Malcolm Wallop: “let me talk just a couple of minutes about the studies. There is a lot of wingding that goes on around this thing. The…”

“let me talk just a couple of minutes about the studies. There is a lot of wingding that goes on around this thing. The two studies mentioned in 1979 and 1987 have no management review. They are not traditional studies that the Park Service does when asked to study the qualifications of a given area. That much is true. They were what the Park Service calls sort of quick and dirty. The poll that the Senator quoted, that 75 percent of the people in California favored a park, is not what the question was in the Field poll. The Field poll asked: ``Did the desert deserve protection?'' Seventy-five percent of the people said, ``Yes, the desert deserves protection.'' They did not ask if it ought to have park status. The Field poll question was about whether or not the desert deserves protection. I am not quarreling with those 75 percent of Californians who say that the desert deserves protection. But the fact of it was that they were not asked the question about park status. At any rate, I say to my friend from Louisiana, who says this is not going to burden the Park Service, the Secretary's own report says that it burdens it to the tune of $125 million, short of spending for construction, short of the design of programs and everything else. Just for maintenance, $125 million over the next 5 years; that is what Secretary Babbitt's Department of the Interior says. Madam President, it is going to burden the Park Service.…”