[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 106 (Tuesday, June 9, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2834-S2837]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    THE GREAT AMERICAN OUTDOORS ACT

  Mr. LEE. Madam President, to most Americans, the so-called Great 
American Outdoors Act is a mistake. It is expensive, shortsighted, and 
it is wrong; but to those of us who live in the American West, it is a 
disaster. Despite its rosy claims, this legislation combines two bills 
that will only tighten the Federal stranglehold on our lands and drive 
us deeper into debt, to the detriment of our economy, our environment, 
and the livelihoods and the freedom of the American people.
  So just how, you might ask, does it do that? Well, let me explain. 
The first title containing an expanded version of the Restore Our Parks 
Act attempts to address the roughly $19.3 billion maintenance backlog 
on our Federal lands, concentrated primarily within national parks 
projects, which approach a $12 billion maintenance backlog just on 
their own, but it seeks to do so by spending $9.5 billion of Federal 
offshore energy revenues over 5 years, without any means whatsoever of 
offsetting those extra funds.
  Now, that, to be clear, is money that is currently going to the U.S. 
Treasury to pay for a number of other costs, a

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number of other expenditures--from aircraft carriers to Federal courts 
and everything in between--and will only add to our already ballooning 
national debt.
  It is, we have to remember, Congress's job to set priorities for the 
funds in the Treasury. If we prioritize something--if we prioritize one 
thing--we must either proportionately decrease the funding for 
something else or find another way to generate new revenue.
  This bill does neither. Furthermore, without any measures to prevent 
it, it guarantees that a similar backlog will only reemerge in the 
future. There are better ways to address this problem. For example, 
there are much better ways in a proposal that has been introduced by 
Senator Enzi in a bill called the REAL Act. The REAL Act would modestly 
increase park visitor fees by $5, businesses and tourist visa fees by 
$25, and a visa waiver program fee by $16--estimated to bring an 
additional $5.5 billion in revenue over the next 10 years.
  This, the REAL Act, introduced by Senator Enzi is a reasonable, 
practical solution to sustainably address the maintenance backlog on 
our National Parks, which is a problem. It is a problem that needs to 
be dealt with, and the REAL Act does it in a very responsible, 
sustainable fashion. What is more, the REAL Act would create a 
permanent and independent way of supplementing the funding for our 
National Parks and do so without adding to the national debt.
  The second title of this bill--of the Great American Outdoors Act--
creates almost $1 billion of mandatory spending every single year on 
new Federal land acquisition through the Land and Water Conservation 
Fund. In other words, it adds a new entitlement, adding to our already 
unaffordable system of entitlements. It puts it on a level playing 
field with things like Social Security and Medicare, other entitlement 
programs, the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
  Now, why would we do this when we are already on a collision course 
with our ability to fund Federal programs, including and especially 
those programs that America's seniors have paid for, for years, and 
come to rely on? Why would we do that for this program? Why make it 
mandatory spending and thus convert it into yet another unaffordable 
entitlement program?
  Let's talk a little bit about the Land and Water Conservation Fund, 
or LWCF, as it is known. This was originally put in place pursuant to a 
law passed in 1964, and the LWCF, as it was created and enacted into 
law back in 1964, was put in place in order to promote and preserve 
access to recreational opportunities on Federal public lands--on public 
lands generally, in fact. So the fund was set up to be the principal 
source of money for Federal land acquisition and to assist States in 
developing recreational opportunities on their own.
  Originally, it directed 60 percent of its funds to be appropriated 
for State purposes and 40 percent for Federal purposes. Unfortunately, 
the program has since drifted far from its original moorings and far 
from its original intent, and it has been rife with abuse. In 1976, the 
law was amended to remove the 60-percent State provision, stating 
simply that not less than 40 percent of the funds must be used for 
Federal purposes, while remaining silent on whether a State would 
receive a penny.
  Now, just over the last year or so, not less than 40 percent of the 
funds are dedicated to State purposes, so that still means that up to 
60 percent of the funds can still be used for Federal land acquisition. 
The result? Well, it hasn't been good. It has been used more for 
Federal land acquisition than for improving access to or care of the 
vast Federal lands that we already own and manage--or in many 
cases, fail to manage.

  Sixty-one percent of the funds have historically been used for 
acquisition, compared to the 25 percent that have been allocated to 
State grants, spending close to $12 billion to purchase new Federal 
lands.
  So despite people's images of charming ribbon cuttings at local parks 
and scenic wildlife, the LWCF has functioned as the Federal 
Government's primary vehicle for Federal land grabs, resulting in a 
massive, restrictive, and neglected Federal estate.
  The Federal Government now owns 640 million acres of land--more than 
640 million acres--within the United States. To put this in 
perspective, this amount--the more than 640 million acres of land 
currently owned by the Federal Government within the United States--is 
a total larger than the entireties of France, Spain, Germany, Poland, 
Italy, the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands 
combined.
  Now, I am not talking about the government-owned lands or the 
parklands within those countries. I am talking about the entirety of 
the countries themselves. The Federal Government owns more land than 
that. That is 28 percent of the total acreage within the United States, 
and more than 50 percent of the land in the West. This has proven to be 
far more land than the Federal Government is capable of managing 
responsibly. The condition of the vast Federal estate ranges from fair 
to poor to dismal. These lands face problems with rampant wildfires, 
soil erosion, mismanagement, and littering--with a staggering combined 
maintenance backlog of nearly $20 billion.
  Resources are only being spread thinner as they are being stretched 
to serve more and more lands--more and more lands that are now going to 
be bought with the new entitlement spending that we are putting in 
place with this bill should we enact this ill-conceived legislative 
proposal.
  On top of that, many of the LWCF funds have been diverted to a vague 
``other purposes'' category that has, in many instances, little to do 
with access to outdoor recreation at all. In fact, many of the programs 
it has funded have, instead, aimed to pull land from public use, 
regardless of how the land in question is classified. So rather than 
increasing opportunities for hunting and fishing, snowmobiling, hiking, 
camping, mountain biking, or kayaking, the land policies in place have 
slowly been squeezing out recreational opportunities, and this has been 
going on for decades.
  And so, too, have these policies imposed severe economic 
restrictions. As the Federal estate has grown since the time the LWCF 
was established in 1964, natural resource production--including mining, 
energy, timber, and livestock raising--have sharply declined, depriving 
rural communities and their economies of crucial jobs and economic 
activity.
  Timber production, for example, has been cut by about 90 percent 
since the 1980s. So instead of providing sustainable, renewable, 
economically productive logging in the Northwest, these forests are now 
managed by catastrophic wildfire under the supervision--or I should say 
the failed supervision--of the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land 
Management.
  If you don't believe me, ask anyone who lives in the Western United 
States. Ask anyone who lives in the communities of Utah who have seen 
the environmental and economic devastation brought about as a result of 
failed land management policies.
  Now, some claim, rather audaciously, that the outdoor recreation 
economy is a major boon to these very same communities that are being 
impoverished by it. But usually, nearly always, people who say that 
aren't people who live in those communities.
  Seasonal tourism is not a sustainable core industry for most 
communities. Much of the money spent on outdoor recreation ends up 
going to apparel, equipment, and gear from large out-of-state 
companies. Rural public lands counties don't see a penny of it. This is 
especially true in those counties where the Federal Government owns not 
just 67 percent of the land mass, as is the case throughout Utah as a 
whole, but 90, 95 percent plus of the land in some counties.
  To make matters worse, Federal lands also mean a loss of property 
taxes and, as a result, a loss of huge sources of revenue and 
opportunities for States and for local communities. It is no 
coincidence that the poorest rural counties in the West are the very 
same communities, the very same counties where they have the most 
Federal land. The poorest counties are the counties with the most 
Federal land.
  Why is that? Well, there are a number of reasons, but one of the 
things that has to be taken into account is

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the fact that, without property taxes, schools are underfunded, local 
governments are crippled, fire departments are, ironically, depleted 
and, therefore, unable to properly take care of the lands they are 
charged to protect in the first place. This, by the way, says nothing 
of the loss of economic activity as a whole. I am just talking here 
about the lack of property tax revenue
  Now, there is a Federal program for this, the Payment in Lieu of 
Taxes Program, also known as the PILT Program, as the abbreviation 
refers. This is a program that was intended to address this disparity 
by compensating counties and local communities for their loss of 
property taxes--that is the loss from property taxes that comes about 
as a result of significant Federal land ownership and the Federal 
Government's declaration, by law, that its lands may not be taxed. But 
PILT payments have provided only a pittance of what would be due to 
local governments were Federal lands not exempt from property taxes.
  In 2018, the Utah Legislature commissioned a state-of-the-art 
evaluation of 32 million acres of Federal land in Utah, excluding 
roughly 3 million acres of National Parks and Wilderness Areas. Now, 
this May, that same commission found that appraising these BLM and 
Forest Service lands according to their lowest use value would result 
in an annual property tax bill of $534 million. And this, by the way, 
in addition to excluding National Parks and Wilderness Areas from that 
equation, was a study that involved only those Federal lands extending 
to within 1 mile of any municipal boundary or of any city or town in 
Utah. So this fraction would produce $534 million annually in property 
tax revenue, even if it were taxed at its lowest value.
  In 2019, the PILT payments to Utah statewide totaled just $41 
million, just 7.7 percent of the potential revenue from property taxes. 
Again, we are not talking about the National Parks or their National 
Wilderness Areas, nor are we talking about the lands outside of 1 mile 
beyond any municipal boundary.
  And while States and localities are the ones carrying the unfair 
economic burden, Washington only pours salt in these wounds by 
neglecting its oversight responsibilities. In May 2019, a GAO report 
found that BLM fails to maintain centralized data on lands acquired and 
that an increasing element of LWCF funds across agencies are being 
spent on acquisition projects that occur without and, in some cases, 
contrary to congressional approval.
  Not only that, but a December 2019 GAO report found that numerous 
agencies have blatantly disregarded LWCF requirements in order to 
illegally purchase more land. Yes. They are buying land, in many cases, 
contrary to their statutory authorization and limitations imposed by 
law. Under the original LWCF Act, no more than 15 percent of the land 
added to the National Forest System is to be west of the 100th 
meridian, essentially everything west of Oklahoma. But the GAO found 
that between fiscal years 2014 and 2018, the Federal Government had 
acquired more than 450,000 acres of land in the United States, more 
than 80 percent of which were west of the 100th meridian. In another 
recent review of land acquisition policies across the agencies 
conducted by the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, officials 
said that 40 percent of the land acquired with LWCF funds were not even 
requested by the agencies--not requested in the first place, yet they 
were purchased in some cases contrary to an explicit statutory command.

  As it turns out, billions of LWCF dollars are being spent without the 
Congress and without the relevant agencies or the public being informed 
of where or why or pursuant to what authority they were made. Why, 
then, would it ever make sense to turn this into an entitlement 
program, to turn this into something that is self-perpetuating--into a 
self-licking ice cream cone--that needs no support or reauthorization 
year to year from Congress?
  Last year, the Senate permanently reauthorized this broken, harmful, 
dangerous, unaccountable fund without reform and without any incentive 
to offer future reforms, but as if that weren't bad enough, the 
legislation before us now proposes to make that funding mandatory.
  Before, Congress could at least appropriate varying amounts to be 
used from the fund. Now, this bill, if passed, would turn the LWCF into 
a true trust fund, automatically requiring that the full $900 million 
be spent primarily on Federal land acquisition each year in perpetuity 
without accountability and without oversight. The unofficial 
Congressional Budget Office score estimates that this bill, as a whole, 
will cost nearly $17.3 billion over the next 10 years, all for land 
projects that we cannot afford, let alone maintain.
  This is not how Congress was tasked with exercising the power of the 
purse. This is not how it is supposed to work--not in this country and 
certainly not in this legislative body.
  It is the tough business of Congress to set priorities and to decide 
which, among worthy causes, should receive our limited resources. These 
funds could be going to provide relief in the midst of the current 
pandemic or to our national defense or to shoring up benefits for 
veterans or to a myriad of other goals. Putting these funds into a 
direct deposit mechanism, however, means that we are not having those 
conversations and not actively evaluating how we can best spend those 
taxpayer dollars each year. No, no. Instead, we are going to put it on 
autopilot. That is what this bill wants to do rather shamefully.
  This provision of the bill automatically puts more funds toward the 
harmful cause of growing the Federal estate, putting us on an even 
worse path than we have already taken. In fact, the first provision of 
the bill is only evidence to the fact that we have bitten off far more 
than we can chew.
  We can do better. As it currently stands, we have nothing to gain 
from this legislation. The agenda of aggressively and endlessly growing 
our Federal estate has put us on a dangerous path with devastating 
effects for our lands and for the people who live, recreate, and 
survive off of them as my home State of Utah has already experienced 
far too well. If we do not change course, this path will only worsen 
for the rest of the Nation too.
  I want to point out something--a common misperception that people 
often have about Federal land and what it is and what it does. In many 
cases, if you don't live in the western United States, you are not 
necessarily aware of the fact that the overwhelming majority--not just 
most but the overwhelming majority of Federal land is not a national 
park. National parks are some of the few things people consistently 
like about the Federal Government. They are frequently the favorite 
thing about the Federal Government. We all love national parks. They 
are beautiful. They are fun, and they are something that the Federal 
Government does that everyone still enjoys and loves. But most Federal 
land is not a national park. The overwhelming majority isn't anything 
like a national park, and the way these lands are divided out really 
isn't fair.
  In every State east of Colorado, the Federal Government owns less 
than 15 percent of the land. In every State to the west of Colorado and 
including Colorado, the Federal Government owns at least 15 percent 
and, in many cases, many multiples of that. In my State it happens to 
be about 67 percent. A tiny segment of that land consists of national 
park land. Most of it is just land that you can't use for anything 
else. The local governments can't tax them, and people can't access 
them for economic or recreational purposes without a ``Mother, may I?'' 
from the Federal Government. That is what it is. Most of this land 
isn't even a national park or a national recreation area or a 
wilderness area or anything remotely worthy of that. This is just about 
Federal control, and most of it is not managed very well.

  The National Park System has been underfunded. They, in many ways, do 
the best job they can with what they have, but they have been 
chronically underfunded, and the national parks are quite well run 
compared to the vast majority of Federal public land we have, which is 
chronically neglected, environmentally mismanaged, often to the 
economic and environmental detriment of those States where there is a 
lot of Federal land.
  Take San Juan County, UT. The Federal Government owns somewhere along 
the order of 95 percent of the land in San Juan County. It also happens 
to be Utah's poorest county.

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These two issues are not a coincidence. The fact that they appear in 
the same land mass is not coincidental; it is causal. The Federal 
Government is the cause for the impoverishment of this county and other 
communities in Utah and throughout the United States. Why? Because 
people can't own the land, can't develop the land, can't tax the land 
to fund their schools, their search and rescue services, or any other 
government priority. Nor can they access it for most economic purposes.
  Finally, all of my other observations about this legislation 
notwithstanding, this is the Senate, and just like church is for 
sinners, the Senate floor isn't for perfect, hermetically sealed, 
finished bills. We are supposed to bring imperfect bills to the floor 
to debate and deliberate and amend and discuss and, ultimately, find 
consensus. That is why I and many of my colleagues have been trying to 
do exactly that in this very situation with this very bill.
  I have a number of amendments. Many western State Senators do as 
well. Several Gulf State Senators have their own concerns about this 
bill in its current form. The way the process is supposed to work is 
that we bring this and other bills like it to the floor, and we offer 
up changes and see where the Senate is, see where the process goes, 
using reason, gentle persuasion, and awkward improvements to each piece 
of legislation as our guide. That is how it is supposed to work.
  There are a number of Senators from western States, from Gulf States, 
and from States that really aren't in the West or the gulf that don't 
really have that much to do with Federal public land, but they can see 
the procedural and substantive defects of this bill. That is why many 
of us who really would like to make improvements to this bill have come 
together from different parts of the country.
  The process of actually legislating has gone out of fashion in 
Washington and, quite regrettably, out of this Chamber in recent years, 
but it is something that I think the whole Senate would like to get 
back to--and I mean the whole Senate, Democrats and Republicans alike. 
This is an issue that is neither Republican or Democratic; it is not 
liberal or conservative; it is not Libertarian. It is not an 
ideological viewpoint. I know people within this Chamber on virtually 
every point along the ideological political continuum who would very 
much like to see the Senate working as an actual legislative body 
rather than as a rubberstamp for whatever small handful of people 
happen to write out behind closed doors and decide must be the 
finished, perfect, hermetically sealed object of our vote. This is 
wrong. It is an insult, not just to the 100 Senators who are here. It 
is that to be sure, but nobody cares about that. It is more about those 
we represent, those who elected us. Those election certificates don't 
belong to us. They belong to the voters of our various States who 
expect us to represent them. Regardless of how we might vote on any 
particular piece of legislation, they expect us to have read it; they 
expect us to do our job by showing up and by offering to make it better 
where we see flaws and we see defects. There is no perfect bill, but we 
can still make legislation a lot less bad. We can make it better. We 
bring about actual consensus. Consensus is not found by ramming 
something through without an opportunity for amendment, debate, or 
discussion
  This is wrong. It has gone on for far too long. I have seen it under 
the leadership of Democrats and Republicans alike in this Chamber, and 
it has to end. It will end. The question is, How long is it going to 
take us and how much misery will the American people have to endure 
while most of their Senators are effectively locked out of meaningful 
legislative debate, discussion, and amendment? This is wrong, and it 
has to end.
  The debate on this bill has now been extended by a whole extra day. 
There is no earthly reason why we can't use that extra day to work 
through a handful of 15-minute votes on a handful of amendments. It is 
just not that hard. In the amount of time that I have been speaking 
tonight, we could have processed a couple of amendments. In the amount 
of time that will be devoted only to hand-wringing and dismissal of 
legitimate concerns with this legislation, we could process any 
amendment that anyone wants to introduce, and this legislation could 
still be passed weeks before the House of Representatives is even 
poised to return. So why are we not doing this? There is no persuasive 
answer here.
  We have to start doing our job. I look forward to working with our 
colleagues to get an agreement on some amendments so that we can give 
this legislation the due consideration and the careful deliberation 
that it deserves, that we deserve, that those who elected us deserve, 
and then move on to the important nominations pending before the Senate 
and to the National Defense Authorization Act that are next in line. In 
the meantime, I hope Democrats and Republicans alike can unite behind 
the fact that we can't skate forever under the mantra that the Senate 
is the world's greatest deliberative body when it does not deliberate. 
The good news is, it is entirely within our power to reclaim use of 
that title justifiably and with dignity.
  I yield the floor.

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