Alan Simpson: “I have to tell you that I am sympathetic to what the gentleman is trying to do. It is a concern that I have had for a…”

“I have to tell you that I am sympathetic to what the gentleman is trying to do. It is a concern that I have had for a number of years. And, in fact, a few years ago, when I was chairman of the Interior Subcommittee, we brought down a bill and we completely defunded any listing of new species or designation of critical habitat because the Endangered Species Act hadn't been reauthorized for, like, 26 years or something like that. Our intent was not to get rid of the Endangered Species Act or to get rid of the designation of critical habitat. Our intent was to send the message that the authorizing committees need to do their job. I was supported in that, actually, by the chairman of the Resources Committee that is in charge of reauthorizing that bill. So far that has not been done. They haven't been able to get it done. As you know, it is sometimes very difficult to pass reauthorization bills for a lot of these different programs, but many of these different programs are very, very important. I continue to try to seek a way to put pressure on the authorizing committees to actually do their job, to get these done. So far, just defunding them has not been successful in achieving that, and I don't know why that is. It is frustrating both to me and to the sponsor of this amendment. Yet this amendment would do great damage to the Department of Energy. And I guess you could use this government- wide. There are a lot of programs.…”