House Green Lights Major Enviro Bill - Legislation approved in final minutes, opponents work for defeat in Senate - NOVEMBER 19 2002
"Literally minutes before adjourning for the year, the House of Representatives without debate unanimously approved a $261 million-a-year legislative grab bag of goodies for environmentalists...
...Co-authored by Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Bob Smith, R-N.H., The American Wildlife Enhancement Act – S 990 – provides the wherewithal for massive land acquisition by state government agencies and non-profit groups, boosts the powers and status of the environmental organizations, and enacts a major amendment to the 1973 Endangered Species Act by adding a new designation – "species at risk" – to the familiar "threatened" and "endangered" categories. The establishment and expansion of several national wildlife refuges and a five-year rodent control program are thrown in for good measure.
The congressman responsible for its passage by the House last week was Rep. James Hansen, R-Utah. Although Hansen headed the House Resources Committee, to which the bill was assigned after it passed the Senate in December, he held no hearings on it. Instead, he kept it on a back shelf until 2:22 a.m. Friday, when he asked that the Resources Committee be discharged from further consideration of the bill and that it be placed on the calendar for a vote. Three minutes later – with major sections stripped from it – S 990 was on its way to the Senate. The same tactic was used for 14 other bills submitted for last-minute approval. Each was labeled non-controversial, placed on the consent calendar, voted upon, and sent to the Senate. This was essentially a rerun of the bill's passage by the Senate. On the evening of Dec. 22, at the end of one of the longest legislative years in decades, and with a mere handful of senators still present, Reid called for "unanimous consent" to pass S 990. The bill passed. "Who voted for and against the bill? No one will ever know. Was there even a quorum present? No one will ever know," wrote Henry Lamb, in an article in WorldNetDaily. Lamb suggested that the bill would be better named the "Screw-the-Landowner Act of 2001,"