Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. The amendment that's being offered is perfectly appropriate. It's the duty of the Department of the Interior to carry out the law. The law requires the Secretary to review, from time to time, the status of public land.

All too often, I hear my colleagues on the Republican side say that this is government land. No, no, no, this is not government land. This is our land. This is the land of the American people, owned in common for the common good. And the Secretary, carrying out that responsibility, reviews the attributes of the land. Is it good for oil? How about gas development or coal development? Or maybe it's useful as grazing land, or perhaps it should be wild and scenic land and preserved for the purpose of remaining in its most natural state. So my Republican colleagues come up and say, No, you can't look at the land. You can't study the land. We just won't want to know anything about the land, except to allow for the destruction of the land.

This particular amendment doesn't come in a vacuum. This amendment leads to the House floor another bill that is likely to move out of the Resources Committee and soon be on the floor, which would take the previous work done over the last 30 years that would quantify the values of the land, scenic, natural, wilderness, and push all of that aside and say, Open all the land, all the land to what was euphemistically--I hope euphemistically--called mechanized conservation. Hmm, "mechanized conservation.'' Sounds to me like bulldozer, drilling rigs, a stampede of cattle and the like over any and all land.

Understand that this particular line in this appropriation bill goes hand in hand with a piece of legislation that went through, that was heard in the Resources Committee just yesterday, that would take all of the land that has been designated as wild and scenic some 30 years ago--some of which is said, no, it's not perfect for a wild and scenic designation--and take all of that land and open it for development. We ought not do that.

Therefore, this amendment that's been brought forward by the ranking member is appropriate in that it allows the Department of the Interior to upgrade some 30-year-old studies, taking into account new scientific information, new information about the land, and making that information available to us in Congress so that we can make an informed decision about whether land should or should not be wild and scenic or whatever designation might be appropriate, including opening some land for development. But I suppose it's best to know nothing.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. When I was the Deputy Secretary at the Department of the Interior, I thought that the Department of the Interior should do what it needed to do. Now that I'm here I would agree with you that they should do what we tell them to do. Just a change in jobs.

However, the point here is that the language that you have put into this bill would preclude the Secretary from moving forward, even to carry out the words that are in the document itself. And I did read the document.

We need to know what is on the land, and we need to know its potential uses. As I understand the amendment that you have put forward that is in this bill, it would deny the funding for those purposes to do the study. Now if I am wrong about that intent and effect of the amendment, then we've had a wonderful debate in which we all agree that the Secretary and the Department of the Interior should continue to always study the land and to take into account new information, new science, new knowledge, new GPS or satellite photos of the land. So I think, as I understand the amendment, and the intent of the amendment, it is to stop the Department from continuing to study these multiple attributes.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. I want to thank my colleague from California for reminding all of us that there are consequences for what we do here. This current wholly manufactured debt crisis has people very, very nervous.

The women that Ms. Speier talked about, concerned and nervous about their Social Security checks, whether they will be able to get their medical care, and today's Wall Street Journal, the first five items on what's news, various businesses around the world and financial institutions being prepared for the first time ever in America's history that our debt may not be worth a hoot. It may be worthless, that we're going to default. This is a totally manufactured, unnecessary crisis. We didn't have to be here.

I want us all to step back a little ways, step back to December 2010, when we had another manufactured crisis. It came time to fund the Federal Government and to deal with some issues having to do with unemployment. And the Republicans in the Senate held us hostage and demanded that we extend the high-end Bush tax cuts, which created a $700 billion deficit. We went ahead and did that, and rolled the issue forward 3 months so that in February we would have yet another crisis, the funding or the shutdown of the Federal Government.

Yet again another opportunity for our Republican colleagues to create a crisis so that they could use it to force onto the American public their policies, which became very evident what they wanted to do. They wanted to reconfigure the entire American scene. They wanted to roll back Social Security. They wanted to end Medicare for all Americans who are not yet 55 years of age. They wanted to end the programs to support higher education, to reduce research, to reduce funding for food safety programs. They used these manufactured crises to shut down a government.

And yet here we are again with the debt limit, first discussed back in May, and then because of the Treasury Department's ability to continue paying bills, we are now up against the final deadline of August 2. Yet again a totally manufactured unnecessary crisis.

Previously, Ronald Reagan said: Don't do this. Do not put the good faith and credit of the American government on the line. He told the Republicans, his Republicans back in the 1980s, honor the debt. This is not about new spending, this is about spending going back a century. This is about the American bills that were paid or not paid years ago, and that's our debt today.

We don't need to do this. There are options. We're putting forth, as we did earlier, a clean debt limit increase. Get us past this. We are also looking at the opportunity for the President to invoke the 14th Amendment, the fourth clause of the 14th Amendment, that says America will honor its debts. I believe he has the power, issuing an Executive order to the Treasury Department: pay our debts. This is something that is fundamental for America, and we must do it.

Put aside this manufactured crisis. It didn't need to be real, but it has become all too real in these last few days as our Republican colleagues are unable to get their act together, even to put forth a proposal that would eviscerate necessary programs. Can't even do that.

The President has called for a balanced approach, one of taxes, raising the taxes that should have been raised back in December and eliminate some $700 billion of this problem, but let's do it now. Let's go after the oil companies that are receiving our tax money at the very same time that over the last decade they have created nearly a trillion dollars of profit. They don't need our tax money. The poor in America, the senior citizens in America, they are the ones that need help.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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