[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 20348]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



       IN OPPOSITION TO INTERIOR APPROPRIATIONS CONFERENCE REPORT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Dickey). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to oppose the Interior 
appropriations bill that is likely to come upon us, at least in the 
form that we have been hearing about. It is pumping millions of dollars 
into the appropriations process but guts CARA, the Conservation and 
Reinvestment Act, that three-quarters of this House voted to support. 
CARA has a trust fund. When we talk about the Medicare and Social 
Security trust funds being restored, we also have an obligation to put 
the money into other trust funds before we engage in disbursing it into 
various appropriations accounts. We have a number of smaller trust 
funds but they are nonetheless trust funds where we take fees from 
people and tell them they are going to be used for an intended purpose 
and then divert it, here in the case of many people who hunt or fish or 
pay different fees and have had their fund diverted into the general 
budget.
  Secondly, by gutting CARA, this will hurt our efforts to increase oil 
drilling and compensate for that oil drilling through additional 
environmental resources in the States where the drilling is done. This 
was a delicately crafted compromise. Alaska, California, and Louisiana 
are States that are going to be most directly affected by the oil 
drilling. I may not represent one of those States, but I represent a 
State right now where we desperately need more oil and gas so we can 
keep our energy prices down for home heating oil in the winter and for 
also the fact that in our district we make pickups, we make RVs, we 
make boats, we make lots of things that we sell to the rest of America 
that use gas. It is only fair if we drill for additional gas in these 
States and work out an agreement that funds for other environmentally-
sensitive projects in those States are spent in those States.
  Thirdly, CARA is one of the only ways that States like Indiana can 
get any Federal funds for wildlife and conservation efforts. We do not 
have national parks like in the West. In my district, Pokagon and Chain 
O'Lakes State Parks have received funds from this reservoir that in the 
past previously had been funded by this Congress but as of late has 
received minimal funding, Dallas Lake County Park in LaGrange County, 
and city parks in Decatur and Columbia City. CARA is one of the only 
ways that funds get equitably distributed around the country rather 
than just go to the appropriators' favorite projects or people where 
they already have big national parks.
  The proposed Interior bill has many important projects in it, but it 
has the purpose and the practical impact of gutting CARA, a bill that 
three-quarters of us supported. So those who favor CARA, which is most 
of this body, would be wise to vote against this bill for environmental 
reasons; but as I pointed out last Thursday on this floor, those who 
have moral concerns should also vote against this bill.
  First off, while they have not directly funded these programs, NEA in 
the last few years, National Endowment for the Arts, has funded in-
your-face theater programs like, for example, the Woolly Mammoth 
Theatre. The Woolly Mammoth Theatre in its description of its purposes 
says it produces plays that are questioning of mainstream American 
values, such as ``My Queer Body,'' where a man describes what it is 
like on stage to have sex with another man, then climbs naked into the 
lap of a spectator and attempts to arouse himself sexually in full view 
of the audience. They received a grant this year, by the way, Woolly 
Mammoth, yet another grant.
  Or how about blaspheming Jesus Christ? We did not fund ``Corpus 
Christi,'' but we fund the Manhattan Theatre prior to this being done. 
We funded it with two grants this year, where Jesus Christ is portrayed 
as having a homosexual relationship with the apostle Peter and all the 
apostles. We complain about Hollywood, then what are we doing funding 
these theaters?
  Thirdly, there is ``The Pope and the Witch,'' written by an Italian 
Communist against the Catholic Church there where the Pope, and it is 
performed by the Theatre for the New City which once again received a 
grant this year in spite of doing this offensive play where the Pope 
goes to the Vatican Square, there are 100,000 children, he decides it 
is a plot by the condo manufacturers to embarrass the Catholic Church. 
Fortunately, a little nun, or actually not a nun, it is a witch 
disguised as a nun, comes up and injects heroin into the Pope's veins. 
The Pope then gets addicted to drugs, to heroin. Then he sees the 
enlightenment, to enlighten the world by going around preaching free 
condom distribution, free heroin needles for drug addicts and free 
legalization of drugs throughout the world.
  Is this what we want to do with taxpayer dollars, to fund theaters 
that perform this? By the way, there is another interesting little play 
in this book called ``The First Miracle of the Boy Jesus,'' a mockery 
of Christ from the very beginning.
  I think it is time that this Congress stop pointing the finger 
everywhere else, and instead we have to clean up the funding that we 
are doing here. We asked for a simple compromise with the Senate and 
with the President that says no obscenity or blasphemy will be funded; 
that there will be a small reduction in the direct NEA funding and we 
would put the additional funds, up to $9 million, $7 million and if we 
take $2 million additional out of NEA, $9 million into a special fund 
for rural areas where we have not had this.
  I understand they can get around that, but it is like a Good 
Housekeeping seal. If the National Endowment for the Arts says a 
theater that does ``The Pope and the Witch'' is deserving of government 
funding, it is a Good Housekeeping seal from the Federal Government. It 
is time we stop


that, stop criticizing Hollywood and clean up our own house first.

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