Date: 2003-07-16
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Chairman. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. and I thank him for all of his work on this bill and to the chairman of the committee for all of their time and effort to bring this bill to the floor. But I do want to say how disappointed I am with this legislation in terms of its treatment of the conservation spending and the conservation accounts. As previous speakers have noted. these accounts were created based upon a bipartisan agreement and an agreement to fund them when we had under consideration the CARA legislation. which was really designed to redeem the promise that this government made to the people of this country that. in exchange for offshore oil drilling. we would create an account. the Land and Water Conservation Account. and those monies would be used for the acquisition and protection of public and local lands. stateside land and water conservation for State and local governments to acquire land and communities to acquire land. and the Federal account for Federal lands. That was the agreement. There were overwhelming votes in the committee on a bipartisan basis. there were overwhelming votes on the floor of the House. The Committee on Appropriations responded with the funding of these accounts. and now we see that those accounts were savaged. This was a promise. This was an account that was created for the acquisition of these lands. both federally and locally. That account has several billion dollars in It in surplus. and yet we see what happens. those accounts were taken down from $450 million on the Federal side and $450 million on the state side. It is just unacceptable. because what do these Federal dollars do at the local level? They attract corporate money. they attract foundation money. local people make contributions. The fastestgrowing organizations in the environmental movement are land trusts where- communities come together to try to protect the natural assets of their communities. to protect the values in their communities. to create open space so that people can enjoy a quality of life. That is what those Federal dollars do. They are all matched at the local level. July 186._2003 Now we see instead of $450 million. we are going to have around $100 million. It is breaking a promise. It is breaking a promise with the people of this country. We tried to offer. the gentleman from Wisconsin and the gentleman from Washington were going to offer an amendment. but it would not be made in order to restore the funding for those accounts. And those accounts should be restored in toto. Maybe what we should do is we should object to every suspension bill where a Member of the Republican Party is asking to acquire additional land. I sit on the Committee on Resources. and we pass bill after bill where Members of the other party want to acquire land. another 10 acres. anothel 20 acres. move the boundary east. west. add to this national park. add to this wilderness area. Why do they do that? Because the communities they represent want this done. They are responding to the desires of their constituents. And now instead of $450 million being available. there will be $100 million. If the Republicans d!slike the program this much. they should not put in any more requests. There should at least be enough money in this bill to fund the Republican requests for land acquisition. That oujht to be the minimum.