George Miller: “it is tragic that we now see Members whose districts have been impacted seriously by the floods being put in the…”

“it is tragic that we now see Members whose districts have been impacted seriously by the floods being put in the situation of a bill that is now unacceptable because it continues to carry riders. One of the most egregious riders in this legislation is the one that deals with the issue of roads and public lands, the RS-2477 roads, if you will. Just as the floods destroyed much of the property of the people in the upper Midwest and in California earlier this year, this rider is designed to destroy much of the wilderness and the public lands in the United States. The reason it is on this legislation is very simple. It could not pass the House of Representatives any other way and it cannot pass the Senate any other way. It may not even be able to get out of a Senate committee. Yet what we find is the sponsors of this measure are the chairs of those committees but they do not want to subject it to public scrutiny. They want to put it on a rider in appropriations that is supposed to speak to the desperate situation of people who have lost their homes, their lives, their property. That ought not to be allowed. This amendment ought not to be allowed. This amendment suggests that if you find any historical trail, any tracings of somebody going across public lands, that somehow that can then be exploited and turned into an improved road. Then of course that improved road is used to say that that land will not qualify for wilderness because it has a road on it.”