Floor Statements

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, I rise in favor of my amendment No. 43, which would prohibit HUD remote work agreements when the employee is working within 50 miles of a HUD office.

Madam Chair, HUD's handbook defines remote work as an arrangement where the employee is not required to report to an agency worksite on a regular or recurring basis. It then defines two forms of remote work, one being near HUD office, which is within 50 miles of a HUD office, to work remotely.

As an example, it cites an employee who would normally be based in HUD's Robert C. Weaver headquarters in Washington, D.C., who is allowed to work from their home in Arlington, Virginia.

Now, Madam Chair, they are not even trying to hide it anymore. The agencies are baking into their policies unseen benefits and perks for bureaucrats who quite frankly aren't entitled to them and for which the taxpaying public is paying, yet we are not receiving an adequate return on our investment.

Thousands of congressional staffers commute to the Capitol building every morning from the surrounding neighborhoods, whether they live in Arlington, Alexandria, or cities in Maryland. Why can't the agency employees do the same?

Pre-COVID, the oversight of Federal agencies was slim, as was the accountability that the American people are entitled to. Today, it is even harder to monitor the efficacy, the efficiency, and the legal compliance of many agency employees because we don't even know where they are. Are they at home doing laundry when they should be processing applications? Are they picking their children up from school during work hours? Are they taking a 2-hour lunch because there is no oversight? We don't know.

I believe that if you are being paid by the American people, you should work for the American people. My amendment is designed to bring some semblance of accountability back to HUD.

Madam Chair, I encourage my colleagues to support my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, HUD's remote work policy shows that its employees are not showing up to work at the Robert C. Weaver building but are instead spending their days in the homes, coffee shops, and other locations across the greater D.C. area. My amendment addresses that situation and requires the employees to show up at their job.

Bureaucracy already moves way too slowly, even when the employees are working in the same building, down the hall from one another, and with access to all of the work accoutrements that are necessary for them to do their jobs.

HUD's policy means that today we are not even sure if they are working in the same State. That is unacceptable.

The basic principles of oversight and accountability require that employees go to work. Basic principles of avoiding further waste, fraud, and abuse means not leaving Federal agency buildings barren.

COVID is over. It is time to return to work. The Republican majority has made clear that we believe government employees should be working at their places of employment. My amendment furthers that policy.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my amendment No. 57 to H.R. 4820, which would prevent DOT from carrying out the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program.

The Biden administration's stated goal for this latest government boondoggle is to utilize taxpayer funding to strategically deploy electric vehicle charging stations across America.

Not only is such an endeavor not the Federal Government's responsibility, but this program also doesn't work, won't work, and will end up wasting massive amounts of Federal money.

You need no further evidence than Secretary Granholm's recent experience of trying to take an electric vehicle out for a spin, a trip that ended in disaster and confirmed that EVs are overpriced, unreliable, and infeasible without massive Federal subsidies.

Mr. Chairman, the Biden administration through this policy and others that were buried in the so-called Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is attempting to use taxpayer money to implement the Green New Deal, a pie-in-the-sky idea that is not only destined to fail but will waste massive amounts of money and further impoverish American citizens.

The Biden administration is pursuing such boondoggles despite the fact that we are already facing out-of-control inflation, increasing energy costs, and bone-crushing grocery bills, all because of Bidenomics, all because this administration is economically illiterate and obsessed with furthering the agenda of the U.N. and the World Economic Forum.

My fellow Wyoming citizens and Americans as a whole are more concerned with the prospects of heating their homes, putting food on the table, and taking care of their families.

Yet, what is the Biden administration focused on? Banning the internal combustion engine and forcing everyone into electric vehicles that won't work effectively in the vast majority of the country.

My amendment is designed to stop the Biden administration from continuing its wasteful and profligate spending on projects that do not provide a benefit to the American public.

Mr. Chair, I urge my fellow Members to support this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Rather than supporting our domestic energy production and investing in much-needed roadway infrastructure projects, the Biden administration has opted to continue skewing the definition of infrastructure to pursue its electric vehicle and renewable energy subsidy programs.

The Biden administration, in other words, continues to do the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party and the richest among us who can afford electric vehicles while leaving everyday Americans behind.

Let me be clear. This technology that DOT is pursuing and implementing has a track record chock full of failure, particularly within my State as the freezing temperatures wreak havoc on batteries while also severely limiting the range of these vehicles.

We have story after story of electric vehicles being limited to less than 100 miles in range as they are driven over our high mountain passes in freezing temperatures.

This effort to force everyone into electric vehicles is not only wrongheaded and not within the purview of DOT but downright dangerous.

It is also important to note that under this program, State recipients are expected to construct vehicle charging stations within 50 miles of each other on major highways.

This requirement alone is not feasible when confronted with the reality of Wyoming's vast rural terrain and wide-open spaces.

There are 80,000 vehicles a day that drive across I-80 in Wyoming. I- 80 is the most important commercial transportation link from the East to the West Coast, and in Wyoming it varies in elevation from 4,000 feet to 8,000 feet. Electric passenger cars and electric 18-wheelers are simply not feasible in Wyoming.

Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, let me be clear. This is yet another attempt by the Biden administration to force us to transition to an electric future, whatever that may mean.

It can only do so if it uses our money to artificially prop up the electric vehicle industry that could otherwise never survive in a free market system, at least not in its current space.

Mr. Chairman, it is past time for this administration to halt its wasteful allocation of billions of hard-earned taxpayer money on the infrastructure that is destined to fail.

Mr. Chair, I urge all my colleagues to support my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in favor of my amendment No. 58, which would prohibit the Department of Transportation from funding remote work agreements.

The DOT defines its telework agreements where an employee performs work away from the typical office location and is not expected to report to the agency official work site on a frequent, regular, or recurring basis.

Mr. Chairman, as I have stood in this Chamber and said before on numerous occasions, it is time for our Federal Government employees to return to work.

Under the panic related to COVID-19, we watched as our Federal agency buildings occupancy dwindled to almost nothing. What was the consequence? A substantial reduction in

the timely provision of Federal services to the citizens of this country.

It should not come as a surprise to anyone that when our Federal employees don't show up for work, the work of the Federal Government doesn't get done.

Now, some may say that is okay, but what it means in practice is that our tax refunds are not timely processed, our passport office effectively shuts down, creating enormous backlogs for this important service, and our veterans suffer.

I have now filed several of these let's make our government employees return to work amendments to other appropriations bills. This is a priority of the Republican Members of the 118th Congress and a priority of mine.

I know how hard our miners, farmers, ranchers, waitresses, nurses, construction contractors, home builders, grocery store clerks, and others in the private sector work.

They didn't have the luxury of working from home, COVID or no COVID. They have powered our economy over the last couple of years, and we owe them a debt of gratitude. We also should have enough respect for them to demand that the people who earn a paycheck because of their tax dollars actually show up for work.

I urge my colleagues to support my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, in pursuing the policy of requiring our Federal employees to work in our Federal offices, I have always been cognizant of the outlier situations whereby someone will need to work remotely. I am not opposed to such flexibility, although that flexibility has now become the rule.

I have left untouched the ad hoc telework programs for these various agencies because we never know when an emergency or unexpected situation will arise. Such an unexpected situation, however, should not become the norm, and our employees should be required to report to work.

We still have not yet assessed the damage the Federal Government's remote work policy has had on constituent services, congressional oversight, and Federal waste in terms of the unused office buildings and agency officials unaccounted for because they are not being monitored in their official work sites.

Even the GAO admits there is not enough information to assess the long-term impacts of remote work policies, including whether it promotes a productive work environment.

Mr. Chairman, the policy of this Republican majority has consistently been that COVID is over and Federal workers must come to work, and this amendment aims to deliver on that promise.

Unelected agency officials already believe they are unaccountable to Congress and the American people. Remote work further undermines our ability to oversee their activities and to promote providing the very best services that the Federal Government can provide to our citizens.

Mr. Chair, I urge all of my colleagues to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, today, I rise in support of my amendment that cuts funding for the Bureau of Land Management by 50 percent.

The mission of the BLM is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. Unfortunately, the BLM isn't living up to its stated purpose, and it has lost its way.

It is becoming harder and harder for each new generation to use and enjoy our public lands because the BLM is locked in on its goal to lock out land users, including recreationists, livestock grazers, and energy producers.

Earlier this year, the BLM proposed the so-called landscape health rule, which seeks to replace productive activities under the BLM's multiple-use framework by creating an additional use, so-called conservation leases, a designation never approved by Congress.

The current framework already balances conservation with other uses. Creating an entirely new use under the umbrella of conservation is simply a means to eliminate other uses and bar anyone from even setting foot on these lands.

Now, I am grateful that this act also includes a section that prevents funding from going toward the implementation of this proposed rule, but that is not enough. We must also address the BLM's overall agenda to lock us out of our Federal lands. My amendment does just that, and I request my colleagues to support it.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, The BLM has recently launched an attack on 3.6 million acres in Wyoming through its proposed draft Rock Springs Resource Management Plan, or RMP. Through their preferred alternative, they are trying to lock out land users by designating 1.8 million acres as areas of critical environmental concern, which essentially prevents us from accessing and using these lands, particularly as it relates to recreation, livestock grazing, energy production and mineral extraction.

The Rock Springs Draft RMP is entirely biased, unscientific, violates FLPMA and NEPA, and is an abuse of BLM's authority. We can mine, we can drill, we can graze, and we can recreate on Federal lands while also conserving our important natural resources and wildlife, and, in fact, we have been doing so for literally decades.

Come to Wyoming and see how we have managed these resources. We have a beautiful State, abundant wildlife, clean water, and clean air. We are also one of the largest energy producers in the United States. Conservation and protection go hand-in-hand with grazing and energy development.

The BLM's preferred alternative for the Rock Springs RMP does not strike the proper balance between conservation and development. It would ravage Wyoming's and the Nation's economy and ultimately destroy opportunities to use the land in a productive, profitable, and effective way.

The BLM has turned into an arm of the radical environmental organizations running this administration, is aggressively exceeding its authorization, and ignoring its very purpose for existence.

I encourage adoption of my amendment so that we can begin to right this ship.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, the BLM is attacking not only the State of Wyoming's economy, but the economic well-being and security of every American. It continues to pursue these failed policies that force us to depend on importing our food and our energy, while also stifling competition for companies that operate on public lands.

Examples of these aggressive actions include: Leading out on President Biden's war on oil and gas, as well as his war on coal;

Crippling conservation efforts by eliminating uses that improve the environment;

Preventing local and State and multigenerational input as to what the most appropriate uses and management of land are, while also pursuing policies that impact the value and quality of our property resources;

Holding projects on Federal lands hostage to environmental litigation, and then selling out to the demands of environmental groups that are gaining traction in the fight against local control.

The BLM has perfected the sue-and-settle model, and all of us are suffering the consequences.

There are so many other examples of the BLM attacking the State of Wyoming, as well as the economic well-being of every citizen in the United States.

Mr. Chairman, today, my State faces an onslaught of proposals from the Bureau of Land Management and other Federal agencies as they pursue the terribly destructive Green New Deal. Cutting the BLM's budget as proposed in amendment No. 2 is one step forward in addressing those attacks.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, the system that we have with the BLM is no longer sustainable, and most States across the West are struggling as a result. My colleagues in the House and Senate are wholly opposed to reining in the executive state, so I have no choice but to try to slash this agency's budget to try to rein in what they have been doing.

The fact is that the Federal Government's ever-growing presence in the West and its adversarial nature to our way of life is undermining our prosperity. In short, the BLM doesn't work for us anymore, it doesn't work for the people of Wyoming, and it doesn't protect our natural resources. It is time that we do something about it, recognize where the problem lies, and slash the budget.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, today, I rise in support of my amendment, which prohibits the BLM from finalizing its draft Rock Springs resource management plan, the purpose of which is to severely restrict livestock grazing, mining, energy development, recreation, and other activities on 3.6 million acres of land in southwestern Wyoming.

The BLM is required to update its resource management plans approximately every 10 years. The Rock Springs field office began the process of updating its own plan in 2011 in accordance with FLPMA.

The proposed RMP contains four alternatives for the planning area, including alternative A, which keeps the current management plan in place; the BLM's preferred plan, alternative B,

which would have tremendous negative consequences for Wyoming and the Nation as a whole; alternative C, which severely restricts recreational activities; and alternative D, which provides a better balance between various uses but still substantially impacts the activities of key contributors to Wyoming's economy, such as our trona mining and existing oil and gas operations.

Contrary to the very purpose of the BLM, it has chosen the most restrictive, the most draconian, and the least scientifically defensible plan--the one that Wyomingites are the most opposed to--as its preference, that being alternative B.

In total, under BLM's preferred alternative B, about 2.5 million acres would not be available for new rights-of-way. This would be an increase of more than 480 percent in acreage off-limits to important things like power lines, pipelines, and maintaining roads.

The draft RMP restricts the use of vehicles on millions of acres of land, restricts recreation, cuts livestock grazing, destroys our trona industry, and severely restricts our ability to explore for and produce oil, gas, and coal.

BLM's alternative B is a nonstarter and will have severe impacts on the economy of not only Wyoming but the Nation. It will impact our food supply.

It is for these reasons that I have introduced my amendment to defund the BLM's efforts to finalize or implement the RMP as a whole.

Mr. Chair, I encourage my colleagues to support this important amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, none of the responses from my colleague on the other side had anything to do with the amendment before us, so I am going to proceed with the statistics related to this particular RMP.

The RMP severely restricts vehicle access, including 4,500 miles of routes to all uses, while removing an additional 10,000 miles of routes from the transportation network.

This draft RMP designates 1.8 million acres out of 3.6 million acres as areas of critical environmental concern without any congressional input whatsoever.

Perhaps what is most disheartening and disturbing and illegal about this RMP is the fact that it has ignored not only stakeholder input over the past 12 years, but the input and analysis undertaken and completed by the BLM personnel in the Rock Springs district's office.

The administration has proven time and again that its primary agenda is to push forward with the radical Green New Deal, as we just heard from my colleague on the other side, and that it views the opinions of unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., over the citizens of this country, and that it does not care whether its actions actually work in the real world or cause severe damage.

In addition to the fact that alternative B is just plain bad on its face, it was also adopted in violation of FLPMA and NEPA. According to a former BLM engineer who worked in the Rock Springs field office on this very RMP, most of the research and work went into studying and pursuing alternative D. What does that mean? The most controversial alternative, the alternative that the BLM is now seeking to impose on Wyoming, was never adequately evaluated.

Alternative C, which includes heavy recreational restrictions, also had little time and little review. The lack of planning and analysis and input related to alternative B exposes the fact that this is a political decision that is not based on the real-life situation in the Rock Springs district, but more related to the idea of blocking any access to our natural resources for the things that we have historically used them for.

Mr. Chair, we have historically balanced our energy development, land use recreation, wildlife management, and grazing, and we have done it well. Come to Wyoming. It is a beautiful State. We have been able to balance all of these interests and, in the process,

become the largest producer of trona in the United States, raised hundreds of thousands of head of cattle and sheep, and produced massive amounts of coal and oil and gas to power this country, all the while protecting our habitat, our air quality, our water quality, and our very way of life.

I am proud of Wyoming producers, ranchers, and recreationists and what they have created, and we cannot allow BLM to destroy it.

It was said the other day by a reporter that this BLM RMP takes the public off public lands. I couldn't have said it better.

Mr. Chairman, we have seen this kind of thing happen across the interior West, including with the Bears Ears designation in Utah, and others in Colorado and Arizona. We need to put a stop to this effort to block our access, use, and management of our resources.

I urge my colleagues to support my amendment, which would prevent any funds from going towards implementing this monstrosity of a plan.

Mr. Chair, I encourage my colleagues to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, I rise in support of my amendment, which prevents any funding from being used to finalize or implement the CEQ's ``National Environmental Policy Act Guidance on Consideration of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Change.''

Earlier this year, the CEQ issued interim guidance for agencies to analyze greenhouse gas and climate change effects of their proposed actions under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Madam Chair, for decades, radical environmental groups have weaponized NEPA to attack and block natural resources development. They have done so through a variety of techniques, including by colluding with various Federal agencies in sue-and-settle schemes that have poured massive amounts of money into their coffers while doing very little to actually protect the environment or ensure that we can access and use our Federal lands and projects to produce oil and gas, coal, hydropower, and nuclear energy.

These are just some of the reasons as to why Republicans in Congress have prioritized the passage of H.R. 1, the Lower Energy Cost Act, which is intended to streamline, improve, and expedite the NEPA process while also ensuring that we are protecting our environment. We can do both, and in fact, we have been doing so for decades.

I have had multiple constituents reach out to me over the last year seeking assistance in getting various Federal agencies to move important projects along in the process.

In one such case, a constituent described being stuck on his fourth and final solicitors review, a do loop that had been going on for literally years. Although they had completed every single task and done every single thing asked of them multiple times, the agency refused to move forward.

My staff has since met with the Office of Surface Mining only to be told that there is a queue, as though that is an adequate answer. To date, there has been no movement on this review.

This situation represents a failure of the system, and allowing the CEQ to unilaterally impose radical GHG and global warming requirements on these agencies will not make the situation any better.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, we simply have no accountability, no taking of responsibility, and no consequences for these agencies that fail to carry out their responsibilities. What that means in the long term is that there is ultimately no more gas for our cars, oil to heat our homes, or energy to power our First World economy.

What is my point? We do not need to add any more roadblocks under NEPA making it even more uncertain and difficult for these agencies to process applications. We don't need any more steps, reviews, analyses, or guidance documents to make NEPA more burdensome to our producers, small businesses, ranchers, and manufacturers. We don't need to make it any more difficult to properly manage our national forests or to maintain our water infrastructure.

We have reclamation projects that need to be constructed and maintained. We have forests in dire need of management. We need these things now, not 10 years from now.

My amendment defunds the CEQ's and this administration's efforts to use global warming hysteria to further delay such projects that are subject to NEPA.

My amendment is also critically important to block CEQ's illegal attempt to avoid compliance with the APA's rulemaking requirements. CEQ doesn't have the authority to issue guidance documents with the force and effect of law, yet that is exactly how this guidance document will be interpreted--as imposing new requirements on project proponents as part of the NEPA review process.

We must, therefore, stop CEQ from implementing a so-called guidance document that is, in reality, no such thing. CEQ should be forced to go through the public rulemaking process to adopt such wide-ranging changes to NEPA procedural requirements.

The reality is that NEPA was designed to address reasonably foreseeable impacts of a particular project, not to allow agencies to try to guess what temperature it will be a thousand miles away 75 years from now.

I read an article a year ago assessing the global warming hysteria that we are living through. This gentleman who wrote the article made an excellent observation that I believe is worth repeating here: ``The notion that government should impoverish actual human beings as a means of promoting the welfare of humanity is a pagan superstition on par with sacrificing individuals to the sun god.'' I couldn't have said it better.

We must block the CEQ from pursuing an agenda of impoverishment and government imposed wretchedness. We must no longer tolerate their bowing to the sun god, and we must return common sense and rational thinking to our permitting and NEPA processes.

Please join me in supporting my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, I rise today in support of my amendment which prohibits the implementation and enforcement of the EPA's final rule entitled: Clean Water Act Section 401 Water Quality Certification Improvement Rule.

The U.S. EPA published in the Federal Register its revised Clean Water Act Section 401 certification rule on September 27 of this year. This proposal was made in direct response to the 2021 Biden executive order that directed agencies to tackle the so-called climate crisis.

This rule applies to 401 certifications, which are water quality certifications issued by State or Tribal authorities that verify compliance with water quality requirements. The CWA allows States a great deal of discretion in reviewing and conditioning 401 certifications to ensure compliance with the CWA and State surface water quality standards.

This final rule returns to the broader scope of review that was in place prior to the 2020 rule and requires States and Tribes to evaluate the water-quality-related impacts from an entire activity as a whole, including construction and operation, rather than doing what it should, which is solely focusing on the aspect of the activity directly authorized by a given Federal license or permit.

The final rule also includes a broad definition of the term ``neighboring jurisdiction'' which means that it can include any jurisdiction other than the one in which the discharge originates.

The EPA's proposed rule is too broad, is contrary to the clear intent of section 401 of the Clean Water Act and is outside of the EPA's authority and jurisdiction.

My amendment would prohibit the implementation of this broad, wrongheaded rule.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, we all want clean water. This rule has nothing to do with that. This has to do with the EPA controlling and dictating matters that they have no business being involved with.

This proposal will put many pending projects at risk, including mining projects, and it will force the courts to make the final determinations with regard to such projects by interpreting and applying two extremely vague and ambiguous provisions included in the new rule.

This situation will ultimately result in a significant loss of investment in mining projects throughout the country, and it will cause greater regulatory uncertainty and inefficiency.

My amendment will block the EPA from implementing this wrongheaded rule, and I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of it.

Not only does this rule broaden reviews and jurisdiction for permit requirements, but it substantially expands the jurisdiction of States to regulate even those waters that are not considered navigable waters of the United States as required by the Clean Water Act.

The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality had this to say about the rule:

We are deeply concerned with EPA's blatant claims in the

preamble of the rule to use the section 401 certification

process as a mechanism to expand Federal jurisdiction in

waters that are not waters of the United States.

Wyoming DEQ also highlighted the burdens that would be imposed on entities due to broadening the scope of activities measured under this certification to include conditions unrelated or only speculatively related to water quality.

I will say it again: We all want clean water. This rule has nothing to do with that.

EPA's new interpretation of section 401 and its efforts to broaden States' authority over water bodies and features that are outside of the jurisdiction of Clean Water Act must be stopped.

We are fed up with the EPA using the Clean Water Act as part of its effort to implement this administration's radical environmental agenda and land grab. My amendment is designed to stop this nonsense, to block the EPA's misinterpretation and application of section 401 of the Clean Water Act, and to force the EPA to follow the law.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to adopt this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of my amendment No. 38 to H.R. 4394, which would prohibit the use of taxpayer funds from going to the Department of Energy's implementation of its proposed Industrial Decarbonization Roadmap.

The Industrial Decarbonization Roadmap identifies and targets four different categories of so-called CO2 emitters--residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation sectors. In other words, pretty much every aspect of our lives.

What does this portend in the real world? We are already experiencing the consequences of this administration's decision to target residential carbon emissions by attacking those home appliances that actually work, from gas stoves to washers and dryers to water heaters, thereby causing the price of these critically important appliances to skyrocket while also reducing their availability.

We are also suffering through this administration's decision to target the transportation sector by imposing tailpipe emission requirements, fuel efficiency standards, and propping up the electric vehicle industry, thereby causing the price of our cars and trucks to skyrocket while also reducing their availability.

What is the outcome of these misguided efforts? Government imposed wretchedness, of course, but that is what this administration does best. It is no wonder that automobile repossessions are at an all-time high because of bad policies imposed by bureaucrats who are shielded from both accountability and having to suffer the consequences of their bad decisions, but real Americans suffer every day.

This roadmap is bad policy, and I urge the adoption of my amendment.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, the administration's roadmap targets those key industries that significantly contribute to the stability of our Nation's economy and supply chain; namely, the petroleum refining, chemicals, iron and steel, cement, and food and beverage industries.

Instead of helping our American businesses, families, and communities, the roadmap requires the use of substantially less efficient, less reliable, and more costly energy resources, including so-called clean energy, hoping to ultimately replace our ability to access our very own domestic, affordable, and reliable energy resources.

One of the goals mentioned in the roadmap is to ``prepare the existing 11.4 million American manufacturing workers and future workforce for the clean industry transition.''

When I hear that this administration seeks to prepare the existing 11.4 million American manufacturing workers for the clean energy transition and then watch as they attempt to shut down our mines while exporting manufacturing jobs to countries with dirtier products and less effective environmental policies led by dictators and despots, I admit I am more than skeptical as to what preparing actually means.

This administration's roadmap is unworkable and will bankrupt our country.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, another goal highlighted in the roadmap supports a transition to no-carbon fuels.

Mr. Chairman, Americans see through these goals. The reality is that no-carbon fuels are not only no such thing--and only a charlatan would argue otherwise--but they receive four times the amount in Federal subsidies while producing less than one-fifth of the energy as compared to our legacy industries.

These fuels are not only unreliable, even with the ridiculous amount of taxpayer subsidies, but environmentally destructive and require massive amounts of land per unit of energy produced. They kill birds and other wildlife by the millions.

These unreliable projects simply cannot compete with our traditional and reliable energy resources, a fact borne out by their need for massive Federal subsidies to be viable at all. Figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show that renewables received $15.6 billion in subsidies during

fiscal year 2022 and an estimated $1.2 trillion from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and are the largest recipient of such subsidies.

It is thus entirely foreseeable that the second largest recipient of subsidies, according to the Energy Information Administration, are lower-income families who struggle to pay their utility bills, proving that this administration is hell-bent on imposing energy poverty on every sector of our society.

Why are they struggling? They are struggling because of rising energy prices and rising utility fees as a result of this administration's forced energy poverty. We simply cannot afford to pursue this energy transition imposed on us by radical leftists.

As the sole Representative of a State whose main industries have been hijacked by the Federal Government in the name of this pie-in-the-sky transition, I voice my strong opposition to this roadmap. I ask my colleagues to join me in defunding the Department of Energy's implementation of this proposed Industrial Decarbonization Roadmap.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of my amendment No. 39 to H.R. 4394, which prohibits funding from going toward the SuperTruck 3 program.

According to the Department of Energy, this program is unlike previous SuperTruck programs; its primary focus being on electrification and meeting so-called green energy goals rather than improving fuel efficiency.

DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy initially launched the SuperTruck initiatives in 2009 with the aim of improving heavy-duty truck efficiency by 50 percent while the follow-up SuperTruck 2 in 2016 sought to double fuel efficiency for 18-wheeler, or class 8, trucks.

Since then, the program has taken a drastic turn away from these goals. DOE has repurposed this program towards the research and development of lowering greenhouse gas emissions. SuperTruck 3 was created to fund projects to electrify medium- and heavy-duty freight trucks.

Mr. Chairman, Americans are tired of their taxpayer dollars being used to fund programs that ultimately cause more harm than good. We simply cannot afford to support programs that share the same fundamental goals outlined in the Green New Deal. They will destroy our economy and force a change in behavior by reducing the availability of the goods that Americans actually want.

Mr. Chair, I urge support of my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, some may argue that this program remains aimed at improving fuel efficiency rather than a repurposed agenda aimed at fulfilling radical Green New Deal priorities.

I refer those who would make this argument to a quote from Senator Merkley in support of this program. He said: ``Climate chaos is the greatest existential threat of our lifetimes, and it is going to take an all-hands-on-deck approach to slash pollution--much of which comes from the transportation sector--that is fanning the flames of the crisis. . . . we can use new technologies to chart a path forward . . . , and lead the world toward a more sustainable future. . . . as we work to thwart the most catastrophic impact of the climate crisis.''

Now, setting aside for a moment the absurdity of the statement, you can tell it was made by a politician who will never be held accountable for the consequences of such actions or actually be required to live under the rules he seeks to impose. He will always be able to afford whatever vehicle he chooses, but not so much for the rest of us.

It is not just left-leaning politicians who spout hyperbole and demand net-zero emissions by 2050. It is also our Federal agencies. Secretary Granholm said: ``Getting to net-zero carbon emission . . . means we must aggressively cut down the largest source of emissions: the transportation sector.''

Then, to highlight this, she referred to the SuperTruck program. She said: DOE's first two SuperTruck initiatives led to a massive leap in fuel efficiency. ``This new funding triples down on . . .

a push toward electrifying trucks of all sizes, along with efforts to expand EV charging access and develop low-emission car engines.''

Large scale use of electric vehicles will not happen unless mandated by the Federal Government. This is borne out by the figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The fact is that this wasteful spending is absolutely not sustainable.

Mr. Chair, I urge the adoption of my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, in Wyoming, we have many instances of EV drivers getting stranded out in the cold soon after charging their vehicles. We had a California driver, just a few months ago in Riverton, who charged his vehicle enough to go 120 miles but ran out of kilovolts halfway over the mountain, about 60 miles.

On this particular occasion, it wasn't even very cold, at least not by Wyoming standards. Had he been in the same spot just a week or so earlier, he would have been stuck in minus 20-degree temperature with 60-mile-an-hour winds.

The town of Jackson just realized that paying $1 million each for a fleet of electric buses didn't make them any more operational in our harsh winter conditions, having found out the hard way that they are unreliable and simply will not work at higher elevations and in single- digit temperatures.

The point I am making is that this transition that is being forced upon us by this administration is not only wrong-handed, it is downright dangerous.

Mr. Chair, supporting this program is not supporting fuel efficiency. It is another way to prop up the forced energy transition to unreliable resources.

For that reason, I urge the adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of my amendment No. 40 to H.R. 4394 which prohibits the use of funds to finalize, implement, administer, or enforce the tyrannical, unnecessary, and wrongheaded ``Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Water Heaters.''

In late July of this year, the office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy proposed a rule to enforce strict conservation standards for consumer water heaters, holding affordable and reliable home appliances hostage to the will of a bunch of unelected bureaucrats in the Federal Government.

All of this is being done in the name of the allegedly reducing global emissions and enforcing an energy transition that will do nothing to actually change global temperatures, either in the short or long term, but will absolutely cause a substantial increase in the cost of our appliances.

We are facing some serious crises in this country: an open border, over 8 million illegal aliens invading America, a broken supply chain, bone-crushing inflation, China spying on us from above, a war in the Middle East, et cetera.

What does this administration focus on? Making all of us poor in order to force us to use costly appliances that don't work.

This administration is incapable of addressing the real issues that are important to the American public. What do they do? They target the home appliances, tools, and vehicles that actually work, from gas stoves to water heaters, from air-conditioners to lawnmowers, from the internal combustion engine to reliable vehicles. This nonsense needs to stop.

Mr. Chair, I encourage the adoption of my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, in this latest proposal, the administration is intentionally attempting to force an increase in the cost of water heaters for consumers and to take those water heaters that actually work off the market.

What did I call that a few minutes ago? Oh, yeah, government-imposed wretchedness.

The cost of home appliances is skyrocketing all because of this administration's war on prosperity. With new regulations, government- imposed market uncertainty, and an intentionally disrupted supply chain, there is certainly a method to their madness.

A new word and concept has been born. This administration and radical bureaucrats running it have one goal in mind, and they call it de- development. Let that sink in.

Throughout most of modern history, our political leaders have sought to improve our standard of living, to improve prosperity, and to make our everyday goods and needs more affordable, not less so, yet that is where we are now. The Biden administration is intentionally seeking to make us all poorer, to make us more dependent on the government, to take away our ability to feed, clothe, and house our families.

It is the concept of de-development that underlies the very purpose of the Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Water Heaters. It is for that reason that we must make sure that such standards never go into effect.

More than 9 million water heaters are sold in the United States every year. What water heaters we use should be a matter of personal freedom and economic choice. Our water heater manufacturers have built the most efficient and environmentally friendly products in the world. That isn't enough, no, not when the goal is not to make our necessary appliances more affordable but when the goal is to use regulations to change human behavior.

I will say it again. When government-imposed wretchedness is not a byproduct of agency action but the purpose of the action itself, you know that you have an out-of-control government that must be starved of money. That is exactly what my amendment does. It starves these new standards of the lifeblood that they need to be weaponized against the American people.

The bottom line is this: The Biden administration doesn't care about personal freedom or economic choice, and Democrats are cheering every opportunity they get to intervene in the day-to-day lives of Americans.

Congress has the authority and responsibility to challenge the extent to which these proposed standards are both technically feasible and economically justified, and they are neither.

This administration's strategy to destroy everything that works is causing energy poverty in vulnerable communities. While powerful clean energy companies are reaping the benefits of billions and billions of dollars in Federal taxpayer subsidies, the consumers are bearing the burden of the costs.

Many Americans are already struggling to heat their homes, pay their utilities, and put food on the table, primarily because of this administration's failed energy policies. This proposed rule only worsens those problems while solving absolutely nothing.

I ask my colleagues to join me in support of freedom and economic prosperity by supporting my amendment to defund this administration's proposed rule by preventing them from finalizing, implementing, and enforcing rulemaking pertaining to energy conservation standards for consumer water heaters. This is tyranny and it needs to stop.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in favor of my amendment No. 58 to H.R. 4665. This amendment would prohibit funding for the State Department's Office of Global Change.

Mr. Chairman, the underlying bill rightfully targets U.S. taxpayer dollars from being sent to globalists who foment climate change hysteria and that provide no benefits to American citizens.

While the underlying bill provides temporary relief from these bad policies, we must target the actual source of this nonsense. That is why my amendment is needed.

The Office of Global Change is responsible for implementing and managing the U.S. international policy on climate change. It is, in other words, the executive office that was created with the mission statement of funding our enemies and destroying our own prosperity.

This is the office that oversees all of Mr. Biden's misguided policies, and we must, therefore, cut off the source of that funding by targeting the money, not just play whack-a-mole whenever a new issue arises.

Any American that is concerned about the globalist agenda infiltrating our sovereign decision-making process should be concerned about any office whose mission statement is ``global change,'' especially when this global change is all about disrupting and destroying our reliable, clean, and affordable domestic energy resources so that they can force a green dystopia that will cause energy poverty on a massive scale.

The Office of Global Change seeks to force CCP-inspired policies on the U.S. so that we become more and more energy insecure while the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, becomes more and more energy independent and secure.

If this majority is to deliver on the promises that we made to the American people, which means substituting radical climate politics for actual real governance, we must identify and eradicate the source of the problems. That means defunding the Office of Global Change.

My amendment would do just that.

Mr. Chair, I urge all of my colleagues to support this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, again, I think what folks need to understand is that the Office of Global Change is responsible for implementing and managing the U.S. international policy on climate change, the very purpose of which is to destroy the prosperity of the United States of America.

As I listened to my colleagues on the other side talk about the ``existential crisis'' that we face because of climate change or the other rote talking points that they use, what you find is that none of those talking points, none of that hysteria is actually rooted in science, other than political science.

Every decision that has been made by the Biden administration in relation to energy policy has resulted in real, immediate energy poverty for thousands, if not millions, of people across the United States of America.

The failed policies of this administration have been visited upon us from the very moment that Joe Biden took office when he started canceling pipelines to be able to deliver affordable, clean, accessible, reliable energy.

I find it to be absolutely astounding to listen to the other side talk about issues of poverty and things around the world when we have an administration who right now with their policies is creating that very policy here.

We watch the border crisis and we see millions of people pouring across the border. We see what is happening in our inner cities. We see what is happening with people who have to make a decision about buying food or buying gasoline. Yet, they want to talk about funding an agency that the very purpose of which is to visit energy poverty around the world upon millions and millions of people.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of amendment 58. We do not need an Office of Global Change. We need to defund it. That is the purpose of my amendment.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in favor of my amendment No. 59 to

Mr. Chairman, I think there is a misunderstanding on the other side of the aisle as to the purpose of my bill. The purpose of this bill is very simple. If you are being paid to live in Denver and work in Denver and your cost of living is associated with living in Denver, you should not be able to live in a little, tiny town of 300 people 200 miles away that has a substantially less cost of living but continue to receive your benefits based upon the more expensive cost of living that is in Denver, Colorado.

That is just the purpose of this. If you are going to live in a lower cost-of-living area and telework, you shouldn't be paid as though you are living in a large city. That is the point of this. It is very simple.

It is about nothing more than fairness. I think the American people expect our Federal employees to be honest about where they are working and the cost of living that they have. I do not believe that it is fair, and the American people don't believe that it is fair that we are actually paying people to live in more expensive areas while they are living in less expensive areas.

That is not what we agreed to as Congress. I don't believe that it is appropriate, and I urge my fellow Members to support amendment No. 59.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, I rise today in favor of my amendment No. 165 to H.R. 4365.

My amendment prohibits the use of funds to pay regular remote and telework for the civilian and contractor workforce of the Department of Defense.

Madam Chair, at the very beginning of this Congress, our majority brought the voice of the American people to this Chamber saying that enough was enough, that it was time for the Federal workforce to return to work.

To this end, we passed the SHOW UP Act because our constituents were sick and tired of the lack of service from the Federal Government.

While progress has been made to some extent, there are still legacy and recent telework and remote work agreements that keep Federal workers who are supposed to be delivering for the American people out of the office. This includes the Department of Defense workforce, which is allowed to work from home in varying capacities.

In 2019, the Office of the Director of National Security found that across the entire Federal Government 4.2 million employees were eligible to access classified information. The Defense Department is responsible for 3.8 million of these clearances. Of these clearances for employees of the DOD, 20 percent are civilian workforce and 26 percent are contractors.

The DOD works largely in a classified setting. Its responsibilities are to safeguard this Nation. How this mission can be fulfilled when the employees are sitting at home is beyond me.

Madam Chair, it is time for the Federal workforce, including those who work for the DOD, to return to work so the American people can receive a full and fair return on the services that they fund through their tax dollars.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert).

Madam Chair, I believe that my colleague on the other side misunderstands the amendment or the scope of it. The amendment does not prevent DOD employees from working from home if needed, such as for health or emergency situations. In fact, the Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory Service is responsible for policy oversight of the DOD telework and remote work programs. These programs are administered in accordance with DOD Instruction 1035.01.

This amendment specifically prevents only telework and remote work on a regular, recurring basis. The other categories that accommodate health issues, emergency situations, and more would be left untouched, providing the necessary flexibility.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, this should be a no-brainer that our Federal workers and our employees should actually go to work. In fact, it is actually bipartisan. President Biden called on his Cabinet members to aggressively execute plans for Federal employees to work more in their offices.

The President and I do not see eye to eye on very much--in fact, very little. In this instance, putting workers back in the office is common sense.

This amendment would not defund telework and remote work for servicemen and -women. This amendment specifically prevents funds for DOD employees, civilians, and contractors.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in favor of my amendment, No. 60, which would prohibit the Secretary of Homeland Security from traveling outside of the United States.

Mr. Chairman, under Mr. Mayorkas, the Department of Homeland Security is a disaster by every single metric, and he has utterly failed at protecting our country, securing our borders, adhering to the rule of law, and protecting the constitutional rights of the citizens of this country.

The southern border is in chaos. We are being invaded by military- aged men from hostile countries from around the world and our cities are being overwhelmed by a mass of humanity and level of migration most likely not seen in world history.

At the same time, the Committee on the Judiciary continues to expose Mayorkas' role in creating, implementing, and enforcing the censorship industrial complex. The list of failures goes on and on and on and on.

Despite Mr. Mayorkas' direct and intentional involvement in the destruction of the borders, boundaries, security, and integrity of the United States of America, he has had the audacity to travel overseas to praise--yes, praise--the importance of the borders in other countries and the benefits of having an orderly transfer of people and goods across the same.

Yes, while ignoring the invasion on our southern and northern borders, an invasion that he has facilitated, Mr. Mayorkas actually traveled to a border between Poland and Ukraine to praise ``the use of U.S. technology that has been deployed to ensure the safe transfer of people and goods between Poland and Ukraine.''

That is right, even while our border has become a raging inferno, Mr. Mayorkas traveled to view another nation's border crossing, to view and judge their operations while also meeting and speaking with their border enforcement officers. If only he had the same such care for what is happening right here in the United States of America.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of amendment No. 60, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, with all due respect, I do not believe Mr. Mayorkas was traveling to other countries to learn how best we can secure our border.

In fact, I don't think there is any evidence whatsoever that he has ever traveled to another country and asked them to stop sending their poor to our country to invade our country.

The fact is that Mayorkas and his boss, Joe Biden, are the largest human traffickers and drug smugglers in U.S. history. We receive absolutely no benefit whatever from Mr. Mayorkas traveling to other countries to observe their functioning borders while ours is burned to the ground.

There is no basis, rationale, or benefit for Secretary Mayorkas to travel outside of the United States to enjoy the fruits of an ordered society. He has failed to do his job and should not be rewarded for such failure by traveling the world at the taxpayers' expense. He needs to leave the visitation and discussions with foreign nations to the State Department. He needs to secure our border and reform his corrupt Department.

My amendment would prohibit Mr. Mayorkas from traveling outside of the United States while acting as the Secretary of the DHS.

I urge all of my colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of my amendment No. 61 to H.R. 4367, which would prevent the DHS from implementing its ``climate literacy strategy.''

Mr. Chair, it seems that there is nothing that Mr. Mayorkas and his Department won't do to distract from carrying out their central mission of defending the U.S. homeland, a mission at which they have failed miserably.

The climate literacy strategy states its objective is `` . . . to develop a climate literate DHS workforce, ensuring all employees across the Department have a sufficient and up-to-date understanding of climate change and its relevance to the DHS mission.''

That is flatout hogwash.

The DHS states it will develop and administer this climate literate workforce through its program for climate change professionals, which DHS calls the ``CCP'' for short. No, I am not making that up.

It will also have a Department-wide website for sharing climate change information, have climate change trainings, and develop a community of practice to champion and share climate discussions.

I will use the word again: This is hogwash.

There are no resources to build a wall, no resources to apprehend illegal aliens, which have numbered over 10 times the population of the State of Wyoming since Joe Biden took office, no resources to stop terrorists from crossing our borders, but, of course, under Mr. Mayorkas' so-called leadership, there are vast sums of money available for promoting climate hysteria to ensure access to the newest climate propaganda and developments.

I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of amendment No. 61.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, again, with all due respect, it is not the DHS' responsibility to deal with climate. In fact, the DHS has absolutely no capacity to do that whatsoever.

What the DHS' responsibility is is to protect the homeland from the invasion that we are seeing on the southern and northern borders.

My constituents are sick and tired of this. Not a cent of money should go to distracting the DHS employees from their jobs of defending this country.

I urge all of my colleagues to support my amendment, strip every last penny from this bone-headed initiative, and force the DHS to actually do its job.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of my amendment No. 62, which would prevent the DHS from carrying out its environmental justice strategy, whatever that nonsensical word salad means in today's parlance.

Similar to the climate indoctrination boondoggle I addressed when addressing my prior amendment, this is yet another angle being taken by Secretary Mayorkas and the DHS to worship at the altar of the so-called climate change instead of actually focusing their attention and resources on the gross incompetence that this administration calls border security.

While this administration continues to use newspeak to extol the virtues of this so-called environmental justice agenda, the reality is that Joe Biden, Mayorkas, and others in this administration are responsible for vast amounts of energy poverty around the world.

What this administration is not pursuing is environmental justice. It instead, has an affirmative goal of universal government-imposed wretchedness. This is what happens when you staff an entire administration with people who have never held a job in the private sector--a collapse of your supply chain, your energy resources, and ultimately, your prosperity.

Environmental justice isn't any such thing. It is an Alice in Wonderland level of gaslighting that is destroying our ability to produce energy, grow food, and provide affordable housing.

Congress' power is in the purse, and we must exercise that power by ensuring that there are no funds going to anything that doesn't secure our border. For my colleagues across the aisle, 11,000 illegal border crossings a day does not count for border security.

I urge my colleagues to support amendment No. 62, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Again, Mr. Chair, I think that I have made my point with these three amendments. The purpose of the DHS and Mr. Mayorkas is to secure our border and protect the homeland. He has failed. There is no other thing that our DHS should be doing except specifically that.

For that reason I urge that my colleagues support amendments 60, 61, and 62, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, I rise in favor of my amendment No. 71 to H.R. 4368, which prevents American tax dollars from being used to fund the World Health Organization.

In the bill currently before us, the FDA is seeking to provide funding to the WHO to advance and expand tobacco product regulation under the Building Research Capacity in Global Tobacco Product Regulation grant program.

The United States has consistently been the largest contributor in the world to the WHO, topping the charts in 2020 at over $116 million, nearly twice as much as China, which contributed about 12 percent of the organization's total that same year.

This is the same WHO that refused to act on or publicize warnings from Taiwan that the new respiratory infection now known as COVID-19 was a threat to humans.

They instead chose to echo the lies coming out of China, that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission.

Mr. Chairman, my constituents sent me to Washington, D.C., with the mandate to stop sending taxpayer dollars to the WHO, an entity which covers for the CCP, helped cover up the COVID outbreak, and routinely attempts to infringe of the sovereignty of Americans in furtherance of its globalist agenda.

I say all this to repeat what the American people rightly know. That the WHO is a corrupt organization which bends to the Chinese Communist Party and does not deserve a cent of American tax dollars, no matter through which account this money is distributed.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Indiana (Mrs. Houchin).

Mr. Chair, it is simply not in the interest of Americans to have their tax dollars going toward a program that studies the health burden of tobacco in other countries.

This is simply an attempt to export the Federal nanny State into other countries through one of the most corrupt international organizations ever known.

What we should be focusing on is domestic deregulation, not global governance. After everything we have been through over the last few years, after witnessing the WHO's complete and utter incompetence during the spread of COVID-19, after witnessing them turn a blind eye time and time again to the CCP's culpability, you would think that we would have learned that American tax dollars should go to American priorities and not the priorities of our adversaries.

Having any funding for the WHO in any appropriations bill is inconsistent with the stated goal of the 118th Congress to defund the WHO completely.

They are a failed puppet organization of Communist China. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support my amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, I rise today in favor of my amendment No. 83 to H.R. 4368. This amendment would prevent the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service from implementing its proposed rule mandating electronic identification ear tags, known as EID, for cattle and bison transported in interstate commerce.

Let me start by saying this: The United States has the highest quality and safest meat in the world. We currently have a robust, effective, and affordable animal identification and traceability system in place that works. Our high standards of disease prevention and detection make us the leader in world food quality.

This rule is problematic for many reasons, including the fact that it sets a dangerous precedent by allowing a Federal agency to dictate how our ranchers run their operations. Our ranchers do not need the D.C. bureaucracy to tell them how to manage and identify their livestock. Yet, that is exactly what this rule allows.

This rule will create a paperwork nightmare, forcing our producers to hire a slew of compliance officers just to meet the new requirements.

The creation of this federally mandated system will require extensive data collection and countless reporting obligations.

Last year, Ireland mandated EID ear tags. Today, just 1 year later, there are an untold number of reports that they must file with the government.

Ireland is now considering killing off 1.3 million head of cattle to reach their ``climate targets.'' Their EID mandate will help them carry out this slaughter.

This rule will increase the cost of food and food production, thereby hurting the consumer.

This rule will ultimately cost our ranchers millions of dollars in compliance costs, forcing many of our smaller independent operations to sell out. It will thus result in further vertical integration of the food supply chain, making our independent livestock producers nothing but serfs to the big ranches and meatpackers.

The primary supporters of this rule are the four big packers, two of which are owned by Brazil and one of which is owned by China, and the ear tag manufacturing companies.

This rule raises serious privacy concerns for our independent ranchers. APHIS' estimated cost of this rule is indefensible, and the minimal amount included in the rule for implementation is entirely inadequate. The real cost of mandating EID ear tags is exponentially higher than what APHIS claims, and this is an unfunded mandate.

In short, we simply cannot afford or allow a bunch of unelected bureaucrats, who have never handled livestock or made an honest living raising animals, to tell our ranchers how to operate.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Massie).

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I reiterate that we already have an identification and traceability system in place that is effective, robust, and affordable. Some larger operations have voluntarily implemented EID because they have the resources and the manpower to do so.

If small and medium operations are forced into this same system, however, and without the proper capital, they will be locked out of the markets.

My colleague just admitted that the funding in the rule doesn't provide adequate funding to implement the rule, and so it is going to cost our ranchers literally millions upon millions of dollars to comply. It is an unfunded mandate.

This proposed rule is based on dubious assumptions. It raises more questions than answers. It is a solution in search of a problem. It is dangerous, and it should be stopped.

I will finish with this: My amendment does not touch the cost offset in the bill. It merely addresses the flawed policy advanced by USDA. It does not prevent any American rancher, cattle producer, or bison producer to use EID technology, but it does not allow the USDA to mandate it.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, respect for one's neighbors and service to one's community are the values that have built this great Nation. However, solitary acts of kindness and assistance were not nearly enough for Dr. Elbridge Brubaker who throughout his entire career consistently made it his goal to improve the quality of someone's day. Dr. Brubaker was a born and raised Wyomingite who always recognized his lifelong dream to become a physician. He would later realize that dream after completing his education at the University of Wyoming in 1961 and obtaining his medical degree from the University of Tennessee in 1965. Upon graduating with his medical degree, he made the decision to serve our country in the Army as the Chief Medical Officer in Montgomery, Alabama, where he was responsible for performing physicals of potential recruits. Following his time in the Army, Dr. Brubaker returned to Casper, Wyoming, and opened a family medical practice that he operated for over 5 decades. His exceptional ability to provide compassionate care was valued by each and every 1 of his patients. However, most importantly, he was a loving husband, father, and grandfather who valued time with his family and the good Lord above all else. Dr. Brubaker's kindness and expertise have undoubtedly left a powerful mark on the community of Casper and in the hearts of everyone who knew him.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chair, I rise today in support of my amendment 49, which would require that all documents and correspondence of the Countering Extremism Working Group are provided to the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government and the Committee on Armed Services.

I am offering this amendment to build upon a larger concept and theme within the House NDAA this year, ending the politicization and weaponization of the DOD.

I am proud to stand with my colleagues here in the House and fight for an NDAA which is focused on warfighting, readiness, and lethality and for an NDAA which conducts meaningful oversight into the political issues which have infiltrated the DOD in recent years.

Through our work on the Judiciary Committee and on the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, we have discovered that rampant abuse of power is not confined to one agency or department, nor is it limited to one subject area.

In the wake of a partisan political persecution spurred by the events on January 6, extremism or domestic violence extremism has been misconstrued to include a wider group of individuals to serve as a predicate for State surveillance, invasion of privacy, and in some instances, deprivation of rights.

We first uncovered this within the DOJ with the padding of DVE crime statistics, which was done to support the political statements of policymakers.

In my first 7 months in Congress, I have had the opportunity to uncover some of these abuses. However, there are some legacy issues which date back to before my time in Congress, to a time when true oversight for the purpose of the protection of the rights of Americans took a back seat to the politicization agenda of some influential leaders on the other side of the aisle.

One such issue was other potential abuses of extremism in the government, including in the DOD Countering Extremism Working Group.

My amendment would ensure that both committees receive documentation from the DOD about the work done in the Countering Extremism Working Group so we can provide proper oversight.

I hope there is nothing there. I hope we find that the DOD abused no serviceman or -woman's rights and that this was an exercise in legitimately protecting their own force.

Without confirming this through the evidence, I cannot trust that the Biden administration and the DOD Under Secretary Austin did the right thing simply because they have failed to earn the trust of the American people due to routine exposure of wrongdoing and abuse.

I urge all of my colleagues to support this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, this bill is nothing more than related to transparency and oversight. We have had FBI whistleblowers who have testified before the judiciary and the select committee as to how the FBI is padding its DVE statistics.

We want to ensure that the Countering Extremism Working Group is not just another way in which our government has been weaponized against the American people.

What I cannot understand is why any Democrat would oppose transparency and good government. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, again, this bill is about transparency and oversight. We all support our troops. This isn't about not supporting our troops. This is about ensuring that the Countering Extremism Working Group has not been politicized; nothing more and nothing less.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I would note for the record that the gentleman on the other side just slandered the men and women in service, in uniform, by making the accusations that he has.

Again, what I am talking about here is simply providing us with the documentation. This isn't about interfering in the work that the working group has done. It is simply to oversee and make sure that that particular working group is not being weaponized against our men and women in service.

As I said, we may not find anything at all. They may have done exactly what they were required to do, but at the same time, there is nothing wrong with this body overseeing and ensuring that these types of groups are operating the way that they should.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, the word of the day is transparency. Any group that is within the Department of Defense we should have oversight of, and that is all that this bill does.

I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the life and legacy of Larry Dockins, a Wyomingite who courageously served our country and who was and remains a beloved hero by all who knew him.

After receiving his GED, Larry made the decision to join the Army National Guard in 1962, where he began his lifetime career in service to his country.

Throughout his time in the Army National Guard, he prioritized the needs of his community and that of his fellow residents. Plowing snow and hauling hay were just a few of the ways in which Larry was able to assist those around him.

He was also a proud member of the Command Maintenance Evaluation and Training team, which sought to solve logistical and equipment-related issues experienced by National Guard units through assistance and training. Upon the conclusion of his service, Larry retired as a master sergeant.

Despite his love for public service, Larry valued family above all else and cherished every minute he was able to spend with both his grandkids and great-grandkids.

Larry, sadly, passed away on January 4, 2023. His selfless service will always be remembered by his family and friends and will leave a lasting impression on the communities he dedicated his life to assisting.

I urge all my colleagues to join me in remembering the life of Larry Dockins, honoring his service to our Nation and standing with his family in these difficult times.

Mr. Speaker, I take my duties as Wyoming's lone congressional Representative very seriously, and my obligation to be honest and trustworthy is the foundation of my ability to carry them out.

This privileged resolution isn't about politics. It is about the seriousness of being honest and forthright as a Member of Congress and upholding the oath of office that we all take upon being sworn in.

It is true that the gentleman from California wouldn't be the first Member of Congress to exaggerate or stretch the truth; however, willfully lying about serious issues our country has faced is something entirely different and claiming that a sitting President has committed what amounts to treason is beyond simple hyperbole.

This Member's lies led to the wasting of millions of taxpayer dollars for unnecessary investigations and the deflection of our attention from the most pressing issues at hand to focus on a made-up crisis.

This Member's actions were designed to delegitimize the 2016 election and to hamstring the Trump administration.

For all the talk about not accepting the election results in 2020, perhaps Democrats and the media, which are mostly one and the same, might want to look at their actions in 2016.

To make matters worse, this Representative perpetuated these lies while he was chair of the House Intelligence Committee and consistently implied, if not outright stated, that he had inside information.

In that capacity, he lied about the following:

How the FBI and DOJ obtained and renewed a FISA warrant; that FBI and DOJ officials did not omit material information from the FISA warrant; how the DOJ used the Steele dossier; what was collected by the FISA warrant; the FBI's vetting process for the Steele dossier; that he had an alleged smoking gun showing that President Trump colluded with Russia.

Each of these claims has proven to be false.

The lies have continued. In fact, they have become compulsive, and they continue right through to this very day.

The lies weaken this body, and if left unchecked, threaten the rule of law, our election integrity, and the civil rights of his targets.

The words and actions of this Member were dangerous and untrue-- knowingly untrue. There must be a serious consequence for that. Being censured is the least of what he should be subjected to, and I support this resolution.

Madam Speaker, over the last few decades, and as accelerated during the Obama and Biden administrations, our constitutional separation of powers has been undermined by Congress' overdelegation of legislative powers to regulatory agencies in the executive branch.

H.R. 288, the Separation of Powers Restoration Act, or SOPRA, would begin to rectify this imbalance.

SOPRA requires nothing more than for courts to apply de novo review to all questions of law, including agencies' interpretation of statutes and rules. That is what courts are supposed to do under the Constitution. They are supposed to interpret the law.

SOPRA would override the ill-advised Supreme Court precedents like Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council that require courts to defer to agencies' interpretation of statutes and rules so long as they are reasonable but even if they are wrong, even if they are incorrect.

It would end this improper judicial deference that gives agencies greater leeway to pass rules carrying the force of law and which puts a thumb on the scale in favor of the administrative state and against the American people.

By doing so, SOPRA would help restore the constitutional separation of powers, reclaiming the courts' role as the branch that interprets the law and Congress' role as the branch that makes the law.

If we were to look at this issue as if it were a dartboard, courts should be aiming for the bull's-eye of what a particular statute means and enforcing the legislative intent.

Deference doctrines, however, allow courts to defer to an agency's interpretation of a statute or regulation if they are anywhere on the dartboard. This is improper, unconstitutional, and needs to change.

Agencies often try to avoid consultation and collaboration with the very people who are the experts, the people who must live, work, and often suffer under the rules and regulations that they mandate. It is a case of an all-knowing bureaucracy in Washington thinking that they know better than the people in the real world, the businessowners, the farmers, the ranchers, the construction workers.

SOPRA also would help to promote the electoral accountability of policymakers by ensuring that it is Congress' policies, and not those of unelected bureaucrats, that govern the American people.

Over the last couple of days, we have had the opportunity to talk about the REINS Act, and today, we are here talking about SOPRA, restoring constitutional order, applying Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution, where Congress makes the laws and the executive branch is merely there to carry them out.

As I indicated yesterday when talking about the REINS Act, I cannot understand why anyone in the legislative body would want to defer to unelected bureaucrats to make the decisions that impact the citizens of this country.

This body, Congress, was created to legislate. We need to jealously guard our power, our authority, and, ultimately, our accountability to the American public.

Again, I cannot understand why anyone who was elected would argue that we should allow agencies and folks sitting here in Washington, D.C., to make decisions that affect literally millions of people across this country without any accountability whatsoever.

I want to retake our authority to legislate. I want to make sure that this body carries out its responsibilities and duties. For that reason, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of SOPRA.

Madam Speaker, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Speaker, the Separation of Powers Restoration Act, or SOPRA, is great legislation that I fully support.

My amendment is simple and seeks to clarify that de novo judicial review applies to agency guidance as well as to agency rules and congressional statutes.

Specifically, my amendment explicitly states that interpretive rules, general statements of policy, and all other agency guidance are subject to de novo judicial review.

Unlike rules, guidance is undefined in the APA's definition section. Agency guidance consists of interpretive rules that explain how agencies interpret the statutes and rules that they administer and general statements of policy that prospectively advise how agencies may choose to exercise their authority.

Guidance is not subject to the APA's notice and comment requirements and, at least not officially, does not have the force of law or at least shouldn't have the force of law.

Yet, we have seen a growing trend of administrative agencies attempting to use guidance to have the force of law while at the same time avoiding even the APA process.

For example, in my private capacity before being elected to Congress, I was part of an effort to push back on the Department of Agriculture's attempt to mandate RFID ear tags on the cattle and bison of our Nation's ranchers. The agency tried to force this on the agriculture community through a two-page guidance document that was posted to the USDA website.

This circumventing of the congressional legislative and agency rulemaking process would have cost our cattle producers $2 billion to comply with this guidance, all without a single comment or public hearing.

Further concerning is that guidance is often not judicially reviewable because agencies then claim that it is not final agency action. Even when it is reviewed, the government then asks for deference to the agencies by the courts.

While the language in SOPRA is implicit that the requirement for de novo judicial review of all relevant questions of law applies to agency guidance, my amendment would make it explicit.

In closing, my amendment would clarify that agency guidance, which agencies routinely abuse, is subject to de novo judicial review under this bill.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, the irony of what my colleague on the other side is saying is that the only time that the courts would be addressing guidance is when the agencies are attempting to enforce it against someone outside of the agency.

Again, an example might be the EPA attempting to enforce their guidance against an irrigator in Wyoming because he moved an irrigation ditch and they have concluded that such irrigation ditch, through their guidance, is actually a navigable water of the United States.

Now, fortunately, recently, the Supreme Court of the United States slapped that down and has indicated that the EPA is no longer going to be able to abuse its power and try to control irrigation land and other resources by claiming that mud puddles and such are navigable waters of the United States, but that is just an example.

The only time that the courts are going to be looking at guidance is if the agencies are attempting to enforce it. Further, while my colleague on the other side would argue that these are just frequently answered questions and internal documents, the fact is that this is the way that agencies are circumventing the APA, circumventing the law, and attempting to enforce unofficial documents against the citizens of the United States of America.

I would also point out that yesterday we did pass a similar amendment to the REINS Act and what this does is it makes SOPRA and REINS consistent in terms of covering guidance documents as well as official rules.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I find it so ironic, having been a practicing attorney for 34 years and fighting over these exact battles in court, that I am having someone who hasn't practiced for decades tell me that I am ignorant.

The agencies are the ones that attempt to enforce guidance, and I have defended lawsuits along that very line.

Therefore, while someone who may have sat in this room for years believes that he has the ability to judge what people in the real world deal with, the fact is that agencies do attempt to enforce guidance against citizens of this country.

The only thing that this amendment does is to say when that happens, the courts are to apply de novo review to the interpretation of what that guidance means. Nothing more and nothing less.

Again, this is a very simple amendment that says to the extent that guidance documents are before the court for interpretation, the courts must apply de novo review rather than defer to the agency interpretation of that guidance. It is very simple, and it is

something that is appropriate and ensures that we are following our constitutional separation of powers.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I rise today on behalf of Mr. Cloud of Texas to offer amendment No. 5 to H.R. 277, the REINS Act.

Mr. Chair, I am proud to be a cosponsor of the REINS Act, which is an important effort to ensure Congress reclaims its rightful authority and responsibility to legislate.

This amendment is technical in nature, but it is important, nonetheless. In April of this year, the Biden administration issued an executive order on modernizing the regulatory review.

The purpose of this executive order is to allow the administration to implement their agenda more quickly and efficiently.

The executive order also raises the threshold for centralized review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or OIRA, from $150 million to $200 million.

The order also gives the administrator of OIRA a discretionary role in determining which regulations are considered for full OIRA review.

OIRA serves as a responsible check on major regulations, reviewing the cost and benefits of each regulation, and ensuring that all public comments have been reviewed and considered before the regulation goes into effect.

OIRA, in other words, is a check on due diligence. This order will mean that fewer rules are reviewed by OIRA and, thus, less due diligence will be conducted over the administrative state.

So long as this executive order stands, a loophole will exist in the REINS Act. Fewer rules would be classified as major, and consequently would not be subject to congressional approval under the REINS Act.

My amendment would close this loophole by clarifying that OIRA must issue a finding of the full cost-benefit analysis of each rule and issue a determination as major or minor according to that finding.

Mr. Chair, I urge the adoption of my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I think that my colleague on the other side of the aisle just confirmed why this amendment is necessary and why the REINS Act is so important.

What I believe I heard him say is that because it is difficult for the administration to determine what the cost of these regulations are, they shouldn't have to make any determination at all and there should be no oversight whatsoever, either from OIRA or OMB, because it is just too doggone difficult to figure out how much these regulations are going to cost.

Frankly, I find that argument absolutely and complete absurd. We are talking about tax money. We are talking about a cost and expense that is being imposed against our small businesses, our mom-and-pop businesses, against our industry groups.

What the gentleman from the other side is saying is that nobody, including this administration, should ever have to disclose what the cost of those regulations are. That is exactly the reason as to why we need a robust review by OIRA as provided for in this amendment.

Mr. Chair, in closing, I do think it is clear that it is important to make this technical change for the REINS Act. It is important that we have an understanding as to what the cost of these regulations will be.

The very purpose of the REINS Act is to ensure that Congress is part of the legislative process for any regulation that would have an economic impact of over $100 million.

Without a robust review by OIRA, it is not possible to determine which of these regulations, in fact, would fit within that category. It is for that reason that I request the adoption of this amendment. It is a good one for the REINS Act, and it ensures that we close an important loophole to make sure that it is the Congress that is legislating and not the executive branch and unelected bureaucrats.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chair, this amendment is simply an attempt to delay implementation of a bill that the Democrats do not support. If the Democrats don't like the bill, they can vote against it.

Even if implementation was delayed a year, it is unclear what, if any, value a study could provide. However, during that year, agencies would continue issuing more and more major rules at the expense of the American public.

It is time for Congress to reclaim its constitutional role as the body that makes policy in this country.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I just have a couple of points.

One is that the REINS Act has enjoyed longstanding, bipartisan support. In fact, the House passed prior versions of the REINS Act with bipartisan support in each one of the 115th, 114th, 113th, and 112th Congresses. In other words, this is an act that has been studied and discussed extensively over the years, and there is no reason for a 1- year delay in its implementation once the bill passes.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chair, this amendment undermines the purpose of the REINS Act. The REINS Act rejects a standard of legislative disapproval concerning major rules. Instead, the REINS Act creates a standard of legislative approval for major rules.

The fact is that in listening to my colleagues on the other side, it is very clear that they simply do not want to legislate. They want to turn over that authority to the executive branch in violation of Article I, Section 1 of the United States Constitution.

We don't believe in doing that. The fact is that the administrative state has enacted unpopular and unwise regulations that could never pass Congress, and that is why President Biden and his predecessors have sought to legislate through regulation versus our constitutional process.

If Congress does not approve a major rule, it should not go into effect. This amendment would leave the status quo in place.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I am prepared to close.

Again, this is just one more effort to try to undermine the very purpose of the REINS Act and make it so that it would not work as it is intended to work.

It is this body's responsibility to legislate, not the executive branch, not unelected bureaucrats, and not administrative agencies. We are the ones who represent the people of this country and are accountable to them through the decisions that we make.

Madam Chair, I urge the opposition to this amendment as it would undermine the very purpose of the REINS Act and is unnecessary, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chair, I think this amendment perhaps defines the incredible contrast between this side of the aisle and the folks on the other side of the aisle.

I believe that $100 million is an astronomical amount of money, and they don't see that it is all that much. I don't believe that unelected bureaucrats in agencies ought to be making decisions that have impacts on our businesses of over $100 million without any legislative oversight, and they think that $1 billion is pretty low. I think that that really epitomizes the difference in our philosophy, how we view government, and how we view our responsibilities.

Under no circumstance should unelected bureaucrats in agencies be imposing hidden taxes against the people of this country without the accountability of the legislative branch being involved in the decision. I believe $100 million is too high and $1 billion is absolutely absurd.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I am ready to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Again, Madam Chair, I am going to say I think that this is clearly an effort to abdicate our responsibilities to legislate.

As far as protecting our air and water, I point out that the EPA is responsible for one of the worst environmental disasters in the history of the United States of America when it blew out the Gold King Mine and turned the Animus River yellow several years ago in southwestern Colorado.

So while they want to turn over the responsibility of governing in this country to unelected bureaucrats in agencies that cause those kinds of disasters, I am unwilling to do so. I believe that this body ought to be accountable to the people and in making the decisions that have an economic impact of $100 million on their lives.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, it is the height of insanity that Congress must pass legislation to keep unelected agency bureaucrats from taking away our ability and right to use gas stoves, which would surely be followed by cutting off gas to our homes completely.

In fact, that is ultimately the plan.

H.R. 1640, however, will protect our right to make dinner for our families without Big Government forcing their subpar cooking mandates on the American public. We are a free people after all--or at least we used to be.

This bill will stop the Biden administration from intentionally increasing the cost of cooking and energy and will prevent this absurd government overreach from taking away even more of our rights.

Natural gas stoves are the preferred cooktop of almost 40 percent of households in our country used by nearly 187 million people. They are more efficient

and three times cheaper than their electric counterparts, so, of course, this administration would want to ban them.

Look, energy poverty is not just an esoteric concept. It is this administration's goal.

Energy poverty is this administration's goal. I will repeat that.

Their policies are actually designed to increase the cost of food, energy, and housing, and their effort to ban gas stoves is just one more step in that direction.

Vote to end this madness. Support passage of the STOVE Act.