Floor Statements

When this bill was originally introduced by the gentleman from Kentucky, it would have required the Department of Energy to conduct a study of needs nationwide and then provided grants to meet those needs.

This doesn't quite do it. There have been no studies. NCE did one about 8 years ago which talked on a regional basis but not anything more specific. Another study was done about 3 years ago, and instead of trying to identify construction needs, this bill tracks money based on title I spending, which simply asks the question, is there a connection between construction needs and the distribution formula in this particular bill? If not, and this bill escapes, we will be coming back repeatedly with ideas that we need to tweak this or that in the effort to create some kind of fairness for the future.

At the committee I raised the question, because my State has an equalization formula, not just for maintenance and operation which is programmed, but also for capital outlay. And I asked how this bill would impact my State and I was told we would find that out; get back with you. That still has yet to happen.

So let me try and tell you what this particular bill would do in my State as it relates to how we fund construction needs within a State. The State of Utah has two different categories, historically. First of all, we have continuing school building aid which basically went for areas that were overcrowded, where there was a surge of students creating crowded school conditions.

We also had a category that we funded which was continuing. I'm sorry. Let me switch that around. Continuing was for overcrowded. Critical school building aid was for those districts that happened to have all their buildings coming of age at the same time and needed an infusion of cash.

We then equalized the formula so that districts in the State of Utah were given State money, in addition to what they could raise locally, to meet these particular needs.

So I simply went through the formula that this bill would equate, and what would it do in the State of Utah. This is the bottom line. The districts that have continuing school building needs, overcrowded, would not get money from this formula. The districts that have critical school building needs, which simply means the age of their buildings are all coming together at the same time, would not get money from this formula.

Indeed, the districts that get money from this formula are the ones in the State of Utah that do not have the construction needs. And that's a simple problem with this bill.

If we had gone along with what Congressman Chandler had originally established and tried to establish a criteria of where this money would go, there would be some logic to it. There is no logic. We are simply throwing money at a target that is constantly on the move.

Satchel Paige used to talk to young pitchers and say, ``Just throw strikes. Home plate don't move.''

Well, in this particular bill, we can't throw strikes because not only is home plate moving, it doesn't even exist. And that is a key problem with what we are trying to accomplish in this.

I have one other issue as well. We have talked, both in committee, the Rules Committee and I'm going to bring it up here on the floor, of the issue of charter schools. The committee has stated as their policy they wish to have charter schools treated fairly in this particular bill.

If a charter school is, of itself, a local education agency, the language in this bill covers charter schools and they will be treated fairly. Unfortunately, if a charter school is part of a different local education agency it does not guarantee in the language of the bill that that charter school will be treated fairly.

We have examples, anecdotal I admit, but anecdotal from coast to coast in this Nation, of charter schools who were not treated fairly by local education agencies. And unless specific language is placed in this bill, it does not guarantee that will happen.

I appreciate the chairman of the committee adding new language in a manager's amendment that will try and make a study of this to see if they can report back. But the bottom line is simply this. Despite our statement that we want charter schools to be treated fairly, the language of our bill is a gaping loophole that does not meet that if the charter school is not part of the LEA, and I would hope, I would certainly hope that the chairman or the sponsors would guarantee that they would continue to work on this issue to make sure that this is given out in a fair and equitable manner because we want fairness and logic. It doesn't exist in the distribution formula in this particular bill.

I appreciate the opportunity of speaking on this very unique rule, which I assume covers parts of at least two or three bills. I would like to talk about one section of it, which is the Department of Defense portion.

I would also like to first congratulate Chairman Skelton and the two subcommittee chairmen with whom I work, Abercrombie and Ortiz, for producing a bipartisan bill. They have given the image that I think could be used on other committees that if the leadership of the committee wants to come up with a bipartisan bill, it is easily possible to do that. They have done that in this particular committee. They have been fair in their leadership, their staffs have been very helpful, they have produced a good bill.

I also want to thank Representative Boren of Oklahoma, who has taken the issue upon which I wish to address very quickly, and continues to move that forward in an attempt to be a bipartisan way.

Unfortunately, the amendment made in order under his name on this particular issue has very vague language in there and, I am afraid, only codifies the existing problem as opposed to trying to find a solution to it.

The problem exists in that a different committee with very little understanding and no jurisdiction over military affairs has passed legislation which has caused a massive problem for the military of this particular country.

A CEO of one of the major airlines has said that for every penny of unexpected cost in fuel, it costs them $1 million of unexpected costs for their overall product. The military has the same problem of fuel costs. In 2001, we spent $2 billion a year for fuel. This year, it may go anywhere between $12 billion to $13 billion a year for fuel. And three-fourths of our oil reserves in this Nation are with countries that are at least hostile or potentially hostile to this country.

Realizing that fact, the military has tried to make some provisions for the future. We have enough oil shale and coal in this country to provide for the needs of the military. There is 1 trillion barrels locked in my State. Decades ago, the Department of Defense recognized this and established certain of those sections as part of the Naval Oil Reserve, a reserve that is untapped which we could go in today and use in defense of this country, except for section 526 of the energy bill that was already passed, which cuts the knees out from under the military and its efforts.

One of the things I think they did not realize when they passed this bill was that coal----

Coal and oil shale have greater Btus, which simply means that, for the same amount of fuel, our fighters, our Humvees, our trucks could go farther or we could do what we are doing now with less energy consumption that we need.

The military has attempted to make sure we have a process with alternative fuels to make sure that we have security for the future. 526 stops that. The Rules Committee could have waived the issues of sequential referral and allowed us to discuss that on the floor, but instead they limited and restricted the debate, so that we will not have a full debate on this important issue that is about the security of the military of this country.

Mr. Chairman, on rollcall No. 355, had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Amendment No. 6 Offered by Mr. Franks of Arizona

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor an outstanding military commander in the United States Army, Colonel Anne L. Davis.

As outgoing Commander of the Tooele Army Depot, TEAD, Utah, Colonel Davis has demonstrated exceptional meritorious service

during her tenure from June 16, 2005 to July 8, 2008. TEAD is a very large military installation, with 23,600 acres with extensive munitions storage handling an estimated 200,000 short tons of ammunition stocks valued at $2.75 billion. She was responsible for logistical support to 17 United States military units as well as command and control of Hawthorne Ammunition Depot, Riverbank Army Ammunition Plant and Ft. Wingate.

Colonel Davis is a brilliant leader who makes every mission look easy. Her PhD in Business added to her skills to better manage and transform Tooele into the Depot of the future. The leaders who worked under her took pride in achieving nearly 100 percent on time, on location delivery of ammunition throughout the Western Continental United States and to various ports to support ongoing combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Colonel Davis was instrumental in the development, testing, prove-out and eventual preparation of the Stryker Brigade Combat Teams Combat Configured Loads. Her ability to safely and efficiently manage stockpile surveillance inspections while enduring personnel shortages in terms of Quality Assurance and Surveillance Specialists was superb.

Colonel Davis aggressively sought additional workload at Tooele by meeting with the Utah Governor's Office of Economic Development and by attending numerous business events throughout the country in an effort to reduce life cycle costs on her installation. Her personal attention in all aspects of safety, to include the Department of Defense Safety Voluntary Protection Program resulted in a 50 percent reduction in civilian days lost due to accidents.

Colonel Davis, a native of St. Clair Shores, Michigan, arrived at Tooele Army Depot in June 2005 as a highly regarded and decorated leader in the Army having served in leadership positions in Italy, Hawaii, and the Continental United States. She also commanded Hawthorne Army Depot in Hawthorne, Nevada from June 2000 to July 2003.

Lean Six Sigma, LSS, was implemented by Colonel Davis to ensure the Army's competitive edge and increase employee involvement. Under her control, TEAD has certified over 70 Green Belts and has an established self-sufficient LSS program with a Master Black Belt and four Black Belts. Involving over half of the workforce in projects, Colonel Davis has overseen savings to the Depot of over $560,000 in the first two years with another $400,000 expected by the end of this fiscal year.

In conclusion, Madam Speaker, Colonel Davis has served her nation well and exhibited some of the finest qualities of leadership and good stewardship of her many responsibilities. She will be missed by the Tooele workforce and by those with whom she has associated in Utah over the past 3 years. I join with the rest of the Utah Congressional Delegation in offering our sincere congratulations on a job well-done, and wishing her the very best for her in all future endeavors.

I appreciate my good friend and colleague from Utah that clearly understands this particular issue.

I want to start by introducing you to a character in American history by the name of Elbridge Gerry. Elbridge Gerry is a former Vice President, Governor of Massachusetts, signed the Declaration of Independence. He is also one of three people who spent the entire time at the Constitutional convention and then refused to sign the document.

Now, we have had others; the gentleman up to my left who appear on the ceiling, one of the two Americans that we had in this icon of lawgivers in the history of the world. George Mason was one who stayed there and refused to sign the document. He had a specific reason, and that was it didn't have a bill of rights.

Elbridge Gerry did not have a specific reason. He had a litany of little ticky issues that he thought were wrong with the document. They are so small and so insignificant that I have yet to find a history book that actually lists the reasons for his refusal to sign this particular document. In fact, I had a teacher that one time told me that he had a personality that was the kind so prickly that if the Savior said that the millennium will start on Tuesday, he would say, I can't do that, I have a haircut; we have to wait until at least Thursday to do it. Now, that is what he did.

Despite the fact that he had a litany of problems with the document, the document itself turned out to be a pretty good document. As P.J. O'Rourke would say, the Constitution of the United States is 21 pages that is the operating manual for 300 million people, compared to the operating manual of the Toyota Camry which is four times as long and only seats five. The document worked.

Well, one of the problems and the reason I am introducing you to Elbridge Gerry is we have an Elbridge Gerry attitude towards energy policy. We all agree that we need to be energy secure and energy independent, and we agree we have to do that. But we can't have windmills off the coast of Massachusetts. We need to be energy secure, but we can't have a liquid natural gas port on the East Coast. We need to be energy secure, but we can't do any kind of offshore drilling even if it is 100 miles away and no one can see it because it might bother the tourists who can't see the drilling going on. We need to be energy secure, but we won't go up to the arctic in Alaska to an area set aside by the Carter administration for the simple purpose of producing energy, and we won't drill there, as the gentleman from Nebraska just recently explained.

We have this idea that we have all these ticky little reasons and details that we won't do this and we won't do that, and the end result is we miss the bigger focus and the bigger issue, and that is we need to be energy secure for our Nation and for the individuals of the Nation.

Our policy towards energy has always caused problems. It has caused problems for businesses, has for several years, and it is causing problems in the way people live their life. Because the issue is not our country's energy policy in the abstract; the issue is, how do people cook their food? How do people heat their homes? How do people create and hold on to a job? Because every time the price of energy increases, jobs are lost, incomes vanish, social programs suffer. Every individual in this Nation suffers with higher and increasing energy prices.

Rising utility bills are indeed one of the major causes of homelessness in this country. And that means, when energy increases in price and cost, the poor and those on fixed income, and there is about 43 million of them in the United States, are the first ones who are hurt and suffering. And how do our people react to this?

There is a couple in Maryland who have decided to take their kids out of weekend activities. So their daughter that was in dance and gymnastics, they no longer drive them to these activities. A Vermont church found itself recently in a $10,000 arrears simply because it didn't budget enough for its energy. In Maine, in Wisconsin, schools simply have lowered the temperatures in their classes. So, in a district in western Wisconsin the kids in the winter are now wearing fleeces and zip sweaters, to the fact that they even had a fashion show to show kids how to dress warmly as they are now coming to schools. Unfortunately, they held it on a day when it was snowed out, but that is still the fashion show they tried to do. In Louisiana, they no longer run their sprinklers on the ball field. In North Dakota, they are talking about a four-day school week. In Iowa, they have cancelled trips for choirs, athletics, and field trips for the junior high kids.

And schools simply don't have a way of handling this. You can't just put more money into the heating salary. Schools are on a very tight budget,

with the majority of schools' budgeting coming from the cost of salaries, which simply means if energy prices increase, teacher salaries will decrease. They simply can't afford to do it in any other particular way.

We have a Chicago nurse who has cut out her cable television. She can't afford it anymore. Elderly people on fixed incomes especially feel trapped in their apartments because they do not have the flexibility to go anywhere. They can't afford to. We have an example of an elderly gentleman in St. Paul, Minnesota who now travels most of the time on his electric wheelchair because electricity comes with his rent and that is for free, and he can plug it in in the apartment and he doesn't have to buy gas to get around. Now, that is what is happening to real people.

It is happening to the country as well. In the military defense of this country, our costs in the last 3 years for energy for our military has risen from $3 billion a year to $7 billion a year.

Our increase in prices are putting our Nation at risk, are putting individuals in jeopardy, and we simply cannot afford to talk about it any longer. We cannot afford to have secret plans that we refuse to identify any longer. We simply have to do something. Because for every dollar spent on higher energy costs, it is a dollar you can't spent on luxuries like tuna casseroles; for our energy is the great social equalizer of this country and it is the one that creates economic opportunity in this country. Our energy should not be those who are rich in government or rich in society or rich economically, the elite that can afford this.

One of our Presidential candidates went in one day on three different jets, each of which spewed out 25,000 pounds of CO2 per hour. Now, the average American spews out 15,000 pounds of CO2 per year. And the solution to that was simple: Recognizing that they are now adding to the emissions in the atmosphere, they paid $11,000, and urged you to all buy mercury light bulbs made in China by coal-powered plants.

Another one of our good friends who makes a great deal of emphasis on the fact of global climate change and global warming lives in a house that consumes 20 times the amount of electricity that an average house does in this country. And his solution to that? Paying offsets that he uses his own company to pay the offsets.

We have a concept right here now of the elite who are not cutting back on their energy consumptions; they are simply paying for it with offsets in a similar way as medieval dukes used to pay for indulgences with the church. And yet, while they are still living in comfort in the elite, what we have is a situation that is harming individuals, and especially individuals who are poor, on fixed incomes, and the elderly.

That is one of the reasons the Western Caucus will be introducing shortly a comprehensive energy bill, one that realizes that if we are going to solve this problem, not just talk about it but solve it, there are three principles that have to be introduced:

We must increase the production of energy in this country. And we are going to have multiple speakers who will be talking on that aspect. That won't work alone. We also have to increase our efforts of conservation. We cannot solve the problem of our energy future without conservation efforts. But, we cannot solve the problem of our energy independence and our energy security needs by conservation alone. It has to work with other principles. Because it is true, every gallon that we save, every watt of electricity that we do not use is a gallon that does not have to be imported, does not become emitted.

Yet, even by the strictest standards of conservation alone, we can account for only about one-half of the amount of oil that we import into this country every year. It would be hypocritical to rely on this. In fact, it would be, as the Ron Arnold book title says, our goal would be ``Freezing in the Dark.'' It has to be more than that.

In addition to that, though, there is a third element that has to be there that will be an essential part of this bill, which is innovation. If you go back to the turn of the century, Jules Verne could not have imagined what would have happened in the next 100 years. He could not have imagined going from radios to I-pods, and rockets, computers, going from antibiotics to organ transplants. Couldn't even have imagined bottled water. But that has been the reality of the past 100 years.

We have technological abilities that sometimes come slow and sometimes come as fast as new cell phone plans that will provide the ability to use these two concepts to reach the needs so that we can become energy secure. We have certain specific problems that need to be addressed in this process of innovation. We have not had a new refinery built since 1976. In 1980, we had 324 in this country; today, there are 148 that are operating. We can produce 17 million barrels of oil per day from our refinery capacity. Unfortunately, this country needs 21 million barrels of oil per day from our refinery capacity.

We have outdated processes and regulations that need to be put in place along with tax reform to encourage both conservation and production.

We use about 5 million miles of electricity distribution and 1 million miles of natural gas distribution lines. That is not enough. We need to be developing new corridors so that we can more easily transport energy from section to section.

One of the other areas we are looking at is also the workforce. There has been a 90 percent drop in the number of petroleum engineers and geoscience graduates since 1982. At that rate, by the year 2010 we will find a 38 percent shortage in this critical profession that we need to try and find our way to use the knowledge that we have to build and move us into the future. We need to come up with smart meters, point of sales generations. We need to use the technological abilities that we have to find solutions.

We need to use a system that has financial rewards and prizes to reach our technological goals, because we have found that voluntary innovation and experimentation are always preferable to bureaucratic or international intervention and regulation. Former efforts that failed were not driven by market forces, but they were driven into failure by self-serving governments. We need to combine all these three areas into one. But we cannot overlook the first and most important effort, which is simply production.

We in the West perhaps have a different attitude. To be honest, the West produces the energy the East consumes. So I think by all rights we have the ability to be a little bit holier than thou, both realistically as well as spiritually. But the issue is, we have the ability in this country to be energy secure. The stuff is here. There is more energy imprisoned in this country than most nations actually have, and all we have to do is simply be wise enough to realize we need to go at it, we need to develop it, we need to conserve it, and we need to be creative in the way we distribute it.

We can talk all day as some people do about profits that the companies are receiving, what we should do with those profits. At the end of that discussion, you have to realize it is a useless discussion, because you can talk all day about what we do with profits. Not one new barrel of oil is provided to anybody by that discussion. The only thing we need to do is start talking about going to where the energy is and developing it, conserving it, and being smarter in the way we do it. That means an attitude change. So our goal is to produce, to conserve, and be smarter in the way we do it. And by that method, that method, we will solve the problem.

This Nation needs more than anything else to not talk about the issues any longer, not have secret plans about the issues any longer, but simply to do it. We have the resources, we have the capability, we have the ability to provide for ourselves into the future. And it is almost criminal if we do not do that in a comprehensive and intellectual way.

I still have faith that this country can proceed into that future, and I hope America will join us in this effort to meet these criteria. And I applaud my good friend from Utah, who understands this issue instinctively, and his effort to bring this to the attention of the American people with a lot of different people who understand elements of this, and hopefully we can bring together a comprehensive plan for the future of this country so that we can have energy security and energy independence for our future.

The gentleman is perfect, right on with this one. The problem we have is a simple concept of supply and demand. If the demand is great and the supply is not, the price goes up. And how do you simply get the price to come down? You increase the supply, whether by production increases or conservation increases or new technology increases. But, once again, spot on accurate.

If we don't do that, it's kids who are freezing in classrooms; it's elderly who are stuck in their homes by the fear of going anywhere because they can't afford to get back; it's poor people who will lose their jobs because we don't have enough energy to expand the market.

That's why we do this. We do this for people who are counting on us to have a wise, comprehensive policy.

And we've found also, if you ask, prizes are a wonderful way because people are so creative. People are innovative. And if we allow that spark of creativity and innovation to come forth, we can solve every problem that we face. And it doesn't have to be done by experts sitting in a room in Washington. People have the ability to do that, and they have the ability to do it better than probably we can.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Senate bill 2457 provides for extensions of leases of certain land by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe of Connecticut. The leased land is for nongaming commercial purposes. I urge support of this legislation as does the administration.

I have no additional speakers. Therefore, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

H.R. 3522 implements a settlement agreement worked out by the tribe and Rio Arriba County. As a result, the parties resolve a long-lasting litigation by conveying tribal lands to the county for transportation purposes.

I support the settlement along with the administration. I urge my colleagues to do the same thing.

We have no additional speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3490 takes 66 acres of Federal land into trust for the tribe's existing reservation for nongaming purposes. In addition, it deems three tracts of adjacent land part of the tribe's reservation in the Sierra Nevada. The tribe will use the lands to alleviate overcrowded housing, to build a cultural center, for agriculture, and for open space. They will also continue to use the land as a cemetery.

Congressman Radanovich should be commended for his work on this bill, and I urge my colleagues to join the administration in support of this particular piece of legislation.

I yield back my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

H.R. 1043 honors the life and legacy of Chief Standing Bear, a pioneer in civil rights for Native Americans. This resolution also commemorates the 100th anniversary of his death, and I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Chief Standing Bear.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Nebraska, the sponsor of this bill, the author of this bill, Mr. Fortenberry.

I yield back my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, Senate bill 2739 contains around 62 provisions, and I am pleased to see that they're finally on their way to the President's desk. However, this bill is also a testament to the dysfunction of a certain body on the other side of this Rotunda.

Many of the sections of this bill are unable to stand on their own and have subsequently been bundled into a $300 million brew to avoid individual scrutiny. To solve the problem and avoid the discomfort of saying ``no,'' this omnibus was created with enough prizes that inevitably the bad will be overlooked and everything, the good, the bad and the ugly, will be able to cross the finish line.

Many of these provisions were passed by this House last year, so it's nice to say that finally something is coming out of the Senate, even if it's coming in this very poor form. But in other ways this bill is also symbolic of this session. We have wasted time and then glob everything together and throw it together with one fell swoop without the ability of scrutinizing it as individual issues, and at the same time miss essential bills that address critical needs.

This legislation deals with land where energy opportunities do exist, and yet once again we are moving forward with gas approaching $4 a gallon. Today, the average price of gasoline in the United States was $3.61. That's $1.28 for gasoline, $1.57 for diesel, 55 and 59 percent above what it was at the beginning of the 110th Congress. And still, with no plan to solve this issue, we pass bills that exacerbate this conundrum.

This particular bill is full of new designations intended to draw tourists, but the only sightseeing that's going to be done in this country will be from the couch watching the Travel Channel if we don't address our fuel crisis. Every time we pass feel-good natural resource legislation with warm and fuzzy titles, we must consider the damage being done to our ability to provide for ourselves. We have locked up so much of our public land from energy development that we are now seeing the results at the pump, and these are our priorities.

What else do we do? Our solution is to offer biofuels; in other words, we want to burn food to power cars. Not only is this immoral, it is devastating Third World countries now unable to afford food to feed their starving children. These are our priorities.

We could have used forest mass that's dead every year, it would have been perfect cellulose for production of energy and at the same time save our forests from catastrophic fires, but such was specifically prohibited in the ``no energy'' bill that passed this Congress recently. So, these are our consequences.

We discussed many of the sections in this bill individually when they first came to the House floor in 2007. We did it the right way, even if I disagreed with some of the outcomes we decided. Unfortunately, they are back without improvements that would have made them palatable.

I don't believe private property rights are adequately protected in any of the heritage areas in this bill. And I question why the amendment to protect second amendment rights, which was overwhelmingly passed on the House floor, was stripped from this package. It is flat out wrong to have done that. It is almost unfathomable that the Senate would do such a thing and that we would consider passing this bill with that significant provision not there. Yet again, the second amendment and property rights take a back seat to misguided priorities of the other body.

As I stated earlier, there are a few positives I am pleased to support. Congressmen Wilson and Brown of South Carolina have worked to get the ``Swamp Fox'' General Francis Marion Memorial to the President. I congratulate them. Minority Whip Blunt has labored to authorize the Newtonia Civil War Battlefields study that we will move today. I thank him for his fine work. My Resource Committee colleague, Congressman Louis Gohmert from Texas, has an important study to honor the Space Shuttle, Columbia, and I'm pleased that this is included in Senate 2739. Resource Committee Ranking Member Don Young has several provisions that will benefit the country and his constituents in Alaska, and I thank him for his tireless efforts and advocacy on their behalf.

Finally, of all the provisions, probably the best one is a dam bill provision for my congressional district. This

provision would authorize the Bureau of Reclamation to do a feasibility study on raising the height of the Arthur V. Watkins Dam in Box Elder County. And given the shortage of water in the West, by increasing storage capacity of this vital reservoir, the residents of my congressional district will have a more secure water supply and water future.

Having already spent too many hours debating these bills when they came before us that now make up this legislative Frankenstein, I see no need to prolong this much longer.

I will reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the gentlelady from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf).

(Mr. WOLF asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Broun).

(Mr. BROUN of Georgia asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

I continue to reserve.

Mr. Speaker, this Frankenstein bill that we have before us has a whole lot of good stuff in it. It also has a whole lot of bad stuff in there, things that could be cataclysmic consequences to this particular country.

One of the things that is so sad is the process in which we are involved. I realize it's regular order, but it's still a sad process. We have germaneness rules that are very loose. The Senate has germaneness rules that are even looser. Former Senator Gene McCarthy said, The Senate has rules, but no one knows what they are so it doesn't really matter.

Bringing a bill in this pattern with these many provisions over here is something that would never be allowed in most legislative bodies within our States. One of the things we should learn as a body is sometimes it is best if we actually deal with bills on an individual basis in a timely manner. I realize part of this problem cannot be laid at the hands of the chairman of our committee because it's actually dealing with the other body on the other side, which decided to lump everything together as a big glob and just throw it at us.

At the same time, it should be a lesson for us to learn that if we really want to reform the system so that we have actual input on bills in a timely fashion and timely manner, we should have one issue, one bill, one vote, and plumping everything together is simply poor parts of legislation. For all the good that is in this bill, and there is much good, as well as the bad, and there is some bad, it still is the wrong process that we should be engaged.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. And I appreciate the gentleman from New Jersey in yielding a few moments so we can talk about another issue of significance, I think, right now.

It was in the year 2004 that the President outlined our Nation's vision for space exploration; and he gave three goals:

Number 1, to complete the international space station by 2010, 2, to conduct the first manned mission of a new vehicle for astronauts by 2014; and Number 3, to return a man to the moon by 2020.

Now, these goals won bipartisan approval by Congress in the 2005 NASA Authorization Act, and we gave clear directions to NASA to administer this act. In it, the administrator was directed to develop a human presence on the moon, promote exploration, science and commerce, United States presence in space, and to create a stepping stone to future exploration of mars and other destinations.

It further codified more specific requirements to use personnel and assets of the current space shuttle program in developing a new crew vehicle and two new launch vehicles.

Now, after the old space shuttle, the original one here has fulfilled its mission to complete the international space station, it will retire in the year 2010 and, by law, must be replaced no later than 2014 by a new vehicle, this one at the top, which is called Orion, which will take humans to the space station, to the moon, to Mars and to beyond.

This vision is a bulwark of our Nation's space future for the decades to come. You see, the space shuttle will have been in service for 30 years by the time it's retired, and we can expect as much or more from these new systems.

NASA Administrator, Michael Griffin, has translated these objectives into a coherent program for further exploration in the solar systems. Its name is Project Constellation, and it will include Orion, and be powered by the most effective, reliable and safe launch vehicles to carry our crew into orbit or lift supplies needed for space exploration; and those two new rockets will be called Ares I and Ares

I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding some time. I appreciate the gentleman from Texas who has introduced this particular piece of legislation.

Madam Speaker, many of us grew up listening to vinyl records played on phonographs, something that my kids have probably never heard, let alone seen. But for its day, the phonograph was an amazing device. It gave beautiful music, or maybe not so beautiful music, into our homes; it brought great orchestras and bands to those who would have never heard them otherwise. And a few people still use them, but most of them had replaced them long ago with tapes and CD's and MP3 files, and other types of digital media acknowledging that the phonograph and vinyl record are outdated and that better technologies are available.

In the same vein, most of us gave up typewriters a long time ago for computers. But there are a few who, for fear or suspicion, cling to their ancient and inefficient typewriters. Admittedly, the typewriter was a marvelous tool in its time, but there are simply better tools available now.

So, Madam Speaker, I want to make the point that it's always a shame to see things that last beyond their usefulness, whether it's an outdated technology, a once-great athlete eventually cut from a team, or even a U.S. senator. You like to see things end in their prime and retain their dignity.

Madam Speaker, I'm not here to propose a Commission for Involuntary Retirement of Senators. Nor will I suggest an investigation into aging athletes who should call it quits. I think Mr. Waxman could probably do that for us all. I'm here to support Mr. Brady's idea for a Federal Sunset Commission to evaluate government agencies and find those agencies that are outdated and beyond their usefulness.

You see, in most sectors of American life, the free market simply dictates that old products, as great as they may have at one time been, are replaced by newer, better products. Unfortunately in the government, that process of creative destruction stops after we create the first version. The old out-of-date programs or agencies don't really get replaced. It stays around. Performing, maybe not performing, duplicative functions and sucking up tax dollars at the same time.

Several years ago, the comptroller, David Walker, pointed out that the USDA, the FDA, and 10 other Federal agencies administer 35 different food safety laws; the Department of Homeland Security, Justice, and HHS administer 16 different grant programs for first responders; and USDA and HUD both provide assistance for rural housing. And I won't even go into the Department of Education; that would be too easy.

Why do we have such a hard time getting rid of old programs? It simply has to do with public-choice theory. Every government agency and program, no matter how outdated, has a core constituency who benefit from its existence. Those who are employed at the agency or program and those who receive benefits have a huge incentive to fight for its continued existence. I understand this attitude. I basically did the same thing as a teacher. I was not content, as many of the old-guard teachers were, to simply teach the same lesson year after year. So I and other innovative staff members started

new programs like the Historical Society, the Renaissance Festival, a scholarship program, an oral history program, and Close-Up, an internship program at our State capitol. Now, fortunately, most of these program enhancements cost the school very little money except my time, but I did it because I always wanted to have a bigger role at the school. The status quo was never sufficient; I wanted to do more.

And herein lies the problem for both government programs and for me as a teacher: In our mindset, if a program is not growing, something is wrong. To self justify, government agencies and offices always think of new ways to expand their ``services.'' The goal is always ``bigger'' and ``more,'' which ends up costing the taxpayers. The desire to grow is the natural instinct of any government agency, and it is the natural instinct of us, but it means to control government, a legislative body has to continually fight that which naturally occurs. It's always an uphill battle. We continue the old and introduce the new.

Simply, what we do is when we introduce a new program and there is still an old one in place, it puts us in the silly position of using a computer and a typewriter at the same time. Comptroller Walker, before he retired, in the same report that I just quoted, said, ``A fundamental reassessment of government programs, policies, and activities can help weed out programs that are outdated, ineffective, unsustainable, or simply a lower priority than they used to be. In most Federal mission areas, from low-income housing to food safety to higher education assistance, national goals are achieved through the use of a variety of tools and increasingly through participation of many organizations such as State and local governments that are beyond the direct control of the Federal Government.''

``Government cannot accept as given all of the existing major programs, policies, and operations. A fundamental review of what the Federal Government does, how it does it, and in some cases, who does the government's business, will be required, particularly given the demographic tidal wave that is starting to show on our fiscal horizon.''

``A fundamental reassessment.'' It's a novel idea. Make agencies and programs continually prove their value. That brings us to Mr. Brady's bill, the Federal Sunset Act of 2008. Sunset commissions aren't a new idea. States, as are often the case, are ahead of us here. I'm told that there are 24 States currently that have some form of a sunset review and have saved millions of dollars through this process, and it is simply about time the Federal Government follows their lead.

P.J. O'Rourke once said, ``the mystery of government is not how Washington works, but how to make it stop.'' Mr. Brady's bill helps solve that mystery. It's a practical solution that will make it easier to get rid of outdated or low-performing or duplicative or wasteful government agencies and programs, and I commend him for reintroducing this bill.

It is something this government has to have to put some balance and rationality and logic back into the delivery of services by the Federal Government.

And with that, I would be happy to yield back to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit for the Record portions of an article from the Tucson Weekly that was published on February 15, 2007.

Following the Amnesty Trail

Leo W. Banks follows one of Arizona's most popular illegal

alien crossing routes

and finds piles of garbage trampled public lands, angry

residents and the suspected presence of a vicious gang.

In the coming weeks, as President Bush and the Democrat-

controlled Congress take up immigration reform, and the

political talk turns to amnesty, everyone living along border

smuggling routes will hunker down to wait for the worst. They

know their lives will get miserable in a hurry.

The word amnesty possesses remarkable power on the Mexican

side of the line. It has the same effect as a starter's

pistol.

Bang! Let the land rush begin.

It happened after Jan. 7. 2004. when Bush floated his idea

for a temporary worker program. The idea was broadly viewed

in Mexico as amnesty, and the Border Patrol's own survey

proved it. In the weeks following the proposal, the agency

quietly questioned crossers apprehended at the southern

border and found the president's plan had caused a big spike

in illegal crossings. Forty-five percent said they'd entered

our country ``to get Bush's amnesty.''

Nowhere will the coming stampede be more evident than on

the smuggling routes that begin at the border at Sasabe, 65

miles southwest of Tucson, curl up through the Altar Valley

and continue all the way to the Ironwood Forest National

Monument, a full 75 miles north of the border.

The 129,000-acre Ironwood, located west of Marana and south

of Eloy, is a desert paradise of giant saguaros and spooky

black-rock peaks worthy of a gothic novel. President Bill

Clinton declared it a Federal monument in June 2000.

But the smugglers have turned this signature Arizona

landscape into a criminals' playground. The land here is

crisscrossed with trails so packed from use, they shine white

under the sun. Another Monument resident, Cindy Coping, uses

Google Earth to zoom in on the Amnesty Trail, which comes up

clear as a bell on her monitor.

What's it like to live here?

If you're out on the land a lot, expect to find the corpses

of those who've made the terrible decision to cross this

desert. Including the three murders last week, seven bodies

were found on the Ironwood in the three months prior to this

writing.

One photo, taken sometime in 2000 by my anonymous

photographer, shows the skull of a presumed illegal, with

other human bones in the foreground. Next to the skull, not

pictured, stands a saguaro-rib cross, probably built by

companions after the deceased went down.

For those trying to keep cattle on their land, the

smugglers have made living in the Ironwood a nightmare. At

this writing, rancher Emilio Figueroa says he has 18 head of

cattle, valued at $800 each, on Tohono O'odham land

immediately west of the monument. They got out when coyotes

cut his fence. Now the tribe is refusing to let him onto

Indian land to retrieve them. He's out $14,000.

For Cindy's husband, Bob, a 58-year-old retired Raytheon

engineer, one of the defining aspects of life on the Ironwood

is a particular sound he can hear, literally, a mile away.

``I'll be out working and I'll hear, `wappa-wappa-wappa', and

I know it's a load-out truck coming down the road with a flat

tire,'' he says.

The smugglers keep driving on the flat until the rubber

flies off. Even then, they don't stop. They keep driving on

the tire's rim until that, too, falls off or disintegrates.

Sometimes the drive train falls out first.

These smuggler vehicles, most stolen from Phoenix, often

travel at night without headlights, with tape over the brake

lights, and they've been clocked tearing through the

monument's dirt roads at 89 mph. This endangers the lives of

residents and visitors alike.

It also ensures that many of these load vehicles--such as

the tan truck pictured--never make it out of the monument.

They smash into trees and saguaros, or run into ditches. The

BLM has towed 300 vehicles a year out of the monument since

2000.

These load-outs, as well as the constant foot traffic,

destroy habitat and threaten cultural sites and endangered

species. The trash left behind requires pickup crews to have

biohazard training and armed guards watching them as they

work.

Even worse, Vic Brown says that MS-13, the notoriously

vicious Salvadoran gang, might be operating on the monument,

based on suspicious tattoos law enforcement has seen on

smugglers arrested there. The Border Patrol's public

information office in Tucson wouldn't return a call to talk

about MS-13 in the monument.

Says Vic Brown: ``We're trying to maintain some semblance

of a national monument out there, and to be quite honest,

we're not able to do it, because undocumented immigrants have

targeted the area. I've watched it degrade from when I got

there in 1992, and in the last 5 years, it has gotten

progressively worse.''

The Copings bought their land here in 1995, and since then,

they've been eyewitnesses to the explosion of the smuggling

trade. In the mid-'90s. it was mainly small family groups

that crossed at Sasabe and walked the 75 miles north to the

monument, then an additional 18-20 miles to their pickup at

Eloy. They rarely used coyotes.

In 2000, the Copings began seeing vehicles, often Ford F-

150 pickups, parked at the side of the road. They usually had

dark windows, no license plates and the keys resting on a

tire. The illegals would drive themselves out to I-10, then

Phoenix.

The abandoned-truck phase gave way in about 2003 to the

huge load-out phase. The Copings began seeing SUVs with five

to eight illegals sitting on the roof, as Bob says, ``like

wasted college students,'' or on the hood, forming a narrow

tunnel through which the driver can see.

Some of these illegals have told the Copings they already

had jobs lined up in places such as North Carolina, and

curried plane tickets out of Sky Harbor in Phoenix.

Cell phones revolutionized the smuggling racket, allowing

illegals to call ahead to arrange a pickup in the Ironwood,

often eliminating the longer walk to Eloy. Independent

walkers are gone now. ``Everybody we see now is somebody's

customer,'' says Bob.

The business has become sophisticated, commercial and very

dangerous. Cindy, 50, a former engineer at Hughes, used to

check fences alone on horseback, but she quit, afraid of what

she might encounter. ``Sometimes I'll be at the house alone,

and 20 illegals will walk down the road,'' she says. ``It's

intimidating. They sound like an army marching.''

Bob says the number of load-outs in the Ironwood increased

last spring before and after demonstrators took to the

streets in Tucson and elsewhere to demand a rewrite of

American law to accommodate illegal aliens and their

corporate partners. The atmosphere, including talk of

amnesty, created an explosion in traffic. In April, the

Copings counted eight load-outs in one day.

When the National Guard was sent to the border, the free-

for-all ended abruptly, if briefly. ``We saw helicopters

overhead, military-type aircraft, and we didn't a see a load-

out for two weeks,'' Bob says. ``The traffic probably dropped

90 percent.''

But the numbers have risen again significantly, and in

recent e-mails, the Copings have told me the big load-outs

have returned with a vengeance. Cindy's e-mails have the

tension and immediacy of dispatches written from a war zone--

because, in fact, she and Bob live in one.

Last Thursday, three illegals were murdered in the

Ironwood. Cindy and Bob learned of the trouble when a male

illegal came to their house, his thigh covered in blood,

evidently splatter from someone else's wound. In rapid

Spanish, he repeated words like, ``Pow! Pow!'' and ``911''

and ``muerta'' and ``mujer,'' while gesturing of blood

pouring from someone's chest. Cindy grubbed her medical kit,

and she and Bob and this man jumped into a pickup and raced

to the scene.

Here is what she wrote next:

``I called 911 and attended to the woman, who was shot in

the shoulder with a bullet wound coming out that soft spot at

the bottom of her throat. The 911 dispatcher was

simultaneously responding to a similar call from the Asarco

Silverbell Mine, which is about a 10-mile drive south. As

soon as I could see the woman was in stable condition. I

crossed the street and assessed the motionless man on the

other side.

``I felt no pulse on his still-warm throat. His eyes were

closed. I grubbed his wrist, and it cold. Then I saw the back

of his head was shot open. He was gone. There was no bleeding

at the scene, so I assume this shooting took place earlier,

and these four people were unloaded.

``The woman, Sebastiana, whom I later found out is 24 years

old, began shivering in the morning's chill. I found no signs

of continued bleeding. Her wound had been hurriedly dressed

with someone's cotton coat stuffed up under her shirt. It was

a gaping 2-inch-wide gash between the two bullet holes, but

it had stopped bleeding. She was alert and breathing, even

able to talk. She had a smaller wound to her abdomen. I

elevated her feet, and Bob made two trips back to the house

for wool blankets to keep her warm.

``A younger (undocumented) woman, Linda, at the scene had

blood covering her cheek and circling one eye. She indicated

no pain, so this was perhaps someone else's blood. She

indicated that something had grazed her face, possibly a

bullet. In the dark, it appeared she'd been punched in the

eye, but after it got light. I could see it was just dried

blood on her face. The first official to arrive on scene was

a Pima County deputy who told us that someone had walked into

Asarco with four fingers shot off.''

The e-maiI goes on. It ends with Cindy and Bob retreating

to their house and locking the gate, another case of Arizona

citizens sealing themselves off from the horrors this

invasion has brought to our state.

But heartrending encounters are not unusual in the

Ironwood. In November, a man in his mid-50s showed up at the

Copings' corrals and said he'd been drinking his urine for

four days. Cindy made him macaroni and cheese and watched him

gobble it down. As he ate, he broke down in retching sobs.

The man said he owned a small farm with 70 pigs in Colima,

Mexico, and had seven sons living in Phoenix. Breaking her

rule of not allowing strays to use the phone, Cindy allowed

him to call them to pick him up. He waited and waited, but no

one in his family came for him.

That night, he slept in the bed of one of the pickups. In

the morning, he gave Cindy several necklaces--depicting

Jesus, the Virgin of Guadalupe and other images--then left,

and Cindy isn't sure in which direction he went. She never

called the Border Patrol to pick him up.

``They usually don't come if it's one or two strays,'' she

says. ``But mostly I didn't have the heart. I couldn't do it

after all he'd been through.''

Cindy figures she and Bob have made six such ``rescues''

over the years, She has no

choice. ``If I don't help them, they'll die,'' she says.

``We're 75 miles from the border, No one gets here without

walking, at least three days, and it's another 20-mile walk

out.''

But living in the Ironwood presents other tough choices.

In 1997, as a precaution, Cindy got shots to immunize her

from contact with hepatitis A. At the time, she was working

with Pima County Search and Rescue, and that agency

recommended that its personnel get immunized for the more

worrisome, and potentially fatal, hepatitis B. It is spread

through contact with the blood of an infected person, and

Cindy has had contact with bleeding Third World people.

She hasn't gotten the second shot yet. ``If I were taking

the best care of myself. I'd get the B shot, too,'' says

Cindy. ``I probably still will.''

It's easy to understand her anxiety, and her belief that

she is on her own against this invasion--because, in spite of

what she calls the dedicated Border Patrol agents on the

ground, Cindy knows that the American government has neither

the will nor desire to control this border.

The same year she got the shots, a Border Patrol agent told

Cindy that while traveling in Guatemala, he walked by a

travel agency in Guatemala City and saw in its front window a

map showing the 1,800-mile route to the United States--with

her little house in the Ironwood as a landmark.

But Cindy just shrugged at that disturbing news. After so

many years of living on the Amnesty Trail, she's no longer

capable of surprise.

I appreciate the gentleman from Washington yielding me the time. It is always a pleasure for me to be on the floor with the two Representative Hastings who represent different parts of the country here. It's a pleasure.

Mr. Speaker, when I was a young State legislator in my second term, actually I was still in my twenties, so you know that was a long, long time ago, someone once came to me with an idea of doing some PR by doing what everyone wants to do, and that is to eliminate useless legislation. I thought this is great. This is going to be a great stunt that I can use to eliminate some useless legislation.

I picked a statute still in the Utah code still on the books which required the State of Utah to fund a summer encampment for every veteran of the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and, since when this was written, it also said the Great War. Since there were no veterans alive, I thought this was an ideal situation to try to pass, and I introduced the bill.

The unfortunate thing is, even though this bill was supposed to do nothing, when it went to the committees of jurisdiction, there was this impending desire on the part of legislators to make the bill actually do something. By the time it went actually through the process, this bill allowed for any veterans group, including Boy Scouts, to be able to use all the National Guard armories in the State of Utah free of charge.

It got to the point where I killed my own bill, because all of a sudden something that wasn't supposed to do anything was now doing something. What it was doing was really, really wrong and not intended.

Now the proponents of this particular bill say the greatest benefit from this bill is simply that it basically does nothing. It doesn't change anything.

However, one of the proponents, when asked by his local newspaper if this would increase the cost and the regulations on these lands said, well, you establish the system first and then we go to step two.

It is what that step two may or may not be that has the greatest amount of concern with this particular bill, which direction will we be going? This bill talks about establishing values for the management of this land, but nowhere does it ever talk about what these values actually are.

We will hear amendments on the floor that we are talking about grazing and hunting and fishing and energy rights, as those are part of the values that should have been described and should have been defined in the very basis of this bill.

But what is significant is what will not be allowed to be discussed on this floor with this particular bill. Specifically, how do you treat individuals with this bill? We had an amendment that deals with the concept of recreation, boating and shooting rights. There would be no net loss of territory. On these types of recreation activities, this is a perfect example to talk about is this part of the value of these lands? It's traditional, and yet it was denied the ability to even present that on the floor.

We talked about the border security. There will be an amendment which will codify the status quo on border security, which is not what we wanted to bring up, because what we were talking about is not the status quo, which is bad, but changing the status quo. Those efforts to try and expand that opportunity on border security were denied discussion on this floor on the rule.

Now, this particular entity, this national land conservation system, came from the fertile mind of Secretary Babbitt. It also did not have a specific definition of what the values were.

There are two types of parks and monuments. Not all parks and monuments are created equal. Parks and monuments, run by the Park Service, talk about values and they are specified as to what those values are. What this bill is now trying to do is codify a new entity that will be talking about values of BLM, parks and national monuments.

Now, when you talk to the Department of the Interior, one of the reasons they say they are somewhat supportive of the concept of this bill was because it would allow them to maintain the multiple use values that make a difference between park service land and BLM land.

Yet when we tried to add an amendment to this bill, both in committee and again in the Rules Committee, to specifically say that one of the values must be multiple use, it was defeated on a straight party-line vote.

Once again, the very essence of the difference between national park monuments and national parks and BLM national parks and national monuments is this concept of multiple use. Yet we are not allowed to even talk about that, which goes to the question, if people eventually take legislation and want it to do something, in what direction will this take us? What will they start wanting to do?

If the core difference between national park land and BLM land is not specified in this legislation, where, actually, will we end up? This bill may, indeed, do something that we do not want to see happening, and this entity, which is nothing more than a $15 million a year boondoggle right now, a redundancy at best, could indeed end up to do something that creates real harm and real destructive elements.

Now there is one other part that should have been part of this discussion and was not allowed by my friends on the Rules Committee.

It was briefly addressed by the gentleman from Florida, but he missed the point, I think, that the gentleman from Alaska was trying to make dealing with personal property.

Supposedly this issue does not deal with personal property because we are only dealing with BLM property. The difference, though, is with all of those entities within the Bureau of Land Management proposal, there are private inholdings. They have been a constant source of problem and contentions.

Unless you specify the significant value of how you are going to treat these inholdings, you make the situation of those private property holders much more difficult. You raise the specter of trying to change access restrictions because, indeed, if you are now going to run this land like the park service land, that will be a problem.

Not only do you create another level of bureaucracy to make those trying to solve their problems much more difficult to get equity, you also create all sorts of different solutions to be there that should have been specified in the legislation.

Protecting the private property holders' inholdings in those properties right now is one of the values that BLM lands should be doing, and it should be specified. It is not in this bill. The fact that we cannot add that to this bill, because of a ruling on a partisan vote by Rules Committee, is devastatingly wrong.

It will take us down a path where who knows what will be the end result. But, it is an end result that will have the high likelihood of harming individual people, individual people who use this land right now, either for recreation purposes, for sporting purposes, for hunting purposes, or for their own land value purposes, will be harmed unless those issues are clearly specified in this language, and the amendments to do that were not made in order.

Several good amendments were made in order, not nearly enough because this bill, as written, is flawed; and this bill, as amended, would still be flawed because it doesn't address those particular issues.

Thank you very much, but please don't try and save myself from anything in the future.

Put all of my amendments on the floor, and then, then you've got a good argument that is there.

Indeed, one of these amendments, specifically the amendment on multiple use, was discussed in committee and was defeated on a partisan voice vote. That issue still is one that is relevant and needs to be part of this bill. If it is not, you have taken the core values between BLM and National Parks and blurred the lines into nonexistence. You can't do that. That has to be one of the values that is here.

The second issue I am talking about is private property rights. As I recall, I did not present that in the committee so but it is still very relevant and should be here, and is one of the problems that we are developing if we continue to go on with this.

I do have to say to the gentleman from Florida, no, I did not have the privilege of going before your committee and testifying last night. Gosh, I wish I could have done that, and I know you guys really wanted me to be there to continue the testimony and elongate the meeting last night.

I thank you if I can answer that question, and as much as I would have loved to, I must say in reality Delta Airlines made the decision for me.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

You know, there was a time when Pete Rose was trying out to make a baseball team, and the scouting report said that ``Rose can't make a double play, he can't throw, he can't hit left-handed and he can't run.'' The first time Fred Astaire tried to make a movie preview, the report coming back on Fred Astaire was, ``he can't act, he's slightly bald, and he can dance a little bit.'' The Boston Red Sox were reviewing a new outfielder, and the scouting report came back saying, ``he's not the Red Sox type.'' The guy they were actually scouting was Willie Mays. Which simply means, in life, sometimes what we see and sometimes what we're told is not necessarily the reality of situations. As groups and individual Members of Congress are starting to see this bill for what the details are is one of the reasons why we see some of those groups peeling off on their support.

Why, some of the issues we raised in committee, it was said they're not really issues, now there are amendments that have been proposed by the majority party to deal with those so-called ``nonissues.''

It is said all we're trying to do here is codify and make permanent an institution that's already in existence, but it is much, much more than that. My freshman year, the goal of the freshman class was to try to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in government. Sometimes I wish we were still doing this because today we have reached the mother lode of waste, fraud and abuse.

This is an entity, the National Landscape Conservation System, which spends money, but it does not hire anyone, it does not fire anyone, it does not write regulations, it does not repeal regulations, it doesn't administer any land, it doesn't manage any land. For the life of me, we have been trying to figure out what this thing does other than spend $50 million a year to encourage and to bring attention to certain particular areas.

We are told that this bill would not change any of that. This bill apparently does nothing to an entity that does nothing. But I'm going to portend to you that the reason this entity has been so successful so far is simply because it's been under the auspices of the Secretary of the Interior. But if, indeed, we codify this and put this into statute, an entity right now which sticks out on a flowchart like a sore thumb that doesn't really do anything will change, it will change significantly, and all of a sudden it will start to do something. And that's where the danger arises. Because when we wrote down the values of this supposed new system, they are extremely vague, which means, first of all, it opens us up to lawsuits right and left. If the amendment that will be offered later does not pass to try and limit the impact of those lawsuits, we are offering this Nation a great deal of harm and potential peril.

We have spent $50 million every year on what can best be called a redundant organization, but it actually should be changed. And the question obviously is, will we be spending more in this society? Now, once again, the proponents say nothing will change, it's not going to cost more, CBO says it's not going to cost more, there will be no regulations. The chairman of the subcommittee that sponsored this bill was asked once again at one point in time, will this create more cost, more regulation, and the answer was simply this: Well, you go in to establish the system, and then you go to step two. What that step two is is the fear that happens to be here. The values that have never been identified in this legislation dealing these parts of land deal with such issues as recreation. Amendments to actually define that were not allowed to be discussed. It deals with border security. Amendments to define that were not allowed to be discussed. We will have another border security amendment which, in my estimation, does anything more than establish the status quo as our policy when the status quo is not sufficient.

We will have discussions over grazing issues and energy issues. We should have had discussions over private end holding issues. All of those should be defined as part of the values that we are talking about here.

The Department of Interior has been very positive about this. They said they support this concept because it allows them to do what has always been done that is the difference between BLM monuments and parks versus national park monuments and parks, and that is, the value of multiple use. But in committee, when we tried to amend the language so that multiple use was a value to be maintained, it was defeated on a party line vote. And when we went to the Rules Committee and tried to make sure that we had a chance to discuss this, to put in multiple use as the value that is significant, it was again denied the ability even to discuss that on the floor. And that is the sum and substance that is different.

Now, we are dealing with a system that impacts people and their lives. It was said by Sir Henry Maine, ``Nobody is at liberty to attack civil property and say at the same time they value civilization because the history of two can never be disentangled.'' And that is where we're at.

Unless this bill is significantly modified, this bill will do harm to people. Unless this bill is changed and this system is moved back, it will do significant harm to people.

We have problems within this entity right now. Rather than solve any of these problems, it provides vague and fluffy language that will make the situation worse. It does not solve the problems, but it does create a permanent statutory entity without any solutions and, indeed, goes the other direction and makes permanent solutions to our problems more difficult actually to accomplish.

This simply is a bill whose time is not now. This is a bill that does not tell us exactly what to expect. It opens up the Federal Government to all sorts of potential lawsuits, and doesn't actually come up with a value that makes BLM land different than Park Service land, which is multiple use. That phrase has to be in that bill if this bill has any chance of having any some rationality of purpose.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Idaho, a member of the committee (Mr. Sali).

Mr. Chairman, it is my pleasure to yield 1 minute to one of the sponsors of this bill, our good friend and colleague from California, where obviously at this particular time both physically and intellectually we are on different sides of the field on this particular issue, but I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Bono Mack).

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Smith).

I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to a member of the committee, the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce).

If the gentleman from Arizona would like to reclaim his time, I realize he has just had one of his speakers come in here, and we can keep the order going, which would be fine with me.

At this time, I am happy to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe).

Mr. Chairman, I offer the Member 1 more minute.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, we have heard several things about this particular piece of legislation. This new entity, the National Land Conservation System, not to be confused with the National League Championship Series, which is a much better concept, this entity was not created by congressional action. It was created as the dream child of a former Secretary of Interior less than 10 years ago.

When asked in a hearing of the Bureau of Land Management if they were incompetent to manage these lands before this new entity was established, the simple answer was no. One would then ask the question, why was there a need 10 years ago for this new entity, because this new entity still does not administer anything, they don't manage anything, they don't regulate anything, nor will they, as has been carefully delineated by the sponsor of this legislation.

The first question still should be asked, what do they really do, other than to provide some vague philosophy of recognition and enhancement and anything else? If we really simply wanted to just create this system statutorily, a one-sentence piece of legislation would do: ``There is established a National Land Conservation System.''

Is there a threat to any lands that are currently under the auspices of the Bureau of Land Management, as has been indicated by certain speakers? The answer is no. The sponsor just admitted there is no threat to that. All we are talking about is some vague new entity, and the issue of concern with this vague new entity is the language now says this new entity has certain values that it is supposed to uphold. These values are vague. Nowhere does it specifically say what these values are.

Is this a threat to private property? No more than the present system. But that is where the issue comes in. We already have threats to the private property within this system, and this piece of legislation, rather than solving that issue, exacerbates that issue altogether.

Is there a border security issue? Yes, presently, and this piece of legislation does not help that issue. It exacerbates the issue, if anything else.

It is the vagueness of the language in this bill that puts into statutory language an entity that really doesn't do anything right now. That is a problem for the future, if at some stage or some point in time Congress wants or even the entity itself wants to make it do something proactively.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, in closing, the gentleman from Florida just gave a wonderful speech, and I think he illustrated some of the problems with this particular bill. The territory to which he was speaking is National Park Service land, not BLM land. This bill only deals with BLM land, and that is precisely the problem that we have with this particular bill.

It is very simple one. We have parks and national monuments, some administered by the Bureau of Land Management, some administered by the National Park Service. They are different. Each one of them has a different value.

In the Park Service, the organic act that created it said what the values for this land would be. It is established in statute and in regulation. The Bureau of Land Management does not have that same value system, because they are different lands for a different purpose, which is why the language in this bill is so troubling, because it is simply a vague statement that simply says they will have values, and it has never, never been defined.

When the Department of Interior told me personally that they were in favor of this, it was because they could maintain the Bureau of Land Management parks and monuments with multiple use as the significant value. It would be protected, they said. Which is why I am so chagrined, that when we attempted to clarify in this legislation by amendment in the committee and once again before the Rules Committee that that is specifically the difference between the Park park and the BLM park, it was rejected.

Now, multiple use is the difference between national parks in the Park Service system and national parks in the BLM system, and that language, that language has to be maintained, because that is indeed the only value that makes a difference.

These lands are not threatened if the BLM has them. They are not threatened if we don't make this system, which is redundant at best and expensive at best, codified. But we do do something dangerous if we pass this legislation and now give a vague term of values on to a system that is defined nowhere. It opens us up to litigation problems, it causes problems in administration, and it does change the system. That is why there is so much danger, unless you are willing to do what our side has been saying all along, which is define what those vague terms actually mean.

That, Mr. Chairman, is why we oppose this piece of legislation. It opens up a door that has no definition as to what room we actually enter, and that is wrong. It is simply wrong.

The problem with that is it is going to hurt people, people who use this BLM land now to recreate, people who use it to graze, people who use it for their economy, people who have private property in-holdings in this area. They are put at risk because our language is simply too vague to allow them to understand what our intent is. That is why this bill has to be defeated.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

I first ask uanimous consent to include an article from the Tucson Weekly that deals with the areas of this issue.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate Mr. Grijalva actually taking the lead on this issue.

In fact, Republicans had two amendments that were introduced to the Rules Committee that dealt with this same specific issue. Again, in a spirit of bipartisanship, the two Republicans ones were not put in place but the Democrat one was, and at least we are addressing this particular issue.

I do happen to have some objection to this one, because to me, what this amendment does, is put into statute or to put into language the status quo. Nothing in this act shall impede what we are already doing. I think this issue should be more forward thinking. We need to change what is happening in the status quo in this area that is simply now known as the trail of amnesty, where so much illegal narcotics work, illegal human trafficking and illegal gang activity has taken place. The article to which I referred actually specifies what that is there.

That is why the amendments that were not made in order were superior to the one that is made in order here, and it should be recognized.

Mr. Chairman, at this time I would like to yield to the gentleman from New Mexico 2 minutes of my time for discussion of this amendment.

Do I have remaining time still, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. Chairman, let me make this clear. I have no intention of opposing or voting against the language from the gentleman from Arizona.

I am appreciative that the gentleman from Arizona and the majority party has finally taken the initiative of bringing issues up here.

My objection is that the language that was proposed to the Rules Committee in other amendments dealing with this issue was far broader and would have been better in the future. When we talk about language right now that nothing of us actually impede, we were talking in other pieces of legislation about not hindering border security, not hindering illegal immigration for Homeland Security or other law enforcement agencies.

The amendments we tried to propose would have been far broader, far more inclusive and would have dealt with issues into future as opposed to this.

But having said that, this is at least a good step in the right direction.

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

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment made in order under the rule.

Mr. Chairman, again, as I was speaking earlier about the bill, one of the problems is simply the concept of some vague elements of what ``values'' may or may not be, especially as it applies to Park Service and Bureau of Land Management lands.

The language in question that I ask to be removed from this bill is language that comes specifically from the Organic Act that created the National Park System as well as the Redwood amendments. Those two concepts caused the National Park Service to administer park lands to the same standard.

In the absence of any other definition of what Bureau of Land Management land should be in this system, it is essential that we not have to revert back to what the National Park Service uses as its values standard, and that's the fear that comes in here.

Indeed, in the BLM land that has been put into this system, you have a multitude of different land, from Bureau of Land Management monuments to Bureau of Land Management parks, to wilderness areas, to wilderness study areas. If, indeed, the same language that has forced the Park Service to manage in the same administrative pattern is now imposed on the Bureau of Land Management, it would do irreparable harm to different lands that are specifically there so that they can use multiple use.

Once again, we come back to that issue. BLM lands are supposed to be administered differently. That's why it's BLM lands in the first place. This language opens up the possibility of using the same kind of litigation techniques that force the Park Service to use all of their lands in the exact same manner onto the National Park Service.

If you change it to simply do what we said earlier, establish a National Landscape Conservation System, without the other verbiage, you eliminate that potential problem.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, the language that is put in here is part of the BLM mandate. They are to conserve, protect, restore cultural, ecological and scientific values for the benefit of current and future generations.

The issue at hand, though, is that this is not the only part of the BLM's management authority and management purpose. By refusing to expand this to the other areas to which BLM is supposed to do, the work they are supposed to do on this land, we are in danger of actually going the other way and trying to impose that this is the only way, especially when this language has been used in the Park Service to mandate specific management practices and hurt that process.

If you go on with this particular section, when you go to (b), it lists the kind of areas designated in this new land system. Each one was established with a certain land management plan. They are there. But the fact that we don't put them in here opens up the possibility of litigation to problems that are there.

It is important so we know that the Department of the Interior said they don't mind creating this system by statute, but they were opposed to this language. They said this language is harmful to their mission statement.

I wish to actually try and convince every Member on the floor, all three of us here, that this is indeed not what the department needs. It is not what the bureau needs. It is not the kind of language that you want to put in statute if you want to make sure what we are doing is specifically defined. This opens up more problems than we would otherwise have.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I have another amendment made in order under the rule.

Mr. Chairman, I can be painfully brief on this amendment.

In two places in this bill you have the same problem we have been talking over and over about, about the vague notion of simply ``values.''

The last amendment took the very superfluous language in the preamble, which has the potential of creating problems, as it has in other sections. But also in section 3(c)(2), we once again find this vague, nefarious language.

It says that the Secretary shall manage the system in a manner that protects the values for which the components of this system were designated.

Once again, by simply saying ``values'' without any kind of definition, nor is there any regulatory definition, you have simply opened this up to a vague, contentious opportunity. If you are going to establish this system and give them something to do, for heaven's sake, tell them what they are going to do and make it simple and make it succinct.

That is why this section should be eliminated. Until we are ready to define these values, you don't put this in statute.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman from Arizona's comments. His initial sentence was that I am attempting to strike the very purpose of this act. I don't really think that is accurate because there is no purpose. If there was a purpose, it would have been written down as to what the purpose is. This simply says there will be values; and there is no definition of what those values are.

I would remind all of my colleagues in this room, this is the language that the department said they do not want.

This is the language BLM says does harm to them. This is the language they said was too vague and should be fixed, and it has not been fixed. That is why it should be eliminated.

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

Mr. Chairman, I have another amendment made in order under the rule.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment deals with one of the other issues that we are talking about as far as potential development of energy on these lands that are currently under the control of the Bureau of Land Management and may or may not actually change with the formalizing of this new entity.

With skyrocketing energy prices, the last thing that Congress should do is lock up more lands that could provide a solution.

The NLCS lands include potentially billions of barrels of oil, vast quantities of natural gas and coal, and unlimited potential for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.

The energy development on NLCS lands is vital to the economies of western States, and to the Nation. We should be looking at ways to keep the $400 billion that we spend to buy energy overseas here at home. We are only just beginning to understand what potential there is on NLCS lands for renewable energy sources. This amendment would ensure that those options remain open.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I am assured and comforted.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I wish to claim the time in opposition although, as some others have said here, I may not necessarily be in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, to be honest, I will be voting in favor of

this particular amendment. I think this is actually a very good amendment. This is the issue we presented in committee that was rejected in committee. I am glad that someone somewhere, between the path of this bill from committee to here on the floor, found religion and is actually looking forward to this particular issue. It's a good one, even though we were told in committee it was just a shadow that we were fighting on the wall.

I would recognize also that there were three amendments that were introduced that did the exact same thing that have now been incorporated in this particular amendment. Somebody once told me, well, when you steal you should steal from the best. I think this is stolen from the best simply because the ones that were not recommended were my amendments.

Therefore, since we're saying the same thing, in the spirit of bipartisanship, what else can I say, other than this is the right thing to do, and I actually personally support this particular amendment. It is the right thing to do. Regardless of who gets credit for it, it is the right thing to do.

I yield back the balance of my time.

The amendment offered by Mr. Pearce is critical to protecting ranchers who produce our food from the negative consequences of this bill. Without the Pearce language, ranchers would be left to the whims of future Secretaries of Interior that will diminish ranching opportunities.

Already, grazing rights are under assault on multiple fronts. There is a simple element out there that loathes grazing on public land. And our food supply is, indeed, worthy of protection and worthy of the use of our public land.

Despite opposition to this amendment in committee, I hope the other side will now recognize that granting these small protections in the legislation is, indeed, our duty. We cannot abandon our responsibility to legislate by leaving to bureaucrats the opportunity to isolate bankrupt ranchers dependent upon grazing.

We thank Mr. Pearce for his foresight and determination to protect grazing rights now and in the future, and urge support of his amendment.

Madam Speaker, when I was first elected to Congress, my incoming class decided to concentrate on the concept of exposing waste, fraud and abuse in national government. I wish I was still doing that because with all due respect, I have struck the mother lode of waste, fraud and abuse.

Tomorrow we will debate on this floor under a rule a perfect example of abusing taxpayers, fraud on taxpayers, and wasting of taxpayers' money.

Less than 10 years ago, Secretary Babbitt established an organization called the National Land Conservation System. He said it was his idea, his hope, to move from what he called the ``Bureau of Livestock and Mining,'' which was actually his legal responsibility, to what he wanted to be, a bureau of landscapes and monuments. He wanted this organization to emphasize and recognize the crown jewels of the Bureau of Land Management.

One has to ask: How does one actually recognize and emphasize the crown jewels of the Bureau of Land Management?

In hearings, we asked the bureau spokesman if before this entity was established, was the Bureau of Land Management incompetent in handling these goals, or of emphasizing and recognizing these lands. And the answer was, obviously, no.

So the question once again is: Why do we want tomorrow to codify and make permanent this entity which is at best redundant and is at worst simply a waste of taxpayers' money, because you see, this new entity doesn't appoint anyone. It doesn't fire anybody. It doesn't write or remove regulations. It doesn't administer or regulate. It doesn't do anything except cost the taxpayer $50 million a year to run it.

The best argument that the proponents of this bill will have is that it doesn't change anything. In essence, it does nothing to an entity that does nothing; so why do it.

Another of the great arguments is it won't cost us a dime, except when the sponsor was asked in his State newspaper whether this new system would have more funds and regulations, his response was, ``Well, you've got to establish the system, and then you go to step two.''

In what actually is being purported as something that doesn't really change anything, my fear is this bill might actually do something.

The Department of Interior tentatively supports this proposal because it says it helps them to maintain the basic difference between a national park and a national monument on BLM land as opposed to a monument or park on National Park Service land. And the key element in the difference between the two is the concept in the BLM of multiple use on the public lands.

And yet when our side tried to introduce an amendment in the committee to make sure that multiple use was one of the key values of this new system, it was defeated on a party-line vote. And when we went to the Rules Committee to try to bring this issue to the floor, it was once again defeated on a party-line vote.

The only difference between BLM and National Park Service is this concept of multiple use, and yet this is one issue that is specifically eliminated from the bill that will be in discussion tomorrow. This bill is supposed to take the status quo and make it permanent; and yet all of the problems inherent in the status quo are not solved by this particular bill. We have great issue with private in holdings on these lands, none of which is addressed.

We tried to make sure that those people who like to recreate on these lands, that no boating, no shooting areas would be diminished if this went into effect, and once again that issue was rejected on a party- line vote and not even allowed to be discussed on the House floor.

We talked about potential border security, and an amendment will be granted tomorrow that says we will do nothing to change what we are doing on border security on these lands which are part of our border, and that is, indeed, one of the problems because it's not the status quo we want. It is change that needs to be done.

This area is sometimes called sarcastically the Trail of Amnesty, where it's estimated that every year a quarter of a million people will go through, those who are most of the worst in the human traffickers, the drug dealers and some of our gang members.

There is one ranch that is near this area; already in a short period of time has been burglarized 16 times even though he has iron bars on the window, a security system. When he's on horseback riding his ranch he finds needles, baby clothes, two skulls, four dead bodies. No Country for Old Men looks like a soap opera compared to this territory.

It is not the status quo we need to do. It is change that is essential. And once again, nothing like this happens. When we write fuzzy and vague language we invite lawsuits against the Federal Government.

We'll have an amendment tomorrow to try to eliminate or at least limit the kinds of potential lawsuits we have. We will see what happens because, once again, that was rejected in the committee.

This national land conservation system should not be codified and made permanent; if anything, it should be eliminated as a $50 million example of waste, fraud and abuse. The dream of Secretary Babbitt is really an expensive millstone around the neck of all taxpayers in this country.