[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 138 (Tuesday, August 4, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4702-S4704]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                    THE GREAT AMERICAN OUTDOORS ACT

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, this morning, I had the privilege of 
attending the President's signing of the Great American Outdoors Act.
  Now, this is a town, Washington, DC, that is accustomed to 
hyperbole--that is exaggeration--and excessive partisanship. Yet, 
today, we had neither. As the Secretary of the Interior said, the bill 
the President signed is, clearly, the most important conservation and 
outdoor recreation legislation that has passed in this Congress and 
become law in at least a half century. It may only be exceeded by the 
actual funding of the National Park System itself as it was gradually 
created, over time, to become an agency with 419 properties.
  This legislation does two things.
  One, it tackles the deferred maintenance backlogs in the Park System. 
By that I mean, look at our campground in the Great Smokies, which 
normally has 5,000 families camping there, but it has been closed for a 
number of years because the sewage system doesn't work. There are 
examples all across this country, from the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center 
to the National Mall, of worn-out trails, of roads with holes in them, 
of roofs that leak, and of sewage systems that don't work. As a result, 
campgrounds are closed because bathrooms don't operate.
  All of these are our national parks and our public lands, which is 
where we want to go and where we especially want to go right now 
because what all of us want is to get out. We want to get outdoors. We 
want some fresh, clean air that we can breathe.
  The head of Bass Pro Shops was telling me at the White House this 
morning that, at first, COVID really hurt Bass Pro Shops and that they 
had to close a lot of stores. Guess what is happening now. The 
purchasing of fishing licenses is going up at a record level. People 
are taking their sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters 
fishing and hunting--outdoors and to the parks. This is something that 
everyone who cares about the outdoors has been worried about since the 
last generation--that young people were not going out to the parks. 
They are going today because they want to get outside.
  So today was a wonderful day, and everyone agreed that this was the 
most important bill for conservation and the outdoors in at least a 
half century. The Republicans agree with that. The Democrats agree with 
that. Hundreds of conservation groups agree with that. The President of 
the United States also agrees with that. It is no exaggeration to say 
that something remarkable and historic happened today when the 
President signed the Great American Outdoors Act. It is also accurate 
to say it was wholly bipartisan because it never would have passed if 
it had not been, and it barely passed even though it was. It took a 
Herculean effort. So I come to the floor briefly today to talk about 
some of those persons who made a difference in this historic event.
  There were many marchers in this parade. There always are when 
something passes in the U.S. Senate. One Senator never really does 
anything. It takes a parade of Senators--almost always of both 
parties--and it takes the House of Representatives. It also takes the 
President of the United States.
  Because Presidents don't always get the credit they deserve, I want 
to say that there were many marchers in this parade--there were 
Democrats and Republicans, and there were hundreds of outdoors groups--
but this historic conservation legislation would not have happened had 
it not been for President Trump. Here is why.
  He is the first President of the United States to allow and support 
the use of money derived from energy exploration on Federal lands for 
deferred maintenance in our national parks, and if the President and 
the Office of Management and Budget don't support that, it is not going 
to happen, which is one reason this bill hasn't happened even though 
people have been trying to do it for years.
  I mentioned the history of this and the deferred maintenance. As the 
Secretary of the Interior pointed out, it was in the Eisenhower years 
when we had the last big investment in our National Park System. I know 
for a fact that the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which was the 
other important part of this legislation--$900 million a year 
permanently for the Land and Water Conservation Fund--was a 
recommendation of the Rockefeller Commission in the Lyndon Johnson 
administration, which Congress enacted in 1964.
  I spent some time on that myself when I was Chairman of the 
President's Commission on Americans Outdoors in 1985 and 1986. It was 
our No. 1 recommendation that Congress should do what had been 
recommended in 1964, and now we are in 2020.
  So good people have been working since 1964 to make the Land and 
Water Conservation Fund permanent, and it was signed into law today. 
Good people have been working since the Eisenhower years to deal with 
the deferred maintenance backlog--the potholes, the roofs, the sewage 
systems, the visitor centers, and the malls--in our national parks. 
That bill was signed today. It is historic. If the President had not 
allowed the money to be used in that way and had not supported it 
strongly in the Republican caucus, where we had some trouble getting 
enough votes until we got plenty of votes, it wouldn't have happened.
  He did one other thing which people don't know about. Our bipartisan 
group of Senators asked me if I would ask him, when he visited 
Tennessee in early March, if he would add to the bill or if he would 
support adding to the bill the national forests and the national 
wildlife refuges in the Bureau of Land Management and the Indian 
schools, which are in disrepair, so that the deferred maintenance of 
all of those would be added to this.
  He said: Yes, let's do it.
  I called that information back to the bipartisan group of managers, 
and the group was excited. It was added to the bill, and that became 
law today as well.
  Take the Cherokee National Forest, which is adjacent to the Great 
Smoky Mountains National Park. We hear more about the Smokies, for 10 
million, 11 million, 12 million people go there every year. It has a 
$224 million maintenance backlog. This will cut that in half over 5 
years. The Cherokee National Forest is right next to the Smokies and 
has 3 million visitors a year, which is more than most national parks. 
It has a $27 million backlog, and this will cut that in half. The 
Indian schools will get hundreds of millions of dollars in order to 
build them back up, and they are in bad shape.
  So the President deserves credit for that. There were many important 
marchers in that parade, but it would not have happened without 
President Trump.
  Let me just mention some of the other marchers, and let's talk about 
the ones in the U.S. Senate. I will not go on at great length about 
them, but I do want to acknowledge them
  Let's start with Senator Warner, of Virginia, and Senator Portman, of 
Ohio. They, in working with the National Parks Conservation Association 
and others, introduced the bill to reduce the maintenance backlog in 
the parks. Secretary Zinke came to Tennessee 3 years ago and asked me 
to do a similar thing, and I worked with Senator King of Maine. We 
introduced a bill. Then we put those bills together. So Senator Warner, 
Senator King, and Senator Portman deserve a lot of credit for the work 
they have done on that part of the bill.
  Then we have the Land and Water Conservation Fund. I mentioned how 
long that work had been going on. Senator Burr of North Carolina has 
been an advocate of that for many years. Senator Cantwell, a Democrat 
from Washington State, has been as well. More recently, Senator 
Manchin, who is the ranking Democrat on the Energy and Natural 
Resources Committee, has taken a major leadership role in the Land and 
Water Conservation Fund.
  Then there were Senators Gardner and Daines. If there were a parade, 
you would have to say they were the drum majors. They were out front. 
They helped to work with the President. They helped to work with this 
group. So you can see what kind of parade we are talking about.
  Senator Heinrich of New Mexico--a strong, progressive Democrat, with 
great respect in his caucus--made sure that we kept the thing on 
balance and brought a real conservationist zeal to this effort.
  We take him for granted, but let us give Senator McConnell, the 
majority

[[Page S4703]]

leader, some credit. In the middle of COVID, he agreed, at our request, 
to give us 2 weeks to debate this bill and try to pass it--2 weeks of 
Senate floor time. If Mitch McConnell had not put the bill on the 
floor, the bill would never have had a chance to pass.
  I thank the Democratic leader, as well, for creating an environment 
within his caucus wherein we could work through the difficult issues 
that arose.
  Now, that is just part of the honor roll of U.S. Senators who were 
involved in all of this, but it is an important honor roll.
  I should add Senator Collins, of Maine, who, from the beginning, was 
a strong supporter of both the Land and Water Conservation Fund and of 
the Restore Our Parks Act.
  So, when I say ``parade,'' that is what I am talking about. There are 
many marchers in this parade, and every single one of those U.S. 
Senators--both Democrats and Republicans--was essential to the passage 
of this bill.
  The final group was made up of outside groups. Some people said there 
were more than 800 conservation and outdoor groups in support of this. 
That sounds a little bit like hyperbole to me, but I think it might 
have been true. I mean, this is something that organizations have 
worked on for decades--literally decades. Some of the people I saw at 
the White House today were the same people I met in the mid-1980s when 
I was the Chairman of President Reagan's Commission on Americans 
Outdoors. Most of the people involved with the Rockefeller Commission 
are gone now, which was in 1963 and 1964, but people for decades have 
worked on this. I couldn't begin to mention all of them, but The Nature 
Conservancy would be one. Pew would be another. Then there is the 
National Wildlife Federation, the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation, 
the National Parks Conservation Association, and the National Park 
Foundation. Sally Jewell, the former Secretary of the Interior in the 
last administration, helped to organize and lead many of these folks.
  So you can see, with that sort of breadth and every Interior 
Secretary from Babbitt to Zinke, we had quite a parade of Americans who 
wanted to celebrate the great American outdoors.
  People say that Italy has its art, that England has its history, that 
Egypt has its pyramids, but that the United States has the great 
American outdoors. We celebrated that today, and I was proud to be one 
marcher in that parade.
  As the President signed the legislation, I was thinking of some 
gesture I could make to him or gift I could give him that would be 
appropriate so as to recognize, of all of the marchers in the parade, 
that he was the most consequential because, if he had not supported it, 
it wouldn't have happened. So I took with me a walking stick that was 
as tall as I am--about his size--that was given to me in 1978 when I 
was walking across Tennessee in my campaign for the Governor of 
Tennessee. I walked in a red and black shirt--a lot like the mask I 
wear today. People would give me walking sticks, and this was a walking 
stick that was carved by a Smoky Mountain craftsman. It is a mountain 
man walking stick. It is, really, a beautiful stick.
  I gave it to the President. He looked a little surprised, and then he 
took it and walked away with it.
  I said: Mr. President, you may find this will come in handy during 
the rest of the year.
  He said: I think it will.
  So that was a heartfelt gesture to the President. I am glad he liked 
it. I know the people in the Great Smoky Mountains like this piece of 
legislation and are grateful for his work on it. I hope he keeps that 
walking stick as a token of respect for his support and appreciation 
for what he has done to help this whole parade of Senators on both 
sides of the aisle create this new law.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, the last 6 months have been among our 
country's most trying and pain-filled in recent history. Nearly 160,000 
Americans have lost their lives--that is more than enough people to 
fill Seattle's CenturyLink stadium twice--and 4.7 million Americans 
have been infected. Everywhere, nationwide, we see the economic 
consequences of this virus--millions of people losing their jobs and 
their healthcare; millions more at risk of losing their homes; food 
lines a mile long. All of this as our country begins long-overdue work 
to grapple not just with police brutality against Black people and 
communities of color but also with the racial injustice imbedded in our 
laws and policies, which has caused COVID-19 to have vastly 
disproportionate impacts on those very same communities.
  Since my home State of Washington was hit hard early back in 
February, I have been ringing alarm bells every day, day in and day 
out, about the need for the Trump administration and this Republican-
controlled Senate to act with urgency, to listen to public health 
experts, and to follow the science and put the health and safety of 
workers and families above any political consideration. So you can 
imagine my frustration that for months, as Democrats urged Republicans 
to work with us on additional relief and pass legislation to do just 
that in the House, Republicans have refused.
  As we got closer and closer to laid-off workers seeing dramatic cuts 
in unemployment benefits, as we got closer to the expiration of the 
eviction moratorium, we heard the Senate Republican leader was ``in 
favor of States just going bankrupt.'' That was April. We heard that 
Senate Republicans didn't feel any urgency to act. That was May. Now it 
is August, and with this virus still raging, Senate Republican leaders 
finally produced a so-called relief package that actually grants 
corporations a ``get out of jail free'' card if their employees or 
customers get sick. It guts jobless benefits. It rolls back critical 
civil rights protections for workers, including communities of color, 
LGBTQIA and other people, women, older Americans, and people with 
disabilities.
  It is a package that fails to keep our childcare sector stabilized 
for more than a month; to provide the significant funding we need to 
finally make testing and contact tracing fast, free, and everywhere; 
and to require the type of end-to-end, comprehensive plan that we need 
to make sure safe, effective vaccines are cost-free and wildly 
available.
  Their package will not help the millions who have lost health 
insurance coverage during this crisis or help people suffering from the 
virus afford treatment. It does nothing to address the impact of this 
virus on Black, Latinx, Tribal communities, and other communities of 
color, and it provides zero relief for State, local, and Tribal 
governments, which is an absolute necessity for my State and so many 
others.
  If that is not enough, one of the centerpieces of this bill is a 
demand, tweeted out by the President of the United States, which I, as 
a former preschool teacher and a mom and a grandmother, find especially 
insidious and harmful. This is the Republican policy to try to force 
schools to reopen for in-person learning, regardless of what the public 
health experts recommend. This policy is a lose, lose, lose. It 
threatens the health and safety of students and families, educators and 
communities. It would in particular pressure high-need school districts 
to reopen in person despite the risk, and it could spread this virus 
further and longer.
  Many school districts are already rejecting that policy and planning 
for distance learning this fall for every student because, let me be 
clear, no student's education, regardless of where it takes place, 
should falter because the President wants to pretend this virus has 
gone away or because Republicans in the Senate are unwilling to stand 
up to him
  If a school cannot safely reopen in person, they need the resources 
to ensure that every student and educator has access to a computer, to 
the internet, and to other equipment necessary to learn outside of a 
traditional classroom. So what we need to do is pass the Coronavirus 
Child Care and Education Relief Act, which provides K-12 schools with 
$175 billion to make sure schools can continue to educate students in 
whatever way is safest.
  It makes addition investments in stabilizing our childcare and higher 
education systems, which are facing financial crisis, and it helps 
ensure that students of all ages, who are disproportionately impacted 
by this virus, are supported through all they are facing.

[[Page S4704]]

  I know there are some who say the investments we are proposing are 
too much. Well, what I would say to them, as a former chair of the 
Budget Committee in the Senate, is that budgets are statements of our 
values and our priorities, and I believe that one of our top priorities 
at all times, but especially in a pandemic, should be making sure that 
students and families and educators do not have to choose between 
safety and quality public education.
  The parents and families I am hearing from are under such immense 
pressure right now. My question to Republican leaders is, why, when 
things are already so hard, are you determined to make them harder for 
people who are already struggling so much?
  This question is personal for me for a lot of reasons, one of which 
is because, when I was growing up, my family fell on hard times. My 
dad, who was a World War II veteran, was diagnosed with multiple 
sclerosis, and he couldn't work any longer. That meant that my mom, who 
had stayed home to raise our family, had to take care of him while also 
working to support our family. Her job didn't pay enough to support me 
and my six brothers and sisters or cover the growing medical bills. For 
several months, we had to rely on food stamps, and then my mom got 
Federal support to go back to school, and she got a better job. My 
brothers and sisters and I got grants and student loans to go to 
college.
  The point is, I know things could have gone a far different way for 
us had the government just said: Sorry; you are on your own.
  Well, right now, families across the country have fallen on 
incredibly hard times. They are worried and scared because, so far, 
``You are on your own'' is largely what this Republican-controlled 
Senate and administration have told them.
  We owe every worker and family, including immigrant families--so many 
of whom are on the frontlines of this fight--relief that reflects the 
depth of this crisis and helps them get back on their feet, just like 
mine was able to; relief that helps kids learn safely and keeps 
families in their homes, with food on the table, until we can get 
through this; relief that helps us come back stronger as a nation. It 
is not too much to ask. In fact, it is what we are supposed to be here 
to do, and it is what I and Democrats are going to keep fighting for.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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