Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is a government-established, government-financed, so-called private nonprofit set up to act as a conduit to funnel public dollars to private environmental advocacy groups. The authorization for these grants has expired. Let me repeat that. There is no congressional authorization for this program, and yet the money just keeps rolling on.

If we are actually serious about spending taxpayer money as carefully as they spend what they've got left after they've paid their taxes, then we ought to start by insisting that if Congress has not authorized a program, it should not be funded. If we ignore this principle, then why do we have any committees other than the Appropriations Committee?

When Ronald Reagan very reluctantly signed the original legislation, NFWF's budget was $100,000. It has grown to $7.5 million, 75-fold. Nor was Reagan's signing statement exactly a ringing endorsement. Here is what he said: ``I must convey my serious reservations about the bill. The statements in the bill to the effect that the foundation shall be a nonprofit, charitable corporation and that it shall not be an agency or establishment of the United States are contradicted by the facts. Establishment of the foundation under the terms of the bill is an unwise and dangerous precedent.'' Well, Reagan had ``serious reservations'' about an unwise and dangerous precedent.

Reagan's ``serious reservations'' were well founded, and, at the very least, there ought to be a full congressional review of this program and a decision made to reauthorize it before we throw more money at it, money, by the way, if you haven't checked the newspapers recently, that we don't have.

In this particular case, these are public dollars being funneled to private concerns, many of which have a disconcerting habit of then turning around and suing the government, that is, suing taxpayers over environmental issues. As we all know, all funds are fungible. So, in essence, through this agency, we are using taxpayer money to give to groups to sue taxpayers.

Not all of these private foundations are even domestic. These grants have gone to such foreign groups as the Prakratic Society of India, the Centre for Dolphin Studies of Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Central Mozambique, and to the San Lorenzo Public Outreach Program in Panama.

Mr. Chairman, with our Nation facing the worst peacetime fiscal crisis in our history, do we really need to continue these expenditures? And shouldn't we at least review the program and renew the authorization before we throw more money at it?

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