William Tauzin: “March may have come in like a lamb, but it is going to go out like a lion. This month has been very interesting. This…”

“March may have come in like a lamb, but it is going to go out like a lion. This month has been very interesting. This month environmentalists met to discuss the environmental agenda of this body, and they determined in a memo that has just been released that they were going to take off the table most of the environmental reforms before this Congress and not give us a chance to vote on it. They were going to decide the agenda of this body. They were going to make sure we did not vote on endangered species reform or wetlands reform, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Drinking Water Act, Superfund, and a host of other environmental reforms. Why? Because they were afraid of something they call the unholy trinity. That is not some new satanic cult. It is just a few ideas. The unholy trinity to them is private property rights, unfunded mandates, and risk assessment and cost analysis, three important issues to this body and to Americans--in fact, so important that a court on March 10, in the Florida rock decision before the Court of Appeals ruled for the first time in a Federal court that no one should be denied compensation for a taking that occurred because of a denial of wetland permits. Mr. Speaker, we are going to get a chance to vote on those things regardless of the environmental community's memo and their decision to keep it from the floor. I ask Members to join me in support of the private property owners bill of rights, H.R. 3875.”