Date: 2000-10-03
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker..I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker. I rise in opposition to this rule. I do so not because this is a bad bill. I do so not because this bill has failed to dramatically increase the monies for the various environmental accounts. In many ways. this is the most environmentally friendly bill we have had out of this subcommittee in a number of years. I do so because I have strongly believed there was another way to redeem the promise that was made to the American people about the use of offshore oil royalties. I believed that the method by which that should have been done was in CARA. H.R. 701. It has been said several times that this appropriations bill is not CARA. Nobody is more aware of that than the gentleman from Alaska and myself. This approach is not CARA. This was devised within the Committee on Appropriations in responding to CARA and the grass roots support that was lobbying on behalf of CARA. They chose to do it in a Washington fashion. CARA was the outgrowth of grass roots organizations. over 5.000 organizations from across the country. that looked at what the Congress had done over the last 20 years and decided there had to be another way. There had to be certainty for communities to be able to plan for the protection of their environmental assets. whether that was open space or whether that was trails or whether that was trying to solve endangered species problems. There clearly had to be a way to help those States that have suffered the impacts of offshore oil. Also. there had to be a commitment established so we could go out and try to secure private financing. fundraising from foundations. from corporations. and from individuals over the long term to help pay for land acquisitions. That is why the certainty of funding was a key feature of CARA occurs. so it is not a startagain. stopagain operation. We believed that was important. and 315 Members of this House believed that was important. the biggest bipartisan vote I think we have had on any controversial legislation in this Congress. We sent it to the Senate. Unfortunately. there it started to stall out. We ask our colleagues to oppose this rule so we can have a chance to pass CARA and not undermine it with the actions of the Committee on Appropriations. We hoped that the same kind of bipartisan support could be resurrected in the Senate to see this bill through to the desk of the President. who has promised to sign it. I have to admit that I am a little disappointed in the signals from the Senate leadership about the improbability of scheduling the CARA legislation this year. But I believe the underlying proposition of CARA is the correct way for the Congress to deal with these issues. because local governments and park agencies and fish and wildlife agencies are struggling every day where the people and the species and the open space and the lands and the assets meet on a daily basis. What they need is a diversity of funding. and a certainty of funding. and they need a level of funding that will let them attack those problems in a manner that they understand best. I believe that that is what the CARA legislation did. It is unfortunate. that we will not be able to complete acton on that legislation in the Congress if the current indications from the Senate continue to hold true. because we believe that legislation. supported by a bipartisan coalition would have truly redeemed the promise that this Congress made to the American people about taking the monies from exploitation of nonrenewable resources and putting them into a permanent fund to protect renewable resources. While it is very clear to anybody who reads this legislation that this is clearly the most dramatic increase in the environmental accounts that we have seen in 25 years. I would have hoped that we would have been able to include the CARA program that would have guaranteed to local communities the kind of certainty they need to support private and public partnerships at the local level for the protection of these assets. It is for that reason that I will ask Members to vote against this rule.