September 20, 2012 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S6499 

and National Wildlife Refuge System 

(NWRS). NPS regulations to implement the 

concealed carry provisions of PL 111–24 became effective on February 10, 2010 and included all firearms legal in the jurisdiction 

in which the park was located. Park Service 

regulations continue to exclude bow and arrows in the National Parks. In some locations this effectively limits bowhunter access to hunt other adjacent BLM, USFS or 

private lands that are otherwise open to 

hunting and can now be legally accessed 

through NPS or NWRS lands by firearms 

hunters. 

36 CFR 2.4 d 4 allows the possibly of permitting for such access through NPS lands 

where it is otherwise impossible or impractical to make other access except through 

NPS lands. In 2009 one such request for permitting for Dinosaur National Monument 

was denied by the Park Superintendent, effectively denying practical bowhunter access 

to some BLM and state school lands. Firearms hunters may now access these lands 

across NPS lands without any requirement 

for permitting. 

Similar access issues occur in several of 

Colorado’s game management units bounding on Dinosaur National Monument. These 

situations likely occur at many National 

Parks and National Monuments both in Colorado and other states. Attempts to rectify 

this situation through an administrative 

rule making process in the Department of 

the Interior have been denied. 

The undersigned sportsmen, representing 

several major sportsmen’s groups and retailers in Colorado request that, barring any 

change in the DOI stance, legislative action 

be taken to give bowhunters with archery 

equipment equal rights in crossing NPS and 

NWRS as that enjoyed by those carrying 

firearms. 

Sincerely, 

Tim Mauck & Gaspar Perricone, Cofounders, Bull Moose Sportsmen’s Alliance; Ivan James, Vice-Chairman for 

Legislation, Colorado Bowhunters Association; Robert Ong, President, 

Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep Society; John Smeltzer, President, Colorado Wildlife Federation; Dean Derby, 

President, Colorado Traditional Archery Society; Bob Hewson, Executive Director, Colorado Youth Outdoors; Robert Hix, Colorado Regional Director, 

Pheasants Forever, Inc.; Joel Webster, 

Director—Center for Western Lands, 

Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership; John & Kathy Tidwell, Owners, Bear Creek Archery Inc; Michael 

Lewellen, President, Colorado National 

Wild Turkey Federation; John Gale & 

David Lien, Co-Chairs, Colorado Back 

Country Hunters and Anglers. 

Mr. BENNET. The overall 

sporstmen’s package from Senator 

TESTER is also widely supported, ranging from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership to the Boone and 

Crocket Club to the National Rifle Association. The Tester bill represent a 

bipartisan package of commonsense 

bills that will benefit our Nation’s 

sports men and women. I want to 

thank Senator TESTER for his leadership on behalf of the West and urge a 

‘‘yes’’ vote. 

I will simply close by saying it is my 

fervent hope that once this election is 

over, some 45 days from now, we will 

come back to this Chamber, Republicans and Democrats together, and 

work to avoid surfing over this fiscal 

cliff that will be so damaging to this 

economy. 

People at home know something that 

people here have not yet figured out, 

which is even if you believe you are always right on your side or had a monopoly of wisdom on your side—which I 

do not, but some people seem to—even 

if you believed it, we cannot accomplish this meaningful deficit reduction 

without doing it in a bipartisan way. It 

is impossible to do it without doing it 

in a bipartisan way. 

People at home actually want to see 

it bipartisan, frankly, because they do 

not believe in either party’s go-it-alone 

strategy when it comes to the debt and 

deficit. So my hope is this election will 

clear the air, we will get back to work, 

and that before January we will have 

something convincing to say to the 

American public on this subject. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado. 

f 

EMERGENCY WATERSHED 

PROTECTION PROGRAM 

Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I see 

no colleagues have come to the floor, 

so I want to speak on one additional 

topic. I will be brief, because I understand we likely won’t have an opportunity to address this issue before we 

leave town. 

My colleague Senator MARK UDALL

and I have been working to provide resources for the USDA’s Emergency Watershed Protection Program, also 

known as EWP. The reason we have 

been doing this is that EWP resources 

help communities recover from 

wildfires, specifically watersheds that, 

after being burned, are unstable and 

risk harm to critical drinking water infrastructure and sometimes jeopardize 

human lives. 

As many in this Chamber know, we 

had a number of devastating wildfires 

in Colorado this summer. In the communities of Fort Collins and Colorado 

Springs in particular, they are having 

trouble protecting their vital drinking 

water infrastructure as their watersheds recover. Despite a letter Senator 

UDALL and I authored to the appropriators, the House version of the continuing resolution did not contain this 

critical funding. That means the Senate won’t be able to vote to help these 

communities recover. And while we are 

disappointed, we are going to continue 

to fight for these resources. 

With that, Madam President, I yield 

the floor, and I suggest the absence of 

a quorum. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The 

clerk will call the roll. 

The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. 

Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I 

ask unanimous consent that the order 

for the quorum call be rescinded. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without 

objection, it is so ordered. 

f 

FARM BILL 

Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I see 

we have been joined by the Chair of the 

Agriculture Committee, Senator STABENOW. She has just arrived, but I 

wanted to report to her that before she 

arrived I was talking about the need to 

pass a farm bill and the fact that, over 

the break, I had traveled 2,500 miles 

around the State of Colorado—in rural 

parts of our State on the west slope 

and on the eastern plains—and nobody 

wanted to talk about anything except 

why we can’t get a farm bill passed. It 

makes no sense to them. They know it 

was completely bipartisan here in the 

Senate, and they know it is the only 

bipartisan piece of legislation with deficit reduction any committee of either 

Chamber has been able to accomplish. 

In the case of Colorado farmers and 

ranchers, we are going through the 

worst drought we have had in a generation, and they want to know why 

Washington, DC, has a completely different set of priorities than they have. 

There is still time for the House to 

pass this bill. This is the first time in 

modern history a House Ag Committee 

has passed out a bill—in this case a bipartisan bill, though not as good, I 

don’t think, as ours, but a step forward—that hasn’t come to the floor for 

a vote. They cannot even get a vote. 

So while the Senator is here, I wanted to thank her, and I would also say to 

the ranking member of the committee 

if he were here, for their extraordinary 

bipartisan effort over the last 2 years 

that resulted in a very fine bill. I also 

think their work sets a model for the 

way we should be approaching our 

work in this Chamber. 

I thank the Chair, and I yield the 

floor. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan. 

Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, 

first, I did come to the floor to talk 

about the urgency of the farm bill, but 

I also want to thank my friend and colleague from Colorado, who chairs our 

conservation subcommittee, for the 

tremendous piece of work on the conservation title in the farm bill. I thank 

him for all of that effort and also say 

to him I understand what is happening 

in Colorado. As he and I know, we 

passed disaster assistance—a permanent livestock disaster assistance program—in our farm bill, along with help 

for food growers in Michigan and other 

places. 

We are totally committed in the 

short run to helping those who have 

the riskiest business in the world, 

which is farming and ranching in this 

country, but we also know what they 

want is the economic certainty of a 5- 

year farm bill. So I thank my friend for 

all of his efforts and in coming to the 

floor. 

I want to say, for the record, there 

are 10 days until September 30—10 days 

until the farm bill expires and 16 million people in this country who rely on 

agriculture for their jobs or their livelihood are put in limbo. That is the reality of where we are. 

We worked so hard, on a bipartisan 

basis in the Senate, to pass a farm bill, 


tjames on DSK7SPTVN1PROD with SENATE
S6500 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE September 20, 2012 

and we did that as quickly as we could 

so the House would have time to act 

and we could actually get things done 

in the summer before we got involved 

in what would be happening in the fall, 

with all of the critically important 

end-of-the-year issues that have to be 

addressed. So we passed a bill in June, 

as we all know, on a bipartisan basis. It 

took a lot of work. 

I continually thank everyone who 

was willing to hang in there with us to 

get this done—my ranking member, 

Senator ROBERTS, and our two leaders 

for giving us the time to do this. We 

worked hard and we got it done and we 

sent it to the House. Then the House 

committee went to work and they 

passed out a bipartisan bill. Never before, that I can remember—and I have 

been around here a while; this is my 

fourth farm bill—have we seen a situation where a bipartisan bill came out of 

committee and yet the House wouldn’t 

take it up. They wouldn’t take it up in 

July, the beginning of August, and 

wouldn’t agree to allow us to negotiate 

differences over the August break to 

come up with a way to get this done by 

the end of this month. 

So here we are. The House is leaving 

today. The Senate is leaving either 

today or tomorrow or the next day, and 

there are 10 days left on the clock to 

provide economic certainty for 16 million men and women whose livelihoods 

come from agriculture. Many of these 

men and women watched as their crops 

withered under the hot summer Sun 

this year, as days and weeks went by 

without a drop of rain in the worst 

drought in 50 years. Yet House Republicans are planning to leave without 

finishing their work on our farm bill. 

That is absolutely stunning to me. 

The work we did in the Senate passed 

on a strong bipartisan vote. As I said 

before, the committee in the House put 

forward their bill on a strong bipartisan vote. If nothing happens, in 10 

days we begin to see a transition over 

the next few months to what is called 

permanent law, which goes back to the 

1940s. 

We had over 90 different groups that 

came in last week. We had hundreds of 

farmers from around the country— 

farmers who got off their tractors, 

took their time at their own expense to 

fly in and say: Hey, wait a minute, 

When there is a job to do, you have to 

get it done. When the crops are ready 

to harvest, you don’t wait a month. 

You have to do what you have to do 

when it needs to be done. 

That is exactly where we are right 

now. They just need to do it. I am confident the chairman and the ranking 

member, working in a bipartisan way, 

could do this in 1 day. I really believe 

they could do this in 1 day. It is not as 

if there is a lot of other substantive 

work going on in the House. So 1 day. 

If they decided today: Okay, we are 

going to get this done before we leave, 

they would create a situation so our 

farmers, who are planning for next 

year, who have to go in and sit down 

with their banker, will know how to 

plan and what tools they have available. These are people who have been 

hit hard, have been devastated by disasters. 

In every single one of the counties in 

Michigan, 83 out of 83 counties, there 

has been a disaster declaration. They 

are looking at us and saying: Thank 

you for what the Senate did, but why 

won’t the House act? And, frankly, I 

don’t know why the House won’t act. 

But they should, because they are leaving an awful lot of people hanging. 

We know the consequences of not 

acting are that we begin to unravel a 

set of policies that need to be in place 

for production agriculture, for conservation, for local food systems, for 

energy, and for nutrition. We know 

also if we step up and do what we 

worked so hard to do in the Senate we 

will get the added plus of $23 billion in 

deficit reduction. The only thing that 

has passed the Senate that has bipartisan deficit reduction is our farm bill. 

We know we need to make reforms. 

That is why we eliminated four different subsidies, moved to a risk-based, 

market-based system, based on crop insurance providing tools for farmers to 

make sure they can make their own 

planning decisions, not plant for government programs, but make their own 

planning decisions and then have tools 

to support them and to manage the 

risks that come. We certainly know 

now, because we have seen this year, 

what kind of devastating risks may 

come for our farmers and ranchers 

across the country. 

I have gone through so many times 

what is in our farm bill that I will not 

do that now, except to say we have 

more reform—in fact, the Wall Street 

Journal said there is more reform in 

this farm bill than any in decades. We 

are proud of that. We have more in deficit reduction than in anything else we 

have passed. We have policies for the 

future. We have listened to farmers 

who said crop insurance is the most 

important thing for them in being able 

to manage their risk. We have focused 

on local food systems, providing 

schools with the ability to purchase locally and support their local farmers. 

There are energy opportunities for the 

future and bio-based manufacturing, 

where we truly can make things and 

grow things and grow the economy and 

grow the middle class of this country. 

There is rural development, where millions of Americans live—for small 

towns, such as Clare, where I grew up— 

with the ability to fund infrastructure—water, sewer, Internet—and have 

a business loan financed, and all those 

things that go into rural development. 

We provide for telemedicine to create a 

quality of life and health for seniors 

and families. 

All those things are involved in what 

we call the farm bill. All of those 

things were passed in the Senate. We 

did what I believe the American public 

wants us to do, and I certainly know 

people in Michigan want us to do—to 

make tough decisions, to evaluate 

what works and what doesn’t work and 

to cut out the duplication. We eliminated over 100 different programs and 

authorizations and we streamlined. 

That is what folks want us to do, and 

we did it. Now it is time for the House 

to do their job. 

The reality is, even though there are 

10 days until the end of the month, the 

Speaker said they are going home with 

no action. So the real number is zero. 

We are out of time for farmers and 

ranchers and their families, and, frankly, for all of us. If we are fortunate 

enough to have lunch or breakfast 

today, we ought to care about the farm 

bill and the people who provide us with 

the safest, most affordable, and abundant food in the world. That is what we 

do in this bill. We are proud of it. And 

the House of Representatives should be 

ashamed of themselves for leaving 

town without supporting rural America. 

Madam President, I yield the floor, 

and I suggest the absence of a quorum. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The 

clerk will call the roll. 

The assistant bill clerk proceeded to 

call the roll. 

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, I ask 

unanimous consent that the order for 

the quorum call be rescinded. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without 

objection, it is so ordered. 

f 

MAKING CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2013— 

MOTION TO PROCEED 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under 

the previous order, all postcloture time 

has expired. The question occurs on 

agreeing to the motion to proceed to 

H.J. Res. 117. 

Mr. LEVIN. I ask for the yeas and 

nays. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a 

sufficient second? 

There is a sufficient second. 

The clerk will call the roll. 

The bill clerk called the roll. 

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are 

necessarily absent: the Senator from 

Oklahoma (Mr. INHOFE) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. KIRK). 

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. 

CARDIN). Are there any other Senators 

in the Chamber desiring to vote? 

The result was announced—yeas 67, 

nays 31, as follows: 

[Rollcall Vote No. 195 Leg.] 

YEAS—67 

Akaka 

Alexander 

Baucus 

Begich 

Bennet 

Bingaman 

Blumenthal 

Blunt 

Boxer 

Brown (MA) 

Brown (OH) 

Cantwell 

Cardin 

Carper 

Casey 

Coats 

Cochran 

Conrad 

Coons 

Durbin 

Feinstein 

Franken 

Gillibrand 

Hagan 

Harkin 

Heller 

Hoeven 

Hutchison 

Inouye 

Johanns 

Johnson (SD) 

Kerry 

Klobuchar 

Kohl 

Kyl 

Landrieu 

Lautenberg 

Leahy 

Levin 

Lieberman 

Lugar 

McCaskill 

McConnell 

Menendez 

Merkley 

Mikulski 

Murkowski 

Murray 


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