[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 154 (Wednesday, October 29, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H9991-H9995]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WAIVING POINTS OF ORDER AGAINST CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 2691,
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT,
2004
Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the
Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 418 ask for its
immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:
H. Res. 418
Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be
in order to consider the conference report to accompany the
bill (H.R. 2691) making appropriations for the Department of
the Interior and related agencies for the fiscal year ending
September 30, 2004, and for other purposes. All points of
order against the conference report and against its
consideration are waived. The conference report shall be
considered as read.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings)
is recognized for 1 hour.
(Mr. HASTINGS of Washington asked and was given permission to revise
and extend his remarks.)
Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate
only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York
(Ms. Slaughter), pending which I yield myself such time as I may
consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is
for the purpose of debate only.
Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 418 is a rule providing for the
consideration of H.R. 2691, the Department of Interior and Related
Agencies Appropriations Act of 2004. The rule waives all points of
order against the conference report and against its consideration. The
rule further provides that the conference report shall be considered as
read.
Mr. Speaker, the Interior conference report that the House shall
consider, following adoption of this rule, provides for $19.8 billion
in budget authority for fiscal year 2004, which is $300 million above
the level requested by the administration.
Specifically, the bill provides increased levels of funding for the
National Park Service, for our system of National Wildlife Refuges, for
the Indian Health Service, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land
Management, among others.
As a Member from the West, I am particularly pleased that the
conference agreement provides for $227.5 million for payment in lieu of
taxes, or PILT, which is greatly needed to reimburse local communities
in Western States whose tax rolls are limited by extensive Federal land
holdings in their areas. This bill funds PILT at a level of $7.5
million above the current year and $22.5 million above the level
requested by the administration.
The bill also provides $212 million for Indian Trust reform to ensure
that Indian Tribes receive full value for oil, gas and other mineral
resources Federal agencies permit to be produced on their lands. By
law, the Interior Department serves as trustee for Indian lands and
resources, and Congress is committed to taking the steps necessary to
see that the Department carries out those trust responsibilities to
their fullest.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, the conferees are to be commended for their
efforts to fund a wide range of forest, health and wildfire safety
initiatives. The tragic wildfires now raging in California have focused
the public's attention on the importance of reducing the threat of
massive fires that endanger both lives and property in their affected
areas. This year, the Congress has provided historic levels of
resources for Federal fire fighting assistance, including in this
conference report a total of $2.9 billion, one of the largest one-time
fire fighting allocations in our history.
The bill includes $2.5 billion for the national fire plan, as well as
additional $400 million to repay wildfire suppression expenses of last
year. These funds emphasize providing fire fighting resources and
personnel to keep fires small, reducing wildfire risks by reducing the
buildup of hazardous fuels, increasing State, volunteer and community
assistance, and stepped up research and development, performance
monitoring and accountability.
Specifically, the conference agreement increases wildfire suppression
by $289 million over the current year, wildfire preparedness by $65
million, hazardous fuels reduction by $11 million, and forest health
and rehabilitation activities by $35 million over the current year.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman Taylor) and
his fellow House conferees have done an excellent job under challenging
circumstances. They have negotiated an agreement which protects the
House positions on provisions far too numerous to mention, and they
have reported a balanced bill that meets the most pressing needs of
Interior Department and related agencies.
Accordingly, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support both the
rule and the conference agreement.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
(Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend
her remarks.)
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Washington for
yielding me the customary 30 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, again the Committee on Rules has trampled on the rights
of the minority and the voices of millions of Americans. Last night,
the Committee held an emergency meeting to consider a rule for the
Interior appropriations conference report. The Democrats had only an
hour to skim the contents of the lengthy report before a quick hearing
was held and the rules hastily approved along party lines. Now, this
morning, the entire membership of the House is expected to consider the
Interior appropriations conference report, even though Members had only
a few late-night hours to scan the report.
It is almost November, and we are well into the new fiscal year, with
only three of the 13 appropriations bills enacted into law. But
inefficiency does not justify our hurriedly passing a bill
appropriating almost $20 billion. The American people expect their
elected Representatives will have more than a handful of dark hours in
the late night to consider vital legislation.
Mr. Speaker, in the few hours I have had to read this conference
report, I saw several problems with the bill. Back in 1992, the funding
for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National
Endowment for the Arts reached its funding zenith, $176 million for
each agency. Over the years, the NEA and NEH budgets have been slashed
again and again, but for the last 2 years this body has voted to
increase the funding for the arts and humanities.
[[Page H9992]]
{time} 1100
In July, the House adopted the Slaughter-Dicks amendment in
increasing the funding for NEA by $10 billion and funding for NEH by $5
million. However, the $10 million budget increase for NEA has been
reduced by $4.5 million and the funding for NEA has been reduced by $5
million from the levels that the body endorsed.
Investing in the arts, Mr. Speaker, is a smart business. The $232
million the Federal Government invested in the NEA and NEH last year
had an economic impact of $132 billion and billions in Federal, State,
and local tax revenues. Every dollar the NEA invests in local theater
groups, orchestras, or exhibitions generates $7 for the arts
organization by attracting other grants and private donations and
ticket sales.
Investing in the arts is also smart for our children. Over and over
arts education has proven to increase academic performance, regardless
of socioeconomic background. The NEA provides the grants for local arts
activities in every State and in every congressional district. In
Buffalo, New York, the NEA provided a small $10,000 grant to a
community arts group to support a program to offer weekend classes in
visual arts and jazz music for the African American children in
Buffalo's low-income, inner city east side. Another small community
grant to a group in Buffalo provided weekly workshops in media literacy
and digital arts for girls age 9 to 15. And in the district of my
colleague, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings), an 8-week
summer residency program that provided psychiatrically and emotionally
impaired children with instruction in creative writing, mask-making,
and theatrical improvisation received a community arts grant from the
NEA.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal told that story of an NEA arts
program to bring professional theater companies to perform
Shakespeare's plays in hundreds of small and midsize towns. The Chicago
Shakespeare Theatre recently brought a live-action ``Romeo and Juliet''
to Paducah, Kentucky. After the performance, the audience stood up to
cheer. The article ends by saying, ``Shakespeare played well on stage
is a wondrously different thing from Shakespeare stammered through in a
classroom.''
The National Endowment for the Humanities is at the forefront in
preserving our American culture and history. Democracy suffocates
without an understanding of its past. The NEH and NEA provide the air
that our democracy needs to survive and to thrive. Bruce Cole, the
chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, warns us that
``we face a serious challenge to our country that lies within our
borders and even within our schools: the threat of American amnesia. We
are in danger of having our view of the future obscured by our
ignorance of the past. We cannot see clearly ahead if we are blind to
history, and a nation that does not know why it exists or what it
stands for cannot be expected to long endure.''
The bill fails to adequately fund programs that protect some of the
Nation's most valuable treasures: our natural resources. Again, I
repeat the admonition of former President Theodore Roosevelt, one of
the fathers of American conservation: ``In utilizing and conserving the
natural resources of the Nation, the one characteristic more essential
than any other is foresight.'' We are caretakers of the Nation's
natural resources and parks. We are entrusted with the duty to preserve
them for generations yet to come, and we should not hand over
management and protection of the natural treasures of our parks to the
lowest bidders.
Going against the bill as passed by this body, the conference report
has added funding for studies about privatizing jobs in the National
Park Service and the United States Forest Service. The $8 million for
these feasibility studies should be spent more wisely on finding ways
to protect our natural resources, not finding ways to eliminate jobs.
The report abandons the conservation trust agreement reached and
enacted into law in response to the 315 Members of the House who voted
for the Conservation Reinvestment Act.
For over a century, the Federal Government has acted as the trustee
of monies belonging to native Americans. Seeking a complete accounting
of these funds held in trust, our native Americans have sued the
Department of the Interior, charging the Department with gross
mismanagement of the trust fund. The conference report contains new
language added to the report that directly interferes with their
continuing litigation by limiting the Department's ability to comply
with the judge's orders.
Many tribes from across the Nation are strongly opposed to this
intrusion and have written to the gentleman from California (Chairman
Dreier) and the gentleman from Texas (Ranking Member Frost), and I will
insert for the Record at the end of my remarks three of those letters.
The Seneca Nation called my office yesterday seeking help to protect
their lawsuit from congressional meddling. Like any trustee, the
Federal Government owes the tribes a complete accounting of the money.
The new provision is a heavy-handed interference in an ongoing case in
a co-equal branch of our government. We should show more respect for
our Native Americans and our Federal courts.
Mandan, Hidatsa, & Arikara, Nation,
New Town, ND, October 28, 2003.
Hon. David Dreier,
Chariman, Committee on Rules, House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Martin Frost,
Ranking Member, Committee on Rules, House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Dreier and Ranking Member Frost: The House
and Senate conferees have included language in the Interior
and Related Agencies conference report which will halt
further efforts by the Interior Department to conduct a
historical accounting of the errors in Indian trust fund
accounts, as directed by a federal court.
The so-called ``trust reform'' rider language violates Rule
21, clause 2 of the Rules of the House of Representatives and
constitutes legislating on an appropriations bill. The
provision also violates the scope rule, House rule 22, clause
9, since the provision was not in either the house or senate
bill before conference. Thus, for procedural and substantive
reasons set forth below, I ask the Committee to issue a Rule
to Recommit the Interior and Related Agencies conference
report back to conference with directions to eliminate the
offending language.
This provision was drafted without any consultation with
the Committee on Resources or with any of the affected class
action plaintiffs, or with any Native American tribes.
Furthermore, this provision will delay the resolution of the
Indian trust fund accounting problem and the court case for
years. Native Americans have waited for over 100 years for an
accounting. Now is not the time for delay. In fact, many of
the Cobell beneficiaries, whose main income depends on a
proper accounting, are dying. If the Interior Department is
allowed to delay, those older beneficiaries may never be
repaid.
There is no question that the Cobell Plaintiffs are likely
to win. The Interior Department knows this and that is the
reason they are asking for a delay. It simply is not in
keeping with American justice to delay the likely meritorious
legal claims of hundreds of litigants because the losing
party does not like the result. Finally, there are serious
constitutional questions of due process and takings that are
at stake.
Thus, I reiterate my opposition to the language in the
trust reform rider and ask the Committee to issue a Rule to
Recommit to Conference.
Sincerely,
Tex G. Hall,
Chairman,
Mandan, Hidatsa & Arikara Nation.
____
National Congress of
American Indians,
Washington, DC, October 28, 2003.
Hon. David Dreier,
Chairman, Committee on Rules.
Hon. Martin Frost,
Ranking Member, Committee on Rules.
Dear Members: It has come to our attention that language in
the FY2004 Interior Appropriations bill would allow the
Department of Interior to ignore the Cobell v. Norton court
ordered historical accounting for one year. This language, if
adopted in the Conference Report, would be an
unconstitutional violation of Article III powers and would
constitute takings in violation of the Fifth Amendment.
Additionally, and most importantly, it would be unfair to
those parties that have waited out this litigation and are
finally seeing a resolution to this historical injustice.
We hereby request that the language be ruled out of order.
In the alternative, we respectfully request that the
Committee allow a point of order by the authorizing committee
Chairman. It is not our desire to ask the committee members
to take the unusual step of asking for a motion to recommit
in both the House and Senate.
Please note that the authorizing committee has already
taken action on this issue. Just last week, the House
Resources Committee held a field hearing in Billings, Montana
to gather input on developing a process to settle the trust
funds lawsuit. Additionally, the Resources Committee will
beholding another field hearing this Saturday
[[Page H9993]]
at the Salt River-Pima Maricopa Community in Arizona to
gather more input on this pressing issue. Finally, Senator
Campbell, joined by Senators Inouye and Domenici, has
introduced Senate bill 1770 to address concerns raised with
the ongoing trust fund litigation, and will hold a hearing on
the measure tomorrow.
Thank you for your consideration on this very important and
time sensitive matter. If you have any questions regarding
this concern, please do not hesitate to contact NCAI at
202.466.7767.
Sincerely,
Tex G. Hall,
President.
____
Native American Rights Fund,
Washington, DC, October 28, 2003.
Hon. David Dreier,
Chairman, Committee on Rules, House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Martin Frost,
Ranking Member, Committee on Rules, House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Dreier and Ranking Member Frost: The Native
American Rights Fund represents 500,000 individual Indians in
the Cobell v. Norton Indian Trust Funds lawsuit. We have won
every merits phase of this case and the right to have a full
accounting of our multi-billion dollar Individual Indian
Trust--which contains the proceeds from our own land. The
House and Senate conferees have included language in the
Interior and Related Agencies conference report which will
halt further efforts by the Interior Department to conduct
the historical accounting of all the assets of the Individual
Indian Trust, as directed by a federal trial and appellate
courts.
The so-called ``trust reform'' rider language violates Rule
XXI, clause 2 of the rules of the House of Representatives
and constitutes legislating on an appropriations bill. The
provision also violates the scope rule, House rule XXII,
clause 9, since the provision was not in either the house or
senate bill before conference. Thus, for procedural and
substantive reasons set forth below, we urge the Committee to
issue a Rule to Recommit the Interior and Related Agencies
conference report back to conference with directions to
eliminate the offending language.
This provision was drafted without any consultation with
the Committee on Resources or with any of the affected class
action plaintiffs, or with any American Indian tribes.
Furthermore, this hostile provision will delay the resolution
of the Indian trust fund accounting for years. Native
Americans have waited for over 100 years for an accounting.
They have played by the rules and litigated this matter in
federal court. Now on the brink of justice, this bill would
further delay the relief these individual Indians deserve.
Justice delayed is justice denied. Many of the Cobell
beneficiaries--whose main income depends on these monies and
who have not had the benefit of this proper accounting they
are owed--are dying. If the Interior Department is permitted
to further delay, the unconscionable result will be that
those older beneficiaries may never be repaid their own trust
money.
Furthermore, the trust funds rider is plainly
unconstitutional. By directing the Court how to ``construe''
existing law, the appropriations rider violates the
Constitutional Separation of Powers Doctrine. Indeed, as
initially held in Marbury v. Madison, 1 U.S. (Cranch) 137,
177 (1803), ``It is emphatically the province and duty of the
judicial department to say what the law is.'' Congress can
therefore not tell a Court how to ``construe'' the law--that
interpretive function is the Judiciary's.
There is no question that the Cobell Plaintiffs will
continue to prevail. The Interior Department knows this and
that is the reason they are asking for further delay. It
simply is not in keeping with American justice to delay the
decidedly meritorious legal claims of hundreds of litigants
because the losing party does not like the result. Finally,
there are serious constitutional questions of due process and
takings that are at stake.
Thus, I reiterate my opposition to the language in the
trust reform rider and ask the Committee to issue a Rule to
Recommit to Conference.
Best regards,
John Echohawk,
Executive Director.
Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from
Washington (Mr. Dicks).
(Mr. DICKS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule providing for
consideration of the Interior Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2004.
Although there are certainly things that I would have done differently,
I am generally pleased with the process this year and am glad that we
have the opportunity to bring this bill to the floor as a freestanding
measure.
I supported the conference agreement and am particularly pleased it
included the additional $400 million added by the other body for
emergency wildland fire costs. The House voted overwhelmingly to have
the money included in the final conference report, and we were
successful in providing it.
Other levels in the bill are far lower than I would have hoped,
particularly levels for conservation spending. Under the Conservation
Trust Fund law established in 2000, this bill should have funded
conservation programs at $1.56 billion for the Interior part of the
bill. Unfortunately, this bill falls roughly $500 million short of that
level. The impact of this cut will be felt nationwide. Funding is
reduced for State and Federal land and water conservation fund,
historic preservation, park and refuge construction, endangered species
work, and forest legacy project. It means projects all over the country
will not be done this year.
The agreement does provide small increases for other important
programs that I am extremely pleased about. The National Endowment for
the Arts receives a $5 million increase over last year, and that was a
direct result of the Slaughter-Dicks amendment that added $10 million
for the National Endowment for the Arts and $5 million for the National
Endowment for the Humanities that was voted on overwhelmingly by the
House. And the Tribal College Program receives an additional $10
million. My colleague from the other body, the ranking Democratic
member, Mr. Dorgan, is to be given a pat on the back for his efforts on
this matter.
The agreement also addresses the issue of competitive outsourcing
with a compromise that I think is responsible. I want to again thank
the gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman Taylor) and his staff for
their work on this bill, his first, and urge my colleagues to support
both the rule for the conference report and the conference report
itself.
I want to go back on the issue of funding for firefighting just for a
moment. I am deeply concerned about the process that we have today, the
way we fund the efforts to deal with forest fires in our country. What
we do is we in essence appropriate some of the money, but then give the
agencies the ability, the Forest Service and the BLM, to borrow money
from other accounts in order to fund all of the money that is necessary
for fighting the fires. And then we do not replenish the amount of
money necessary. In 2003, I think we were short a couple of hundred
million dollars in terms of replenishing the money necessary to make up
the funding that was borrowed.
Now, with FEMA, we do not do it that way. We just give FEMA the
money, and they draw it down and then we replenish it; and this is what
I think we should do. We have got to come up with a new way of funding
firefighting in this country. It is not acceptable.
The other problem we have is we have old, antiquated equipment. We
have a whole group of airplanes that are 40-plus years old that we are
using for firefighting. And according to the staff on the Subcommittee
on Interior Appropriations, we are losing lives because we are using
this old equipment.
So I would urge that next year we make this a priority, that we have
a committee investigation. I am going to talk to the gentleman from
California (Chairman Lewis) on the Subcommittee on Defense and the
gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman Taylor) on the Subcommittee on
Interior. We have to get some new equipment for these firefighters. It
is outrageous that we are sending them out with these old airplanes and
not replacing them. The planes that we use now are, I think, C-130s
that are in some cases over 40 years old. I just had a chance to fly in
a few of these over in Iraq; and I want my colleagues to know, I would
not want to be fighting fires in these old planes.
So we have a lot of work to do, and I hope even in this supplemental,
because of the situation in California. I understand the chairman of
the Interior Appropriations Committee in the other body is considering
an amendment to add money for additional funds for firefighting for the
Forest Service and for the BLM. That should be done. We should not go
in and start this year and start borrowing immediately on the 2004
money in order to fund these fires in California.
Now, I understand that $500 million was added in FEMA; and
definitely, there is a requirement here for $100 million-plus for the
Forest Service and the BLM.
So, Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill, and I am going to vote for this
bill; but we have additional things that need to be done in the
supplemental or in the omnibus.
[[Page H9994]]
So this is an important matter. I know there is a lot of controversy
on the agreement on how we are going to deal with these trust accounts,
and I just want to say, I am concerned about the potential liability
here to the country and to the Congress if we do not come up with a
settlement here. The authorizing committees have promised us over and
over again that they are going to deal with this issue. Well, they have
had one hearing. The pace of their activity is not what I would call
brisk. They need to get busy here. They made commitments to the
gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman Taylor) and myself that they
were going to get busy on this issue. Well, they need to do it. That is
not just in the House; it is also in the other body. They have to get
busy, because this is a crisis that is affecting the Department of the
Interior, and it is going to affect tribal programs and mean less
funding for our tribes because of this if we do not come up with an
answer. So we have some work to do.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of my
colleague, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks). I think much of
this bill reflects positively on his leadership and hard work over the
years on this committee. I appreciate that there are some things in
here that deal with the notion of how we are going to protect the
national Mall, issues of protecting the employees in the Department of
the Interior, although I would have rather preferred the House-passed
ban on contracting out their positions.
But I must come to the floor in deep disappointment, Mr. Speaker,
dealing with the way that we have treated the conservation trust fund.
I was one of the people that supported the landmark legislation that
was advanced by the gentleman from Alaska (Chairman Young) and the
gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) that had huge, bipartisan
support to address a serious failure on the part of Congress to fund
our conservation programs. There are vast, unmet needs across the
country.
We came together, passed the legislation in the House. It was held up
in the other body, but there was a reasonable alternative that was
brokered in no small measure due to the hard efforts of my colleague,
again, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks). We went along with
CARA Light as it was called, with the assurance that we had a trust
fund in place. And I am sad to say that the commitment that was made to
a bipartisan majority of this Chamber has been violated. This will
would almost cut in half the program this year. The traditional
acquisition programs are funded at $272 million, a little over half of
what they received last year. I am deeply, deeply concerned.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. BLUMENAUER. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I want to point out, and the gentleman, I
think, mentioned this, this was a bipartisan agreement, by the way.
This was not something that was just done by myself and the gentleman
from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey). This was something that the gentleman from
Ohio (Mr. Regula) was involved in and Mr. Byrd was involved in. So it
had both House and the other body working together on this alternative,
and so this was a bipartisan agreement. That is why it hurts me deeply
that we have not been able to keep this up.
{time} 1115
But budget levels have been so ridiculously low for the Interior, our
allocation, that it has been almost impossible. The committee has made
some very difficult choices, but I am completely in concurrence. I
think their commitment was made. We should stay with it. We should get
back to it, and, hopefully, we will at some point in the future.
But I have to concur with the gentleman that we are $500 million
below where we were supposed to be under the agreement.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I appreciate the
comments of the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks), and I thank him
for his hard work. In part, it is true that this underfunding is the
result of the allocations that were given to the subcommittee. And I do
not envy the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) or his colleague in
terms of trying to fight this through. But the fact is, that this
problem is part of the consequence of the decision of people who are
running the show here in the House to systematically shortchange
fundamental needs of the American public by moving forward with massive
tax cuts.
There are also issues that I have deep concerns about in terms of
misallocation of funds while we deal with the important issue of
rebuilding Iraq and dealing with Afghanistan.
The point is there was a fundamental commitment made on a bipartisan
basis by the leadership in this Chamber and in the other body in order
to forestall mandatory spending under the Land and Water Conservation
Fund, with the enactment of CARA.
There are other things in this bill that give me great pause that
have nothing to do with finances. There are egregious riders dealing
with the Tongass and Montana forests that are a real set back for the
environment. The bill does not include House-passed language that
prevented the construction of new roads through our national parks,
wildlife refuges, and national monuments under the guise of the obscure
1866 mining law known as RS 2477 that is a path to destruction through
national treasures.
There is a lot here to be concerned about, and, unfortunately, the
way that the rule is structured and brought before us, the House is not
going to be able to address them.
So in conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I would just say I appreciate the
difficulty that the subcommittee had in some regards, and I appreciate
the commitment of the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) to helping
follow through on this agreement that was reached to be able to protect
the environment. I hope we can do better. But I would think that we
ought to start by rejecting the rule, rejecting the bill before us and
make sure that we do right by the important agreements that we have for
our environment and not approve destructive riders.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from
Michigan (Mr. Kildee).
Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to the rule
because of a provision included in the Interior conference report that
would limit the Federal Government's accountability to over a half
million American Indian Trust beneficiaries by preventing the
Department of Interior from conducting a complete historical accounting
of individual Indian Trusts, as directed by a Federal court last month
in Cobell versus Norton litigation.
Last year, the House voted overwhelmingly to strike a similar
provision in the fiscal year 2003 Interior appropriations bill. And in
July of this year, the gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman Taylor)
graciously agreed to drop a similar provision from the fiscal year 2004
Interior funding bill before it was considered on the House floor.
Despite these actions, the provision in the conference report, once
again, serves to delay justice to the Indian beneficiaries who have
waited for over 100 years for an accounting while opening up the
government to new legal claims.
The Congressional Native American Caucus opposes this provision. The
chairman and ranking Democrat of the Committee on Resources, the
authorizing committee, oppose this provision. As a matter of fact, just
a few minutes ago, the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) and the
gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall), during the markup over in
the Committee on Resources, asked that if this rule is approved to vote
against the Interior appropriations bill.
In addition, this provision was drafted without the input of the
authorizing committee or any of the Indian Trust beneficiaries or
Indian tribes.
Mr. Speaker, this provision violates the House rule against
legislating on the appropriations bill. It may also violate the House
scope rule since the provision was included in the conference report
without having first been included in either the House or the Senate
bills. It violates, I believe, the U.S. Constitution separation-of-
powers doctrine since the provision dictates how a
[[Page H9995]]
Federal law relating to Indian Trust management reform should be
interpreted. That interpretive function is the responsibility of the
courts.
The House Committee on Resources held two hearings on Indian Trust
funds this year, and it plans to hold more hearings. These hearings in
the authorizing committee will produce the proper framework for
settlement negotiations to resolve the Cobell case. Let us give the
authorizing committee the opportunity to complete its job.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) and the
gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall) are seriously committed to
this. That is why they asked just a few minutes ago that if this rule
is passed and the bill does come for a vote, the conference report,
that we vote ``no'' on that conference report.
So I urge my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, to oppose the rule and to vote
against the conference report.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests
for time, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous
question on the resolution.
The previous question was ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shaw). The question is on the
resolution.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further
proceedings on this question will be postponed.
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