On the recordMay 25, 2016
Let me respond and tell the story again. We have already gone through this once tonight about authorizations. I don't think we should fund any program that isn't authorized. I don't think we should flat-fund it. I don't think we should fund it. But that is, unfortunately, what the Appropriations Committee ends up doing because the authorizing committees aren't doing their dang job. They are not getting out and reauthorizing the programs. One year--and I will tell the story again. I will tell it again and again, I suspect, as we go through all of this--when I was chairman of the Interior Committee, because the Endangered Species Act at that time had not been reauthorized for 23 years, 23 years, I took all funding for listing of endangered species and designation of critical habitat out of the bill, zero funded it. We brought the bill to the floor. The biggest supporter of my bill and opponent to the amendment to put funding in it for those purposes was the chairman of the Resources Committee. It is the Resources Committee's responsibility to reauthorize the Endangered Species Act. But he supported my amendment. And after all of that, guess what? They still haven't reauthorized the Endangered Species Act.
