Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations At, 2012
Floor Speech
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Mr. SIMPSON. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to bring to the floor H.R. 2584, the fiscal year 2012 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies appropriations bill.
As we begin, I want to personally thank Mr. Moran, Mr. Dicks, and each of the members of our subcommittee for their active participation in the bipartisan spirit that has been part of our deliberations this year. Regardless of our positions on this bill, I do sincerely appreciate their constructive contributions.
Mr. Chairman, we're living at a time when the Federal Government borrows more than 40 cents on each dollar that it spends. We are also living in a time of record deficits and debt. While reductions in discretionary spending alone will not totally erase the deficit, we all know that reducing Federal spending is a necessary first step.
The fiscal year 2012 Interior and Environment bill is funded at $27.5 billion, which is $2.1 billion, or 7 percent below the fiscal year enacted level, and $3.8 billion, or 12 percent below the budget request.
Overall, funding within this bill is essentially level within fiscal year 2009 spending. The subcommittee has made some very difficult choices in preparing this budget proposal. In total, 235 Members of the House submitted over 1,700 programmatic requests to the subcommittee for consideration.
While the bill makes significant spending reductions across many agencies and programs, it also provides ample funding to address the needs of key accounts supported by a bipartisan cross-section of Members. For instance, fire suppression at the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service is fully funded at the 10-year average.
The bill includes a $37 million increase over fiscal year 2011 for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to hire new inspectors and move forward with offshore oil and gas permitting and leasing while also improving safety. And Members will be pleased to know that the operations of our national parks are sustained at levels only slightly below last year, which means every park unit in the country will be operational and fully staffed without the threat of furloughs or layoffs.
Finally, this bill also makes critical investments in Indian Country. Building upon efforts initiated by Mr. Dicks and Mr. Moran, this bill continues to make investments in human health and wellness programs in Indian Country, affecting health care, education, and self-determination. Overall, the Department of the Interior is funded at $9.9 billion, which is a $715 million, or 7 percent, reduction below last year's enacted level.
As I mentioned, we've done some things that Secretary Salazar will support. The Secretary and I have had many discussions about these issues as well as some areas where funding isn't what he would like to see. One of those areas relates to the funding of the Endangered Species Act.
Since the ESA was enacted, there have been 2,018 species listed and only 21 species recovered. By any calculation, that's a pretty poor track record. Any other program with such a poor rate of success would have long since been terminated. There isn't one member of this subcommittee opposed to recovering endangered species; but the ESA has become so contentious, so political, and so litigious that it has become a policy failure. The authorization for the ESA appropriation expired 20 years ago, and the assumption has been that the Appropriations Committee would continue to fund it year in and year out, as it has in the past.
In fact, Members might be interested to know that 26 percent of the funding in this bill is for programs in which the authorizations have expired. That's not how the process is supposed to work, Mr. Chairman. And just as we are going back to regular order and passing appropriation bills, we need to return to regular order when it comes to working with the authorizers to update and fix laws that no longer work or have expired.
It's time to fix the ESA. The best way to do that is for the authorizers and stakeholders in the conservation community to come to the table to fix what is broken so we can actually begin recovering species. We are sending that message today.
Climate change is another item of interest to members of this committee. Most of the Members know that I am not a climate change naysayer. The fact is that climate change funding has been increasing over the past few years, and no one has any idea how or whether its funding is being coordinated between various agencies. The GAO came to the same conclusion in a report released in May of this year. The GAO said: ``Without further improvement in how Federal climate change funding is defined and reported, strategic priorities are set, and funding is aligned with priorities, it will be difficult for the public and Congress to fully understand how climate change funds are accounted for and how they are spent.'' As a result of this ongoing concern, climate change funding in this bill is reduced by $83 million, or 22 percent.
The bill also makes significant reductions in funding for land acquisition. Land acquisition was funded at $301 million in the current fiscal year. The President had requested $900 million for next year. We funded it at $66 million in this bill to complete land acquisitions currently under consideration. I would personally like to see more funding in the LWCF. The problem is, we just don't have the money.
It's also worth noting that while we increase funding for oil and gas rig inspections, we don't pay for them by including the President's proposed $38 million increase for additional onshore gas and oil fees or the $55 million increase for additional offshore oil and gas fees. These issues are best left to the authorizing committees of jurisdiction. And I hope that by next year, the authorizing committees will address this issue.
There are a few other items that may be of interest to Members that I'll mention briefly: The U.S.
Geological Survey is funded at $1.1 billion, which is $30 million, or 3 percent, below the FY11-enacted level. The next-generation LandSat satellite imaging program, which has been a cooperative venture with NASA, was proposed to be transferred entirely to USGS without any corresponding funding from NASA. Because projected costs are estimated to increase tenfold over the next 2 years and because LandSat is a widely used governmental and private sector resource, this bill sends the proposal back to the administration with instructions to start over.
Within the EPA, the bill includes $15 million for a new competitive grant program to fund rural water technical assistance, which is widely supported on both sides of the aisle. The NEA and the NEH are both funded at $135 million, which is a level too low for some Members and too high for others. It's worth noting that both sides worked together in a effort to maintain several longstanding proven programs that the administration had slated for termination.
The bill provides funding for the Smithsonian at levels just below the FY11-enacted level and includes $50 million to begin construction of the National Museum of African American History and Culture and $75 million for revitalization of existing Smithsonian buildings. The bill also provides a $30 million down payment to begin construction next year of a memorial to honor the memory of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
I suspect that most of the headlines from House consideration of this bill will focus on the committee's attention to the EPA. We need to continue funding the EPA in order for business to obtain the necessary permits to operate in accord with the environmental laws.
Through EPA funding, we also continue to address our Nation's critical water and wastewater infrastructure needs. However, one of the major underlying themes to this year's work is the sheer volume of regulatory actions being pursued by agencies in the absence of legislation and without clear congressional direction.
My intense opposition to the EPA's efforts to control nearly every industry in this country is no secret. The EPA's unrestrained effort to regulate greenhouse gases and the pursuit of an overly aggressive regulatory agenda are signs of an agency that has lost its bearings.
Wherever I go, the biggest complaint I hear about the Federal Government is about how the EPA is creating economic uncertainty and killing jobs. This isn't a partisan issue. Members of both parties have said that the EPA's regulatory actions vastly exceed its authority and congressional intent. The responsibility to determine whether or not to expand that authority rests solely with Congress, not with the EPA. We have included a number of provisions in the base bill to address some of these issues and more were added in full committee. We saw during consideration of H.R. 1 earlier this year and we will see again on the House floor even more efforts to rein in the EPA.
I know some of my Democrat friends will be especially critical of the spending reductions in EPA accounts. While we all recognize the importance of the clean drinking water and safe drinking water State revolving funds, we also know funding them, as we have in the past, is not possible. We need to find a better long-term funding source for water infrastructure projects, something that a number of Members have been working on.
It's also worth pointing out that these accounts received $6 billion in Recovery Act funds in 2009 and still have nearly $3 billion in previously appropriated funding that they have yet to spend. In calendar year 2009, the EPA received over $25 billion in combined stimulus funding and regular appropriation. So it should come as no surprise that the funding for the EPA was reduced by $1.5 billion, or 18 percent, from current levels.
Much will be said today about the subcommittee's allocation of the policy provisions in this bill; but just remember, at the end of the day, what this committee is attempting to do is all about reducing spending, creating more certainty in the marketplace, and promoting an economic environment conducive to job growth. If there's one thing that we should have learned in the last couple of years, it's that we can't spend our way to an economic recovery. That didn't work. All it did was make the hole we're in much deeper.
I know Mr. Moran and Mr. Dicks may not agree, but the legislative provisions in this bill and those that will be added today and on the House floor, they are not special interests. They're about jobs. They're about protecting businesses and hardworking Americans from frivolous lawsuits. They're about creating certainty in the marketplace, and they're about assuring businesses that employ people that it's safe to begin hiring people again without the threat of the EPA, under the guise of protecting our environment, imposing millions of dollars of penalties through regulations that are unreasonable or simply defy common sense.
Is this a perfect bill? No. But I've never seen a perfect bill. This is a bill that makes some very tough choices on spending. It's a bill that attempts to rein in the excesses of the EPA, and it's a bill that sends a clear message to stakeholders in Congress that it's time to get busy on renewing expiring authorizations. I wish we had more money to spend on a variety of programs that I, and other Members, believe are important. I also wish we didn't have a $1.6 trillion deficit. I wish we weren't $14.5 trillion in debt. I wish the economy was booming and that unemployment was something we only read about in history books. Unfortunately, wishing doesn't make it so. These are the economic and political realities that we have to face.
In closing, I'd like to thank the staff on both sides of the aisle for their hard work in producing this bill. Most Members don't realize how much time and effort staff members put into this. On the minority side, I'd like to thank Rick Healy and Shalanda Young, as well as Tim Aiken and Pete Modaff. They have played an integral role in the process, and their efforts are very much appreciated.
On the majority side, I'd like to thank the subcommittee staff: Colin Vickery, Grace Stephens, who, by the way, just had a baby last week--she held off until she was sure we had this bill through the full committee--Erica Rhoad, Jason Gray, Darren Benjamin, and Dave LesStrang. I'd also like to thank Missy Small, Kaylyn Bessey and Lindsay Slater on my personal staff for their great work.
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