IN OPPOSITION TO INTERIOR APPROPRIATIONS CONFERENCE REPORT -- (House of Representatives - October 02, 2000)
 

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   The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. DICKEY). Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. SOUDER) is recognized for 5 minutes.

   Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to oppose the Interior appropriations bill that is likely to come upon us, at least in the form that we have been hearing about. It is pumping millions of dollars into the appropriations process but guts CARA, the Conservation and Reinvestment Act, that three-quarters of this House voted to support. CARA has a trust fund. When we talk about the Medicare and Social Security trust funds being restored, we also have an obligation to put the money into other trust funds before we engage in disbursing it into various appropriations accounts. We have a number of smaller trust funds but they are nonetheless trust funds where we take fees from people and tell them they are going to be used for an intended purpose and then divert it, here in the case of many people who hunt or fish or pay different fees and have had their fund diverted into the general budget.

   Secondly, by gutting CARA, this will hurt our efforts to increase oil drilling 

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and compensate for that oil drilling through additional environmental resources in the States where the drilling is done. This was a delicately crafted compromise. Alaska, California, and Louisiana are States that are going to be most directly affected by the oil drilling. I may not represent one of those States, but I represent a State right now where we desperately need more oil and gas so we can keep our energy prices down for home heating oil in the winter and for also the fact that in our district we make pickups, we make RVs, we make boats, we make lots of things that we sell to the rest of America that use gas. It is only fair if we drill for additional gas in these States and work out an agreement that funds for other environmentally-sensitive projects in those States are spent in those States.

   Thirdly, CARA is one of the only ways that States like Indiana can get any Federal funds for wildlife and conservation efforts. We do not have national parks like in the West. In my district, Pokagon and Chain O'Lakes State Parks have received funds from this reservoir that in the past previously had been funded by this Congress but as of late has received minimal funding, Dallas Lake County Park in LaGrange County, and city parks in Decatur and Columbia City. CARA is one of the only ways that funds get equitably distributed around the country rather than just go to the appropriators' favorite projects or people where they already have big national parks.

   The proposed Interior bill has many important projects in it, but it has the purpose and the practical impact of gutting CARA, a bill that three-quarters of us supported. So those who favor CARA, which is most of this body, would be wise to vote against this bill for environmental reasons; but as I pointed out last Thursday on this floor, those who have moral concerns should also vote against this bill.

   First off, while they have not directly funded these programs, NEA in the last few years, National Endowment for the Arts, has funded in-your-face theater programs like, for example, the Woolly Mammoth Theatre. The Woolly Mammoth Theatre in its description of its purposes says it produces plays that are questioning of mainstream American values, such as ``My Queer Body,'' where a man describes what it is like on stage to have sex with another man, then climbs naked into the lap of a spectator and attempts to arouse himself sexually in full view of the audience. They received a grant this year, by the way, Woolly Mammoth, yet another grant.

   Or how about blaspheming Jesus Christ? We did not fund ``Corpus Christi,'' but we fund the Manhattan Theatre prior to this being done. We funded it with two grants this year, where Jesus Christ is portrayed as having a homosexual relationship with the apostle Peter and all the apostles. We complain about Hollywood, then what are we doing funding these theaters?

   Thirdly, there is ``The Pope and the Witch,'' written by an Italian Communist against the Catholic Church there where the Pope, and it is performed by the Theatre for the New City which once again received a grant this year in spite of doing this offensive play where the Pope goes to the Vatican Square, there are 100,000 children, he decides it is a plot by the condo manufacturers to embarrass the Catholic Church. Fortunately, a little nun, or actually not a nun, it is a witch disguised as a nun, comes up and injects heroin into the Pope's veins. The Pope then gets addicted to drugs, to heroin. Then he sees the enlightenment, to enlighten the world by going around preaching free condom distribution, free heroin needles for drug addicts and free legalization of drugs throughout the world.

   Is this what we want to do with taxpayer dollars, to fund theaters that perform this? By the way, there is another interesting little play in this book called ``The First Miracle of the Boy Jesus,'' a mockery of Christ from the very beginning.

   I think it is time that this Congress stop pointing the finger everywhere else, and instead we have to clean up the funding that we are doing here. We asked for a simple compromise with the Senate and with the President that says no obscenity or blasphemy will be funded; that there will be a small reduction in the direct NEA funding and we would put the additional funds, up to $9 million, $7 million and if we take $2 million additional out of NEA, $9 million into a special fund for rural areas where we have not had this.

   I understand they can get around that, but it is like a Good Housekeeping seal. If the National Endowment for the Arts says a theater that does ``The Pope and the Witch'' is deserving of government funding, it is a Good Housekeeping seal from the Federal Government. It is time we stop that, stop criticizing Hollywood and clean up our own house first.

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