Keystone XL Pipeline Act - Continued

Floor Speech

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, the amendment I am offering this afternoon is pretty straightforward. It would effectively release wilderness study areas if, within 1 year of receiving the recommendation, Congress has not designated this study area as wilderness.

There has been a lot of discussion in the news of late with the President's announcement on Sunday that he is seeking to put an additional 12 million acres in the ANWR area--Alaska's North Slope--into wilderness status, including the 1002 area which has specifically been designated for oil and gas exploration. I want to make sure people understand this is not just an ANWR amendment. This is about the wilderness study areas that we see that are currently on the books.

According to the Congressional Research Service, as of the beginning of this year, Congress has designated 109.8 million acres of Federal land as wilderness. Just over half of this wilderness is in my State of Alaska. We have over 57 million acres of wilderness in Alaska. Ninety percent of the wilderness under the management of the Fish and Wildlife Service is in Alaska.

As a practical matter, there is more out there. There are more acres that are proposed for wilderness designation. For example, the Bureau of Land Management manages 528 wilderness study areas containing almost 12.8 million acres located primarily in the 12 States in the West as well as Alaska.

We also have the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has a wilderness study process through its land use planning to identify areas to be proposed as wilderness.

There is some history as to how we got to dealing with these wilderness study areas. Areas that are identified by agency officials as having certain wilderness characteristics--as identified under the 1964 Wilderness Act--were classified as wilderness study areas. BLM received specific direction in the Federal Land Policy Management Act of 1976 to inventory and study its roadless areas for wilderness characteristics. By 1980 the BLM completed field inventories which designated about 25 million acres of wilderness study areas. Since 1980 Congress has taken a look at some of these. Some have been designated as wilderness and others have been released for nonwilderness uses. The BLM has also taken it upon itself to designate wilderness study areas through its land use process.

The point here is that once an area has been designated under the BLM or the Fish and Wildlife Service study regime, it effectively becomes de facto wilderness. The designation then limits and restricts the ability to do just about anything for fear that it might impair the suitability of the area for preservation as wilderness.

Until Congress makes a final determination on a wilderness study area, the BLM or the Fish and Wildlife Service manages these areas to preserve their suitability for designation as wilderness. Even if Congress has not acted--because it is Congress's purview to do so--the agencies have designated it as de facto wilderness.

My amendment says we are going to change this, and we have to change this. Congress needs to reassert itself into this equation. As the final arbiter of what is or is not designated as wilderness, Congress can and should make the decisions in a timely manner about the wilderness status.

What my amendment does is pretty simple. If Congress doesn't act within 1 year to designate as wilderness an area recommended for wilderness, the designation is released. It just goes back to multiple use. That way the agencies are not managing areas to preserve a possible wilderness designation as an option for Congress. Instead, they can get on with looking at a broader range of options for how to manage that land with the local people and other interested stakeholders through the land-use planning process that applies to each of the agencies.

Some may argue that Congress needs more time on this. I would say we have had plenty of time to review these areas. Some of the wilderness study areas have been pending since the 1980s. That is plenty of time to figure out whether they should be put in wilderness status. Congress needs to make decisions.

I ask my colleagues to support my amendment and take a look at what is contained and not just think about the ANWR situation but think about the applicability within their respective States.

I know that Senator Sessions was seeking recognition. As Members are seeking to come to the floor to get their amendments pending, we would like to allow them to have recognition.

At this point, I believe we need some clarification from the Senator from North Dakota.

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I rise and thank my colleague from Maine for bringing up this very important issue. I would like her to know that I join with her in a concern that has been raised with the President and this proposal.

As the mom of two young men who are just finishing their years in college--I have one who graduated last year and one who will graduate in May. Very early on we participated in the 529 plan that was offered in the State of Alaska.

In fact, in my early years as a State legislator, it was my legislation in the Statehouse that set up the University of Alaska 529 College Savings Plan, and our boys were direct beneficiaries of that, if you will, because it allowed us, as parents, to begin our savings in a way we knew, when it came time for them to go to schools, we would be as prepared as we could be at that point in time.

I don't think any family is ever really prepared, particularly for the extraordinary costs of higher education. We were fortunate in that our sons chose to attend schools that were not some of the most expensive schools in the country--they attended State universities--but what we paid as a family for their college education, and having two boys in college at the same time puts a stress on families that is very real. So the suggestion that somehow these 529s benefit a very limited group of families across the Nation, I think, belies the obvious.

I think we all try to do the best we can by our kids, and saving for their future when they are very young is important.

So when we have these programs that will allow and encourage families to do this, knowing there will be a tax benefit, it is important. It is important for the families, it is important for the young people looking to their opportunities in college and, hopefully, when they complete their college education, they are not bearing these incredibly crushing financial burdens.

Again, I applaud the efforts of my colleague and I look forward to working with her on this very important issue.

With that, I yield the floor.

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