Senate Appropriations Committee:
Energy and Water Development Subcommittee

The Energy and Water Development Subcommittee determines funding for the Department of Interior (the governmental agency responsible for managing and protecting 507 million acres of federal land), the U.S. Forest Service (which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture), and the Smithsonian Institution.  

Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) is the Chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on Energy and Water Development.  For the past two decades, he was either Chairman or Ranking Member of the Budget Committee. He was first elected to the Senate in 1972.  Sen. Domenici has not compiled an environmentally friendly voting record during his three decades in the Senate. In the last ten years, his voting record has become even more strikingly anti-environmental. In 1995 he voted to allow mining companies to "patent" (purchase) public lands in order to extract minerals from them, without environmental standards, for the ridiculously low "price" of $5 an acre or less. In 2004 he voted in support of the energy bill, which favored fossil fuels over clean, renewable technology.  In 2004, Sen. Domenici earned an LCV score of 0%.

Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) is the Ranking Member of the Appropriations subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. He also serves as the Senate Minority Leader, the highest-ranking member of the Democratic PartyÆs Senate leadership team. Sen. Reid represented Nevada in the House from 1982 until he was elected to the United States Senate in 1986. In 2001 he co-sponsored a brownfields bill that more than doubled the federal funding level for cleaning up contaminated former industrial sites. He has a 2004 LCV score of 50%.