[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 132 (Tuesday, September 20, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
               SUBSIDIES TO PROVIDE RESOURCES TO THE WEST

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                           HON. GEORGE MILLER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 20, 1994

  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues know, one of 
the things which most angers people is government waste and 
inefficiency. We're constantly told that ``government ought to be run 
more a like a business.''
  One of the most inefficient parts of the Federal Government is the 
series of subsidies that we--the taxpayers--provide to resource 
industries in the West.
  Last month, the majority staff of the Subcommittee on Investigations 
and Oversight of the Committee on Natural Resources finished a report 
which looked at those subsidies. That report raised a number of 
questions, questions which were echoed in an editorial in the 
Washington Post on September 1, 1994. I am placing that editorial into 
the Record and urging my colleagues to read it. It is long past time to 
bring these subsidies into the modern era.

               [From the Washington Post, Sept. 1, 1994]

                         Takings and `Takings'

       There's been a lot of debate in this Congress about takings 
     law: At what point does government regulation of the use of 
     private property constitute a ``taking'' for which the 
     government ought to pay? It's an interesting question. The 
     majority staff of the House Committee on Natural Resources 
     has issued a report that seeks to take advantage of the 
     currency of the argument by extending the concept of 
     takings to the subsidies that the natural resources 
     industries in the West continue to receive from the 
     taxpayers. This is artful, and a little finely wrought. 
     But apart from the question of whether the two subjects 
     really do belong on the same page, the kind of ``takings'' 
     the report discusses are well worth being concerned about.
       Most of the subsidies are in the form of below-market rates 
     for the use of federal resources. They were introduced in an 
     era when the West was empty and it was federal policy to 
     develop it. Now the greater need is often to conserve the 
     resources that the subsidies threaten. The report is a call 
     to Congress to rationalize a set of policies that have often 
     outlived their original purposes and become uncoordinated 
     giveaways.
       The committee document notes that in passing the Federal 
     Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, itself a major step 
     forward, Congress declared it to be federal policy that ``the 
     United States shall receive fair market value of the use of 
     the public lands and their resources unless otherwise 
     provided for by statute.'' The implication was the subsidies 
     should become the exception, but in fact in most cases they 
     have remained the rule.
       The classic example may be the Mining Law of 1982, still 
     mostly intact with regard to hard-rock mining though no 
     longer to the extraction of oil and gas and other energy 
     resources, which have been split off. The Senate passed a 
     weak reform bill and the House a strong one last year. The 
     legislation has been caught up in an inconclusive conference 
     ever since. It isn't clear what kind of bill, if any, can 
     emerge. If none does, large mining companies will continue to 
     have access to enormously valuable mineral deposits under 
     federal land for only token fees and without full 
     responsibility for the damage they do to the environment.
       It's an indefensible system that congress would never enact 
     today--no one would even propose it--yet Congress can't 
     muster the votes to uproot it. The same is true in varying 
     degrees with regard to grazing rights on federal land, the 
     extra water that the government stores behind its dams and 
     sells at cut rates to irrigators in the western desert and 
     the timbering programs on federal lands.
       There aren't good data on the value of these subsidies, the 
     committee report says, and even less is known about their 
     distribution. The subsidizing agencies need to do more to 
     compile this, but it isn't clear they regard such information 
     as in their interest. The data would help make better sense 
     of the policies--for example, by eliminating contradictions. 
     The government now sells low-cost water to some western 
     irrigators so that they can grow surplus crops on which the 
     government, meaning the taxpayer, then pays further subsidies 
     in the form of price and income supports. How much sense does 
     that make?
       There's talk of targeting other government spending so that 
     benefits decline as income rises. Should the same thing 
     happen with these? Why not?

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