Bruce F. Vento: “I rise in opposition to the override of the President's veto message on this important Interior appropriations bill.…”

“I rise in opposition to the override of the President's veto message on this important Interior appropriations bill. Unfortunately, this bill, under the mantra of repeating over and over again a balanced budget amendment, something we would all like to do, but the question is how you do it, when you look into the bowels of what is in this particular bill and what is in the 7-year plan that our Republican colleagues are trying to foist upon us, they are extreme positions. They are positions that do not agree with the last three decades of work that has been done in this Congress, that is the product of the American people, the product I wish I could claim of only Democrats, but I know that there are many Republicans that have worked on that. But fundamentally it is in disagreement with the people of this country. In this spending bill, I think we see in clear view the fact that this extreme agenda that is being delivered to this Congress by the leadership in this House and the Republican Senate is inherent. They are trying to put in here in a covert way, the chairman of the policy committee rises and gives a speech, but the fact is the policy committees have not done their work. This is a spending bill, but yet within this spending bill, it is laced with provisions that overturn fundamental policies of environmental law, of land use law, of the endangered species, very well worked out agreements such as the Tongass Forest agreement which now they disagree with.”