mr. chairman , i urge my colleagues to support the miller-boehlert substitute . 
mr. chairman , i rise today in support of the substitute amendment in opposition to h.r. 3824 . 
h.r. 3824 is being promoted as a piece of legislation that is good for business . 
as a senior member of both the small business committee and the resources committee , i think i have an important perspective on this issue . 
i would like to draw a parallel between the endangered species act and landmark legislation that has been passed by congress to protect the health and safety of workers . 
one could easily and logically argue , if they were so inclined , that child labor laws and occupational safety and health laws were bad for business . 
but we do n't because we intuitively understand that supporting the very foundation of business , the people who do the work , is a long-term economic benefit for society , even though it may cost a few dollars up front . 
that goes to the basic fact that practically every adult in america has worked hard at a job for a business or a corporation at some point in his or her life . 
all of us can easily relate to the problems caused by unfair labor practices and unsafe working conditions . 
however , very few of us are scientists . 
we are not a scientifically literate society . 
i am not here to say whether that is good or bad but just to offer one explanation why we find it so difficult to grasp that the health of our environment and the continuity of all the pieces in our environment is as important to the health of our society and the strength of our economy as sound labor practices . 
legislation that hurts the health of the worker is not good for business . 
laws , like the one being proposed today , that undermine the very foundation of our society 's well-being and economic infrastructure , are not good for business . 
when we undermine the basic tenets and goals of the endangered species act , we do so at our own peril . 
most of us in the house were alive in the early 1960s when rachel carson published her book , silent spring . 
the silence of which she spoke caused by the extermination of songbirds , dying because the shells that protected their offspring shattered long before the young were ready to hatch . 
the eggs shattered and the next generation died because ddt weakened the structure of the eggs . 
the spring , once filled with the sound of songbirds , was growing ever more silent as ddt began to pervade every corner of our environment . 
ddt nearly exterminated our nation 's symbol of freedom , the bald eagle , because it shattered their shells . 
ddt nearly exterminated the endless flocks of brown pelicans flying low over the ocean 's horizon , because it shattered the shells of their young . 
in my lifetime , i have witnessed the near extinction of these birds . 
and , thank god , i have witnessed their return because we banned that chemical . 
even though the birds have returned , did we ban ddt too late , because we all know that every one of us harbors residues of ddt in our bodies , that ddt is found in our mother 's milk ? 
or , were the eagle and the pelican sentinels , helping us to right our wrongs just in time , before they disappeared from this planet and our own bodies weakened along with , them . 
the environmental protection agency banned ddt a year before the esa was passed and here we are , 35 years later , about ready to pass a so-called `` esa reform bill '' that would suspend all endangered species act provisions related to pesticides . 
the endangered species act is really about a single species -- us , human beings . 
i am not going to be dramatic and suggest that our species faces extinction . 
at six and a half billion and growing , i think the human species is going to be around for a good long time . 
but the existence of today 's young people is not the existence i remember from my youth . 
bottled water , mercury poisoning the womb , rates of asthma attacks skyrocketing , beaches closed because e.coli pollutes the water and sickens our children . 
the endangered species act is not about saving the tiny silvery minnow that lives in the rio grande and it is not about saving the spotted owl that exists in mature forests . 
it is about alerting us to the fact that our rivers no longer sustain fish and our forest no longer sustains birds . 
the endangered species act sounds the five-minute buzzer for humanity and says `` watch out ! 
`` our fellow creatures are sickening . 
the animals that share our water , our air , our soils are dying . 
something is wrong and we better do something about it before it begins to weaken and sicken us and we have to scramble to pick up the pieces . 
let me close where i began -- whether or not a drastic weakening of the endangered species act is good for business . 
the simple cost/benefit analysis often applied to endangered species protection only reflects what can easily be given a monetary value . 
this highly selective economic analysis only counts what can be most easily quantified -- the cost of timber not cut , the cost of water not sold , the cost of crops not sprayed with pesticide . 
these economic analyses do not account for the cost if environmental protections are not put in place -- an aquifer that dries up , a hillside that erodes into a river , people stricken with cancer from unsafe pesticides . 
it is easy to hold up the first balance sheet and say , `` business will suffer '' in the same way one could say that by prohibiting the labor of children , `` business will suffer '' . 
but the cumulative costs of a thousand cuts into the environment that sustains us as humans will be borne by everyone in society , consumers and businesses alike . 
without environmental laws , our economy polluted our rivers , darkened our air , paved our wetlands , and drained our rivers . 
the endangered species act does not take property from private entities ; it protects the property , the health and the wealth of all americans . 
