Remarks as Prepared for Delivery
for The Honorable Dirk Kempthorne
Secretary of the Interior
Department of the Interior FY 2008 Budget
February 5, 2007
Good afternoon and welcome to the Department of the Interior.
This is the first Department of Interior budget I have announced since I became Secretary last May. Throughout my career, I have been part of developing many budgets – first as mayor of Boise, then as a United States Senator, and finally as governor of Idaho.
Having reached this day, I can now tell you that developing a budget for the Department of Interior is an extraordinary exercise. We have an enormous mandate that rivals just about any governmental department in its breadth and diversity – and its importance to the everyday lives of our citizens.
Our 73,000 employees live and work in communities across America and its territories. We have 2,400 field offices. We manage 145,000 assets – second only to the Department of Defense.
Our work stretches from pole to pole from wildlife refuges in the Arctic to scientific research at the South Pole.
We oversee land and resources that stretch across 12 time zones from the Caribbean to the Pacific Rim. The sun literally never sets on the Department of the Interior.
We have the third largest contingent of federal law enforcement officers, with 3,400 officers and agents.
The list goes on.
In crafting the budget we are announcing today, I was acutely aware that this is more than an exercise in balancing numbers.
Each dollar we put into our budget makes a statement about the priorities we believe are important for the American people – and the vision we have for how we will serve the American people more effectively in the coming years.
The good news I can report to you today is that our overall 2008 request for the Department of the Interior is $10.7 billion -- nearly $450 million, or 4.5 percent, above the 2007 continuing resolution spending level.
Within this request, our budget includes a record increase of $214 million to fully cover the fixed costs of the entire department.
The budget is carefully crafted within the President’s commitment to continue to fund the nation’s highest priorities while eliminating the deficit in five years. The administration is on track to achieve this goal.
As Interior Secretary, I get to boast that my department actually returns more to the U.S. Treasury than we receive in appropriations. We project $15 billion in non-tax revenues for 2008, more than any other federal agency. That’s roughly one and half times our appropriation.
I believe that our 2008 budget will – in its entirety – make a dramatic difference for the American people.
We will better conserve our public lands.
We will improve our national parks.
We will protect our wildlife and its habitat.
We will help craft a better future for Indian country and particularly for Indian children.
And we will produce the energy that America needs to heat our homes and run our businesses.
Assistant Secretary Tom Weimer and Deputy Secretary Lynn Scarlett will guide you through many of the specifics of our 2008 budget in a moment, but I want to highlight four major initiatives that are at the heart of the budget.
The National Parks Centennial Challenge to enhance National Parks as we approach their 100th anniversary in 2016;
The Healthy Lands Initiative, which will allow us to provide energy for the nation while also protecting critical lands and habitat;
The Safe Indian Communities Initiative to combat the methamphetamine crisis on Indian lands; and
The Improving Indian Education Initiative that will enable Indian children to grow up in an environment that allows them to achieve their dreams.
- Ninety-nine years ago, President Theodore Roosevelt convened a summit of national leaders to consider the future of conservation. This historic conference established the framework for a uniquely American invention—the National Park Service.
- Our National Parks are more than simply places to visit. They help define who we are as a nation – our land, our history, and our culture. We must ensure that they inspire our grandchildren, just as they inspired our grandparents in the last century.
- Last August, I had the honor of celebrating the 90th anniversary of the National Park Service at our first national park, Yellowstone. On that day, I announced the President’s National Parks Centennial Challenge.
Through this initiative, we are preparing the parks for their 100th anniversary in 2016.
The goal of the Centennial Challenge is not to wait until this anniversary to improve our parks. Rather, it is to begin the work now so that we can celebrate victory and a much-improved National Park System in 2016.
- Our 2008 budget inaugurates this historic, multi-year investment with the largest ever budget for operations and programs that benefit our national parks —$2.3 billion.
- Park superintendents repeatedly tell me their greatest need and highest priority is to increase funding for daily operations.
- Park advocates like the National Parks Conservation Association have encouraged the American public to champion spending increases for our parks of $250 million over the 2006 budget.
- Our budget surpasses that goal. Today, I am announcing an increase for park operations of $258 million.
- As part of the operating budget, the President is proposing $100 million a year over the next decade – or $1 billion – as part of what we are calling our Centennial Commitment to improve both our park infrastructure and the experiences of people visiting the parks.
- This will allow us to hire 3,000 more seasonal national park rangers, guides and maintenance workers. It will enable us to repair buildings; improve landscapes; and enroll more children in the Junior Ranger program. We will also expand interactive experiences that will appeal to today’s technologically savvy youth.
- In addition to the operating budget, the President is proposing $100 million a year in mandatory funding over the next decade –or another $1 billion – under the Centennial Challenge to provide matching funds for contributions made by Americans for projects to improve our parks and open the way for better visitor experiences.
- Unlike the Centennial Commitment funds, these funds will be made available to match donations from the American people to support these projects. As private partners match the amount, this will mean at least an additional $1 billion in contributions to improve our parks.
- Taken as a whole, the funds for the Centennial Challenge initiative and the anticipated contributions of the American people will total a minimum of $3 billion over the next decade.
- We are a nation united in our love and appreciation for our national parks. Each year, in fact, Americans contribute millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours at our 390 national parks, battlefields, memorials, and other sites that make up the park system.
- As they embrace the Centennial Challenge, the voluntary contributions of Americans will help us invest in signature programs and projects that we will identify through a series of listening sessions throughout the country in the next few months.
- At Yellowstone and Yosemite, Denali and Dinosaur, Grand Canyon and Grant Teton, Shiloh, Shenandoah and other parks, the National Park Service each year welcomes 270 million visitors.
- Our Centennial Challenge will ensure that national parks continue to inspire Americans for another 100 years.
Beyond our Nation’s parks, Interior also manages millions of acres of public lands as working landscapes. These lands support grazing, energy and minerals production, hunting and fishing, and other recreational opportunities.
As we seek to enhance energy security through domestic energy production, we must also maintain healthy lands to support wildlife and their habitat.
We must actively manage species such as the sage grouse to prevent the need to list them under the Endangered Species Act and to assure recovery of threatened and endangered species.
Addressing these challenges will require new management tools, increased resources, and partnerships.
My Healthy Lands Initiative meets these challenges. My Initiative includes, for the first time, a $22 million investment dedicated to conserving areas both vital to wildlife and to energy development.
Through this initiative, the Bureau of Land Management, working with the Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey, will identify, restore and protect important wildlife habitat.
The Healthy Lands Initiative focuses on conserving the entire landscape and its wildlife as a whole, allowing us to better identify and protect wildlife corridors and other significant habitat.
A $15 million increase will enable the Bureau of Land Management to protect wildlife and restore habitat, primarily in energy interface areas.
The Healthy Lands Initiative will strengthen partnerships with communities, conservation organizations, and companies.
The Initiative focuses on six areas in the West. Five of these areas contain the largest onshore reserves of natural gas in the country.
One of the six targeted areas for this initiative is the Green River Basin of Southwest Wyoming, an area of significant wildlife habitat and rapid energy development.
Wyoming is home to more than 800 species, of which 12 are federally listed as threatened or endangered. The Green River area alone has 9 listed species.
The Healthy Lands Initiative will build upon existing partnerships to restore 71,000 acres in the Green River Basin.
In his State of the Union Address, the President underscored the importance of domestic energy production.
BLM estimates that there are 1.9 billion barrels of oil and over 57 trillion cubic feet of natural gas on the federal lands in the area of Southwest Wyoming—an area also rich in wildlife. This is enough oil to provide for the needs of the entire Rocky Mountain region for nearly nine years. It is enough natural gas to supply homes in the entire United States for more than 11 years.
Our budget will ensure continued access to public lands for energy development.
In New Mexico, our Initiative will build upon recent experiences to apply landscape-scale habitat management. In the past, BLM undertook habitat restoration five to ten acres at a time. In 2005, this traditional approach resulted in improvements on less than 14,000 acres.
With resources from our Healthy Lands Initiative and using landscape-scale partnerships, BLM will improve nearly 100,000 acres of habitat in the wildlife-energy interface in New Mexico—seven times what it achieved under the traditional approach.
Overall, under the Healthy Lands Initiative, we expect the $22 million in Federal funding, combined with partner investments, to restore nearly a half million acres.
Our Initiative includes $5 million for the US Geological Survey and $2 million to the Fish and Wildlife Service to improve scientific information and monitoring.
The U.S. Geological survey will inventory species and habitats, monitor land and water resources, and integrate habitat and energy information.
In addition, the Fish and Wildlife Service will work with private landowners to conserve species at risk, exploring use of tools like mitigation and conservation banks.
I have spoken today about our vision for managing and preserving our lands for future generations to enjoy.
I am also proposing two initiatives to ensure that future generations of Native Americans have safe and secure communities to call home.
I also want to ensure that all Native American children can fulfill their greatest potential through education.
If we are going to meet these goals, we must stop the scourge of methamphetamine in Indian Country. As I meet with Tribal leaders, they describe a meth crisis that has the potential to destroy an entire generation if left unattended. They refer to it as the second small pox epidemic.
This crisis has a human face. The face of destroyed lives. The face of neglected children.
I personally saw this human face when I was governor of Idaho. I accompanied state police on a drug bust at a private home. I have never seen such squalor and filth. There was garbage everywhere and in the backyard, an open septic tank leaked raw sewage.
As if that weren’t bad enough, I learned that the children of those arrested were about to arrive home from school. These children ate, breathed, and slept in rooms containing toxic chemicals. When they came home and saw mom or dad cooking on the stove, it wasn’t dinner. It was another batch of meth.
Tribal leaders have told me about a 9-year old meth user who was taken to the hospital with hallucinations and violent behavior. They told me of a young mother on meth who stabbed her baby to death because she thought he was possessed by the devil.
At one reservation particularly hard hit by this crisis, an estimated 25 percent of babies are born addicted to methamphetamine. One still-born baby had meth and five other drugs in its blood system.
This is not just a budget issue, this is a moral issue. We must help tribes put an end to this scourge and create an environment in which young people can thrive.
Our 2008 budget proposes $16 million in new investments for a Safe Indian Communities Initiative. With this Initiative, we will battle the rise of methamphetamine on Indian reservations.
One of the challenges we face is lack of adequate law enforcement on many tribal lands. As a result, organized crime has targeted Indian reservations as a hub for the distribution and transportation of methamphetamine.
The result is a violent crime rate in some communities that is ten to twenty times the national average.
Our Safe Indian Communities Initiative will increase law enforcement presence and training on tribal lands.
With additional officers and specialized drug enforcement training, we will shut down these peddlers of poison.
It is not enough, however, to simply protect Indian children from drugs and crime. We must also help them to a brighter future through better educational opportunities in Indian Country.
Last year, I established a new Bureau of Indian Education to oversee education for the nearly 50,000 students in our school system.
As one of only two Federal school systems, our Bureau of Indian Education schools should be models for achieving the goals of the No Child Left Behind Act.
Yet just 30 percent of our schools are meeting these goals. We must change course so Indian children receive the education they deserve.
Our budget proposes $15 million to do just that.
Over the last 5 years, we have significantly improved the condition of Indian Country schools.
We must now focus on the classroom.
Through our education initiative, we will ensure that the dreams of today’s youth become the realities of tomorrow.
These four initiatives are at the heart of our vision for the Department of the Interior in the coming years.
As I look back over the past eight months, I am encouraged by the professionalism and dedication of our employees. I have full confidence that the budget we are announcing today will empower them to serve the American people better and to work in partnership with the American people to create a better future.
I would now like to introduce Assistant Secretary Tom Weimer. Tom will discuss Interior’s integrated approach to meeting our responsibilities and achieving our key goals in 2008.