Rep. Doggett on the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park
The full text of Rep. Doggett's remarks follow below:
I rise to focus attention upon one of today's provisions— perhaps a few rose petals hidden in the thicket of unnecessary and painful thorns that constitute this legislation.
Recently nominated as a World Heritage Site, the Spanish missions of San Antonio are a unique treasure for parishioners, tourists, and Texans everywhere. In 2010, our able, former colleague Ciro Rodriquez, introduced legislation both to expand the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park by about 151 acres and to require a study by the Secretary of the Interior regarding an even larger expansion of the park. In 2010, the House approved this Rodriquez bill. Though a companion measure was introduced by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Senate failed to act upon the Rodriquez bill.
During this Congress, I am one of five Members joining Rep. Canseco in reintroducing the Rodriquez bill. Instead of reapproving our bipartisan measure, the Resources Committee has merged only a very limited portion of it into a totally unrelated bill that is little more than a giant giveaway and exploitation of public property and which will endanger irreplaceable, natural resources from seashore in North Carolina to wilderness in Alaska.
While Senator Hutchison has already secured approval by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee of a complete San Antonio Missions bill, today's measure includes little of the protection our missions deserve. Now any purchase of additional land for the park is prohibited, and even a mere study of the possibility of additional park expansion is denied. Now the only way that the park can be expanded is if a private or public owner donates land to it. In other words, it makes future park expansion dependent entirely upon charity.
No matter how public-minded they may be, some private owners will be unable to give their land to the park.
Instead of continuing the previous, bipartisan commitment to the Missions, this bill reflects the same ideological extremes so evident in our larger policy debates like that over the future of our national transportation system—our House Republican colleagues are all for good transportation; it is just paying for that transportation they are opposed to. So today we hear about private property rights— but what about the private property right of an individual land owner to sell his property for a legitimate public purpose such as expanding this vital national park? That is denied in today's bill.
This bill will not grow the park in the way necessary to fully enhance the missions that are so significant to San Antonio and to this nation's culture and history. The better approach is to follow Senator Hutchison's lead and to approve a freestanding, bipartisan bill that provides these missions the complete support that they deserve.