David Skaggs: “I am afraid that the new Republican majority in the House is carrying out what is in effect a sneak attack on public…”

“I am afraid that the new Republican majority in the House is carrying out what is in effect a sneak attack on public health, on environmental protection and on our national park system, among other things. Following the unfortunate example of James Watt, they are distorting the normal legislative process around here, acting against House rules by using the appropriations process to rewrite law and reshape policy, so that they can achieve, by stealth, objectives that lack real public support. We saw the start of this pattern with the first rescissions bill, with its pages of legislative language waiving environmental and forest management laws, language that under the normal rules of the House should not have been in any bill of that kind. We are seeing it again now in the Interior appropriations bill, which we will take up again later today, with its provisions to dissolve the National Biological Service, transfer its functions to the U.S. Geological Service, again, legislating on an appropriations bill, again, an attack on research and on sound wildlife conservation; also, in the same bill, with its provisions to essentially eliminate the Mojave National Preserve in California as a unit of the National Park Service, by a back door attack instead of a straightforward proposal to repeal or amend the California Desert Protection Act.”