David Obey: “I flatly disagree with those who say we do not need substantially more land acquisition. We are going to have 35 million…”

“I flatly disagree with those who say we do not need substantially more land acquisition. We are going to have 35 million more people knocking on the doors of national parks in 10 years and we need to buy a lot more land in order to preserve it for posterity. But I also support this amendment. I am uncomfortable being here. I do not like to oppose my friends, and I do not like to be standing in the way of this legislation. But I think there are some substantial problems with it. The Federal Government has the responsibility to take care of our national parks and our national forests and our national wildlife refuges in dealing with national environmental priorities. This bill takes almost $3 billion of national resources and locks them into a handful of projects, many of them focused on dealing with State parks, State forests and State priorities. Every year for the next 15 years that money is steered to acquisition of land, to specific wildlife programs, to coastal environmental projects. Those programs are good, and I strongly support them, but they are not the only priorities we have as a Nation and they are not even the only priorities we have on the environmental front. They are important to me, but they are not any more important than is education or health care or some others. I do not understand why we are taking Federal money and using it to fund State priorities when many of our States have been running budget surpluses.”