Northern Arizona Mining Continuity Act of 2011

Mr. President, today, I am pleased to introduce legislation to improve the Public Safety Officers' Benefits Act, PSOB. This law, enacted in 1976, is a vital safety net for our first responders who are permanently disabled in the line of duty, and for the families of those who make the ultimate sacrifice while serving their fellow citizens.

This legislation, along with several technical refinements to the program, will add certain classes of first responders who, due to gaps in the law, have been left without protection. For example, the bill contains legislation I introduced in the 111th Congress in response to the tragic death of Dale Long, a decorated emergency medical responder in Vermont. The Dale Long Emergency Medical Service Providers Protection Act would protect Mr. Long's survivors and those who may follow and encounter the same limitations under the current law.

Under current PSOB law, in order to be eligible for benefits, a member of an ambulance crew must work for an organization that is deemed a unit of State or local government, and thus be deemed a public employee. In Dale Long's case, as with rescue crews across the country, he worked for a private, non-profit entity that nonetheless served his community in a way indistinguishable from an organization with status as a unit of government. Based upon this distinction, Dale Long's surviving family was ineligible for these benefits. This is unfair, and undermines the Federal policy that is in place to support and protect these men and women. The bill I introduce today would end this disparate treatment.

The legislation also includes a provision to ensure that a cadet officer killed during a dangerous training exercise would be eligible for such benefits. The current law's weakness in this

area was highlighted in a case in Maryland, during which fire cadet Racheal Wilson was killed during a training exercise. Senator Mikulski and Senator Cardin have been very concerned about this situation, and I commend them for advocating for its inclusion in this legislation.

In the 111th Congress, the Judiciary Committee considered and reported the Dale Long Emergency Medical Service Providers Protection Act by voice vote. Despite the Committee's work, and the process and debate it was afforded within the Committee, the bill was objected to when I tried to get Senate consideration. This was very disappointing, given the importance of this legislation to first responders around the country, and given the fact that the legislation was fully offset.

This year, I once again introduced the Dale Long Emergency Medical Service Providers Protection Act. During the Senate's debate in February on the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act, I worked closely with Senator Inhofe to propose an amendment that included both the Dale Long Emergency Medical Service Providers Protection Act and a proposal from Senator Inhofe to support those who volunteer their time and expertise as airplane pilots to help those in need. Our bipartisan amendment was adopted by voice vote.

During the course of the subsequent conference negotiations on the FAA authorization legislation, I worked closely with Chairman Rockefeller and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith to ensure that our bipartisan amendment was retained in the conference agreement. During the course of these negotiations, Chairman Smith proposed to expand the Dale Long Emergency Medical Service Providers Protection Act to include other changes to the current PSOB law.

For example, Chairman Smith proposed a refinement of the Hometown Heroes law, a law that I authored and which was enacted in 2003. I worked with firefighters, police officers, and first responders to make sure that what Chairman Smith had proposed would not only retain the spirit and intent of the original Hometown Heroes law, but, most importantly, would improve upon it to alleviate some of the administrative delays that the families of first responders had encountered in the past. This refined proposal is included in the bill.

The bill I introduce today also includes provisions to lessen the length of a currently unwieldy appeals process for claimants, clarify the list of eligible survivor beneficiaries, and make those who have been catastrophically injured eligible for peer support and counseling programs. It also removes artificial distinctions under the Hometown Heroes Act to expand the types of injuries that would make a public safety officer's survivors eligible for benefits.

The final version of the legislation to which Chairman Smith and I agreed represents a bipartisan compromise on the overall improvement of this important program. I appreciate Chairman Smith's willingness to work with me in support of this program, and the first responders for whom the law is intended to protect. I understand that our agreement was to be incorporated in the FAA conference report.

Unfortunately, the future for a conference agreement on the FAA legislation is unclear. Each day that passes is another day that Mr. Long's family, and others who would benefit from this legislation, must live without the assistance this benefit provides. The Public Safety Officers' Benefits Act has been in effect for over 30 years, and has brought a measure of security to survivors of fallen first responders. In 1990, Congress continued this tradition and acted again to ensure that those first responders who have been permanently disabled in the line of duty are taken care of. This longstanding policy is reflective of Congress' recognition of the importance and necessity of the men and women who commit themselves as firefighters, police officers, and medical responders.

It is difficult to imagine what communities across America would be like without these essential services. From the firefighters in Vermont who race to the scene of a rural fire during a cold winter night, to the ambulance crews providing emergency medical services following a natural disaster in Oklahoma, our dedicated first responders are all connected by their sense of duty and their selflessness in the service of their neighbors. In Congress, lawmakers have traditionally acted in support of these men and women irrespective of party and we should continue that great tradition. I hope the Senate will act quickly to pass this important bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to thank Senator Bingaman for leading the effort to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act.

Over 100 years ago this Congress passed a law which formed a compact with counties, boroughs and parishes in rural America where the National Forests are located. That compact stipulated that the Forest Service would share 25 percent of its revenues with local governments to support roads and schools.

This agreement was put into law 60 years before the Payment in Lieu of Tax law was written to help compensate counties for the loss of revenue caused by the inability to tax federal property.

Over the years, the Forest Service shared billions of dollars with the counties and, until 1990, the amount of those payments increased almost every year. In fact, the Forest Service sold $1.6 billion worth of timber in fiscal year 1990. As a result, counties received more than $402 million in 25 percent payments to support schools and roads.

More importantly, the Forest Service timber sale program in 1990 generated more than 102,000 direct and indirect jobs in areas that now have the highest unemployment rates in the country. Those timber sales generated more than $5.3 billion--that is billion with a ``B'' of economic activity and $800 million in Federal income taxes. Further, revenue from the Forest Service's timber sale program supported many of the other Forest Service's multiple-use programs, including recreation, wilderness, road building and maintenance, and fire suppression.

All that changed in 1990 and 1991, when activists used the Endangered Species Act to reduce, and in some instances stop, timber harvesting across the West. If I could wave a magic wand and legislate reforms to the many environmental laws that have been twisted and misconstrued in order to block any development of our natural resources, rather than ensuring responsible decision making by our Federal land management agencies, as Congress intended, I would.

In the long run, I think that is what is needed, and I am convinced that given the economic malaise this country suffers, the American public is beginning to understand the wrongheaded direction our Federal land management has taken over the last two and a half decades.

But I don't think I can accomplish that in this Congress, and I am compelled to avoid adding any additional pain and suffering to the shoulders of the small rural communities that depend on Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act payments. Therefore I am joining Senators Bingaman and Wyden and others in cosponsoring legislation to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self- Determination Act for another 5-year period.

Senator Bingaman has fully described the bill, but it reauthorizes the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act at fiscal year 2011 payment levels for 5 more years. We have reduced the annual reduction in payments from the 10 percent level in current law down to a 5-percent annual reduction. Under this plan, counties, parishes, communities and schools will receive up to $364 million in temporary assistance each year for the next 5 years.

I say ``temporary'' because this program was, and is, designed to be a short-term bridge to allow counties and communities to transition to the new economic reality that our wrongheaded Federal lands policy has forced upon them.

I want everyone to also understand that while having signed on to this bill I am also considering a number of other alternative solutions that have the promise of generating enough revenue and jobs from Federal land activities to make our counties whole. I am willing to go as far as turning control of some Federal lands over to counties so that they may get some economic benefit from them. But first I will be taking a careful look at Representative Hastings's bill to generate additional resource management by lifting restrictions and expediting the processes needed to offer additional timber sales.

I want everyone to know that if a legitimate, acceptable, offset to pay for the cost of this program is not identified by the time the bill is ready to move to the Senate floor, I will have no alternative but to remove my name from the bill and will have to work to defeat the bill.

I would tell my fellow Senators that the folks in the House Resources Committee are fundamentally correct. We are going to have to either utilize our Federal lands to support our rural communities or we should divest the Federal Government of those lands and let the States, or the counties, manage those lands. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the House to find a path forward for this approach in this and future Congresses.

I will close by speaking directly to the counties, parishes, boroughs and communities that have now depended on the Secure Rural School program for more than a decade--and for some counties in Oregon, Washington and Northwest California for more than two decades--the Secure Rural Schools Payments are coming to an end. It could be this year if enough people do not rally around the bill that Senator Bingaman, I, and our other cosponsors have proposed. It could be 2 years from now if Representative Hastings and other Representatives prevail. Or it could be 5 years from now if we find the acceptable offsets needed to pay for our legislative proposal. My fervent hope is that the program will be replaced by a forest management system that actually puts people back to work in the forest, but it's coming to an end, and the counties and schools need to prepare for that eventuality.

Mr. President, today I introduced, along with Senator Murkowski and 22 other Senators S. 1692, the County Payments Reauthorization Act of 2011. The bill would provide dependable funding to support public schools, transportation infrastructure, and other critical county programs in more than 1,900 counties in 49 States. Specifically, it would continue to fund for 5 more years the Payments In Lieu of Taxes Program, and it would reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act. The Secure Rural Schools Act expired at the end of September.

Economists have long said that funding for local governments not only provides one of the most efficient and immediate ways to create and save jobs, it also helps to ensure that essential community services on which economic growth depends are maintained. These programs have proven that point in recent years. They have been lifelines for financially strapped rural counties and the thousands of Americans they employ and they contract with. They employ a multitude of public school teachers, support countless miles of county road projects, fund thousands of collaborative forest and watershed restoration projects, and pay for hundreds of community wildfire risk reduction programs in all parts of the country.

I would like to give one example from my home State of New Mexico. Many of my colleagues may know that the Wallow fire this summer grew to become the largest fire in the history of Arizona. My colleagues may not know that its leading edge burned more than 15,000 acres into New Mexico, and it threatened the community of Luna in Catron County, New Mexico.

When I visited the town of Luna, the community's firefighters told me the wildfire risk reduction projects they had completed using funds from the Secure Rural Schools Program helped to save their town. The funds from this bill also will fund many projects to help their local forests and watersheds and many others around New Mexico to recover from the severe fires that burned there this summer.

Despite the important work these programs support, we recognize that funding these programs is not easy, given the financial circumstance in which we find ourselves. We worked for months to build this strong coalition in the Senate and among the stakeholders in support of these programs across the country. In the process there have been an array of differing views about the details of how these programs should be structured going forward.

For example, recognizing the difficult financial situation in communities around the country and the urgent need to create jobs, some would significantly increase funding for these programs. Others, recognizing the challenging fiscal situation that the Federal Government faces, would sharply reduce funding for these programs. Some would shift the emphasis of the Secure Rural Schools Program to forestry projects such as those covered by titles II and III of that program. Others would shift the emphasis to public schools and to road projects.

But most importantly, there has been broad agreement on the most critical issues. First, there is broad agreement that funding for these two programs is immensely important. Second, there is broad agreement that the only way for us to successfully continue that funding is for us to renew the compromise we negotiated in 2008. Congress overwhelmingly passed that compromise, it has provided funding for these programs for the last 4 years, and our communities have broadly supported it.

The alternative, which seems to have become routine in Congress, is to emphasize our differences and destroy the coalition of support that will be essential to continue funding of these programs.

I greatly appreciate the support and leadership of Senator Murkowski and many others. Let me mention all those who have helped with this bill and who are cosponsoring this effort: Senator Baucus, Senator Crapo, Senator Wyden, Senator Risch, Senator Reid of Nevada, Senator Cochran, Senator Tester, Senator Blunt, Senator Feinstein, Senator Heller, Senator Tom Udall, Senator Boxer, Senator Cantwell, Senator Murray, Senator Bennet, Senator Merkley, Senator Sanders, Senator Tim Johnson, Senator Begich, Senator McCaskill, Senator Mark Udall, Senator Franken, and Senator Levin--all of whom are cosponsoring this important legislation.

I hope the rest of the Senate will join us once again to support the continuation of these important programs and enact this legislation.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Indian Tribal Energy Development and Self-Determination Act Amendments of 2011. For far too long, bureaucratic red tape has prevented Indian tribes from pursuing economic development opportunities on tribal trust lands, including energy development. For years, Indian tribes have expressed concerns about how Federal laws and regulations governing the management of trust resources, including energy resources, create significant delays and uncertainty in development proposals.

This bill represents an effort to deal with some of those concerns, and for the Record I would like to highlight some of its provisions. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 included an Indian Energy title--Title V--that, in significant part, attempts to deal with these delays and uncertainties that are inherent in the Bureau of Indian Affairs' energy leasing process, by providing Indian tribes with an alternative way to develop their energy resources. However, more than 6 years after the enactment of that act, it appears that no tribe has yet availed itself of the new energy development process authorized in the 2005 Act.

This bill includes a number of amendments to the alternative process established back in 2005, all of which are intended to facilitate the use of that section--to make the process easier for Indian tribes to follow and more predictable--be clearing away some of the red tape and other impediments.

Another amendment to this process would provide the Indian tribes with some funding to implement the processes authorized under the 2005 Energy Policy Act, in a way that should not increase the cost of the program. What this amendment would do is require the Secretary to provide funding to the tribe for its energy development activities in an amount equal any savings that the United States might realize as a result of the Indian tribe pursing this process, since the Indian tribe would be performing many functions itself rather than the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The bill requires the Secretary to identify the savings to the United States and make that amount available to the Indian tribe in a separate funding agreement.

The ultimate goal of these amendments is to facilitate economic development, provide Indian people with an opportunity to make a good living, and give the tribes greater control over the management and development of their own trust resources.

There are other energy-related issues addressed in this bill as well. There is an amendment to section 201 of the Federal Power Act that would put Indian tribes on a similar footing with States and municipalities for preferences when preliminary permits or original licenses, where no preliminary permit has been issued, for hydroelectric projects. However, this provision does not affect any preliminary permit or original license issued before the bill's enactment date or any application for an original license where no preliminary permit has been issued that was complete before the date of enactment of the bill.

The bill would also authorize a ``biomass demonstration project'' for biomass energy production from Indian forest lands, rangelands and other Federal lands in accordance with program requirements developed by the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture after consultation with Indian tribes. This amendment would promote the development of tribal biomass projects by providing them with more reliable and potentially long-term supplies of woody biomass materials.

There are many other provisions of the Indian Tribal Energy Development and Self-Determination Act of 2011, but the foregoing items are among the more important. Before I conclude, I would like to thank Senator Akaka, the Chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs, for his leadership on this issue and for agreeing to cosponsor this bill with me as well as the other Senators who have agreed to join as cosponsors.

In closing, I urge my colleagues to help us expand economic opportunity on tribal trust lands by moving this act expeditiously.

Mr. President, today I rise in support of the Indian Tribal Energy Development and Self-Determination Act Amendments of 2011. I am proud to co-sponsor this bill introduced by my friend, colleague, and Vice Chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs, Senator John Barrasso. I applaud his leadership and am proud to call him my full partner in our work on behalf of the Native peoples of the United States. Introduction of the Indian Tribal Energy Development and Self-Determination Act Amendments of 2011 is an important first step. I look forward to hearings on this measure and working with all of my colleagues to increase the ability of Native communities to develop energy resources on their lands and enhance self-determination.

Indian lands hold great potential for traditional and renewable domestic energy production. Responsible development could help decrease our Nation's dependence on foreign energy sources and create much needed jobs in some of the most impoverished areas of the Nation. Today, Indian reservations make up approximately 5 percent of the United States land base, and it is estimated that those reservations contain about 10 percent of the country's energy resources. A number of Indian tribes are already working in the areas of traditional and renewable energy production, energy transmission, and energy planning. Yet, successfully tapping into the vast energy reserves in our Nation's Indian communities remains a difficult and complex task.

It remains challenging for Indian tribes to develop adequate information about their energy resources, to obtain interconnection to the electric transmission grid, and to partner with private entities to engage in energy projects. Congress recognized the potential of tribes to develop energy sources on their lands by enacting tribal provisions in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. However, many of the programs and policies authorized by Title V of the act intended to benefit tribes have not been implemented or have only been partially implemented.

The Committee on Indian Affairs has held a listening session, and we have solicited comments from stakeholders across the spectrum on the issue. Tribes have made it clear they wish to chart their own economic destinies, but that in order to do so modifications are needed to the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The legislation introduced today will address tribal concerns as well as private sector concerns and will help unlock the huge potential of Indian tribal energy development to create jobs, promote tribal self-determination, and decrease our dependence on foreign energy sources.

This bill will set clear deadlines for Secretarial approval and streamline administrative processes related to tribal energy development which will help tribes and the United States ``win the future'' by enabling development of renewable energy sources from tribal lands.

I encourage all of my colleagues to stand with me and Senator Barrasso in support of this legislative initiative.