[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 126 (Thursday, July 25, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H7388-H7389]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           RESTORE OUR PARKS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Utah 
(Mr. Bishop) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Kilmer for leading off 
on this particular issue and all the work that he has been doing on 
this particular concept. It is important.
  I am very happy that this bill has 300 cosponsors now here in the 
House. That is the largest number of cosponsors who have ever supported 
a bill coming from the Natural Resources Committee. I think there are 
only 10 other bills that have more cosponsors in the House. It passed 
our committee on a 36-2 vote and is now awaiting the chance of being 
heard here on the House floor.
  There is a companion bill in the Senate, not quite as good as our 
ours, that already has one-third of the Senate as cosponsors of that.
  This is an idea whose time has actually come. We talk about the 
maintenance backlog of our national parks and all of our public lands, 
including fish and wildlife land, BLM land, and also our national 
forests.
  Especially as we now enter August, when there will be the largest 
participation of Americans going out to visit these parks and public 
lands, it is important that their experience be a positive one and not 
be stopped by broken roads, lack of sewers, lack of facilities, or lack 
of any kind of access that they may need. That is why it is so 
significant.

  We have almost around $17 billion of maintenance backlog only in our 
parks. If you add up the maintenance backlog we have on all other 
public lands, including our national forests, it is $30 billion that we 
would need to spend just to get them to standard--not to do any kind of 
really human moving it forward, but just to get them to where they are 
workable, livable, and enjoyable.
  That kind of backlog did not take place overnight. There are a lot of 
people who are simply looking at saying: Well, let's just try and use 
the same old stuff we have been using for a long time. We will 
appropriate more money.
  That doesn't work. We have developed a significant problem that needs 
a significant new solution. This solution is one that was coming out 
of, actually, the administration that has the support of over two-
thirds of the House and that has the support of one-third of the 
Senate. This is one of those things which, all of a sudden, this is a 
cool idea to solve an existing problem that we have ignored for a 
number of years.
  The goal of this is to take excess--and that is the key word--
royalties that are coming from energy production on all Federal lands, 
all kinds of energy production, whether it is traditional, renewable, 
onshore, or offshore, any kind of royalties coming into the Federal 
Government from those. If there is an excess, which means we take the 
commitments we have already to things like GOMESA and LWCF, and after 
those are funded, then if there is excess, that excess now goes into a 
fund to start working at these kinds of problems, to solve our problems 
with public lands. The restoration fund only receives the amounts after 
all these other programs have received that.
  If there is no excess in the royalties--I clearly doubt that will 
happen, but if there is no excess in the royalties, then there is no 
money that goes into this program.
  Some people have said this is mandatory spending. No, it is not.
  Mandatory spending, by definition, means you have to spend the money 
whether it appears or not; you have to find it from somewhere else. 
This is one of those programs that said, if there is excess, then the 
first billion of this money will go to fund our national

[[Page H7389]]

parks, our public lands. If there is no excess, then you don't have to 
find it anywhere else because there will be no money that goes to that.
  This is not mandatory in any way.
  Also, some people are saying, well, maybe there should be an offset 
for this new program. This is really not a new program. The parks and 
public lands exist. The responsibility to make sure that they are 
viable, they are paid, and they are sustainable already exists. This is 
an existing program.
  We are not taking anything from any other program for this. We are 
simply basing it on what is already our existing responsibility.
  If you were to try and go through a traditional approach of trying to 
appropriate more money through our budgeting process, that wouldn't 
have to have an offset. What we are talking about here is existing 
programs, existing needs, and existing responsibilities.
  We have spent a whole lot of time buying up land. The Federal 
Government owns one-third of America already. It is easy to buy up more 
property. It is easy to establish a park because that sounds really 
cool. You get your name on it, and it gives you a legacy. The hard part 
is maintaining that land.
  And for heaven's sake, if we are going to take the responsibility and 
build a legacy, to actually buy something and create something, we have 
to take the responsibility of maintaining it, and this is exactly what 
we are talking about.
  I am so proud that there are so many Republicans and so many 
Democrats who have realized this is our obligation, this is our 
responsibility, and we have to do it.
  This bill is extremely important because it is a proper approach to 
solving an existing problem. I encourage the leaders of this House to 
bring it to the floor soon so it can be debated and heard.

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