Floor Statements

Offered By: Mr. Hinchey

Amendment No. 2: At the end of the bill (before the title),

insert the following new title:

Mr. Chairman, we must stop the Park Service from killing Yellowstone National Park's buffalo. More than any other animal, the American buffalo is a wildlife icon of the United States. The buffalo is the symbol that represents the Department

of the Interior. The buffalo is profoundly significant to Native American cultures and perhaps more than any other wildlife species has influenced our history.

In the late 19th century, buffalo were nearly exterminated. After tens of millions of buffalo were killed, only 200 wild buffalo remained in the Nation and all were located in Yellowstone National Park. Due to poaching, their numbers were reduced to 25 by the turn of the last century. The offspring of the 25 survivors, today's Yellowstone National Park buffalo, comprise the only wild, free-roaming buffalo to continually occupy their native habitat in the United States. Yet the Yellowstone buffalo herd is still under assault. Since 1984, nearly 3,700 buffalo have been killed in Montana. This past winter, 244 buffalo were killed by the Federal and State agencies, including 231 captured and slaughtered by the National Park Service. The Department of the Interior does this under the guise of preventing the spread of brucellosis to cattle.

Here are the facts. There has never been a confirmed incidence of brucellosis transmission in the wild from buffalo to cattle. This risk is so low as to be determined to be immeasurable by the 1998 report from the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. 13,000 Yellowstone elk, some of which harbor brucellosis, are allowed unfettered access to Federal land outside the park. Buffalo with brucellosis and cattle have grazed together for over 50 years in the Jackson Hole area south of Yellowstone with no incidence of disease transmission. Despite these facts, the National Park Service spends taxpayer dollars to kill buffalo in an attempt to keep them unnaturally confined within Yellowstone.

Later this year I will introduce a bill that provides a comprehensive solution to this issue. But until the bison herd can freely roam on key low-elevation habitat on national forest land adjacent to the park like any other wildlife, without triggering hazing, capture or killing, the Park Service should be protecting this wildlife icon in Yellowstone Park and managing them in a nonlethal manner. The Rahall amendment will do this. I urge its adoption.

Mr. Chairman, the national forest system was created nearly a century ago by President Theodore Roosevelt. He said he was creating it for the greatest good, for the greatest number in the long run, and that is something we should not forget.

The roadless policy is necessary, unfortunately, because the Forest Service has failed to protect our forests in the public interest. Under their stewardship, 400,000 miles of logging roads have been built, while industrial activities have encroached on more than half of all the national forest lands.

If my colleagues want to know where the fires are, look for where the roads have been built. That is where to find the fires. Where the so- called thinning has occurred, that is where to find the fires. So this whole business about building roads in order to prevent fires is totally bogus.

Building new roads is a fiscal and environmental disaster. The Forest Service road construction and timber programs have been completely mismanaged. The Forest Service has an $8.4 billion road maintenance backlog. It cannot take care of the roads it has now. National forests in 16 States have a road maintenance backlog of more than $100 million in each and every one of those States. They cannot take care of the roads they have already built. Road building and commercial exploitation will leave behind impaired lands whose repair the taxpayers will have to finance.

Unroaded portions of our national forests are not only the most important habitats for fish and wildlife, but are critical sources for clean drinking water for more than 60 million Americans, and they are in my colleagues' districts. Our constituents are demanding that these areas be protected for themselves and for future generations.

The Clinton administration developed this policy. They did it in a very comprehensive and detailed way, and many of us here in this room took part in that process. The roadless policy was one of the most significant national forest conservation measures of the last 100 years and should have been preserved as an enduring legacy for true forest protection.

But unfortunately it has not, because of the way it has been mismanaged and because of the way it is threatened by the present administration. This amendment needs to be passed.

Mr. Chairman, I am a bit mystified by the statement that was just made by my friend and colleague from New York. The Democrat party is not in the majority in this House. We do not control the agenda. That is controlled by the Republican party, and there is no reason why an amendment that a Republican Member wants to bring forward should not be brought forward and everybody has an opportunity to vote on it. I am sure I would have voted for it if the gentleman had brought it out here.

It is not too late. Let us bring the amendment out here, discuss it. If the amendment has merit, then it will pass. I do not see any reason why it is not going to be brought forward. It is your amendment. You are in control of the House. You bring it forward.

I want to thank the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks), the ranking member, for yielding me the time; and I appreciate his leadership and hard work on this bill.

I also want to express my appreciation to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Taylor), our chairman, for his hard work. I have enjoyed working with our chairman on the process that put this bill together. We had a good series of hearings earlier this year that led to some spirited discussions among the members of the subcommittee, and I want to thank the professional staff on both sides for all the good work that they have done.

There are some very good initiatives in this bill. Very importantly, the subcommittee's vigorous oversight of Everglades restoration is reflected here.

Despite admonishments from me and several subcommittee members, including the chairman and the chairman of the full committee, the State of Florida enacted legislation earlier this year that casts considerable doubt on the commitment to Everglades restoration. The provisions contained in this bill will ensure that the Federal interest in restoration is maintained by protecting the water quality that is crucial to the healthy functioning of the Everglades ecosystem.

The increased funding for Indian health and education in the bill is commendable, as is the subcommittee's concern with the administration's rush to contract out jobs within the Park Service and the Forest Service. A good job was done there.

Again, to the gentleman from North Carolina's (Mr. Taylor) credit, the bill restores some of the most egregious cuts proposed by the administration, such as those that would have crippled the important scientific research at both the Forest Service and the Geological Survey.

I recognize that the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Taylor) is working with an insufficient allocation that is the direct result of the Republican tax cuts, and that is a problem that has devilled this process throughout. My colleagues cannot take $3 trillion out of the Treasury and then expect to have enough money to meet the needs of the country, and this is what we are facing throughout this appropriations process, and it is unfortunately reflected in this bill as well.

Arts funding is still frozen at 30 percent below what it was 10 years ago, and energy research lacks the necessary resource and vision to put us on a path to energy independence. But beyond the low allocation, even more troubling is the ideologically driven opposition to conservation funding that permeates the bill, particularly land acquisition. This bill completely walks away from our responsibilities to protect and conserve lands.

The tilt of this bill towards the notion that the Federal Government somehow owns too much land runs counter to the desire of the American people to preserve open space and natural resources. While I certainly agree that we should take care of what we already own, we have got an obligation to protect the best of what remains, sensitive and threatened forests, coastal lands, mountains, plains and wetlands that provide ecological, scenic and recreational values of national significance.

Federal land acquisition programs in this bill are funded at $100 million. This is $213 million below last year's level, more than a 50 percent cut, and even $87 million below the President's request. The lack of land acquisition funding in this bill means lands that could otherwise be protected may now be lost forever.

These cuts are incredibly shortsighted. The demand for open space and protected areas will only continue to grow as our population swells and land development pressures increase.

So the bill contains a number of important provisions, but so far as the land acquisition and conservation measures are concerned it is inadequate.

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would yield, that would be a mistake; and I urge my colleague to bring that amendment out here so we could debate it. Bring it out.

Mr. Speaker, from clean air and water to wetlands and global warming, this is an administration that is determined to ignore the most pressing environmental problems, dismiss good science that draws attention to these problems and undermine our most effective environmental laws that address those problems.

It is one thing for the Bush administration to break its promises on environmental issues such as regulating carbon dioxide, but every administration has a responsibility to provide Congress and the American people with sound science that is untainted by politics.

Unfortunately, it is becoming all too common for the Bush administration to compromise the independence and credibility of our government agencies by shelving and suppressing sound science if it does not fit their political agenda.

Most recently, this trend is evident in EPA's actions surrounding the administration's ``Clear Skies'' proposal which would weaken the Clean Air Act. Earlier this month the EPA intentionally hid data showing that a competing Senate clean air bill would provide far greater long-term health benefits at only a slightly higher cost. While EPA disclosed the cost associated with the Senate bill, it failed to disclose that the proposal would result in 17,800 fewer premature deaths annually than the administration's proposal.

This comes on the heels of last month's release of EPA's State of the Environment Report. The report, commissioned in 2001 by Administrator Whitman, was intended to provide the first comprehensive review of what is known about the various environmental problems, from air pollution to the state of drinking water supplies, where gaps in understanding exist and how we might fill them.

The White House directed a major rewrite of an assessment of climate change, removing references to health and environmental risks posed by rising global temperatures.

According to an EPA memo, the changes demanded by the White House were so extensive that the climate section no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change and characterized the revised draft as an embarrassment to the EPA. If the changes are accepted, the staff memo said, the agency will take severe criticism from the science and environmental communities for poorly representing the science of climate change.

According to the EPA papers, the White House deleted from a summary under the heading of Global Issues the sentence, ``Climate changes has global consequences for human health and the environment.'' A number of scientific reports have also raised those concerns.

The draft also removed the reference and a graphic to a 1999 study showing global temperatures had risen sharply in the past decade compared with the previous 1,000 years. Instead, it cites a new study partly sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute that disputed those findings.

The draft eliminated references to many studies, concluding that warming is at least partly caused by rising concentrations of smokestack and tailpipe emissions and could threaten health and ecological systems.

The White House deleted a National Research Council finding that various studies have suggested that recent warmings were unusual and likely due to human activities, although the same 2001 NRC report had been commissioned by the White House and endorsed by President Bush previously.

This is the second time in the past year that the Bush administration has censored information on global warming. Last September, an annual EPA report on air pollution that for 6 years had contained a section on climate was released without one. Administrator Whitman told the New York Times she was perfectly comfortable with the edited version.

However, the seriousness of climate change cannot be understated. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of hundreds of scientists established by the United Nations in 1988 to assess global warming, concluded that global warming is real and will have serious consequences.

Their report, released in January, 2001, states that the Earth has warmed in the last century and that the majority of the observed warming is attributable to human activities, including fossil fuel- generated carbon dioxide emissions.

In late 2001, the National Academy of Sciences confirmed those findings.

This just shows that the administration is manipulating the EPA's formerly unbiased science for its political agenda in an effort to mislead the public.

We have spoken on this floor about the way in which the administration has manipulated data with regard to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, how the administration has put pressure on the intelligence agencies to manipulate their objectively drawn and realized information in order to make it more accurately fit the administration's political agenda; and here we have an example of how the administration is doing the same thing with regard to important scientific considerations on the single most important global issue of our lives, the warming of the Earth's temperature and the ecological consequences, as well as the consequences on the health and safety of people in this country and around the world. It is time for this administration to be honest in its science and in its reporting to the American people.

Mr. Speaker, the decision to go to war is the most profound decision that any nation can make. It should be done, of course, judiciously and only with the utmost of care and only as a last resort. This is especially true of democratic republics such as ours, when the actions of the government must be with the consent of the governed.

In order for the governed to give their consent, that consent, of course, must be informed. And it is the responsibility of the government to inform its citizens in an honest and straightforward way with regard to the background and information that it has that causes it to make such profound decisions.

On January 23 of this year, the President of the United States in this room addressed the Joint Session of the Congress as well as the people of the United States. And in that address he made a number of assertions with regard to the state of Iraq and why it was important for us to engage that country in hostility. Among those statements he made was one with regard to the importation of processed uranium from Niger. The President said in his statement that the British Government had informed them that the Government of Niger was importing processed uranium, and that was in the context of Iraq's trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

Now, we know that the President had that information on a first-hand basis. He did not have to quote any information from the British Government. He had it on a first-hand basis because the Vice President of the United States back in March of last year went to the Central Intelligence Agency and asked them to conduct an investigation as to whether or not Iraq was importing processed uranium from Africa.

The Central Intelligence Agency then asked former Ambassador Wilson, who had a long and distinguished career in the Foreign Service including positions in West Africa, asked Mr. Wilson if he would go to Niger to discover whether or not it was possible for Niger to export processed uranium to Iraq for the purpose of building a nuclear weapon.

Ambassador Wilson went there. He spent a considerable amount of time, something in the neighborhood of close to 2 weeks. He interviewed dozens of people. He came back and reported to the Central Intelligence Agency that he found no reason to believe whatsoever that any processed uranium has been exported from Niger. Why? Because the uranium companies there are owned by essentially European countries and the controls are very, very strict and rigid. He examined a number of people who were involved in the companies and their controls, as well as people in the Niger Government. He came away believing there was no way that processed uranium could be exported from Niger to Iraq.

He reported to the Central Intelligence Agency. The Central Intelligence Agency obviously then reported to the Vice President of the United States, who we can only imagine and expect reported to the President of the United States.

Nevertheless, the President then came here before the House and said that Niger was exporting processed uranium to Iraq when the government, our government, the administration knew, based upon firsthand information as a result of a CIA-sponsored investigation, that that was not the case. In addition, though, now we know that is not the case because we have the report of Mr. Wilson and we have other information that can only compel us to conclude that the President was wrong in his statement; and, in fact, he has admitted he was wrong in that statement, blaming Mr. Tenet.

Also in that address before a joint session of the Congress, the President mentioned the presence of vast quantities of chemical and biological weapons that were also in Iraq, according to his statement to that joint session. He also said that there were delivery mechanisms that were in Iraq and that those delivery mechanisms could be armed very, very quickly with those biological and chemical weapons and they could be used to bring those weapons into conflict against countries in the surrounding region, including Israel, against others, and that this constituted a direct threat to the United States and to our allies.

It has been now nearly 3 months that we have been searching for chemical and biological weapons as well as the means to deliver them in Iraq, and we have found absolutely nothing.

Based upon these two sets of facts, one has to question, what else did the President say that was false and why did we go to war in Iraq? This Congress needs to initiate a full and complete congressional investigation as to the causes surrounding our entry into that war and the prosecution of that war, and it must do so forthwith.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise today to commend the children of Mrs. Sally DePoala's Fifth Grade class at Cahill Elementary School in Saugerties, New York for their contribution to the national dialogue in support of peace and hope. Last Friday I had the good fortune to spend some time with these young people and receive from them a Peace Quilt that they had spent a good part of the year creating. After reading an African folk tale earlier in the year, the students were inspired to create an artistic quilt that expressed their deeply held commitment to peace here in the United States of America and throughout the world. All of the students in the class contributed to the beautiful quilt and asked to present it to me so I may assist them in eventually having it displayed at a memorial for the World Trade Center in New York City.

The tragic events of September 11, 2001 have had a profound effect on the Nation and the world. Together, we have sought out ways to deal with the fear, anger and grief that struck us all on that fateful day. Indeed, we as a nation have come together to find strength in the masses and to recommit ourselves to our families, our communities and our country.

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud that the fifth grade students in Mrs. DePoala's class at Cahill Elementary decided to express themselves in this very thoughtful and traditional way. In a simple way, they have profoundly communicated the dream of our future generations to embrace peace and hope and to seek out strength from within our communities. I'm grateful to have been chosen as the messenger of the spirit of these young people and I will enthusiastically seek to have their wonderful Peace Quilt displayed prominently at the site where the world will remember the tragic events of September 11, 2001. In the meantime, I will proudly display this quilt in my Kingston district office so that our local community can appreciate this profound statement by our future generation.

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

Mr. Chairman, I want to express my appreciation to the gentleman from Kentucky as well as the gentleman from Minnesota for the hard work that they have done on this bill under very difficult circumstances. Part of the problem is that there does not seem to be enough money to deal with the problems of domestic security at a time when this Nation appears to be under threat. At least that is what the administration would lead us to believe. Every other week we are going up to the orange alert code. Local governments around the Nation are responding to that. So if we are under threat, we need to be providing for the people at the local level who have to deal with that threat. This bill for all the care that has been put into fashioning it does not deal with that problem adequately. The problem seems to be that there is not enough money. I have heard people come to the floor here,

even today, and talk about the fact that this is the appropriations process, it is not the budget process. But nothing here happens in isolation. This is all of a piece. If you are going to cut taxes, if you are going to take money out of the Treasury, do not be surprised if a little while later you do not have enough money to pay for your domestic security programs. That is the situation that we are confronting in the context of this bill.

Let me be even a bit more specific. Last year, we appropriated $2.9 billion of grants to State and local governments to help them prepare for and defend against terrorist attacks.

Eight hundred million dollars or about 30 percent of that was directed to high-threat areas. Some people would argue that 30 percent is not enough to be directed toward high-threat areas. They ought to have more than that. But we are getting even less in this particular bill. Seventy percent in last year's appropriation went to other places across the country. That number under this piece of legislation goes up to 83 percent, and the effective cut for areas under high threat goes from $800 million to $500 million, and that has to be spread all across the country in areas that constitute areas of high threat. Secretary Ridge himself has said that the $800 million is not enough. Certainly the $500 million is not enough.

We are not providing for the kind of national security that the administration talks about and Members of this Congress take this floor to talk about. It is one thing to express one's understanding of the need to deal with the problems of domestic threat. It is another to face up to those domestic threats and provide the resources so that the people out there on the firing line, the local government officials, the police, the firemen, emergency medical services personnel and others are able to contend with the problem when they express themselves and almost certainly they will.

So for all the care that the chairman and the ranking member have put into this bill, it remains deficient overall in the amount of money that we are spending on national security. No fault of theirs. They have been restricted in the amount of money they have to work with. There is not enough money allocated by this Congress or by the administration to deal with this problem. There is a lot of money for tax cuts. There is $80 billion to fight the war in Iraq, but there is not enough money to provide for domestic security. And on top of that in the context of this bill, we are cutting back on the amount of money that is allocated to high-threat areas specifically. That is foolish and we need to correct it.

We are beginning a process with this appropriation bill here today, and it is my hope that we will all work together constructively so that in the final analysis when we pass the final appropriation measure, we will have a bill that adequately provides funding for our domestic security needs and also takes into consideration those additional specific security needs that exist in areas of high threat across the country.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to congratulate my constituent and dear friend, Len Cane, on the occasion of his retirement as president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of Ulster County, New York. Having served in that capacity for 34 years, Len has earned the respect and affection of the business and education communities in my home county and throughout New York State.

An ardent advocate of public education, Len has served as president of the Ulster County Board of Cooperative Educational Services as well as the Kingston City Schools' Board of Education. In October 2002, the 7,500-member New York State School Boards Association honored him with the Distinguished Service Award as the organization's outstanding member.

Len is a graduate of the Institutes for Organization Management, a continuing education program for organization managers from across the country. He was a member of the program's Board of Regents for six years and of its executive faculty for 11 years, instructing at the University of Delaware and at Notre Dame.

At the helm of Ulster's Chamber of Commerce, Len has been a wonderful ambassador for the county. He is a past president of the Chamber Alliance of New York State and the Mid-Atlantic Chamber of Commerce Executives. He also served for seven years as Chairman of the Mid- Hudson Valley Chamber of Commerce Executives and was a two-term president of the Ulster County Development Corporation. In 1996 Len's New York state colleagues named him the Outstanding Professional Chamber of Commerce Executive.

Notwithstanding his outstanding accomplishments, Len is best known for his lightning-quick wit and self-effacing humor. I am sure Len's successors will perform commendably as chamber presidents, but none will make us laugh as Len has for more than three decades.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to join Len Cane's colleagues, friends and family in extending my best wishes to him and his wife Lee for a long and happy retirement. His wonderful personality and unsurpassed professionalism have made Len a tremendous asset to the Hudson Valley and Catskill regions. We will miss him dearly.

Mr. Speaker, the Federal Communications Commission today struck a very hard and damaging blow against democracy. They did so in a very close four to three ruling that will allow media corporations to own more and more of the public information distribution system that we all rely upon for the information upon which we base our civic decisions, the information upon which we base our votes for Members of Congress and for other offices all across the country.

What is happening here? Why is it that the Republicans in the Federal Communications Commission are voting to restrict the voice of the American people while the Democrats are opposed to it? This is an issue that has been going on in this country now for almost three decades.

In 1987, the Federal Communications Commission of Ronald Reagan stripped the fairness doctrine or the equal access clause from the FCC rules. The fairness doctrine was a simple provision that was placed in the FCC rules early on in the 1930s. It stipulates that if someone who owns a broadcast station, then a radio station, but now radio or television, has a political opinion and they express it editorially they have to provide for an alternative opinion by others in that community who may feel differently. That was stricken in 1987.

In 1996, the Telecommunications Act was passed, fashioned by the Republican majority in this House, which gave rise to the commission decision today to restrict civic public access to the media and allow it to be controlled by an increasingly smaller number of people, a handful of people.

This is damaging and dangerous to every democratic principle. It is damaging and dangerous to the future of this democratic republic.

Countries and governments such as ours, free countries, rely upon the open, free exchange of information. If you have a handful of people controlling the way information is distributed, you are not going to have a free and open exchange. That is dangerous to our country.

What did the ruling do today? Under the new rules, a national television network may now acquire dozens of local broadcast stations and control up to 90 percent of the national television market. A single corporation may now acquire, in one city, up to three television stations, eight radio stations, the cable television system, numerous cable television stations, and the daily newspaper as well. No diversity. No contrary opinion. One voice speaking to the public in community after community after community across this country.

When the Federal Communications Commission was established by this Congress, it was established in order to require that there be diversity and that the American people have access to the airwaves, which they own. The airwaves are owned by all the American people; they are not owned by one corporation or several corporations. Those corporations only lease them for periods of time. We need to return to a system where the American people have access to the means of communication in our Nation.

If we are going to preserve this democratic Republic, if we are going to save the essence of American democracy, we are going to have to have the opportunity to discuss different opinions on important political social issues, whether they are foreign or domestic, in the open so that everybody has a chance to have their voice heard. Not just the elite, not just the big corporations, not just the people with all the money and the power.

What is going on here? Why is there this connection and relationship between the Republican Party establishment here in Washington and the media corporations across the country? Republicans out there do not want to see this happen, groups as diverse as the National Consumer Network, the National Rifle Association, the Catholic Bishops, and a host of others have come out against this recent Federal Communication decision. The people of this country, whether they are Republicans or Democrats, are opposed to it; but the Republican establishment here in Washington is creating a situation where people do not have access to their own airwaves, do not have access to their own media.

We are introducing legislation that is going to put a stop to this and reverse what has been going on now since at least 1987; and the sooner that legislation is passed, the sooner the American democracy will be saved.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor President Chen Shui- Bian of Taiwan as he celebrates three years in office.

For more than fifty years the United States and Taiwan have had a valued cross-pacific relationship. One million Americans of Taiwanese descent live in the United States and twenty nine thousand Taiwanese students attend American universities.

Taiwan and the US share close economic ties. In the last half century, Taiwan has grown to become our seventh largest trading partner.

Taiwan, however, is more than an economic ally. It has offered unwavering support in our efforts to confront terrorism. Taiwan's democratic success is also clear. It heeds its people's choice and turns over power after elections. It allows and encourages its people to participate in deliberations on their country's future.

In the wake of the SARS outbreak, it is imperative that Taiwan's twenty three million people are allowed to participate in the World Health Organization's efforts to counteract this contagion. This can be achieved by granting Taiwan observer status in the WHO.

Taiwan and President Chen have been great allies and friends to the American people. I congratulate the people of Taiwan and President Chen on their many achievements.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the community of New Paltz in Ulster County, New York, which is part of the 22nd Congressional District that I proudly serve. This year marks the 325th Anniversary of the founding of New Paltz, as well as the 175th Anniversary of the founding of the College of New Paltz. I am delighted to recognize this community's rich historical heritage and continued vitality, as the Town of New Paltz and State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz mark these important milestones.

New Paltz was founded in 1678 by Huguenot families who were seeking refuge from severe religious persecution in France. The community was self-governed by the Duzine, referring to the twelve partners who acquired the royal land patent in 1677 on more than 33,000 acres purchased from local Native Americans. The Duzine decided local matters and consisted of one representative from each of the original families. That form of government continued well past the time of the American Revolution, by special action of the New York State Legislature. New Paltz was dominated for more than 150 years by the founding partners and their heirs, whose family names can still be found today in the area.

The lands encompassed in the original patent, stretching all the way from the

Shawangunk Mountains to the Hudson River, were augmented soon by additional patents to the south. These lands were eventually divided among the twelve partners, their relatives, and a few friends into large plots--part wilderness and part farm. The farms were grouped principally around the heights west and east of the Wallkill River.

The area's commercial center was located on the east shore of the Wallkill River, where the Huguenots built wooden homes and later, stone houses. These houses were located on what is now known as Huguenot Street, the oldest continuously inhabited street in America. Many of the seventeenth century stone buildings still stand today and have been preserved as a museum community. The Huguenot Street Historic District has also been designated a National Historical Landmark.

The population of New Paltz gradually increased and moved up from the Wallkill River to what is now Main Street and beyond. Areas that are now incorporated into the nearby towns of Lloyd, Shawangunk, Esopus and Gardiner split off from the Town of New Paltz between 1843 and 1853. The Village of New Paltz was incorporated within the town in 1887. For 200 years after its settlement, New Paltz remained a small, isolated farming community. Farming, particularly of apples, is still one of New Paltz's largest businesses.

New Paltz farmers looked early on to surrounding communities and even to New York City for markets. Establishment of the Wallkill Valley Railroad in 1870 gave a great boost to their commercial efforts. After fifty years or so, the automobile began to replace the train, and finally, in the early 1950's, the opening of the New York State Thruway with an exit for New Paltz made this community much more accessible, leading to substantial growth in the town and at the University.

Higher education has long been one of the main concerns of the community, especially since 1828 when the New Paltz Classical School was established and, shortly thereafter, became the New Paltz Academy. This Academy slowly metamorphosed into the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz, which continues to offer high quality education to thousands of undergraduate and graduate students each year. I would like to note I am a proud alumnus of SUNY New Paltz. I would also like to mention that SUNY's library is named after one of Ulster County's most famous residents, Sojourner Truth, the abolitionist and champion for women's suffrage, who lived in and around New Paltz for part of her life.

Over many generations, New Paltz's population has been enriched with a variety of races, faiths and ethnic backgrounds. New Paltz continues to uphold its long-held traditions of respect for diversity and civic involvement, while actively working to preserve its historic, cultural and scenic resources. Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to recognize and honor New Paltz as this community prepares to celebrate the 325th Anniversary of its founding and the 175th Anniversary of the founding of the College of New Paltz.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw to the attention of the Members of the House an action that is about to be taken by the Federal Communications Commission. On June 2, the FCC is going to act on a ruling which in all likelihood will be passed by a vote of three to two, two members of the commission voting against it and three voting for it.

This is a resolution that will continue a process that has been going on in our country now for a number of years. That process is the consolidation of the media, the means of communication in our Nation, the consolidation of that media into the hands of fewer and fewer people.

I think that many people across the country have noticed that in towns and small cities all across America, radio stations that used to be competing with each other and in doing so paid attention to issues that were taking place at the local level, community events, and also concentrating on local news that those radio stations now are not competing with each other but in fact they are owned by the same entity and often they are owned by a corporation that is not even located in that city. Often that corporation is located thousands of miles away and the broadcasting on those stations is actually piped in from distances and has no relationship whatsoever to what is going on in that town or in that city.

This consolidation, I think, is acting contrary to the best interests of the country; and I think it is also quite clearly acting contrary to the Federal communications law of 1934 which stipulated by the Congress that we ought to have in our electronic communications as much diversity of opinion as possible and that radio stations and then later television stations ought to in large measure reflect what is going on in the individual communities where those radio and television stations are located.

Increasingly, that is not the case. Increasingly, we are seeing the homogenization of content on radio and on television particularly. We are also noticing that radio stations are now beginning to charge communications companies and artists to have their artwork, their songs, their music played over those radio stations. That in and of itself may be running afoul of existing law.

There is also, of course, a growing concern about the availability of actual news and information as it is being handled and consolidated by these individual corporations. Suddenly, groups as well as individuals across the country are becoming concerned about this phenomenon, and those groups are very diverse and represent a very broad spectrum of the American people.

Let me give just a couple of examples. Just recently the National Rifle Association became aware of this ruling of the Federal Communications Commission which is pending and which will be acted upon on June 2. The NRA has come out against this ruling, stipulating that they believe that this ruling is not in the best interest of the American people, not in the best interest of this Republic and not in the best interest of our democratic principles.

Also, the National Council of Catholic Bishops has come out against this ruling. They have come out against it for a slightly different reason. They have noticed that as we have seen the consolidation of media in America, in other words, radio stations and TV stations owned by big corporations and not reflecting the needs of the local community, that in addition to that we have seen a dumbing down of the programming that is being broadcast over radio and television and that often they are observing that the content is becoming lowbrow and demeaning and low grade and base, and they are deeply concerned about the kind of television broadcasting that young people particularly are being exposed to as a result of the fact that more and more of our television stations and radio stations are owned by these major corporations that have no interest whatsoever in the type of content they are broadcasting or the effect that content is having on the people in those communities.

So the National Council of Catholic Bishops has come out opposed to this ruling and also the largest organization of television viewers. This organization represents about 750,000 television viewers across the country and has also come out against this ruling, which is pending on the 2nd of June.

I have introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives, and this resolution calls upon the House to notify the FCC that we want this process stopped. Already we have 96 cosponsors of this resolution, and I am inviting other Members of the House to join us. It is quite clear that the action proposed by the FCC is not in the interests of the country, and it is being opposed by a growing segment of the American community across a very wide spectrum. Please come and join us on this resolution.

Madam Speaker, I would like this evening once again to bring to the attention of the Members of the House of Representatives an action which will be taken by the Federal Communications Commission on June 2, now just a little more than 2 weeks away. This is a very critical action, and it will be a controversial one. It will be controversial within the Federal Communications Commission itself in that the vote is likely to be three to two. The three Republican members of the Communications Commission will vote for this measure, and the two Democrats will vote against it. This measure will continue a program that was advanced initially in the 1980's which is bringing about the increasing consolidation of the American Communications System into the hands of fewer and fewer people.

For example, as a result of actions taken during the Reagan administration and subsequent actions taken, we now have a situation in the United States where 80 percent of the radio audience is listening to stations that are owned by just several companies. One company owns radio stations, 1,220 of them, all across America. This situation is critical because it is antithetical to a democratic society.

When the Federal Communications Commission was established back in the 1930's, it was established in order to ensure that there would be a broad diversity of opinion expressed on radio, which was at that time of course the principal electronic means of communication. This position taken by the FCC and by the Congress which established it was informed by events that took place in Europe in the 1930's. Fascist governments in Germany, in Spain, and Italy had come to power by increasingly consolidating the means of communication; and once they were in power, they completed that consolidation, and it was through that consolidation that they remained in power in those countries.

We here in the United States, recognizing that situation, set up a program whereby we would ensure there would be local voices first on radio and then subsequently on television when that developed into the next important electronic medium of communication. But beginning in the 1980's, the Reagan administration advanced principles which allowed a handful of companies to increasingly own more and more radio stations, more and more television stations, and to dominate the public discourse, the public discussion, that was taking place in specific areas around the country. As a result of that, we have less local news on many local radio stations and television stations; people have a difficult time finding out what is going on in their community by listening to their local radio stations. Often the programming in those radio stations takes place thousands of miles away and has no relationship whatsoever to what is happening in those communities. There is no local voice, no local news voice, no local voice about what is happening in those communities as a result. And also, of course, we are finding uniformity in these communications media.

Now the Federal Communications Commission is taking the next step, or they want to take the next step. That is the Republican-dominated communications commission, the three members, want to take the next step, and that is to allow in addition to the radio stations and the television stations in a broadcast area to be owned by a single entity, a single corporation, they now want to allow a system which will also allow for the newspaper in that media market to be owned by the same company.

This is a very dangerous situation. A democratic society must rely upon diversity of opinion. No one single person, no one corporation, no one entity has a patent on the truth. The way that we arrive at the truth in the United States of America is by the conflux of voices, by people expressing their opinions, expressing their views, and those views being heard and then people being elected on the basis of those diverse opinions. All of that is increasingly in jeopardy as a result of the actions that have been and continue to be taken by the Federal Communications Commission.

I am introducing a resolution to the House of Representatives sponsored by 72 Members of the House. That resolution calls upon the FCC to halt this process. I urge Members to come forward and support that resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to this evening call to the attention of the Members of the House that tomorrow I, along with 22 original cosponsors, will introduce a resolution calling on the Government of Argentina to make public all of its official records pertaining to the relocation to Argentina of Nazis and other criminals of World War II.

Just 60 years ago, the world witnessed the most horrific crime ever perpetrated, the Holocaust. Hitler's campaign of genocide murdered 6 million Jews, 220,000 Roma, 200,000 mentally and physically disabled persons, and millions more homosexuals, Russians, Poles, and others. This campaign, known as the ``Final Solution,'' was carried out with ruthless efficiency by Hitler's Nazi regime and its collaborators.

Following the fall of that regime in 1945, the Nuremberg Trials were established to prosecute those responsible for carrying out the genocide campaign. While many of the Nazis and war criminals who perpetrated these atrocities were tried at Nuremberg, others escaped Europe and fled.

Many of those who escaped sought refuge in Argentina, where the government of Juan Peron offered them a safe haven. While many historians believe at least 300 war criminals fled to Argentina, there is no accurate number available.

Those we do know about include some of the Holocaust's most notorious figures: Edward Roschmann, the ``Butcher of Riga,'' and probable organizer of the ODESSA network; Eric Priebke, the SS captain involved in massacres of Italian victims; and Adolf Eichmann, chief of the Jewish Office of the Gestapo and responsible for implementing the ``Final Solution.'' There are many others who belong on the list.

This era of Argentina's history is over, and Argentina has attempted to come to grips with this history. Despite these efforts, there is much we do not know about this era. Two prominent examples demonstrate this fact.

The fate of Klaus Barbie is not certain, as he briefly resided in Argentina on his way to a third country. Josef Mengele spent a short time in Argentina before leaving for Paraguay, but the details of his flight are uncertain as well.

Did the Government of Argentina know that these men traveled through the country? How long did they reside in Argentina? These questions and others remain unanswered. As two of the most dangerous and destructive men during the Holocaust, their actions after World War II should be known. Access to the documents that Argentina has may provide information on the final whereabouts of these and other war criminals.

Historians and researchers, however, are still encountering obstacles to Argentina's archives as repeated requests for documentation from that time period have been disregarded or refused. The New York Times reported on this in March of this year, and other researchers and historians have confirmed this fact.

My resolution calls on Argentina to build upon the steps it has already taken to shed light on the relocation of Nazis to Argentina following the end of World War II and to make public all official records pertaining to this era.

The world must always learn from its history. Knowledge of past events can guard against such things occurring in the future. Access to these records is necessary to form a full understanding of the Holocaust's aftermath and to thwart future attempts by war criminals to avoid prosecution. And just as important, if not more, the Nazis and war criminals who avoided prosecution for their roles in the Holocaust must be exposed. The world deserves to know of their crimes and their fates. The people of Argentina deserve nothing less than complete knowledge of their country's history. And the families of Holocaust victims deserve a full account of this time period.

Argentina should be praised for its recent efforts to investigate and bring to light the events of this time period as a member of the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research. Argentina also signed the Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust and therefore agreed to ``throw light on the still obscured shadows of the Holocaust'' and to ``take all necessary steps to facilitate the opening of archives in order to ensure that all documents bearing on the Holocaust are available to researchers.''

In 1997, Argentina created the Commission of Inquiry into the Activities of Nazism in Argentina to identify Nazis who settled in the country, determine if Nazi loot had arrived in Argentina, and evaluate the impact of Nazism on Argentine society. However, documentation and details regarding these events in Argentina's history have still not been made available, despite commitments from Argentina's Government to do so. By making these documents and information public, the Government of Argentina will be making an enormous contribution to all those who seek an accurate accounting of history.

Before I close, I want to make clear that the purpose of this resolution is not to lay blame on Argentina, but to foster a clear and complete understanding of the events following the Holocaust. It is important to note that just prior to the start of World War II, 30,000 to 40,000 Jewish immigrants entered Argentina and sought asylum, thousands more than other countries were permitting at the time, and efforts are being made by the current government to expose these facts regarding the Holocaust.

I call on the Argentine Government to fully support the efforts it has previously made on this issue and to release any and all information and documents it has on the relocation of Nazis and other war criminals to within its borders after World War II. Recognition of these events is critical for a full understanding of the Holocaust and its aftermath.