about 80,000 acres. It has a 13,000-foot mountain on it, Wheeler Peak. It has a glacier. It has the oldest living thing in the world, a bristlecone pine.
These trees are over 5,000 years old. Think about that--trees that started
growing before Christ came to Earth. These trees were around the same time the pyramids came into existence. They are living things at the Great Basin National Park.
In our park, we have the Lehman Caves. Around the turn of the last century, a man who was a cowboy was out riding his horse and he suddenly found himself in a deep underground cavern. The horse, as far as I know, was not injured, but that was the beginning of a great odyssey for people to visit this magnificent part of nature, Lehman Caves, which is now in the Great Basin National Park.
We were fortunate enough a short time ago to be present at that facility when they dedicated the new visitors center. It is in a remote part of the State of Nevada, but it is a place that people from all over the world travel to because of its uniqueness.
Great Basin is only one of our many national parks. I was in Montana and Wyoming recently. I had the good fortune, after these many years, to once again visit Yellowstone National Park. I was only able to spend a couple of hours there, but it was a great experience.
I first went there shortly after my wife and I returned from law school in Washington. We traveled from Las Vegas on one of the first vacations we ever took. We could have gone anyplace our small budget at that time would handle, but we drove from Las Vegas to Yellowstone. I still look back with great awe at Old Faithful and the many other things we were able to see, the buffalos and other animals. So when I returned there, even though it was only for a few hours, the place I wanted to go visit again was Old Faithful.
Old Faithful spewed a few times during the time I was there. We took a walk through Geyser Park. We saw buffalo lying right near the geysers. The reason these great animals come and lie down near these spewing geysers is that, to a great extent, they keep the pests off themselves by doing so.
Even though I was there just a short time, it was wonderful again, after 25 years, to reflect back on my little children when they were tiny going there and visiting that park.
This experience I had was magnified on both occasions by virtue of the people who work there. They have nothing of which to be ashamed. They are Government employees who have dedicated their lives not to seeing how much money they can make but to being in the great outdoors, being part of nature.
I can remember the woman who took us on our walk through this little Geyser Park. She was an expert. She knew when every geyser was going to spew forth some water. She was able to tell stories about how people first discovered them. She is a woman who makes very little money but is talented, as a person in her position should be.
So on the two occasions I visited Yellowstone, my experiences were so much better as a result of the people who work there for the Federal Government--park rangers, other park employees.
I hope this Senate will respond overwhelmingly and support this amendment, as was done in the House.
The people who work in these parks are not Democrats. They are not Republicans. In the true sense of the word, this should not be a Democratic amendment. It should be an amendment that is supported by the Senate to protect these faithful employees of the Federal Government.
We are very fortunate in the State of Nevada to have a large presence of the Federal Government. I say fortunate because 87 percent of the land in the State of Nevada is owned by the Federal Government. Only 13 percent of Nevada is owned by individuals; the rest is Government land. The Bureau of Land Management's largest assets are in the State of Nevada.
In addition to the national forests and the park I have described, we have large parts of the State of Nevada, as I have indicated, that are controlled by the Bureau of Land Management. The employees who work for the BLM are just as dedicated as those people who work in our parks.
The forest rangers are also people who work so hard for so little return. I am convinced that if this is put out to the lowest bidder, we are going to have parks that are visited by people who recognize that these people are not there for any purpose other than somebody who got the contract and is trying to make a buck, someone who has gotten minimum-wage employees to get by with as little as possible.
We cannot let this go forward. It is a slap in the face to these loyal, dedicated public servants. It is a slap in the face of the American public. These Federal assets are owned by all of us, and all of us should have a say in how these parks are run. Renting them out to the lowest bidder is not the way to do it.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.
I send an amendment to the desk.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.
I send an amendment to the desk.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
Madam President, before I turn the floor over to the distinguished Senator from West Virginia, I would simply like to say that upon completion of the last judge vote today, that means we have approved 151 judges during the little over 2\1/2\ years President Bush has been President. I think we
are doing remarkably good work for this President as relates to judges. The count is 151 to 3. That means there have been three judges who have been submitted to us we have not accepted.
President Reagan did not reach 150 judges until well into the fourth year of his first term. The first President Bush did not receive his 150th Federal judge until well into his fourth year. During President Clinton's second term, the term just preceding this administration, he did not appoint his 150th judge until his fourth year. So we are a year and a half--at least a year ahead of Reagan, first President Bush, and the second term of President Clinton.
So we have done extremely well. Senator Leahy is to be commended for his ability to move these judges in conjunction with the distinguished Senator from Utah, the chairman, Senator Hatch.