H 5358 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—HOUSE May 18, 1995

few years and then come back to college later.’’ But I think that is ignoring two realities. One is that increasingly the cost of higher education is

such that it is not that easy to take

time off, and make up the money, and

then go back to school; and, secondly,

that we are in a world where we are

competing with other countries, and, if

we have to set up the higher education

system where many of our students

have to defer going to college for a

number of years before they can go because they have to work on the private

sphere in order to pay for it, well, we

are losing people, a lot of people, who

would otherwise receive a higher education and be a productive member of

the work force in the career that they

have chosen and perhaps that they will

be best at.

I also think it ignores the fact that

in the last 29 or 30 years many of us

were able to take advantage, including

myself, of these student loan programs

and grants programs, and now we are

seeing those of future generations will

not be able to take advantage of them.

I think it is a mistake on our part to

cut back on funding for higher education. You have to think about educating our students and educating our

fellow Americans. If we do not provide

that commitment that has been traditionally provided for the last generation or two to pay and provide Federal

help for higher education the way we

have, then it really says a lot about

the value of education in our society.

It says we do not value it very much.

So, even though both measures, both

the budget and the rescission bill

passed today; I did vote against both of

them in part because of the impact on

Medicare and Medicaid on senior citizens, but also in a major part because

of the effect on higher education, and

the student loans, and the student

grants that so many of our students increasingly depend upon.

M

House, the gentleman from Georgia

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs.

YRICK). Under a previous order of the

f[Mr. NORWOOD] is recognized for 5 minutes.

[Mr. NORWOOD addressed the House.

His remarks will appear hereafter in

the Extensions of Remarks.]

THE REINCARNATION OF TV

fMARTI

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a

previous order of the House, the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. SKAGGS] is

recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. SKAGGS. Madam Speaker, I am

certainly not a fan of the Republican

budget resolution. But there was one

item in it that made a whole lot of

sense—the idea of terminating TV

Marti. It is long past time we stopped

spending $12 million a year to beam to

Cuba in the middle of the night TV programs that nobody sees.

I was pleased when Chairman KASICH

took on the powerful Cuban-American

lobby and proposed eliminating their

pet project. And on this point, it sure

looked like the committee intended to

go along with that proposal.

At the markup on May 10th, the

Budget Committee had before it both

budget figures and a document with

policy assumptions on how to meet

those budget goals. The policy document listed a decision to ‘‘terminate

broadcasting to Cuba’’ as one of the

cuts needed to achieve the budget-cutting goals for the international assistance portion of the budget.

The draft committee report circulated on May 12, after the committee

passed the budget resolution, stated:

Overseas broadcasting played an important

role during the cold war, but has become and

expensive anachronism with the advent of

global satellite television broadcasting.

Likewise, the technology used by Voice of

America and WorldNet limits their potential

audiences and makes those systems inefficient and expensive. TV Marti has achieved

little success broadcasting to Cuba.

Any reasonable person would interpret all this to mean that the Committee supported termination. Many observers of the budget process reached

this conclusion. The Federal Page of

the Washington Post on May 11 listed

‘‘Terminate Voice of America and

Radio Marti broadcasts to Cuba’’ as

one of the items in its ‘‘‘House Republicans’ Blueprint to Balance the Budget.’’ (p.A21) The Miami Herald in a May

14 page one story called ‘‘Cuban exiles

losing clout in D.C.’’ reported, ‘‘To help

balance the U.S. budget by 2002, the

House budget committee called for

eliminating funding for (Radio and TV

Marti) next fiscal year.’’ (p.1.)

Then a most amazing thing happened. The final version of the committee report that was filed on May 15 reversed the Committee’s apparent policy decision to terminate TV Marti.

The sentence ‘‘TV Marti has achieved

little success broadcasting to Cuba’’

was deleted. All the rest of the paragraph declaring overseas broadcasting

‘‘an expensive anachronism’’ remained

intact. But where first appeared the admission that TV Marti was a flop,

there now magically appeared the

wholly contradictory statement that

‘‘Funding, however, is available for

Radio and TV Marti.’’

This is an interesting situation. The

report now recommends getting rid of

all USIA broadcasting programs—VOA,

Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe—but

makes a specific exception for TV and

Radio Marti.

What happened over the weekend

that resulted in this complete reversal?

Who pressured Chairman KASICH to

turn around on this and rewrite the report language? And what else in this

budget has been changed after the committee vote? This is yet another demonstration of how difficult it is to kill

a program, even when the program

does not work.

I want to give credit to Chairman

KASICH for his effort to go beyond generalities, to details, in his budget resolution. This experience with TV Marti

gives new meaning to that old saw,

that the devil is in the details. It also,

I am afraid, undermines the credibility

of the entire exercise.

THE INTRODUCTION OF THE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE IMfPROVEMENT ACT OF 1995

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a

previous order of the House, the gentleman from Alaska [Mr. YOUNG] is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Madam Speaker, I

am very pleased to introduce today, along with

a number of our colleagues, the National Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act of 1995.

This legislation, which is the product of

many months of careful deliberation, would be

the first comprehensive refuge reform bill

since the enactment of the National Wildlife

Refuge System Administration Act of 1966.

While that landmark statute, which was authored by the distinguished gentleman from

Michigan, JOHN DINGELL, nearly 30 years ago

has served our Nation well, it is time that we

update that law and, by so doing, improve the

management of our Nation’s wildlife refuge

system.

At present, the system is comprised of 504

refuges, which are located in all 50 States and

the 5 U.S. Territories, totaling about 91.7 million acres. These units range in size from the

smallest, the 1-acre Mille Lacs National Wildlife Refuge in Minnesota, to the largest, the

19.3-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In the last decade, 81 refuges and approximately 3.6 million acres have been added

to the system.

While millions of Americans engage in various recreational activities each year on public

lands within the system, there have been several recent developments that have caused

great concern.

For instance, in October of 1993, the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service settled a lawsuit filed

by the National Audubon Society by agreeing

to undertake a comprehensive system-wide

‘‘compatibility’’ study, to expeditiously terminate certain secondary uses, and to redirect

their funds away from recreational and wildlifedependent activities.

In addition, the Clinton administration has

recommended that refuge funding be sharply

reduced by deferring maintenance projects

and upkeep of public use facilities, including

trails, observation towers, and information kiosks. This recommendation is worrisome because without proper maintenance, the service

may prohibit certain uses on our refuge lands.

While it is appropriate to periodically review

the compatibility of certain activities, there is

no statutory list of purposes for the national

wildlife refuge system and no statutory definition of what constitutes a compatible use of a

refuge. Without this guidance, individual wildlife managers have broad discretion to prevent

or disallow recreational activities which do not

materially affect the purposes of the refuge or

the refuge system.

In fact, earlier this week my committee held

a hearing on a bill to transfer the management

of the Tishomingo National Wildlife Refuge to

the State of Oklahoma. The overriding reason

for H.R. 1112 was a decision by the local refuge manager to prohibit boating, camping,

fishing, and picnicking in portions of the