Date: 2000-05-10
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Chairman. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr.. Chairman. I rise in opposition to this amendment. Mr. Chairman. this kind of simple prohibition simply is unworkable and takes the thought processes out of setting priorities and making determinations about different values. about different emergencies. about different situations. The fact of the matter is very often we buy some private property to relieve pressure on other private property owners. We know that a number of endangered species problems have been solved because the Federal Government was able to aggregate some areas for protection that then freed up other landowners so that they could put their lands to the productive use or the changes or whatever that they wanted to participate in. So now we would say. no. they cannot do that. We know very often that we buy property sometimes because it threatens the values and the purposes of the national preserve. whether it is a park or whether it is the forest. We buy some lands so that we can then swap those lands for some other lands that private property or a city or a county wants to put to use. They want us to buy certain lands and swap different lands with them. Those are all determinations made. by elected officials at local levels and in the Congress and in the Senate and city council members. They use their judgment. Yes. there is a backlog. But let us not pretend like this Congress has been working it off recently. because the Congress has not funded that. But we should not take away those kinds of determinations. Under this thinking. what they would say is that they could not build three fighter planes at the same time or they could not build a new class of submarine until they finished the old one. No. we have different situations that emerge in the running of this Government. and the fact of the matter is that we make determinations and we use our best judgments. And so. now they want to say that they can only use this money for inholdings. But. in fact. if an emergency comes up or they have to protect a Federal asset. then they have to go through a lot of rigmarole. The fact is that this system has worked very. very well. Because we have purchased inholdings. We have purchased lands contiguous to these lands where we think they have a particular value or in some cases where landowners want out because they want to do something to the land. they want to go into some other business and the Federal Reserve is inconsistent with that. These people use it. They do not run around willynilly. Most of these purchases from the Land and Water Conservation Fund are made because Members of Congress go to the Committee on Appropriations and ask that they be made. Every year we trudge down there. we send letters. we get all the people in our delegation to sign them. And they come from both sides of the aisle. and they come from most of the Members who have spoken here tonight asking for the Federal Government to buy these lands. And they want to posture and put a straitjacket on these Federal agencies so they cannot provide the kind of stewardship that the Nations lands deserve. I ask for a no vote.