[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 26263-26267]
[From the U.S. 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. 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.
  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

[[Page 26264]]

the last 2 years this body has voted to increase the funding for the 
arts and humanities.

                              {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.

[[Page 26265]]

       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 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. 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.

[[Page 26266]]

  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.
  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.

[[Page 26267]]

  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 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.

                          ____________________