Moran Statement on Department of Interior 2015 Budget Request

Thank you Mr. Chairman. And since this is our first hearing with you as chairman, let me publicly congratulate you on assuming this new role and say that I look forward to working with you on the many issues that this subcommittee faces. You have big shoes to fill following Chairman Simpson but I am confident that you are up to the task.

Chairman Calvert took over just as we were entering the final stretch on the FY 2014 budget and helped shepherd the Interior and Environment bill to completion. It was a significant achievement. While it took our budget colleagues 9 months to come up with an agreed upon overall number, it only took the Appropriations Committee 3 ½ weeks to turn that number into 12 appropriations bills. We all know how important it is that the Interior Department has a regular appropriation, rather than a CR, with which to operate.

Madam Secretary, I want to welcome you here this afternoon. It is good to see you. We appreciate the work you and your staff, especially Pam Haze and the other budget staff, did in putting a budget together to carry out the important responsibilities of the Department of the Interior.

Next month marks the one year anniversary of you being sworn in as the 51^st Secretary of the Interior. In your early months as Secretary you likened the job to that of drinking from a water main. Now, after nearly a year, I hope you have gone from that to perhaps just drinking from a fire hose.

As Secretary of the Interior you wear many hats and are the steward of some of the very best this nation has to offer. As you well know Madam Secretary, your responsibilities can conflict with one another. That is the challenge of your job but I would suggest that if you are going to error, you error on the side of conservation with science as your guide. At one time, the people of this Nation thought its natural resources were inexhaustible. Our great Republican President Teddy Roosevelt recognized the folly of this view.

Now Chairman Calvert, I know I don't want to disappointment you (or Mr. Simpson for that matter) so I have a quote from Teddy Roosevelt that I believe contains some good advice for all of us. President Roosevelt said:

"This is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish persons or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance."

Today we recognize that our natural resources are not inexhaustible and that through indifference, neglect or the expedient demands of today we could well lose our natural, cultural, and environmental heritage.

The budget we have been presented with for the Department of the Interior is certainly not extravagant for the work that needs to be done. If you include the funding for the wildland fire disaster cap adjustment that our colleague Mike Simpson and others have been working hard on, funding for Interior is just 3.3% above the FY 2014 level. And without that disaster cap adjustment, Interior funding is just 1% above the current appropriation.

We get kudos for completing the FY 2014 appropriations bill, but it just shows the diminished expectations we are operating under. While on paper, our FY 2014 allocation for Interior and Environment was $883 million above FY 2012, when you deduct the fire borrowing repayment and the increased funds budgeted for fire, the subcommittee actually had $426 million less to spend on all the other programs in the Interior and Environment bill in FY 2014 than it had in FY 2012. Yes, the FY 2014 bill provided sequester relief, but it definitely did not fix all the sequester cuts.

So it is against that backdrop that we have to look at Interior Department funding. I can only hope that when the FY 2015 allocations are made that the Interior and Environment subcommittee gets a fair and workable allocation. We also have to hope that the upcoming fire season is not too serious.

Madam Secretary, you have your work cut out for you in the fiscal and political environment in which we are operating. I value the work that you and the dedicated employees of the Department of the Interior do day in and day out to meet your responsibilities and I look forward to your testimony this afternoon.

Thank you Mr. Chairman.