Alan Simpson: “I reluctantly rise in opposition to the amendment. I understand what the gentleman is saying. I agree with what he's…”

“I reluctantly rise in opposition to the amendment. I understand what the gentleman is saying. I agree with what he's saying. I think the Members have a concern that we are not allowing these oil companies to go out after the permits, and we're trying to send a message to the Secretary. I understand that, and I don't have a problem with sending a message. The problem is--and this is a little bit of inside baseball, I guess, to talk about it this way--the problem is that under the rules we have, you can reduce an account by a certain amount and put that money in the budget reserve account which then reduces the allocation that the committee has to spend. He takes the $420,000, I think it is, out of the Office of the Secretary and reduces our allocation by that much. And as Members have heard that have listened to this debate, there are both Republicans and Democrats that are concerned about some of the funding allocations in this bill of the various accounts. People want to put more money into the Land and Water Conservation Fund. People want to put more money, as the last amendment did, into the invasive species program, taking care of invasive species. If you go throughout, there are Members on both sides of the aisle that believe that various accounts are funded at too low of a level.…”