C. W. Bill Young: “I yield myself 3 minutes, and despite the eloquence of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson), my friend, who…”

“I yield myself 3 minutes, and despite the eloquence of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson), my friend, who makes this amendment sound really attractive, I must rise and express the objection of the Committee on Appropriations to this amendment. This amendment is no better than the amendment offered in full committee which would have taken $50 million from very important environmental protection issues and transfer it to this fund to create an inventory of gas and oil. The fact of the matter is, we cannot afford to remove the environmental protection in this bill, and we do not need the inventory that the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson) talks about. This amendment opens all coasts to new drilling. The oil companies, the energy companies, the gas companies themselves already have this inventory, as does the Minerals Management Service at the Department of the Interior. We already know about this. The truth of the matter is, this would just be a raid on the environmental issues to fund something that does not need to be done. The committee is opposed to this. The Committee on Energy and Commerce have debated this in the past, have rejected similar amendments; and I hope that we will do the same thing today, that we will reject this particular amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.”