[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 107 (Tuesday, July 27, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H6571-H6573]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE REPUBLICAN AGENDA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Tancredo). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the recognition for this hour 
that I reserve on behalf of the Republican majority. And, specifically, 
for those Members of the Theme Team and any Member of the Republican 
Conference that has anything to discuss this evening, I invite them to 
come down to the floor now and join me in the next hour in discussing 
topics relative to our majority agenda on the House floor.
  That agenda, of course, includes an effort to save and secure a 
retirement security system through Social Security and Medicare. It 
also involves our efforts to reduce the tax burden on the American 
people. The third item is to build the strongest national defense in 
the country, in the world, one that allows for complete security for 
our Nation and for our children, and the third effort is to try to 
create the best education system on the planet.

                              {time}  2245

  Those are three goals towards which we are working vigorously, and 
hoping to accomplish and achieve.
  I want to start out by talking about a fifth topic, one that is 
important to my constituents and one that is fresh on my mind just 
coming back from a weekend of visiting with constituents. The topic 
back home was the Endangered Species Act.
  The Committee on Resources has a special task force that visited 
Colorado and held a hearing in the town of Greeley. We had a great 
hearing. One of our colleagues, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. 
Udall), was able to come up to Greeley and join us, as well as one of 
the members of the Senate, Senator Campbell. Also, the fourth member of 
that group was the chairman, the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo).
  We had a great hearing. We heard from many, many people involved in 
agriculture in Colorado, and those who are in the business of wildlife 
management and the science of trying to preserve and protect endangered 
species, and prevent certain species from becoming listed on that list.
  We also heard from a number of individuals from environmental groups. 
But the consensus clearly was that the Endangered Species Act is broken 
and needs to be fixed; that the act needs to be addressed in wholesale 
fashion and dramatically reformed.
  It is very clear that the notion of protecting and preserving 
endangered species is a good one, and one that ought to be maintained. 
It is a noble goal, a worthwhile goal. It is a public goal.
  The unfortunate consequence, however, of the Endangered Species Act 
is that the individual who happens to find one of these species on his 
or her property bears the almost exclusive burden in shouldering the 
cost of protecting and preserving and achieving this public goal of 
species recovery. That is the unfortunate part of it. It is the unfair 
part of the Endangered Species Act.
  Once again, I want to suggest that those we heard from in Colorado, 
from the farming and ranching community, from the homebuilders in 
Colorado, those who represent municipalities, as well, we heard from a 
county commissioner, a State legislator, all of these people really and 
truly believe that we ought to do everything we can to protect and 
preserve species, and we certainly do not want to see them go extinct 
as a result of any human activity.
  But they also understand the importance of a local perspective in 
achieving a strategy to secure these public goals of species recovery 
and protection of species.
  We heard from a county commissioner, for example, Kathay Reynolds, 
the county commissioner in Lambert County, who was disappointed that 
the Fish and Wildlife Service did not reach out enough to her and her 
constituency in devising the rules to protect a mouse, a mouse called 
the Prebles Meadow Jumping Mouse. This is a mouse that looks just like 
the Western Jumping Mouse that is a more hardy variety in Colorado.
  The mouse has been listed. Let me say that the mouse seems to like 
water. It hangs out around rivers and streams and irrigation ditches, 
which in the West is critical in a semi-arid region such as ours when 
it comes to agriculture. So the mouse likes to be around the water and 
in the tall grass around the water.
  If you happen to find a mouse, one of these Prebles Meadow Jumping 
Mice in and around your property, your life is about to change, because 
under the proposed rules by the Fish and Wildlife Service, that means 
that you can no longer maintain your irrigation canals and ditches. It 
means that, in many cases, you may have to divert your

[[Page H6572]]

 water and use it in a way that is not conducive to sound agricultural 
practices.
  It also means that again, in an area where water rights, where we 
fight very hard for water rights, that this has the ability to disrupt 
the allocation of such a scarce resource.
  We heard from many other individuals, but the hearing was a very good 
one, one that is very, very important to the West. We heard about other 
species, the mountain plover, the blacktailed prairie dog, and other 
species that are proposed to be listed in Colorado.
  I want to thank the Committee on Resources, its leadership under the 
chairman, the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young), as well as the 
chairman of the task force, the gentleman from California, for coming 
out to Colorado and focusing so much national attention on a big 
problem in our part of the country.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Hill).
  Mr. HILL of Montana. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado 
for yielding to me.
  While he and I both serve on the Committee on Resources, I was unable 
to join the gentleman in Colorado over the weekends. But there is no 
question that the Endangered Species Act is having a very dramatic and 
in some instances, a devastating impact on our rural communities.
  Obviously, it impacts rural areas because rural areas is where 
habitat involving endangered species exists. But what we know now is 
that it operates in an unfair fashion, particularly with private 
property owners. But even the impact that it has on the management of 
public lands, it is unfair, and it is also ineffective.
  We know now that has been having an adverse impact on what the 
objective is, which is of course to protect species, because the 
incentives in the Endangered Species Act certainly are such that if one 
discovers a species on one's property, it is best not to do that. So 
the incentive is for people to change habitat.
  Also one of the huge issues associated with the Endangered Species 
Act is the fact that the States have had responsibility for managing 
wildlife. That has been the tradition in this country. In the 
Endangered Species Act, the Federal Government has taken the dominant 
role, overriding the authority of the States.
  What we see happening is that we are managing for a single species, 
which is having an adverse impact on other species. In other words, the 
Endangered Species Act focuses all the resources on a single species, 
and the broad ecology is secondary to the protection of that species.
  So there are a number of reforms we need to make. One is to restore 
the responsibility and authority of the States, to allow for agreements 
with private property owners in managing their property for broad 
species protection, and also to make sure that people who lose the use 
of their property are appropriately compensated for it.
  While I missed this meeting, I certainly agree that we need to reform 
the Endangered Species Act.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Farmers and ranchers are really having a tough go of it 
right now, not only because of various regulatory policies, the 
Endangered Species Act, as implemented by the Fish and Wildlife 
Service, being among them, but several other matters, tax-related 
policies and trade issues, also.
  But the topic of private property ownership in America is so central 
and essential to our way of life and our culture. It really is rural 
America, which in, my opinion, is where we find the real soul of 
America. These are the same folks, the same spirit and mentality and 
motivation that in fact founded the country and have sustained our 
great Republic to this time.

  The effect of this particular regulatory action, the Endangered 
Species Act, is one that restricts and constrains to a tremendous 
degree the ability not only to enjoy property rights and the use of 
one's private property, but also the production of our food supply, 
which is something that, of course, is vital to the long-term solvency 
of our Nation and the success of our Republic, and the strength of 
emerging economies throughout the rest of the world.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth).
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my friend from Colorado and my friend, the 
gentleman from Montana.
  Mr. Speaker, as I listened to their words, I could not help but think 
of the irony of the current administration, who campaigned in 1992 
under a slogan of putting people first. How ironic that is, in the wake 
of decisions by the administration that would seek to dilute what the 
Fifth Amendment to the Constitution says in its final clause.
  I would ask my colleagues and those who join us to listen closely. 
The final clause of the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution says, ``Nor 
shall private property be taken for public use without just 
compensation.'' And the irony of the assertion that the Clinton-Gore 
gang plan to put people first is exceeded only by the boastfulness of 
the current president in the inter regnum between his election and 
swearing in when he said that he would offer the most ethical 
administration in history.
  The irony fairly drips from those words when today, Mr. Speaker, we 
came to this floor to debate the trade status of the People's Republic 
of China, mindful of the fact that Chinese shell corporations, 
technically with American charters, had given money to the Clinton-Gore 
campaign in 1996; mindful also of the fact that for those of us from 
the West, from Colorado, Montana, and Arizona, it has been said that 
this administration has declared war on the West, on resource-based 
industries, on small family farms and ranches, on a way of life that is 
rapidly vanishing, hastened by the bureaucratic decisions of those who 
would seek to short-circuit this document.
  Mr. Speaker, one is reminded of the weak assertion by our current 
Vice President, the same Vice President who last weekend presided over 
an unparalleled waste of natural resources in the millions of dollars, 
in the millions of gallons of water, for what is now being called the 
new Watergate, for what some cynics call Tipper Canoe; for what other 
cynics call the new Row vs. Wade; a Vice President of the United 
States, Mr. Speaker, who had the audacity to stand in front of the 
assembled press and say to America, through the Press Corps, ``My legal 
counsel informs me that there is no controlling legal authority.''
  Mr. Speaker, it is a fair question to ask, how low can an 
administration go, from the boastful claims of putting people first, 
from the boastful claims of having the most ethical administration in 
history, to the reality of taking contributions from Chinese front 
corporations, to having a Vice President who, in violation of existing 
Federal law, sought campaign donations from his Executive Office 
Building location, not from the Democrat National Committee, and still 
had the audacity to claim that his legal counsel informed him that 
there is no controlling legal authority.
  Mr. Speaker, I will say again for the Record, to my colleagues and 
those who would join us beyond these walls, there is a controlling 
legal authority. It is called the Constitution of the United States, 
which provides oversight capacity to the legislative branch of 
government, but moreover, Mr. Speaker, which provides a remedy every 4 
years for the executive branch, every 2 years for those who would serve 
in the Congress of the United States, where we stand at the bar of 
public opinion and are accountable to the people who sent us here.
  That should give pause to this Vice President, even though the 
current president apparently has no concerns about it.
  Mr. SCHAFFER of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, this topic of corruption in 
the executive branch of government and in administration is one that 
the Committee on Resources again had a chance to look into a little 
further, and the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Hill) was there.
  I would like to ask him to comment, if he would, for a moment on the 
hearing we had just a few days ago.
  Mr. HILL. As my colleague, the gentleman from Colorado, knows, we are 
considering a number of bills associated with putting perhaps more of 
the offshore receipts, revenue from offshore oil and gas development, 
into habitat and providing that money to the State.
  So as part of that, the Committee on Resources asked the General 
Accounting Office to do an examination of the

[[Page H6573]]

 accounting in the use of these funds. We had one of the most startling 
reports that I think that I have ever read as a Member of Congress. 
What we have discovered is that at the very top of this administration, 
there has been a looting of hunters' and fishermen's funds. People who 
hunt and fish in the United States pay an excise tax into a fund, the 
Pittman Robertson fund, and a fisheries fund to provide for habitat to 
help sustain hunting and provide habitat for hunting.
  What we have discovered is that the Fish and Wildlife Service has 
been looting this account.

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