Date: 2000-04-05
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Chairman. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman. as we finish this debate. I would hope that we would be able to hold this in perspective. because I do not think that this bill is finished yet. I think. in fact. it is a work in progress. I hope that Members who are interested and concerned about this would just look at the letter from the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies who are expressing some of the very same concerns that I am expressing about the funding levels in this legislation. We agree. they agree. and almost everybody in this Chamber agrees that many of these reforms are fine and should be made. But. when we get done. we have to leave this agency in a position to properly deal with the charge that we have given them. As for those who want to keep coming here and saying that they want to slaughter this agency because GAO said this is the worst managed program they have ever seen. I think maybe that statement in and of itself would call into question the GAO audit. I wonder if the GAO ever took a look at .the oil shale program. I bet that was a beaut. That was billions of dollars. Or. how about that coal fusion program where we were spending that money. those guys out in Utah still trying to bring it in on time. How about the uranium reprocessing program. the space station. the big dig going on up there in Boston. the Resolution Trust Corporation. Now. there is one that cost us hundreds of billions of dollars. This was the worst managed program these GAO auditors ever saw? I have to tell my colleagues that these GAO auditors maybe just did not have the right experience. because as it turns out. as we reconcile all of the concerns that they raised and the issues that they raised. we are now down to about $700.000 of seriously questioned expenses that should not have been allowed. So to suggest that somehow this agency has run amok. and I find it interesting that as we say that. we are now giving this agency in this legislation the exact duties that supposedly we criticized them for. but we know are essential and must be done if. in fact. the State programs are going to work. So this is not the worst. Tragically to say for the taxpayers of this country. this is not the worst program GAO has ever encountered. Maybe this GAO auditor. but he probably was not around for that C121 when the wings broke off. That was a hell of a program we had going there. How about that one where we sent subsidized water so people will grow more cotton. but we have a cotton retirement program. so we buy the cotton back from them? That is going on today. There is a good program. How about those KV funds. where the Forest Service could not tell us where any of the funds were? We still do not know today. Fortunately. the Committee on Appropriations started to put a stop to that. That mining law has worked out well for the taxpayers of this country. We have lost billions and billions of dollars. This is not the worst program. This is a program that has gotten off track. This is a program that has abused. has abused the authority that is given to it. We ought to put it back in line. I think the Chairmans legislation goes a long way toward that. I still want to say that we have to leave this agency there. because those same sportsmen. hunters and fisherpersons that like this program. that use this program. have seen it improve. Their experience out there in the countryside recognizes the need of this agency to get that done in cooperation with the States. Mr. Chairman. I yield back the balance of my time.