people in Alaska were excited to work with the President. I know 

 myself and our two Senators appeared before that task force. Did 

 they listen? No, they did not. 



We worked very hard to provide the case for Alaska's interests. 

 Unfortunately, when the plan came out, it was clear that my good 

 faith efforts, those of our Senators, the Governor, and a wide varie- 

 ty of other interests had been cynically ignored. Nothing new in 

 this administration. This was done to facilitate a politically conven- 

 ient deal with several national environmental groups. 



The article that appeared on the front page of the Washington 

 Post on August 25th, 1993, provided the smoking gun that the le- 

 gitimate interests of the people of Alaska had been traded away in 

 hopes of buying off the Nation's farm community. 



Fortunately, the farmers of this Nation appear to have more in- 

 tegrity on this issue than the administration does. A representative 

 of the Nation's farmers told me that "they were not going to sup- 

 port the trampling of other people's rights in order to be sold a cow 

 they already owned.' 



To realize just how crudely disguised this raw political deal was, 

 one need only read the justification on page 23 of the President's 

 plan. It states that 1.5 million acres of Alaska's wetlands would be 

 destroyed if the proposed 1 percent rule was finalized. 



Under what possible development scenario was this supposed to 

 happen? To get that kind of development we would have to open 

 ANWR and open up most of the parks and refuges created by 

 ANILCA. I hardly think that President Clinton plans to propose 

 any such action in the near future. 



The White House also claims that "potentially all of Alaska's 

 345,000 acres of extremely valuable coastal wetlands" could be lost. 

 I have no idea where, other than environmental community propa- 

 ganda sheets, the number 345,000 acres of coastal wetlands came 

 from, but with 34,000 miles of coastline in Alaska, I think 345,000 

 acres is orders of magnitude low. I also wonder if the person who 

 wrote that "all coastal wetlands could be lost," ever looked at the 

 map he or she was given or who has ever been there. I say no, they 

 have not. 



If whoever wrote the President's justification had looked at the 

 map, they never would have made such a ridiculous statement. 



As the map clearly demonstrates, most of Alaska's coast and 

 therefore its coastal wetlands are already protected in Federal or 

 State conservation units. To say that the 404 program provides the 

 basis for the protection of these wetlands is absolutely absurd. 



There are several other glaring factual errors that appear in the 

 administration's justification, but I think that I have made my 

 point. 



So what did the President offer the people of Alaska? What did 

 you offer us? He offered them a meeting. It appears that this meet- 

 ing is supposed to go something like this: Alaskans are supposed to 

 traipse in and present themselves at an audience before the very 

 same bureaucrats who have been trampling over our rights for 

 years. They were to present their case and then those bureaucrats 

 will come to some magic solution, just as they have done in this 

 program. 



