Military Construction, The Department of Veterans Affairs, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, from coast to coast the Land and Water Conservation Fund is the primary tool that our Nation uses to fund the protection of our natural and our cultural heritage. In my home State of New Mexico, the LWCF has protected some of our most iconic and famous landscapes--places such as the Valles Caldera National Preserve, Ute Mountain, and the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument. These are places families go back to year after year, generation after generation to camp, hunt, hike, and fish.

Our public lands are uniquely American, but the future of our outdoor places--all the places we enjoy as public lands--depends on the Land and Water Conservation Fund. We must permanently authorize and fully fund the LWCF. Permanently and fully funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund will help ensure the outdoor places we all enjoy will be protected for future generations to enjoy as well.

So I ask unanimous consent that the Energy and Natural Resources Committee be discharged from and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 2101; I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

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Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, my colleague from Utah purports to speak for westerners. I want to make it clear, he doesn't speak for New Mexico, he doesn't speak for me, he doesn't speak for my constituents, and he certainly doesn't speak for the businesses that write letters to me speaking about how the Land and Water Conservation Fund has benefited their businesses--particularly businesses that rely on tourism and outdoor recreation, that rely on places like the Valles Caldera National Preserve, that rely on places like the Rio Grande National Monument for their livelihood. The reason why, as westerners, I can take my kids out and go hunting on public land and the reason we can go camping and cut firewood to heat our homes is because of the public land the Land and Water Conservation Fund has provided in places like New Mexico.

We had a hearing in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. If anything, what we heard is that we didn't need to reform this program; that, frankly, it was working better than just about any program in the Federal Government.

LWCF works. It has broad bipartisan support. It creates recreation jobs that are key to Western States. LWCF buys from willing sellers in places that oftentimes reduce how much we spend on maintaining, protecting, and managing our Federal lands. Imagine in-holdings that make it harder for our foresters to manage wildfires and to protect and do the work. We need to do a better job of managing wildfires across the West.

So many of these issues that have been raised, particularly reform, are a red herring for what is truly an ideological opposition to the Land and Water Conservation Fund--a program that has put soccer fields and baseball diamonds in just about every little town across the United States. All of my counties, many of my cities, have benefited from sports fields specifically from this fund for decades now, as well as purchases like the new National Wildlife Refuge in Albuquerque's South Valley, the Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge, something the local community has enormous pride in. They had a friends group set up for this wildlife refuge before the refuge even existed.

So it is an indication of just how off base and out of the mainstream some of our conversations in Washington, DC, have become that we have this ideological opposition to the Land and Water Conservation Fund--a program that is actually working as it was designed to work and that has broad bipartisan support from one coast to the other in this Nation.

So I am disappointed in the actions of my colleagues. This issue is not going away. We have a strong coalition. We are going to continue to fight for the reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. I would argue that we ought to stop taking money out of the Land and Water Conservation Fund and using it to cover other expenses within the general fund; that we should remain true to the concept of this fund as it was created back in the 1960s, under Secretary Udall, and return to a level of fiscal responsibility, where the money flowing into the Land and Water Conservation Fund actually benefits land and water.

With that, I yield the floor.

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