Date: 1996-01-03
Speaker: GENE GREEN (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. I thank my colleague from New Jersey for. one. requesting this hour. but also getting a lot of diverse Members that are Democrats. But we are diverse. We are from all parts of the country: Florida. New York. Oregon. Texas and New Jersey. and tonight we are talking about the Department of the Interior concerns and the shutdown and also the EPA. We share and we will talk about the lack of funding for the Medicare suppliers. My own VA hospital in Houston. they are running out of supplies tomorrow just like they are in Oregon. We are not serving the veterans by keeping the Government closed. What I think is ironic. the extremists. they think they are hurting Democrats or bureaucrats. They are hurting a lot of people. The people who are veterans who are not getting those services and the senior citizens who want to apply for Social Security and cannot apply for it. I had a townhall meeting in Houston and I had a senior citizen with an appeal on his Social Security check. He thinks they misfigured. The appeal here in Maryland is shut down. We do not know when he is going to get some redress or at least an answer on it. Tonight I want to talk a little bit about the Department of Interior and what is happening all over the country. because a few years ago I had the opportunity. in fact I took my kids and we went to Yellowstone in Wyoming and we could not go into Yellowstone in 1985 or 1986 because of the fires. They closed the park. That was a natural disaster. Mr. Speaker. what we are experiencing now with our National Parks and with our veterans and health care is an unnatural disaster. an unnatural crisis to paraphrase my colleague from Oregon. that has been created by the Republican Majority to force tax cuts that nobody has asked for. Sure. all of us would like a tax cut. But the first priority ought to be to balance the budget. Let me talk about the 383.000 people that visit our National Parks that are closed. In California. Yosemite. that is not represented by a Democrat by any means. has asked for assistance from the Governor of California. who could not do anything. Yosemite and Mariposa County asked for State disaster assistance. but the Governor of California. who was a Republican presidential candidate. said he could not help. It is just atrocious what is happening. The Forest Service that operates our campgrounds and monuments and visitors centers. not just here in Washington. because I have a group of students coming next week from a junior high in my district. It is the first time a lot of those youngsters will be able to come to their capital. and it is going to be closed to them. Mr. Speaker. it is unreasonable what they are trying to do because they do not have the votes in Congress to override a presidential veto to accept the cuts that they want to do in education funding and health care. In Houston. we have a petrochemical complex and there are EPA sites that are not being staffed now because of the shutdown. That is why I know the gentleman from New Jersey asked for the time tonight. The other point is that the EPA is not only not enforcing the Superfund sites. but the nonSuperfund civil environmental enforcement actions have been stopped. costing us $3 million a day. I always hear from my colleagues on the Republican side saying that no business can run like the Federal Government. and they are right. No business can have $5 trillion deficits. But also you do not get your income just because you want to cut the budget. We should balance the budget first. That is the first priority. and then we are going to have to make some tough decisions. But. Mr. Speaker. we should not give $200 billion in tax cuts before we balance the budget. We should not cut health care for seniors and investment in our future for both job training and the children who are the ones who are going to be paying those taxes tomorrow. We should not cut environmental to make sure that we have a cleaner tomorrow by saying we are going to cut that now. That is what they are doing. That is why they have not been able to pass them. and we saw today they could not pass a bill that would override a presidential veto. Even though there were lots of things in those bills that I wanted to vote for. I could not take the cuts that they were going to do in those programs. It is the same way with VAHUD and NASA. In Houston. we have the Manned NASA Space Center. We have those employees who are furloughed right now. Tomorrow there will be a picket out in front asking. "Why are NASA employees being furloughed?" That was passed here by overwhelming votes. the efforts. and yet they are furloughing those employees that are. quote. nonemergency. Mr. Speaker. it is a tragedy that is happening. but it is a tragedy that was in the making by the Speaker. And earlier this year I had some Republican freshmen tell me they said they were elected to come up here and close it down. I want to congratulate those 73 Republican freshmen. They are successful. They closed down Pearl Harbor for veterans who want to go out there. They closed down Yosemite and Yellowstone and the monuments. and they are effectively closing down my VA hospital. If that is what they want to do. then they are successful.