Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010
Floor Speech
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2010 -- (House of Representatives - June 25, 2009)
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Mr. SIMPSON. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Chairwoman, let me begin my remarks by expressing thanks to Chairman Dicks for the reasonable and evenhanded manner in which he's conducted the business of the Interior Subcommittee this year. While we may disagree about the needed 17 percent increase in our subcommittee allocation, our work together has been a bipartisan, collaborative effort. We are certainly not going to agree on every issue, but even when we disagree, Chairman Dicks and I continue to work well together, and I thank him for that.
I'd also like to commend the chairman for the extraordinary oversight activity of our subcommittee this year. As he mentioned, oversight is one of the committee's most important functions, and we have upheld that responsibility by holding 20 subcommittee hearings since the beginning of the year involving over 100 witnesses. I don't know many other subcommittees that can match that record.
I also want to applaud the chairman's decision to provide full pay and fixed costs for each of the agencies under this subcommittee's jurisdiction.
We're both concerned by the fact the President's budget submission for the U.S. Forest Service covered only 60 percent of the pay and fixed costs, while the budget request for the Department of Interior included 100 percent of pay and fixed costs. To date, the committee has received no explanation or justification from the administration for this discrepancy.
I'm also pleased by the needed attention this legislation provides our Native American brothers and sisters. There are many unmet needs within Indian country--in education, health care, law enforcement, drug abuse prevention, and other areas--and this bill does a great deal to address these issues.
Chairman Dicks and I agree on many things, including our obligation to be good stewards of our environment and public lands for future generations. However, we part when it comes to the need for an allocation as generous as the one Chairman Obey has provided in this bill.
The 302(b) allocation for this bill is $32.3 billion, a $4.7 billion, or 17 percent, increase over last year's enacted level. This increase comes on the heels of historic increases in this subcommittee's spending in recent years.
Interior and the Environment spending between 2007 and 2009--including base bills, emergency supplementals, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act--has increased by 41 percent--and that's before this year's 17 percent increase.
Chairman Obey is fond of saying, Show me a smaller problem and I'll show you a smaller solution. While I may not be able to show him a smaller problem, I can show him a historically bigger problem where the ``solution'' of more and more deficit spending has not worked--including the Great Depression of the 1930s and Japan in the 1990s.
But it isn't just the spending that concerns me. This legislation is funding large increases in programs without having clearly defined goals or sufficient processes in place to measure the return on our investment. We are making rapid investments in water, climate change, renewable energy, and other areas--all of them worthy endeavors--but with relatively little planning and coordination across multiple agencies and the rest of government.
Our country has some serious environmental challenges that need to be addressed. And this bill has an overly generous allocation to meet many of those needs. But, with all due respect to Chairman Obey, too often we believe that our commitment to an issue is measured by the amount of money we spend rather than how we're spending that money. History has shown us that bigger budgets do not necessarily produce better results.
The climate change issue is an illustration of this point. ``Climate change'' is today what the term ``homeland security'' was in the days and months following the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Anyone who came into our offices, any of our offices, to discuss an issue, spoke of it in the context of ``homeland security.'' The argument was, We have to do X, Y, or Z, for our homeland security depends upon it.
Well, today many of our priorities are related to climate change. I agree with Chairman Dicks this is an issue we need to study carefully and know more about. It's affecting the intensity of our fires and even the duration of our fire season.
But what have we learned from the money this subcommittee and other committees have already provided? Are we spending $420 million on climate change next year to learn something new or relearn what we already know?
I'm also concerned that many climate change functions within this bill won't be coordinated with similar efforts undertaken by other Federal agencies, resulting in a duplicating of effort. We ought to require coordination across the entire Federal Government on an issue as important as this, and one on which we are spending as much money government-wide as we are.
It's for this reason that the minority offered an amendment--adopted during the full committee consideration--requiring the President to report to Congress 120 days after submission of the 2011 budget request on all obligations and expenditures across government on climate change programs and activities for FY 2008, 2009, and 2010. It's not because we're opposed to climate change programs, but because they need to be coordinated government-wide.
Given the uncertain economic times our country is facing, I'm also troubled by the unsustainable pattern of spending in this legislation. This subcommittee and Congress ought to be as concerned about the impact of too much spending as we are about the potential impact of climate change and other issues.
Chairman Dicks has spoken on many occasions about what he describes as ``the dark days'' and ``the misguided policies and priorities of the previous administration.'' Still, for any perceived or real inadequacies of past policies or budgets, it would be a mistake for any of us to believe we can spend our way to a solution to every challenge we face.
The Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, recently told Congress that it's time for the Obama administration to develop a strategy to address record deficits or risk long-term damage to our economy. He said, ``Unless we demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal sustainability in the longer term, we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth.''
A good bill is a balanced bill. But providing a disproportionate level of funding to one agency creates an imbalance that undermines the legitimate needs of other deserving agencies. That is why I question a $10.6 billion budget for the EPA--a 38 percent increase from last year. This is on top of the $7.2 billion the agency received in the stimulus package and the $7.6 billion it received in the enacted 2009 Interior bill.
Taken together, the EPA will receive over $25 billion this calendar year alone. That's about the size of this subcommittee's entire budget just 2 years ago.
While the EPA will receive an extraordinary, historic funding increase, it's worth noting the U.S. Forest Service was recently rated as one of the worst places to work in the Federal Government by a study conducted by the Office of Personnel Management. It isn't clear why Forest Service employees feel as they do, but it may be linked to the incredible funding challenges the Service has faced in recent years due to the growing cost of fire suppressions.
From our hearings, we know that almost 50 percent of the Forest Service budget is now consumed by the cost fighting wildfires. In past years, the Forest Service has had to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars from other accounts just to pay for fire suppression. Without any question, this creates uncertainty among Forest Service employees.
President Obama is to be commended for tackling the issue of budgeting for fire suppression by proposing a fully funded fire suppression budget as well as a contingency reserve fund. And I commend Chairman Dicks for providing the Forest Service with resources to address many fire-related needs.
Still, based upon recent fire patterns and the monumental increase in demand for fire suppression dollars, I feel strongly that the wildfire contingency reserve fund should be funded at the President's request level of $357 million. This reserve fund is similar to the emergency fund source contained in the FLAME Act, which passed the House in March on an overwhelming 412-3 vote.
That is why the minority offered an amendment--adopted during full committee consideration--which increased the fire contingency reserve fund from $250 million in the chairman's mark to the President's requested level of $357 million. If virtually every other item in this legislation is funded at or above the President's request level, there should be no justifiable reason to exclude fire suppression. And I want to thank the chairman for accepting that amendment in the full committee.
We paid for this increase by rescinding $107 million from the EPA's prior year balances. According to the May, 2009 report issued by the EPA's Inspector General's office, the EPA presently has $163 million on the books that have been sitting there unspent since 1999. The EPA does some good work, but if those dollars haven't been spent in 10 years, we ought to put them to good use fighting fires.
While Chairman Dicks has done a good job addressing many critical issues in this bill, I don't believe that a $4.7 billion, or 17 percent, increase over the FY 2009 enacted level is justified or warranted. This unprecedented increase follows a $3.2 billion, or 13 percent, increase between FY 2008 and FY 2009 spending bills, as well as an $11 billion infusion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Frankly, we just can't afford this.
In closing, I would again like to thank Chairman Dicks for the evenhandedness that he has shown in working with us. We work well together, and I think this bill shows that.
In closing, I'd like to thank both majority and minority staff for their long hours and fine work in producing this legislation. On the majority side, this includes Delia Scott, Chris Topik, Julie Falkner, Greg Knadle, Beth Houser, Melissa Squire, Ryan Shauers, and Pete Modaff.
On the minority side, let me thank my staff--Missy Small, Megan Milam, Kaylyn Bessey, and Lindsay Slater, as well as the committee staffers, Darren Benjamin and David LesStrang. If the Members of this House worked as well together as the majority and minority staffers do, we'd get a lot more done in this place.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. SIMPSON. I would like to echo the words of Chairman Dicks and thank the gentleman from Indiana for bringing this to our attention, the importance of improving the standards of these cemeteries. Mr. Buyer's amendment--though not made in order, and it should have been made in order--has made us aware of this situation that must be addressed. I will continue to work with Chairman Dicks and Mr. Buyer to ensure that these veterans' cemeteries are brought up to the standard consistent with other veterans' cemeteries.
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