mr. chairman , i yield myself the balance of my time . 
well , george , we have come a long ways . 
we have come a long ways , because , as you know , i have been working on this since i got here , and when i first started , all i heard was there is nothing wrong with the act that a little bit more money would not solve . 
here we are today , everybody saying that there is problems with the law and we have to fix it . 
so we have come a long ways , and i am being attacked for spending more money under the act on the reauthorization . 
first of all , i wanted to respond to your comments on jeopardy . 
we stay with current law . 
that is what is in the bill , is current law . 
we stay with current law . 
we had a different definition in the bill originally , and that caused the administration to say that it would result in new litigation , so we said we will stay with current law ; and that eviscerates the act , staying with current law that they have so dutifully defended . 
i have heard here today that the underlying bill guts , eviscerates , euthanizes , is unreasonable , and then i get a handout that talks about how much the substitute is like the base bill . 
when it comes to critical habitat , both bills use identical language . 
when it comes to providing certainty for landowners , both bills contain identical language . 
when it comes to providing incentives for landowners , both bills contain identical language , and on and on and on , about how much alike the bills are ; and yet they gut , eviscerate , euthanize , and they are unreasonable . 
the gentleman from new york ( mr. boehlert ) xz4000350 i think is right about this : the real difference between the two bills is how private property rights is protected . 
the gentleman from west virginia ( mr. rahall ) xz4003310 and i spent months debating the meaning of a word , and we finally came pretty close to getting a bill put together . 
the substitute represents , i think , a step back in the negotiations in that everything that you wanted that you did not get , you put in the substitute ; change the words a little bit so that they really do not mean anything . 
there is no protection for private property owners . 
i remember 10 years ago , i introduced a bill on endangered species , and one of the major provisions in that bill was to utilize public lands , and i got ripped over it because 90 percent of the species have their habitat on private land . 
you can not just put the focus on public lands . 
you can not . 
but if it is going to work , if we are truly going to put the focus on recovery , if we are truly going to try to bring these species back from the brink and do the responsible thing , private property owners have to be part of the solution . 
we hear a lot of horror stories about things that have happened in my district and mr. cardoza 's district and mr. costa 's district and mr. baca 's district , in your district , mr. miller . 
if you do not do something to protect the property owners , those stories are never going to stop . 
the act has been a failure in recovering species . 
now we can all agree . 
when it comes to protecting private property owners , regardless of what all the hot rhetoric is , what the underlying law says is that if you meet state and local zoning laws , if you go through the process of getting that approval , then you have something . 
if you are a farmer farming your land and they tell you that you can not farm your land anymore , you can get compensated for agriculture land . 
if you are a developer who has gone through the process , gotten your land zoned and they tell you you can not use it , then that is what you get compensated for . 
but once land has that restriction on it , whoever buys it can not come back again and say they want something else , because they know it is restricted . 
so this argument is totally out of line and off base . 
we protect private property owners . 
that is what leads to recovery . 
the substitute just does not . 
vote against the substitute , support the base bill , and let us move on with some decent legislation . 
