[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 146 (Saturday, October 8, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 8, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
          CALIFORNIA DESERT PROTECTION ACT--CONFERENCE REPORT

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the conference report.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, this is an important debate. I would say at 
the very outset it is not about politics. It is about how we will 
manage a very large chunk of public land property in the State of 
California, public land property, if you will, national property. It 
will also be how we will treat private property owners who live within 
the bounds of this huge expanse of public land.
  I have grown to know the California desert over the last 10 years in 
a very special way. I come from a mountainous semi-arid State in the 
northern tier of the West.
  I was unfamiliar with the ways of the desert or the beauty of the 
desert. But while I was serving in the House and on the Interior 
Committee as this issue began to grow in the mid- to late-eighties, I 
had the privilege on more than one occasion of going to California, 
going to Barstow, going to Palm Springs, not to play golf or to 
recreate, but to listen to those who love the desert, to the 
environmentalists who want to preserve it beyond where it is currently 
being preserved and managed today, to the day-to-day person in 
California who pours out of a Los Angeles basin on the weekends to find 
their solitude and their recreation in the marvelous expanse of desert 
land that has become a battleground over what this country ought to do 
and what the public policy ought to be about the management of it.
  It is wrong to assert that this land would become covered with 
hamburger palaces. And the reason that is a false premise--and I must 
charge the chairman with that rhetoric--is because it is public land. 
You do not build a hamburger palace on public land, you build it on 
private land. We are debating the management of public land, not 
private land, although this will clearly impact vast numbers of private 
property owners and hundreds of thousands of acres of private fee-
simple land.
  More than likely, when you hang the billboard up that says this is an 
exceptionally unique place and so designated by the Congress in 
wilderness or in parks, you have, in fact, sent a message around the 
world that it is so unique that people ought to come see it more than 
they are currently using it, enjoying it and preserving it and 
recreating in it.
  The risk of a hamburger palace being built, as we know, on the 
fringes of designated parks is enhanced by the designation of a park, 
not the absence of a park. Because a hamburger palace is of no value if 
the human is not present and the human is always present where there is 
a national park designated because we Americans love our parks and the 
world at large knows how much we love our parks and that we have 
historically preserved unique places around our country, and so the 
world comes to see our parks.
  No, really, what this debate is all about is, in part, the message, 
and on that I agree with my chairman. What is the message that will be 
sent, or, more importantly, what is the message that will be recorded 
tomorrow morning in the Los Angeles Times? Will the headline be, 
``Senate votes to preserve vast acreages of desert land in California 
in both wilderness and parks"? Will it be that the Senate has failed to 
do that? That is probably one or the other of the way those headlines 
will read.
  Mr. President, I think you and I know that the headlines will never 
read, ``More than 12,000 landowners affected and private property that 
they own devalued by the passage of a California desert bill.'' That 
will never be in a headline in the Los Angeles Times.
  Something else will never be in the headline in the Los Angeles 
Times. That will be: ``California Desert Protection Act requires 
billions of unfunded costs to be funded in the outyears by a Government 
that has a $200 billion-plus deficit and a $4.8 trillion debt.'' Those 
headlines will not be there. That is part of the debate, and that is a 
very important part of the debate here today and why some of us, for 
now nearly a decade, have been involved in the question of should we 
pass an S. 21-type bill that would lend extraordinary protection to the 
California desert.
  Let me also attempt to debunk some assumptions that are involved in a 
lot of this debate that if we do not pass this legislation, somehow the 
California desert falls prey to greater development.
  The California desert today is under one of the most comprehensive 
Federal land management policies of any piece of public property in the 
United States. Starting in the early 1970's, the Bureau of Land 
Management, which is the primary manager of the California desert, 
began a comprehensive land review in which they, through a very astute 
process so designed by Federal policy, reached out and asked the public 
of California to become involved in how this land ought to be managed. 
Out of that grew the California desert plan, a huge plan, involving all 
of these millions of acres; some put in protected areas to be further 
legislated as wilderness; some used for what they had always been used 
for, development and human access, be it mining, be it recreation; some 
cattle grazing, although very limited.
  Certainly at that time and since that time wildlife enthusiasts, 
along with the California Fish and Game, began to establish better 
facilities to assure mountain sheep would be protected, and that 
population has thrived since that time under that management scheme.
  So it is false, it is blatantly false, to suggest that somehow these 
lands are not being protected or managed. They are. They have been, in 
an extensive way, by the very public policy that this Senate and the 
Congress as a whole and our Government passed a good long while ago, 
demanding of the Bureau of Land Management that they go in and provide 
a comprehensive management plan and develop the review process and get 
the public input. All that has happened, and the California desert is 
where we can debate it today, be it for wilderness or for parks. And 
the reason it is of that quality today is because it has been protected 
and it has been managed.
  But the kind of protection today that we are proposing is 
phenomenally more restrictive to human beings than any other that we 
have ever offered. And I really believe that is the tremendous debate 
that goes on here.
  Here are faxes that have poured into my office from a variety of 
citizens across California who live in the desert, who come to the 
desert, who recreate on the desert every weekend or take their 
vacations there. They rock hound, they walk, they ride their four-
wheel-drive vehicles because they love the desert. People in a very 
open and direct way are saying, ``You are locking us out.''
  I will never forget, Mr. President, when we were having a hearing in 
Palm Desert, I believe, or Palm Springs on the California desert. There 
were thousands of people there. One man, who was so supportive of this 
legislation, said, ``I have loved the desert all of my life. I have 
traveled every inch of the desert and I know every part of it. It must 
be preserved and it must be protected.''
  I asked that gentleman, whose name I have forgotten--it was a good 
number of years ago--``I don't dispute your knowledge of the desert nor 
your love of the desert. How did you see the desert?''
  The desert is a very hot, dry environment, temperatures pushing up to 
the 100 degree and beyond mark during the day and down into the 40's 
and below in the night; typical of the Southwestern deserts of the 
United States, extreme highs and extreme lows and, therefore, extreme 
to the human species.
  I said, ``How do you see the desert?''
  Well, he drove all over it in his four-wheel-drive vehicle. That is 
how he saw it. And that is how he developed his love and that is what 
he wanted to share with everyone, was his love of, and therefore 
protection of the love of, the California desert.
  And yet what was ironic about that man's testimony is no one else 
under this legislation would get the same opportunity that that very 
gentleman was talking about, because the roads he drove on will be 
blocked. Access by motorized vehicles will be extremely limited. You do 
not drive a motorized vehicle across the country in a park. You stay on 
the roads. In a wilderness area, they are prohibited altogether.
  And so I said to this man, ``How can you, an advocate of desert 
wilderness and desert parks, want to preserve this in a way that you 
will grant to the other citizens of our country the same privilege you 
had when, in fact, you are denying them?''
  Well, he stuttered a bit and did not say much more and got off the 
witness stand, and I have not seen him since.
  My point, I think, is well made, though. More importantly, his point 
was missed, that you really are denying future generations unique 
opportunities to see and love the desert, as many do, and to use it, as 
many have, under the current management plan and the protection that 
the BLM has offered this marvelous, marvelous piece of property that is 
now being talked about and debated.
  Well, what are we talking about? We are talking about probably the 
largest lockup, preservation of, change of policy on public land of any 
size we have seen since we placed so much of Alaska in wilderness a 
good number of years ago. This bill places 6.9 million acres of 
California land, now under the control of the BLM and the Forest 
Service and private landowners, into 69 separate wilderness areas under 
the National Wilderness Preservation System, and three new units of 
National Park Service. In all, the bill creates 7.5 million acres of 
wilderness and 5.5 million acres of national park preserve.
  What does that mean to somebody who might be listening today? What 
does that mean in the context of an eastern lifestyle when those of us 
of the West understand millions and millions of acres?
  Well, it means the States of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware 
and a few pieces of New York all thrown in together. It is one big 
chunk of land, is what it is.
  And it is not just desert and no one just does not live there. It is 
a lot of people and a lot of property and a lot of diverse interests.
  To create the 5.5 million acres of new national parks and preserves, 
the bill transfers BLM land to the Death Valley and Joshua Tree 
national monuments and elevates them to the status of parks.
  What did I just say? Death Valley and Joshua Tree national monuments.
  National monument? Oh, yes, we have already gone in there years ago 
and designated lands to be protected, unique lands, like Joshua Tree. I 
have been there, and it is beautiful. I have been to the phenomenal 
Death Valley. It is beautiful and it is protected and no one can 
desecrate it and no one has. Then why, today, the rush to judgment? You 
heard the chairman of the committee talking about the need to protect. 
Yet, I am telling you, Mr. President, the law currently protects. Laws 
passed by this Congress have offered that kind of protection. The 
conferees added 238,450 acres to the Senate bill, and 1.1 million to 
the proposed Mojave National Park--in other words another extremely 
large expansion.
  The simple designation of large blocks of public land, I think, in 
the desert, dilutes the importance of our national wilderness 
preservation system. It degrades, for study recommendations, 
necessarily designated areas that many of us have been to and many of 
us will argue do not deserve wilderness status.
  I think we know what the 1964 act was all about. It was to preserve 
lands that were untrammeled or relatively untouched by man. But in the 
euphoria of using the law, over the last decades we have locked up huge 
tracts of land. Unlike what the chairman suggested, that we had not 
been preserving lands, we put more lands in parks and wilderness areas 
in the last decade than ever in the history of our country. Millions 
upon millions of acres have been preserved. Yet the Federal Government, 
in this instance, talks about lands that have roads, that have been 
actively used by man, that is in the visual sight of mining properties.
  I fought hard to convince the Senator from California not to condemn 
private properties, and in all fairness, she did not in many instances. 
I began to discuss with her the plight of the ranchers--she never 
having been one, I having been one--trying to tell her what happens 
when you change the public policies as she is proposing to do, and how 
you can literally drive the ranchers out of business by the devaluation 
of their properties because you have locked them in a state where the 
Government promises but the Government never delivers. And in some 
instances, the Senator from California, in all fairness, began to 
address that issue.
  I have read the GAO reports and the BLM's response to these reports. 
I have talked to you and to others about multiple use management, and 
the importance of all that the California desert is, not just to 
California, but to the Nation--that there are areas in the desert that 
deserve wilderness status. I do not deny that. In fact, I support that. 
There are some areas in the desert that would deserve expansion for the 
purpose of making them a national park, and I have supported that. But 
so have many others from California who, today, oppose this bill. And 
the reason why although they would support some, they cannot support 
this, is because this is so overreaching, so grabbing, so locking up, 
so antihuman, to say to the people who have used the desert for decades 
and decades, if not generations: We are going to dramatically change 
your access and in many instances deny you the access and the 
opportunity you once had.
  The authors of the legislation ignore the management and the 
conservation fact that I have tried to argue here in the first few 
minutes this morning, of the protection that was set in motion with the 
creation of the California Desert Conservation Area in 1976. That is 
the BLM management package I was talking about.
  The Senator from California implies that without the passage of S. 21 
there is no desert management or protection. Truly, this is a false 
premise. A responsible desert bill would carry out and implement the 
conservation legacy, a legacy that this Senate should be proud of 
because it was the public policy passed by this Senate that produced 
that conservation area that has created the legacy that recognized in 
the mid-1970's the importance of the California desert.
  But it also recognized something else. It recognized that the 
California desert was one of the last great treasure houses of America, 
of the Northern Hemisphere. You say, ``Senator Craig, what do you mean, 
treasure house?'' I mean minerals. I mean that desert today still 
represents one of the greatest explored and unexplored mineral reserves 
of this Nation.
  Have we lost sight of the fact that we are an industrial Nation, that 
we live off our natural resources, our metals and our materials, and 
our minerals? Senator Wallop from Wyoming yesterday talked about the 
rare earths. What are those? Those are the minerals and metals that are 
developed for the use in this Nation's reach toward superconductivity.
  What is superconductivity? The Senator from Louisiana and the Senator 
from Idaho and the Senator from Colorado are starting to ride on a 
train that takes us from this building to our offices. That is part of 
superconductivity, the maglev--magnetic, electrically driven process of 
transportation. It is known by our geologists that one of the greatest, 
if not, maybe, the only reserve of this kind of resources is in the 
California desert. We are whisperingly quiet in our desire to lock it 
up and to deny this country that opportunity?
  A responsible desert bill would carry out and implement the 
conservation legacy that I have mentioned, of management versus 
protection and development. Unfortunately for California, all of this 
balance is ignored in favor of a very narrow single interest, dominated 
only by a protectionist principle.
  What we are doing today is taking this vast acreage of land off the 
map. We are putting it in a museum and, for any of us who have ever 
visited a museum, you walk quietly in hushed ways. You do not go there 
to recreate. You do not go there to vacation. You go there to look at 
the past. But I know Californians, and a lot of them. I know how they 
love their desert and they want to use their desert for their future--
not to destroy but to play in, to recreate and enjoy, and take their 
children, as that one man who did not really understand that to lock it 
up meant you denied him the access. Because, as I said you do not just 
walk around in 110-degree temperatures. You drive around in them, but 
you do not go out and camp in them very easily. Yet, that is what this 
bill is saying.
  Rather than preparing the comprehensive bill that would contain all 
of the facets of management and conservation, only the wilderness 
management portion of the desert plan, and therefore the parks, got 
consumed up in all of this. And it is, I believe, a tremendously unjust 
way to treat a phenomenally valuable resource.
  Mr. President, there is a good deal more I could say about this 
issue, and I say that because I have learned to enjoy the California 
desert. In fact, it is reasonable to say I have learned to love it. I 
have been there numerous times now. I am very proud of the Bureau of 
Land Management and the way they have managed the desert and responded 
to the public needs of this country and to the resource needs of this 
country.
  So it is not that I do this out of ignorance, it is not that I do 
this for political reasons, I do this because of my commitment to a 
responsible and managed, balanced approach toward dealing with our 
public lands and their phenomenal resources.
  The California desert is one of those many resources, and I do not 
take lightly locking up land that is approximately four times the size 
of Yellowstone National Park without due consideration. I do not take 
lightly locking up and turning away people from acreage the size of 
Vermont, Rhode Island, and Delaware all combined. And I do not take 
lightly the idea that I would be turning this loose to developers if I 
denied California S. 21, because that is false. And for any Senator to 
come to the floor and to say that means they have not studied the 
conservation plan. They have not looked at how the BLM has managed this 
land on behalf of the citizens of California and the country.
  So we are talking about a very large piece of not just California but 
the Nation, a very large chunk of resource and critical habitat and 
roadless area and beauty unique and beyond compare for the deserts of 
our country.
  I hope today that the Senate will defeat this proposition because the 
desert today is protected and that if we want to add wilderness to the 
wilderness preservation system, that we will come back in a much more 
modest and reasonable way. Because as I said, there are lands that 
deserve wilderness treatment there. I hope that if we want to add to 
our parks that we would first listen to the clarion call of the Senator 
from Wyoming who, for the last many years, has said we keep adding land 
but we put no money with it, and, therefore, we only dilute the very 
parks we have.
  We have included in my State of Idaho a beautiful area called City of 
Rocks, now one of the No. 1 rock climbing areas in the world. Thousands 
of people come annually. But as we have treated it and as we have said 
it is becoming a park unit, we are mistreating it because this year I 
tried to get $600,000 to protect it and to manage it and to build 
parking areas and treat the roads, and I did not get the money. They 
said, ``Larry, come back another year.''
  Can I say to the people of the world who are now coming to climb the 
rocks of the City of Rocks in Idaho, ``Come back another year, we can't 
handle you, we can't manage you, we don't want you there degrading the 
value of the resource because we are not willing to put the dollars and 
cents involved in''? That is really at issue here.
  So what the Senator from Wyoming said on the floor yesterday--and I 
am sure he will repeat today in the closing minutes--and what he has 
said for so long but what somehow gets denied by this Senate is that in 
our rush to add lands, we forget one thing: To finance them, to provide 
the management necessary to preserve the resource that we so 
politically and articulately suggest we are preserving.
  I retain the remainder of the time.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Who yields time?
  Mr. JOHNSTON. How much time remains?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Louisiana has 15 
minutes 41 seconds; the Senator from Wyoming has 3 minutes 41 seconds.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I yield myself 5 minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Louisiana is 
recognized.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, it is clear that there is broad 
agreement on one issue between the distinguished Senator who just 
spoke, the Senator from Idaho, and myself. That is that this resource 
in the desert is a matter of great beauty and great value. It is a 
great resource that ought to be preserved. The Senator from Idaho said 
it, I think, better than I when he described the beauty of this 
resource.
  It is clear that a national park status will protect this resource. 
There is no question about that. It is very much in question whether a 
Bureau of Land Management status, with respect to the public land, 
would protect it from mining, from roads, from ingress and egress and 
the very fragile values of a desert. It is very much in question 
whether that would be protected by BLM, or, indeed, whether the BLM 
land would, as so often is the case, be exchanged for other land around 
the country for the purpose of development. It happens all the time 
with BLM land. There are private inholdings of tens of thousands of 
acres contained within the desert that would be eligible for 
development.
  So, Mr. President, there is no question that national park status 
would be the better protection for what is, we agree, a great resource 
for the United States and for California.
  When this matter was up before and passed our bill by a vote of 69 to 
29, with 13 or 14 Republicans, it was well agreed by a margin of 2 to 1 
in this body--greater than 2 to 1--that national park status would be 
the best protective status for this land.
  As the other party is having their caucus, what do you think is being 
discussed, Mr. President? Do you think the issue there is whether or 
not national park status would best protect this land? Whether or not 
we have the resources to afford national park status, a Congress that 
just yesterday burdened this same account with $180 million a year for 
payment in lieu of taxes, do you think that is what is being discussed? 
Do you think that is the appeal that is being made to those Republicans 
who voted for this park when it was up before?
  No, Mr. President, it is not. It is, and I have no listening device 
there, but I can confidently predict that the discussion there is raw 
politics. Something to the effect that the American people are 
frustrated. We help our candidate by trying to capitalize on that 
frustration, by saying, no, by saying invoke gridlock, do not let the 
American people, do not let the California people have what they want, 
which is park status, which the Senate wanted by 69 to 29, that somehow 
we get political advantage by stopping this legislation.
  That is perfectly clear, Mr. President. Can you not hear it now, if 
you had a wire into that room? Can you not hear those statements being 
made? It is not about whether we have the resources to afford this--
$180 million yesterday a year for payment in lieu of taxes? Good 
purpose--sure it is--but I mean, does it resonate with any credibility 
that we cannot afford this legislation? Not at all, Mr. President.
  Or is there anyone who would seriously argue that BLM status better 
protects the desert? No. They are trying to take the frustration of the 
American public and capitalize on it for political purposes.
  I do not believe that is what the American people are trying to tell 
us. That is not their frustration. They are not saying we have too many 
parks, or that we ought not to develop our parks. They are not saying 
that we ought to have less protection, fewer places to go, fewer places 
of beauty and refuge in this country. That is not what they are telling 
us, Mr. President, and I do not believe that they will reward those who 
want to frustrate movements to set aside great places in this country 
for national parks for all posterity.
  Mr. President, I see the distinguished Senator from California, and I 
ask if she needs some time.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. I yield to the Senator from California such time as 
remains.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, once again, I would like to state the 
merits of this bill. This is not a bill that has a bare majority. This 
is a bill that has passed both Houses of this Congress with a major 
majority. This is a bill that has survived in this House by 73 votes on 
a cloture motion. This is a bill that is bipartisan and had 16 
Republicans supporting it when it was passed.
  This is a bill on which I have worked with both sides of the aisle, 
and more than 19 amendments from the opposition party have been 
incorporated in this bill. This is a bill in which the major point of 
contention by the opponents was remedied by acceptance of the House 
language to designate the east Mojave a preserve and permit hunting. 
This is a bill which, if it is defeated on this vote, will be defeated 
by just a few Members of this body. I do not think that is what the 
constitutional fathers intended when the rules were set up for the 
functioning of this body.
  In California, there are 25 million acres of desert, believe it or 
not--25 million. This bill would protect about 6.3 million of those 
acres of California desert, and it would protect some of the most 
fragile areas of that desert.
  As you know, Mr. President, because you are involved in the 
outdoors--you appreciate the outdoors; you use off-road vehicles; you 
know the interest that this desert area has for off-road vehicle 
users--we have worked with that community. We have worked with the 
American Motorcyclist Association, which had a position of opposition 
and which changed that position. We have excluded roads of concern to 
them. We have taken out the South Algodones Dunes area. We have 
maintained lands for recreational off-road vehicles use in places that 
are appropriate, where it would not destroy some of the finest 
artifacts, some of the most fragile flora and fauna of the desert.
  This is an area which has 90 mountain ranges, cinder cones, extinct 
volcanoes, the largest remaining Joshua tree forest in the world, 
desert tortoises, bighorn sheep, wild burros. It is an area where 
citizens come in and bring water to animals. That is allowed under this 
bill.
  There were Republicans who had concern with certain land exchanges. 
Those land exchanges are out of this bill. Every active mine is 
protected in this bill. Every existing job is protected in this bill. 
The law enforcement language that has been agreed upon is bipartisan. 
The military language has been agreed upon by the Armed Services 
Committee.
  Private property rights are protected. There is no taking of private 
property.
  Secretary Babbitt, present in the Chamber yesterday, committed to see 
to it that access roads to private property and utility lines to 
private property also are protected and are provided as necessary in 
conjunction with the private property owner.
  The National Park Service estimates that this bill will create in the 
area between 1,000 and 2,000 new jobs--the area will not lose jobs but 
gain jobs. It will be good for the area and give property owners in the 
area I think a sense of pride.
  Mr. President, 7 years ago this was a very different bill. The bill 
on which the argument was joined was a stronger environmental bill in 
the sense that it eliminated grazing. It did not have the language to 
protect private property, law enforcement, military, mining--all of the 
things that we have added to the bill.
  I think the unfortunate part about this debate is that many of the 
opponents' views were cemented on a bill that is long gone, that was 
introduced 7 years ago in this body, that has been amended 
substantially. I am so proud of this bill because I think it points a 
way for a very unique protection program that is not repressive, that 
is not filled with Big Brother, heavy-handed Government, that is 
sensitive to the people of the area.
  This is why 16 boards of supervisors support it. This is why 36 city 
councils support it. This is why 15 major newspapers support it. This 
is why 75 percent of the people of the area support it, and 70 percent 
of the people of the State support it. It is a good bill. I cannot 
express my frustration and my disbelief that the will of the majority 
is sublimated by the practices of this body, and I saw it happen, in 
campaign spending reform, in lobby disclosure reform, in 
telecommunications, and somehow I do not think this is the way our 
forefathers intended this body to work.
  Mr. President, I am hopeful that we have 60 votes. The opposition has 
created a field of land mines to run through to get to this point. Some 
Members have had to leave. Others have left and come back. I want them 
to know how very grateful I am to those Members.
  I wish to point out to them that this is important to the people of 
California. It has been a 7-year battle. I am hopeful in the vote that 
will be upcoming in a few moments we will be able to deliver for the 
enjoyment of our children and our grandchildren protection of the last 
remaining dinosaur trackway in California, protection of the largest 
Joshua tree forest, protection of Indian petroglyphs written on walls 
of hills and in slot canyons all through this desert area, and 
protection of tribal burial grounds.
  As I pointed out yesterday, under the present system of management, 
people come in and chip out these petroglyphs and take them home and 
put them on the coffee table so that your and my grandchildren will 
never know the history of this great California Desert. The aim of the 
bill is to protect this history. The aim is to showcase this history. 
The aim is to enable the flora and fauna of the area to be available, 
not trampled over and destroyed, to all of the people, to the more than 
a million visitors who go to Death Valley, who go to Joshua Tree, who 
go to the east Mojave for one of the most unique experiences in western 
America.
  Mr. President, this is a western preservation bill. This is a bill of 
which miners and ranchers and recreationists and all Americans should 
be proud. It is a bill whose time has come, and the time is today. I 
hope that vote is here.
  I thank you, Mr. President, and I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Who yields time?
  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, what is the time status?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wyoming has 3 
minutes 40 seconds, the Senator from Louisiana has 1 minute 22 seconds.
  (Mrs. MURRAY assumed the chair.)
  Mr. WALLOP. Madam President, I will consume the remainder of the 
time.
  Let me just try to confine this argument to what it is really about. 
I do not quarrel with the Senator from California that it is political 
because the Senator from California has made it political, because it 
is not with the Senator from Wyoming.
  This is about degrading the National Park System. This is about 
degrading the National Park system and making American citizens pay for 
that degradation in funny kinds of ways that they were not otherwise 
obligated to.
  Let me explain. Every time we add a park, this one twice the size of 
Yellowstone, without adding any personnel or resources, that is a tax 
on the resources of every national park in America. It is a reduction 
in its personnel. It is a reduction in its budget.
  The argument can be made, and I make it here today, that this area 
will receive less protection under this status than it has under the 
BLM for the simple reason the National Park System cannot take care of 
what it has and it cannot absorb this new obligation. There will be 
fewer people protecting it than there are now.
  Now, let us talk about another protection. Twelve thousand private 
property holders will be having their property condemned by this and 
not be able to be paid for it because we do not have the money to pay 
for the 20,000-some other property holders who are in America with a 
backlog of $8 or $9 billion that we have refused to pay. This Congress, 
and the ones that have preceded it, does nothing but put its political 
reputation on the line by saying I bring you parks and then they tax 
the parks and the park system.
  It is going downhill, Madam President, and Congress is making it go 
downhill for a very simple reason, because it likes to take credit for 
the park and blame somebody else for what is happening --$500 million 
to put the roads in Yellowstone Park just back into condition.
  Guess what happens in here? Another 500,000 acres of private property 
goes onto the rolls that the Federal Government must buy, and we have a 
37-year backlog today. Who will be benefited? The big landholders. Who 
will be punished? The small landholders and property holders--$7 
billion worth of property. This bill cost, for one campaign, $7 billion 
out of the hides of the taxpayers all over America.
  This is not a California issue. The Senator from California said that 
there is all of this great support. All five Members of Congress in 
whose districts these lands lie oppose it. And all five Members of 
Congress in whose lands these districts lie were not consulted by the 
Senators from California as this went through.
  Sixty-eight percent of the people who know about those areas do not 
approve of this specific piece of legislation. Ask them if they approve 
of protecting the desert. By all means they do. But do they think this 
will? By all means they do not. What they think this will do is exactly 
what it will do--is camp on their backs, reduce their access, reduce 
the protection of the desert, and take their private property.
  The Park Service is not a multiuse agency, and it never has been, and 
cannot succeed as that.
  Madam President, this is an antienvironmental bill, and it is an 
anti-U.S. Park Service, anti-National Park Service, and anti-National 
Park System bill.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Madam President, I ask my colleagues this morning to 
vote on this measure, first, based on whether they think this resource 
is worth protecting as a national park. The answer to that question is 
a resounding yes.
  Second, Madam President, I ask for them to vote on this question 
based on what they think the American people want. Madam President, 
there is no question that the American people, in my judgment, are 
committed to preserving these resources.
  Third, I ask them to take into consideration what the people of 
California want. But most of all, Madam President, I ask for Senators 
today to vote this matter based on their consciences. What does that 
inner light of conscience tell our Senators? If they will follow their 
dictate of conscience and do what is right, we will again pass this 
legislation, which we passed before by 69 to 29.
  I say this is a time for courage and for conscience and to do what is 
right.
  I yield the remainder of my time.

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