[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 106 (Tuesday, June 27, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1331-E1332]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                   A RUMMAGE SALE ON THE ENVIRONMENT

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                           HON. GEORGE MILLER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 27, 1995
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, each day we seem to have a 
clearer view of ways in which the Republican Congress intends to 
attempt to balance our Nation's budget--and this week's action by the 
House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee is an alarming indication 
that it will be our Nation's most valuable natural resources that will 
play a major role in this balancing act.
  As a recent San Francisco Chronicle editorial laments the 
subcommittee's actions appears to be ``a national rummage sale, the 
effect of which will be to privatize, commercialize, pollute, and 
consume America's natural heritage.''
  I believe that those of us who have worked for years to protect our 
natural resources would agree with the Chronicle's view that such 
actions are ``a sell-out, pure and simple.''
  I commend the following editorial to my colleagues' attention:
           [From the San Francisco Chronicle, June 22, 1995]

                   A Rummage Sale On the Environment

       Now we know how the Republican Congress is going to balance 
     the budget: auction off the nation's most valuable natural 
     resources, along with its own votes, to the highest bidder.
       Make no mistake, the legislation on offshore oil and gas 
     leasing and the East Mojave National Preserve that passed the 
     House Appropriations Subcommittee Tuesday is part and parcel 
     of a giant national rummage sale, the effect of which will be 
     to privatize, commercialize, pollute and consume America's 
     natural heritage.
       It is a sell-out, pure and simple.
       The congressional assault on natural resources is far from 
     being limited to the coasts and the desert. The House budget 
     plan calls for selling--or even giving away--vast tracts of 
     national forests, and other House legislation would set up a 
     commission to study the closure of national parks.
       Still other proposals call for turning national wildlife 
     areas over to the states to do with as they please. And an 
     amendment to the vetoed budget rescission act, that would 
     have doubled the cutting of timber in national forests while 
     suspending all environmental protections, has risen from its 
     well deserved grave and is heading back to the president's 
     desk.
       In April, President Clinton promised to veto any bill that 
     compromises America's clean water, clean air and toxic waste 
     laws. If he is as good as his word, every single one of these 
     ecological nightmares must be vetoed if and when they reach 
     his desk.
       Let's look at just three of them.
       The so-called ``logging without laws'' amendment to the 
     rescission bill would virtually hand national forest 
     management over to timber barons with chain saws.
       Ostensibly intended to expedite salvage logging of dead and 
     dying trees, it would direct the U.S. Forest Service and the 
     Bureau of Land Management to cut more than 6.2 million board-
     feet over the next 18 months with no regard to the 
     protections stipulated in the National Environmental Policy 
     Act, the National Forest Management Act, the Clean Water Act 
     or the Endangered Species Act. 

[[Page E 1332]]

       The bill's definition of ``salvage'' timber would include 
     all ``associated trees,'' ``insect-infected trees'' and 
     ``trees imminently susceptible to fire or insect attack''--in 
     other words, anything that can be cut.
       A recent BLM memo correctly characterized it as ``more or 
     less a license for unregulated timber harvest.''
       Second, the House Interior Appropriations bill would 
     virtually zero-out funding for National Park Service 
     management of the new Mojave National Preserve, created last 
     fall as part of the California Desert Protection Act.
       Not satisfied with having won a battle to permit continued 
     hunting and grazing in the preserve, Representative Jerry 
     Lewis, R-Redlands, along with ranching and mining interests, 
     are pressing ultimately for a reversal of the Desert 
     Protection Act, which took eight years to negotiate.
       It seems not to matter a whit to Lewis that many of his own 
     constituents, including the San Bernardino County Board of 
     Supervisors, which originally opposed the preserve, is now 
     enthusiastic about winning full funding for it, having noted 
     that tourist visits in the area have increased dramatically 
     since the preserve was established.
       Finally, the same legislation would open up all federal 
     waters on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to leasing by 
     oil and gas extractors, reversing a 14-year moratorium on 
     offshore drilling that has enjoyed bipartisan support, 
     including that of Governor Wilson.
       Laughingly, congressional Republicans argued that the 
     United States is too dependent upon foreign oil and that it 
     would be irresponsible not to explore all domestic sources. 
     But a Department of Energy study shows that there are 
     approximately 726 million barrels of proven reserves off the 
     California coast.
       This means that, in exchange for allowing oil derricks to 
     threaten spills along the entire length of our coast, the 
     nation would get all of 41 days worth of energy from proven 
     oil reserves--a bargain that only members of Congress in 
     thrall to oil companies could appreciate.
       President Clinton, get out the veto pen.
       

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