[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 125 (Monday, July 31, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H8060]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               BLM LOBBYING AGAINST LIVESTOCK GRAZING ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentlewoman from Idaho [Mrs. Chenoweth] is recognized for 
10 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to speak with you about 
an issue that is taking place with regards to the activities of the 
Bureau of Land Management and the Rangeland Reform Act that is now 
pending before the committees here in the House and in the Senate. 
Shockingly the Bureau of Land Management, Mr. Babbitt, and the Clinton 
administration have ordered a communications plan designed to discredit 
the Livestock Grazing Act before committee hearings were even held on 
the act and before the legislation has been finalized. It is obvious, 
Mr. Speaker, that through this action the Clinton administration has no 
desire to work with Congress on grazing issues so important to our 
lifestyle, our culture, our economic base, and our way of life in the 
West.
  Mr. Speaker, the job of the Bureau of Land Management is very plain 
and simply to carry out the laws passed by Congress, not to use 
taxpayer dollars to lobby the media or attempt to write their own laws.
  Mr. Speaker, the Director of the Bureau of Land Management in the 
State of Nevada published in local newspapers a lobbying effort against 
this particular action. I am, Mr. Speaker, calling on the Bureau of 
Land Management to immediately cease spending taxpayer money to spread 
false and misleading information to the public on the Public Rangeland 
Management Act.
  I need to remind the Bureau of Land Management that the Hatch Act 
under section 7322 of the United States Code clearly states that an 
employee in an executive agency or in the competitive service may not 
use his official authority or influence to coerce the political action 
of a person or a body.
  Section 303 of the Interior Appropriation Act of 1995 clearly states 
that, quote, no part of any appropriations contained in this act shall 
be used for any activities, for publications or distribution of 
literature that in any way tend to promote public support or opposition 
to any legislative proposal on which congressional action is not 
complete.
  The Public Rangeland Management Act currently under consideration by 
the House and the Senate is the result of hard work and lengthy 
discussions from all
 parties involved with the use and management of public rangelands.

  Mr. Speaker, I intend to work as a member of the House Committee on 
Resources to schedule a special hearing on the conduct of the Bureau of 
Land Management to this issue. It is imperative that we bring the 
separation of powers back under control as envisioned by our Founding 
Fathers.
  Article I, section 1, of the United States Constitution suggests, and 
states, and mandates that the Congress shall form all laws. It is the 
administration's responsibility simply to carry out those laws. Many of 
these public employees are very well paid. They have very high 
positions, and to see them blatantly ignore the Hatch Act and other 
pieces of legislation which have kept and maintained that separation of 
powers over these years, to see it blatantly ignored, is alarming to 
me, Mr. Speaker.
  You know, today I had the fortune of going to Fredericksburg and 
viewing the battlefield there, viewing the battlefield where 35,000 
young men from age 12 up through their twenties are buried, where only 
15 percent of those young men were identified with grave markers. So 
much has gone before us, Mr. Speaker, in order for us to maintain the 
concepts emboldened and embodied in the Constitution of the separation 
of powers, so much has gone before us in the way of sacrifice, and yet 
today, yet today, we see public officials blatantly ignore the laws of 
Congress with absolutely no retribution or no fear of retribution.
  Mr. Speaker, it is only when we are able to bring this out in the 
public and the public is able to see and to say to the lawmakers and to 
the policy makers in this Nation it is time, it is time, Mr. Speaker, 
that the members of the Bureau of Land Management and various other 
agencies abide by the same course of law and standard of law that 
nonpublic employees must live and abide by.


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