[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 114 (Tuesday, July 30, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H8798-H8799]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               NOBODY IN AMERICA WANTS TO CLOSE THE PARKS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Utah [Mr. Hansen] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HANSEN. Mr. Speaker, I was very interested in my friend from 
Ohio, Mr. Regula talking about the national parks of America. The 
gentleman from Ohio is the chairman of the Subcommittee on 
Appropriations that handles those particular issues, and I am the 
chairman of the subcommittee that handles the authorization of the 
parks.
  I think in America people should realize we have 368 units of the 
National Park Service. It costs an awful lot of money, and Mr. Regula 
has that responsibility. I have the responsibility to make sure they 
are run correctly, managed correctly.
  We find out, however, that we have a lot of parks that are in dire 
need of help. Yellowstone, for example, has 28 miles of impassable 
roads; Yosemite has problems, Everglades have problems. We have got 
problems in parking, sewer systems and culinary water systems.
  We wonder why did we find ourselves in a position such as this. So we 
are doing everything in our power not only to appropriate money, but to 
come up with a better management procedure. We are trying to come up 
with ways to give the superintendent of the park a better way to do it.
  The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Regula] talked about something is very 
interesting. We have a rec bill in now that will say: Superintendent of 
the park, if you will put somebody out at that gate, and they walk in, 
not only will you take that money and send it to the black hole in 
Congress, there is no incentive to do it.
  So this rec bill we have got says this: You keep 70 percent of the 
money so the superintendent at Yellowstone can take care of the park 
without having to come to Mr. Regula and having to spend the time. So 
there will be incentive for somebody to be in that park.
  I find it interesting that the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. 
Babbitt, has chosen to take H.R. 260, which passed in the 103d session, 
428 to nothing, and turn it into a park closing bill. He has gone 
around America time after time, literally dozens of places, saying 
Republicans want to close parks. That is absolutely false. Nothing is 
further from the truth. We do not want to close parks.
  What we want to do is make parks that jewel in the crown Americans 
want. They want to go to the park and they want service. They want the 
concessionaire to take care. They want the roads to be right. They do 
not want to see the mess that we are seeing in parks today.
  I cannot understand why he is doing that. In fact, the President of 
the United States, Mr. Clinton, stood on the Mall and thanked them for 
defeating this park closing bill, which there never was a park closing 
bill. In fact, I wrote President Clinton and asked him a question: 
Where is this park closing bill? Where do you want to perpetuate this 
myth?
  I am still awaiting an answer from the President of the United 
States.
  We find ourselves now working on a number of pieces of legislation, a 
concessionaire's bill that will bring more money into the Treasury, 
that will have more competition among concessionaires, a healthy thing 
for the parks. We found the rec bill that I have talked about, as the 
gentleman from Ohio mentioned, of Yosemite.
  The oldest park is Yellowstone. In 1915, if you had gone into 
Yellowstone it was $10. Today it is $10 for an entire car. We just 
cannot afford that any more.
  I must ask my friends who fall in the category of having the 
perpetual thing as they reach 62 they can go in free. I think it is 
interesting if Americans would go into the Yellowstones, and the Grand 
Canyons, and the Zions and the Bryces and the Yosemites and see these 
people going into the parks, and they are over 62, and they drive in 
with an $80,000 Winnebago pulling behind it a $30,000 Suburban, and 
they camp for 7 days. They hook up to the electricity, the sewer and 
the water, and they are free for that entire time.
  I have made a time to stumble through those areas and talk to these 
folks, and I say as I talked to these CEO's and others, a lot of them 
want to give us money. And they sent us money saying this is the best 
deal in the world.
  We are not in here to rip off the public, but we do want to take care 
of it.
  Do folks in America realize how much we are in arrears in the 
infrastructure of the park? It is literally billions of dollars in 
inholdings in other areas.

  Can we take care of it? Sure we can, but we have to come up with some 
of these recommendations that the gentleman from Ohio brought up, and 
those things we are trying to do.
  I say to the administration, to Secretary Babbitt and others: Stop 
playing political games with this stuff. This is too big to be 
political. Do not try to ingratiate yourselves to this administration. 
What we want to do is we want to take care of the parks of America.
  I am a little sick and tired as every day another report comes to me. 
They bring in a newspaper thing or radio ad. Well, all these 
Republicans are trying to close our park. That is nonsense. There is 
nobody in America who wants to close the parks.
  In fact, I brought in--as chairman of the committee I brought in the 
man by the name of Roger Kennedy, Director of National Parks. I had him 
put his arm to the square.
  Mr. Kennedy, do you solemnly swear to tell the whole truth, nothing 
but the truth, so help you God? As we have the right to do?
  Mr. Kennedy said, yes.
  My first question: Is there any bill that closes any parks?
  One answer, one word: No.
  Second question: Is there anything in H.R. 260 that privatizes any 
parks?
  One answer: No.
  The next question: Now, why is it that your Secretary, your boss, is 
going all over America saying we have parks to close, and he says, 
``that is above my pay grade.''
  So we find ourselves in a situation where these things are not 
happening. We put out the hand of fellowship to our friends on the 
other side of the aisle, to the administration saying let us work this 
out and take care of these 368 parks.
  All right; the question comes up should we in any way close any 
parks? Again, let me refer to Mr. Kennedy, who I found to be an 
honorable man, and he was on C-SPAN with Brian Lamb, and the question 
came up should you close any? And he said maybe four or five.
  Maybe there is four or five they should close. Let me give you an 
example of which I will not give you, Mr. Speaker, because I see my 
time is up.
  Mr. Speaker, Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt has spent a 
great deal of time during his tenure traveling around the country 
trying to convince the public that our National Parks are doomed and 
that the Republicans are responsible for all the problems. The truth is 
that our park system is in trouble. Republicans inherited a park system 
just 2 years ago that was already in intensive care. While Republicans 
and Democrats have worked together in the last 2 years to address these 
problems, they have only been exacerbated through mismanagement by 
Bruce Babbitt and his inability to stay home and mind the store. 
Secretary Babbitt is directly responsible for our National Parks waste 
and misdirected priorities.
  While Secretary Babbitt was taking fishing trips around the country, 
the GAO found that the National Park Service has no idea how it is 
spending its money, what its assets are and what its needs are. 
Perhaps, Secretary Babbitt should spend less time politicking and 
racking up frequent flyer miles and more time fixing the problems this 
Congress and the GAO pointed out to him over 2 years ago. Having spent 
40 percent of his time traveling at taxpayer's expense, Secretary 
Babbitt has certainly seen the country but is doing very little to 
manage our national treasures.

  Lets compare the records of the Resources Committee and Secretary 
Babbitt:
  Secretary Babbitt has requested cuts in the funding allocation for 
park operating funds from 47 percent to 44 percent of the total NPS 
allocations in the past 2 years. While the Republican-controlled 
Resources Committee has never recommended cuts in basic park operating 
funds.
  Secretary Babbitt has cut 525 Park Service personnel while the 
Resources Committee has never recommended any cuts in personnel.
  Secretary Babbitt unilaterally sought or studied closure or 
termination of National Park

[[Page H8799]]

Service involvement at over 30 park units. Secretary Babbitt is 
studying transferring parks such as Redwoods National Park, Great Basin 
National Park, and Lake Clark National Park to different Indian tribes. 
In the mean time, the Resources Committee, on a bipartisan basis, has 
sought to set up a nonpartisan Commission to study our Park System and 
make recommendations to help save our Parks.
  After Secretary Babbitt's first two choices for Director of the 
National Park Service--Robert Redford and Tom Brokaw--turned him down, 
Babbitt has filled more key park service positions with political 
appointees than the last three administrations combined. These are 
simply political favors for people who never worked a day in a park. 
The Resources Committee has moved legislation requiring that the 
National Park Service Director possess professional qualifications and 
be subject to Senate approval.
  Secretary Babbitt is in charge of the waste, fraud, and abuse that 
runs rampant in the National Park Service. The Interior inspector 
general and the General Accounting Office found the Park Service's 
books unbalanced for 3 years and no method to ensure that the highest 
priority programs are funded. Instead of taking care of our parks, 
Secretary Babbitt has spent money on a $1.6 million personality 
inventory, a multi-million dollar reorganization with no benefit to the 
parks, and a $20,000 redecoration of the Director's hallway. While 
Secretary Babbitt is spending money on interior decorating--literally--
the Resources Committee initiated these reports by the inspector 
general and the General Accounting Office to improve the operations of 
the Park Service, improve accountability and to help prioritize 
funding. Thus far, Secretary Babbitt has ignored those reports and has 
made few changes in his management of our Nation's parks.
  Recently, Secretary Babbitt has been traveling around the country 
saying we need concessions reform and that we need to return more to 
the Federal Government. Unfortunately, the legislation Mr. Babbitt 
supports would exempt 80 percent of the concessionaires from 
competition and the Congressional Budget Office says will cost the 
American taxpayer $79 million over the next 5 years. The Republican 
proposal would open all 660 National Park Service concessions contracts 
to competition and will return $12 million back to the parks while 
providing $84 million to deficit reduction over 5 years. If Secretary 
Babbitt wants real reform then the Republican proposal is the only 
alternative.
  Housing for Park Service employees has been described as third world 
conditions in many instances. After a photo-op and the construction of 
three housing units, the Secretary has dropped any further efforts to 
resolve this problem. Republicans in the mean time have moved 
legislation that would encourage private sector solutions and 
investments for park housing. Secretary Babbitt would rather ignore the 
problems that don't make political hay for him. I guess taking care of 
his employees is just not a priority for Secretary Babbitt.
  Secretary Babbitt alleges that our National Parks are broke, yet 
while overall visitation has been level for the past 8 years, 
appropriations have increased by nearly $300 million over that same 
period. Where did the money go Mr. Secretary? Where did you spend it? 
We love our parks and so do the citizens of this country and we expect 
Secretary Babbitt to manage these treasures in a responsible and 
protective fashion. Instead, Secretary Babbitt would rather gallivant 
across the Nation doing political fund raisers, going fishing, and 
politicizing our National Parks than stay home and manage our national 
treasures. Our parks need our help and the goal of this Congress is to 
identify the problems and find creative solutions to solving those 
problems. Americans don't want to just throw money at the problem, they 
want the problems fixed. Mr. President, we need a Secretary of Interior 
will actually work for our National Parks and not just travel around 
and fish in them.

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