OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Taxpayer First Act of 2019

Floor Speech

By: Jim Costa
By: Jim Costa
Date: July 22, 2020
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Natural Resources

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Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for his efforts to bring this legislation to the House floor.

I rise today to speak on the Great American Outdoors Act and the importance of this legislation and why we should move on a bipartisan effort to pass it.

This bill tackles a tremendous deferred maintenance backlog on public lands, including our national parks, our treasures, the great American national parks.

This funding will contribute towards making our parks safe and enhance the recreational access, such as the great Yosemite National Park, the crown jewel in California, as well as Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks and many others--not only in California, but across our Nation--that are part of America's heritage and a part of our lasting legacy for future generations to come.

This bill funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund annually at $900 million and creates a $9.5 billion fund for deferred maintenance on public lands.

We are way in arrears in terms of deferred maintenance that we need to do not only for our national parks, but for our public lands. That is why this is so important.

Let me respond to the issue of our deficit.

Our deficit is a problem. I am a Blue Dog. But let's be clear. After 16 years here, I have come to the conclusion that trying to address incremental issues as they relate to our national deficit is not going to get us there.

Until Republicans are willing to address the issues of revenues and Democrats are willing to address the issues of expenditures together and jump off that cliff holding hands to balance revenues and expenditures, we are just not going to get there. Okay?

So we should not use that as an excuse not to do what we should do for today's generation and future generations. The creation of this permanent funding highlights the need for Congress to address the deferred maintenance backlog.

I will admit that we are not doing more to provide funding for our aging Federal water infrastructure that also needs to be invested on.

So let me close. Let's take the moment of this bipartisan success to redouble our efforts to address the need for maintenance on federally owned projects.

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