Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act of 2015

Mr. President, I am here on the floor today with my friend and colleague from the State of Idaho to speak in support of legislation we have just dropped today; that is, the Bipartisan Sportsmen's Act of 2015. I have introduced it today, along with the prime cosponsor, Senator Heinrich from New Mexico.

I think it is important to recognize that this bipartisan bill is supported with original cosponsors, including the Senator from Idaho, Mr. Risch, Senator Manchin, Senator Fischer, and Senator Heitkamp, as well as myself and Senator Heinrich. I wish to acknowledge the role of Senator Heinrich in this and his staff for working with us to revise and reintroduce this important bill. I would also like to acknowledge the great work the bipartisan leadership of the Senate's Sportsmen's Caucus has done on this issue, led ably by my friend from Idaho. I think it is important to recognize the groundwork, the leg work that went into the development of this bill and the work the caucus did in doing so. So I thank my colleagues for all of their good, hard work.

We are here today to not only announce this reintroduction--because this is now the third Congress we have tried to advance the Bipartisan Sportsmen's Act--but also to really kind of re-up the conversation about its importance and really to urge the Senate to come together to pass legislation such as we are talking about today.

We have sportsmen all over the country. I come from a big State that is wide open, and people come to Alaska to hunt and to fish. They never want to leave, and that is fine. That is how my husband came to Alaska--it was the lure of sport fishing on the Kenai River. So many of our military are on assignment to Alaska, and they end up staying because of the hunting and fishing and other recreational opportunities Alaska offers. It is not just places such as Alaska and Idaho that offer great outdoors opportunities; it is all over the country, from big cities to small towns, North and South.

For so many of us, hunting is a tradition that is passed down from generation to generation. Certainly my family is evidence of that. I think it is important to recognize that while we talk about hunting and fishing as being the best known recreational opportunities, we also include with this legislation enthusiasts who go outside to go boating and so many of the other outdoor activities.

We speak often on this floor about jobs and economic opportunities and what they bring to our Nation, the important role they play. Sportsmen and sportswomen really are economic contributors when we think about their role. Back in 2013 there were approximately 37 million people who hunted or fished in America. That is roughly equal to the entire population of the State of California. Those numbers are always on the rise. Again, when we have strong numbers, we also have strong economic impacts. Sports men and women spent roughly $90 billion in 2013. Those numbers have probably risen since then. Those dollars go not only to the gear and equipment, which is what we would expect, but also to the travel industry, to the hospitality industry, and to so many other sectors of the economy.

Spending by sports men and women also aids our conservation efforts. Excise taxes on fishing and hunting and shooting equipment, motorboat fuel, as well as the fees for licenses and stamps are all dedicated to State fish and wildlife management and conservation. These folks care deeply about the environment and conservation, and that is why these excise taxes are in place to take care of our natural resources. Since their establishment, the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Programs have contributed over $14.5 billion to conservation.

I mentioned Alaska and its role as kind of a magnet for those who like to hunt and fish. In my State alone, we have over 125,000 individuals who engage in hunting every year. It has created more than $439 million in retail sales and $195 million in salaries and wages. In Alaska, we bring in over $53 million to the State and local governments each year. We had a big holiday a year or so ago when Cabela's opened its doors. It was as though we had finally arrived on the scene. All of our sportsmen--hunters and fishermen--were loving it.

On the fishing side, when we think about the economic impact in my State, it is even more impressive. Last year over 460,000 people bought fishing licenses to take part in some of the best fishing in the world. It brought about $1.4 billion to Alaska's economy. These are huge contributors to our tax base, to our economy, and they are key to who we are as a State.

Our Bipartisan Sportsmen's Act of 2015 that we are introducing today builds on the efforts of last year. Last year's bill saw 46 Members of this Chamber coming together to support it. We have taken all of the provisions from the previous bill except for two that were enacted in other legislation and then we have added some additional bipartisan provisions. We have Senator Heinrich's revised HUNT Act. We have a couple of others that are new to the bill. All told, these measures increase access to provide greater opportunities for sports men and women to enjoy our public lands.

There are a lot of different components in the bill. I know my colleague from Idaho will speak to several of them. I wish to highlight a couple that I think are important in this discussion.

First is a bill I have championed for several years now called the Recreational Fishing and Hunting Heritage and Opportunities Act. It protects recreational hunting and fishing on our BLM and our National Forest Service lands while reaffirming other prior congressional actions enacted to protect hunting and wildlife conservation. So the bill we have introduced--again, this is the same one we have had previously--requires BLM and Forest Service lands to be open to hunting, to recreational fishing, or recreational shooting as a matter of law unless the managing agency acts to close lands to such activity. So it is open unless otherwise closed. Leaving lands open unless closed means that agencies need not take action then to open them up to hunting and fishing. Agencies are still permitted to close or put restrictions on land for a number of purposes, such as resource conservation and public safety. But on the whole this is really an affirmation that sportsmen and sportswomen are welcome on our public lands. Isn't that what our public lands are supposed to be all about, which is being able to access them?

The Hunting, Fishing, and Recreational Shooting Protection Act has again been included in this bill. This

was introduced previously by Senators Thune and Klobuchar as a standalone bill, but its language is very important to many of us and to nearly all the sportsmen's groups we have heard from.

We also have provisions in the bill that deal with some of the efforts to limit ammunition and fishing tackle by some organizations. I think we know that if we can't access, if we can't afford traditional ammunition and fishing tackle, it makes it pretty tough to go out and enjoy these opportunities.

We have good pieces in here relating to conservation priorities, including the North American Wetlands Conservation Act and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

I again the Sportsmen's Caucus and Senator Heinrich as the prime Democratic lead on this bill. My hope is that we will be able to build this coalition on the floor and get even beyond the number 46, which is what we had last go-around with this legislation.

I think we will have good discussion within the committee and here on the Senate floor. My hope is that the third time is going to be the charm for this sportsmen's legislation. It is important to us, it is important to our economy, and it is an issue which I am certainly willing to take aim at. Sorry for the pun.

With that, I yield to my friend from Idaho.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss our truly bipartisan sportsmen's bill. This is a bipartisan bill which has been worked on for quite some time, and I think its time has come. They say Paul Masson's wine's time has come. It has. We have Senators Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, Mark Heinrich from New Mexico, Jim Risch from Idaho, myself from West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp from North Dakota, and Deb Fischer from Nebraska. It is balanced. I think we will find total support hopefully on both sides.

Let me talk about the bill and what it does. It is good for sportsmen, hunters, and lovers of the outdoors. This is a bill which shows that Democrats and Republicans can truly come together and work together. The bill should be a model for how we can make things work here in Washington, and we hope the country will be watching.

West Virginia has more than 1.6 million acres of public land open to hunting. In a State that is our size, if they flatten the State, it would be bigger than Texas. But with all the mountains and hills and everything, it is an absolutely wonderful and beautiful place to grow up and live and hunt and enjoy the outdoors.

We have a year-round fishing season with more than 20,000 miles of streams and more than 100 public fishing lakes. In 2011 West Virginia saw more than 400,000 hunters and sportsmen supporting more than 12,000 jobs--400,000 hunters supporting 12,000 West Virginia jobs. These sportsmen spent $870 million on hunting and fishing in West Virginia and generated $81 million in State and local taxes. That is an industry within itself. In a small State such as ours, we are very appreciative of every job and every dollar that helps us provide a better quality of life.

Let me tell you about growing up in West Virginia. It was funny. I had a conversation on the floor of the Senate with some of my colleagues, and we were talking about many issues. We started talking about how we grew up and this and that, and he said: You know, Joe, I grew up in a community in a part of the city where I never knew anybody who owned a gun.

I was thinking how much he missed. That means he had never been hunting. No one ever taught him how to shoot and be safe--the safety things we should learn. I kept thinking about that. I thought to myself and I told him: You know something, I grew up in a town where I didn't know anybody who didn't have a gun. It is just the cultures we have.

If this bill helps introduce people to the love of the outdoors, to the sporting, whether it is just shooting from the standpoint of targets or sports shooting or actually hunting and basically the game-- it is very nutritional and very healthy. Venison is a big staple of the diet in West Virginia. It is very good quality meat and very low in fat, very high in protein and fiber. It is great.

You start learning about gun safety. My father was not a hunter. My father never got into it. My grandfather was not a hunter. My uncles were very much involved. But my dad made sure we had a sporting club in the little town, a little coal mining town, and the people who were very astute in this basically took all of us under their wing. They would teach us how to shoot. They would teach us the safety. They would teach us how to respect where we--if we are going to shoot something, we should be able to harvest the game or know somebody who would use it for nutritional values. Don't waste a thing. But also go out in the woods and enjoy the beauty God gave us. I look back on those days.

Then I took my grandson hunting the first time. First of all, I couldn't believe how good his eyesight was and how good he could shoot. It is something that now he is fixated on, and he does a great job, and I am so happy to see him. My son loves fishing, and I take him with me all the time. It is a family tradition. We do it once a year. We do a whole family trip where everybody goes.

This bill, the Sportsmen's Act of 2015, does so many things all over America. It really helps us promote and continue to promote the love of the outdoors, the love of hunting, the love of fishing, basically of sports shooting, competitive sports shooting, pleasurable sports shooting, learning the safety of a gun, what we should and should not do, learning to respect others around us, making sure safety is the first and foremost thing we do.

I hope this bill gets very quick action, very favorable action. We can start out this new year, if you will, on something that is truly overwhelmingly a bipartisan bill. I am sure there will be people who have something they might object to in any piece of legislation. They will have to work hard to find something in this bill they can object to because I think it is put together the right way, in a bipartisan way. It is good for America.

Mr. President, I rise today also in support of the Bipartisan Sportsmen's Act of 2015. I am honored to be here today with Senator Murkowski. Idahoans and Alaskans have a lot in common when it comes to outdoor sporting activities, including hunting and fishing. Senator Crapo and I were honored to host Senator Murkowski in Idaho. Although we don't have the acres Alaska has, we certainly have that diverse environment for hunting and fishing in many different areas of the State that support and will continue to support both fishing and game.

This bill is cosponsored by a bipartisan team of Senators who are committed to advancing the agenda of sportsmen and sportswomen. Senators Murkowski and Heinrich, along with the leaders of the Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus--myself and Senator Manchin as the co- chairmen and Senator Fischer and Senator Heitkamp as the co-vice chairmen--make up the largest bipartisan caucus in Congress, and we have diligently labored to craft this bipartisan legislation that is supported by a broad coalition of sportsmen's groups. Indeed, we have worked on it substantially more since the first of the year. Last year we labored over it at great length and were not able to get it across the finish line, but we are cautiously optimistic this year that we have hit that right spot where we actually can get this across the finish line this year.

One provision of this package will encourage States to create and maintain public shooting ranges. This will promote gun safety by providing a venue to teach young adults about firearms. These public ranges can also serve as a place to hold hunter education classes and can be used as facilities to train police forces.

This bill will also allow any legal gun owner to carry a firearm on land administered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This provision will require the Army Corps to conform their regulations to align with local laws related to firearms. I wish to thank my colleague from Idaho, Senator Mike Crapo, for his hard work and leadership on this particular issue. I know the sportsmen of Idaho and across the country are pleased to know that this legislation will allow firearms on Army Corps land and that it is included in this bipartisan sportsmen's package.

This bill will also reauthorize the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act, a program that enables the Bureau of Land Management to sell public land for community development and other projects. This land-for-land approach creates jobs and generates funding for the BLM to acquire critical inholdings from willing sellers.

I am also proud to include a provision supported by my colleague from Wyoming, Senator Mike Enzi, to allow archery equipment to be transported and possessed in national parks. Archery is one of the fastest growing sports in America. It should not be illegal to carry a bow in a national park.

I am happy to work with my colleagues to include this important provision in this Sportsmen's Act. Whether you hunt or fish to put food on the table or for sport or to pass down a tradition to your family or for game-management purposes, there is something in this bill for you.

With more than half a million sportsmen and sportswomen in the State of Idaho, this legislation will ensure they can continue to access their favorite hunting or fishing sport. In fact, the number of people who hunt each year in Idaho would fill Boise State Broncos stadium more than 6\1/2\ times. Most of you are familiar with that stadium since it is the only stadium in America that has blue turf, and most everyone has seen that.

For those of us who hunt and fish, it is difficult to put into words why this legislation is so important. I ask everyone I talk to about these issues to encourage and teach youngsters about hunting and fishing. In Idaho this last year 14,000 kids purchased a junior fishing license, and approximately 14,000 purchased a junior hunting license. These numbers could be higher, and they should be higher. It is important to teach and mentor these future generations--those coming behind us--about hunting and fishing and to hand down this culture to them. Hunting and fishing give us a great reason to be in the great outdoors, a great reason to hand down traditions, and a great reason to support the Bipartisan Sportsmen's Act of 2015.

I urge all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to work with this bipartisan coalition we put together, to cosponsor and to work with us to pass this legislation.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the Bipartisan Sportsmen's Act. I am pleased to join my colleague in introducing this legislation.

I am grateful for the opportunity to work with my colleagues on legislation that will promote our country's hunting, fishing, and conservation heritage.

This bill does a lot of good things. It prevents antihunting groups from restricting sportsmen's ammunition choices, which would unnecessarily drive up hunting costs, impede participation in shooting sports, and consequently decrease conservation funding.

The Sportsmen's Act provides States with more flexibility to build and maintain public shooting ranges in order to provide Americans with more opportunities to engage in recreational and competitive shooting activities. The legislation also expands and enhances hunting and fishing opportunities on Federal lands by establishing a more open policy for access to recreational activities on our public lands.

I am especially encouraged by the fact that this bill contains provisions I have championed that would increase transparency regarding the judgment fund. It has the potential to help our efforts to track taxpayer-funded litigation that impacts our public lands policies.

As my colleagues may or may not know, the judgment fund is administered by the Treasury Department and is used to pay certain court judgments and settlements against the Federal Government. Essentially, this fund acts as an unlimited amount of money that is set aside to pay for Federal Government liability. It is not subject to the annual appropriations process, and, even more remarkably, the Treasury Department has no reporting requirements, so these funds are paid out with very little oversight or scrutiny.

This is no small matter, as the judgment fund disburses billions of dollars in payments every year. Because the Treasury Department has no binding reporting requirements, few public details exist about where these funds are going and why.

The Public Lands Council has decried the lack of oversight of the judgment fund by stating:

Certain groups continuously sue the federal government, and

[the] Treasury simply writes a check to foot the bill without

providing Members of Congress and the American taxpayers

basic information about the payment.

This kind of litigation can have a big impact on sportsmen and others who enjoy multiple uses of Federal lands. This is because the government is permitted to blindly fund lawsuits by activist groups who use the court as a backdoor to policy making.

A recent report from the GAO found that cases filed against the EPA have shown a pattern of these groups working in unison with big law firms to sue under the same statutes in order to push their political agenda through the courts.

The legislation I introduced this week with Senator Gardner, known as the Judgment Fund Transparency Act, will bring these cases to light. That bill has been included as a provision to the Sportsmen's Act and will provide even greater transparency and accountability.

I am proud to be a vice chair of the Sportsmen's Caucus, and I look forward to continuing our work to advance these important legislative measures.

Mr. President, today I introduce the Foreign Earnings Reinvestment Act that would generate the flow of an estimated $1.9 trillion back into the American economy by temporarily allowing companies to return profits earned overseas to the U.S. at a reduced tax rate. It is no secret that one of the primary reasons why this money is laying idle and doing nothing to spur job creation is due to the fact that our Nation has the highest corporate tax rate in the free world at 35 percent. According to the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development, OECD, when you add in additional State and local taxes the combined corporate rate jumps to a staggering 39.1 percent. Whereas, the average combined corporate tax rate for the rest of the developed world, excluding the U.S. is around 25 percent.

Congress has long debated tax reform and has failed to act. It is my hope that, under a Republican controlled Congress, we will be able to move forward with tax reform, which includes lowering both the personal and corporate tax rate and eliminating tax loopholes. If we are not going to act on behalf of the American taxpayer than we need to make available temporary tax incentives to bring this money back home providing a much needed boost to our economy.

The Foreign Earnings Reinvestment Act would encourage American companies to bring overseas earnings back to the United States and creates strong incentives for those firms to invest these earnings in U.S. employees.

Specifically, the bill would temporarily reduce the current 35 percent corporate rate to an 8.75 percent effective rate on foreign earnings brought back to the United States. If companies are able to show that they are expanding their payroll by 10 percent through net job creation or higher payroll, the bill would allow these corporations to obtain up to a 5.25 percent effective repatriation rate In addition, the bill discourages U.S. companies from reducing employment by including in a company's gross income calculation of $75,000 per full- time position that is eliminated.

This common sense legislation will drive the roughly $1.9 trillion currently parked overseas back here to the United States, boosting our economy and spurring job creation.