Floor Statements

Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman and associate myself with his opening remarks about this wrongheaded proposed amendment.

We debated this last year. It failed on this floor with 278 ``no'' votes to 193 ``yes'' votes. Twenty-five Republicans voted ``no,'' but here we are again.

Our friend from Arizona apparently thinks he knows more than our Department of Defense because they are not asking for this. Nevertheless, he thinks they should have it.

Since the enactment of the Endangered Species Act over 50 years ago, the ESA has provided the framework for the U.S. Government's policy on endangered species. All agencies of the Federal Government, including Defense, should conserve threatened endangered species. It works just fine with the Department of Defense.

This amendment undermines that commitment by amending the ESA to simply exclude an entire sector of our economy, the Department of Defense, from any requirements under the ESA.

There is zero evidence that the ESA is negatively impacting military activities. In fact, the Department of Defense has a long history of working successfully to bring back endangered species from the brink of extinction. In fact, according to DOD, protecting military lands for endangered species is a critical piece of military readiness and training.

For example, wildlife conservation on Army installations helps preserve rare natural landscapes necessary for the Army's training. They are preserving some of the best habitats we have for endangered species, and they have integrated endangered species into their training scenarios, treating endangered species and their habitat as things that cannot be damaged or destroyed during conflict, such as they would with churches or schools.

The Army celebrates its role and leadership in recovering species, and this amendment significantly undermines that success.

On the Barry M. Goldwater Range, which our friend from Arizona mentioned, the Marine Corps, Army, National Guard, Air Force, Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Arizona Game and Fish Department are all partnering to support military training missions and recover the Sonoran pronghorn antelope. We don't have to choose between the two.

Look, some in Congress just want to blow up the ESA completely. Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to see this amendment for what it is. Vote ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, I regret that I was unable to make the following votes. Had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 179; NAY on Roll Call No. 180; NAY on Roll Call No. 181; NAY on Roll Call No. 182; YEA on Roll Call No. 183; NAY on Roll Call No. 184; NAY on Roll Call No. 185; and YEA on Roll Call No. 186.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New Mexico for yielding, and I thank her for also actually reading the bill. Sometimes the truth matters in these debates.

We have to take many things with a grain of salt. We have been lectured about national security from folks who just last week voted to deny aid to Ukraine. The pro-Putin caucus is actually lecturing us about national security. You have to take it all with a grain of salt or maybe with a glass of vodka in this particular case.

In regard to this bill, the mining industry says they need this bill to provide regulatory clarity. Well, if it is clarity our colleagues across the aisle are seeking, this bill certainly delivers it because in the name of regulatory clarity, they would let any mining company do, essentially, whatever they want in any open area of public lands.

We have our long-outdated Mining Law of 1872 that already gives more rights to miners than any other public land users by far.

Under current law, as long as they have four stakes in the ground and keep up with their nominal annual fees, any open public lands are theirs for the taking.

Of course, for our colleagues across the aisle, that is not enough. For the mining industry, it is never enough.

Under this bill, the land that they are after wouldn't even need to have valuable minerals for miners to hold a valid mining claim. Under this bill, they actually don't even need to have a mining claim at all. This bill would allow any activity even slightly related to prospecting, exploration, discovery and assessment, development, extraction, or processing of minerals, regardless of whether that activity is carried out on a mining claim. It also waives any payment of fair market value for the use of public lands and resources for mining-related activities.

My colleagues say they are interested in clarity. Let's be very clear what all of this means. If a mining corporation decided to build a large-scale power plant directly outside a national park to support their claim, they could do it under this bill. That same mining corporation could build a polluting processing plant right next to the power plant and suck the aquifers dry to support their mine, under this bill.

They could build a network of pipelines and roads or anything else the mining company decides is ``necessary infrastructure'' across grazing areas or priority areas for renewable energy development or anything else they want.

They could also permanently bury sacred sites near their mining claim. They could bury it in toxic waste under this bill. None of these tangential activities would have to go through the usual evaluation of public lands use because they would be given the same priority rights the mining industry already enjoys on public lands.

If all of that wasn't enough, under this bill, the mining industry, or, frankly, any bad actor with a handful of dollars, could effectively block any other use of our public lands, like recreation, like natural carbon storage, access to traditional and cultural resources, renewable energy projects, or any number of other important uses.

This bill says that anyone--and I do mean anyone--could do any so- called mining-related activities on or off a mining claim for a mere $10 per acre per year.

This entire bill is one of the most egregious giveaways of our public lands and resources most of us have ever seen, and that is saying something because we have seen a lot of proposed giveaways from our friends across the aisle. Our public lands would become the mining industry's playground or dumping grounds as they see fit.

There are other important uses for our public lands. Our public lands and waters should also be considered for solar, for wind, and for geothermal resources. This bill threatens to hand absolute control to mining companies and would jeopardize the crucial role public lands can play in responsible, renewable energy production, among other important uses.

Our public lands serve as substantial carbon sinks, aiding both communities and ecosystems in adapting to the challenges brought on by the climate crisis that our friends ignore and deny.

These lands should not belong to the mining industry and other exploitive actors. They should belong to all Americans.

Our public lands deserve our protection. We need real reform of this antiquated mining law from 1872 to put other uses of our public lands on equal footing with the mining industry. We need to prioritize Tribal sovereignty, community input, and environmental protection to give Americans a fair return for their public minerals.

The good news is, that bill already exists, and I am a proud cosponsor of ranking member Grijalva's Clean Energy Minerals Reform Act. It would do all of those important things. That is the bill we should be considering today. Instead, we have the bill before us that would double down on the mining law of 1872's worst ideas.

This is the wrong move for a modern, sustainable mining industry, it is the wrong move for America, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

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

Mr. Speaker, once again, instead of dealing with the real problems facing Americans every day, we are back on the House floor talking about the GOP agenda--guns, oil, and polluters. It is a relentless mission to wreak havoc on our planet and communities, but before we go into the merits of this bill, here is a dose of reality.

Last year, as our Republican friends turned a blind eye, the global climate surpassed 2 degrees Celsius, a threshold that ought to be taken quite seriously. For the first time in recorded history, we passed this threshold, and that made it the hottest year on record.

Experts have determined that a 2-degree rise in global temperatures will inarguably cause dangerous and cascading effects on humans and our planet. That hasn't stopped my colleagues across the aisle. It is as if the majority is playing a dangerous game of chicken with our environment, betting against Mother Nature.

In the disaster department, 2023 was a showcase of calamity. We tallied up a staggering $63 billion in weather-related catastrophes. This includes 19 severe storms, 2 tropical cyclones, 4 floods, a winter weather event, a drought, and a wildfire event. It is as if Republicans were sitting on the front row with the popcorn in their hands, leaning over to ask their oil and gas buddies what they needed in addition to all the other giveaways they have received from the Republican majority.

There is actually even more. In a display of unparalleled negligence, 2023 also came with 10 oil tanker spills because apparently the GOP agenda is also: Spill, baby, spill, and let the taxpayer foot the bill.

We are not even talking yet about pipeline leaks. Every day in America, some aspect of this spiderweb of fossil fuel infrastructure is exploding, bursting, leaking, spilling. Last fall, there were almost 1.1 million gallons of crude oil released into the Gulf of Mexico, yet my friends across the aisle don't ever legislate about that or do oversight about that. Republican Members don't talk about it or acknowledge it. One has to wonder if my colleagues on the other side of the aisle even care about it.

Here we are again with an effort to expand our Nation's carbon footprint and expose our coastal communities to future disasters and oil spills. Not only does this bill grant access to one of our most ecologically sensitive and difficult regions to productively drill, but it reverses significant strides by the Biden administration to protect lands that Tribal nations have occupied and held sacred since time immemorial.

The Arctic refuge is one of the last truly wild places left in America, and the urgency to preserve the Arctic refuge transcends environmental concerns. It is a rallying cry against irreversible devastation and destruction, things that would fundamentally change and ruin this unique, fragile, and wild place.

The coastal plain, which is the heart of the Porcupine caribou herd's calving grounds, hosts nearly 200 migratory bird species annually. Equally vital, the 9,000-strong Gwich'in Nation, whose subsistence and culture depend on the caribou herd, resides along the migratory route. This means that development in this area would disrupt not only biodiversity, but it would be an assault on their indigenous livelihoods and traditions.

We have already seen how that plays out. In Nuiqsut, the Alaska Native village nearest to the Willow oil and gas project, 70 percent of households rely on subsistence resources for more than half of their diet. With the new Willow development, hunters are being forced to travel farther and farther to find resources and avoid hunting grounds that are now dominated by the fossil fuel industry. Rolling back NPR-A protections would make matters even worse.

In the Bering Sea, which is home to many unique marine ecosystems and rich in indigenous cultures, sea ice is melting earlier and freezing later. This threatens access to subsistence hunting and fishing grounds. Any increased vessel traffic related to oil and gas development would further stress and create risk for an already vulnerable ecosystem.

Exploiting these sensitive areas is equivalent to sacrificing those on the front lines of the climate crisis as martyrs in order to temporarily quench the insatiable thirst of Big Oil for money.

Let's get one more thing clear. The drilling that would be green- lighted in this bill would not make us energy independent. The United States is already the number one producer of oil and gas in the world. We are exporting record amounts of fossil fuel, but consumers still get hit with price shocks

anytime OPEC decides to raise prices or Russia starts a war in Europe because oil and gas are global commodities.

Fossil fuel dependence is not true energy independence because you are always on the roller coaster. You are always subject to the whims of some cartel, somebody gaming the global commodity market, some explosion, some international event.

If we want energy independence, we need a transition to clean energy, which is cheaper, safer, and generated entirely here at home, instead of being at the mercy of global price shocks like oil and gas.

The Republican agenda is predictable, repetitive, and dangerous. They need to stop putting polluters over people.

Enough is enough. We can no longer exploit our frontline communities and delicate ecosystems to pad the pockets of the fossil fuel industries and its GOP cronies.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate my colleague's love of tennis, our mutual love of tennis and his sense of humor. I have less appreciation when he draws tortured analogies to international sanctions and national security issues. It is just hard to take that kind of sanctimony seriously from somebody who just last week voted, along with the majority of the House Republican Conference, to hand Ukraine over to Vladimir Putin.

As I often say in these debates, you have to take a lot of this political theater with a grain of salt, in this case, with a glass of vodka.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentlewoman from Alaska (Mrs. Peltola).

Mr. Speaker, this is certainly a master class in deflection. I think perhaps the fact that a majority of the Republican Conference voted to hand Ukraine to Russia last week has touched a nerve as people have begun to consider the reality of that.

Going back and trying to deflect to a pipeline from many years ago that no longer even functions, because it was blown up, certainly doesn't change the fact that last week when we had a chance to vote for critical lifeline military support for Ukraine as it fights for its survival against Russia, a significant majority of my colleagues across the aisle voted ``no.''

They voted with Vladimir Putin and so congratulations on the deflection. Moscow Marge couldn't have done it any better. It might even make the highlight reel on RT tonight.

I don't watch that network, but I just have to wonder if maybe there wouldn't be coverage of some of these things that we are hearing from across the aisle.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, this is getting almost comical. I have now heard yet another speech pretending to oppose Vladimir Putin and Russia less than a week after the gentleman who just spoke voted to hand Ukraine over to Putin, voted ``no'' on essential military aid to our Ukrainian allies who are fighting for their very existence against this terrible war of aggression by Vladimir Putin made possible and financed, of course, by the fossil fuel industry in Russia, which American oil and gas companies truly helped to develop.

You just have to wonder if there is not a lot of damage control underway right now across the aisle. Maybe folks realize just how reckless and dangerous that vote against Ukraine was last week, that vote that a majority, solid majority of my Republican friends took right along with Moscow Marge and the rest of the pro-Putin caucus.

I am going to keep bringing this up each time I hear one of these anti-Ukraine voters pretend to care about Ukraine or pretend to oppose Vladimir Putin and Russia because last week they had a chance to actually show their colors, and we saw their colors.

There is another way in which they are really doing a great favor to Vladimir Putin and Russia, and it is by opposing the clean energy transition at every turn and in every possible way. Vladimir Putin's worst nightmare is to break the fossil fuel paradigm that made him rich and powerful, that enabled him to have all this influence and leverage over Europe because a clean energy economy would make him irrelevant. It would make him a lot less powerful.

Go ahead and keep helping Vladimir Putin with your votes, with your energy policy, but we are going to stand for a clean energy transition, and we are going to support Ukraine.

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

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

I thank the gentleman from Washington for his refreshingly rare vote for Ukraine military aid and also the chairman, Mr. Westerman, for joining Democrats in that very important vote in the interests of our national security.

I think, as we continue with this debate, it is worth talking about just what a fiscal and financial boondoggle drilling in the Arctic refuge is. It is, first of all, a proposition that is so deeply unpopular that the only way it became law was to sneak it into the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the Trump tax scam.

Two lease sales were included in the legislation to partly offset tax cuts for the wealthy. Initially, Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration claimed that these lease sales would bring in $1.8 billion in revenues for the Federal Government and the State of Alaska through bonus bids, and they proceeded to give a whole bunch of tax cuts away to billionaires and corporations on the basis of this illusory offset.

Later, the Congressional Budget Office lowered the estimate to $900 million, specifically $725 million for the first lease sale. Fast forward to the first lease sale that finally took place in 2021 in the final days of the Trump administration. Guess what happened? Well, it generated less than $15 million--not billion--in bonus bids, around 2 percent of what even CBO's reduced estimate had projected.

In 2022, two of those lessees actually asked BLM to cancel and refund their leases. They wanted out. Separately in 2021, two development companies, Chevron and Hilcorp, paid $10 million to get out, just to walk away from their legacy leases in the Arctic refuge. At least five major U.S. banks and 18 other international banks have said they won't finance drilling in the refuge.

If my Republican colleagues are interested in Federal revenues, if they are interested in fiscal conservatism, I am sorry to say that the pristine Alaska wilderness is not their piggy bank, and, in any event, it turns out that it is empty.

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I sometimes feel like, serving in this Congress, I need a good chiropractor because you just political whiplash one day to another, one week to another.

Just now, my friend from Louisiana, in service of the fossil fuel agenda, made a sanctimonious speech opposing Russia and Vladimir Putin as if the whole country, the whole world, didn't watch his vote last week with the rest of his Republican Conference to hand Ukraine over to Russia, to vote ``no'' on critical military aid to Ukraine.

It is like that. It is remarkable whiplash.

My friend has the ability to actually criticize the air quality in California caused by catastrophic wildfires driven by the climate crisis caused by our fossil fuel addiction and suggests that that is because of California's climate agenda, which is absurd, while ignoring the fact that the one place of persistent air pollution and respiratory illness and other problems with air quality in California is in the oil patch, Bakersfield, former Speaker McCarthy's district where it is frankly a lot like Louisiana and Texas. It is pretty rich.

Yet, we also have a Record if anybody is interested in cutting through the political theater and seeing where people really stand, including last week's vote against Ukraine.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Castor).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida.

Mr. Speaker, I would also point out that if our friends across the aisle are so concerned with American energy bills, you would think they would at some point say no to the LNG export extravaganza that all serious economic analysis shows is driving up U.S. energy prices. Yet, they continue to come to this floor to introduce legislation and advocate against the commonsense pause that the Biden administration has taken so that we can look at the impacts of more LNG export infrastructure on U.S. energy prices as well as our climate crisis.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to hear the gentleman from Arkansas talk about energy subsidies and to criticize the subsidies that he believes should be questioned for clean energy.

I hope he has the same concern about the much greater amount of subsidy, especially if you consider all the environmental externalities that taxpayers just pick up the tab for and have for the past hundred years when it comes to the fossil fuel industry.

There is a lot of work we could do together to take inappropriate subsidies out of U.S. energy policy, and I hope the gentleman would be interested in that.

I want to assure him when it comes to the forestry and trees and air quality part of our conversation that the wildfires and the air quality problems in California, because of them, are not something you can log your way out of.

I know the gentleman is interested in forest management, and there is a lot that we could work on there together as well for healthy forests. Some of the worst wildfires in California that produced the worst air quality were through heavily cutover land where there had been all the clear-cutting anybody could ever want.

The same can be said for some of the terrible Canadian wildfires last year that gave us awful air quality right here in Washington, D.C. Much of that ripped right through heavily cutover, clear-cut land.

Logging, you know, is not the simple solution to these problems. A better solution is to step back and realize the climate crisis that is driving it and to begin working together to actually reduce the worst impacts of that crisis.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close as well and yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, obviously, I oppose this bill. We have massive wildfires, prolonged droughts, stronger hurricanes, and coastal flooding. All across this country, our communities are feeling the increased severity and frequency of tragic events from the climate crisis, sending us dire warnings.

The crisis is real, it is here, and we need to act now for the sake of this planet and future generations.

In the Arctic, temperatures are rising four times faster than the global average. In the indigenous communities in northern Alaska who are so disproportionately facing the devastating impacts of the climate crisis, we must also pay attention to the impacts on them.

The melting permafrost is creating our country's first but not last climate refugees. Changing species migration patterns are threatening food security and cultural continuity. Oil and gas development only exacerbates all of these impacts.

Of course, not all Alaskans, including indigenous Alaskans, share the same perspective on oil and gas development. Native American Tribes are not a monolith.

You can bet that whenever my friends across the aisle can find some indigenous individual or advocacy group or other entity that supports oil and gas development, they are going to wrap themselves around Tribal consultation and pretend to be great champions for Indian Country.

In many other votes, when Indian Country opposes pipelines and dams and mining projects and other things that are against their interests, I am afraid the Tribes are thrown under the bus by my Republican friends pretty much every time.

Revenue from extraction often supports local governments and indigenous regional and village corporations.

That is part of the consideration in Alaska, but in so many cases, the tradeoffs create unacceptable impacts as well. That is why it is not a monolith when you talk to indigenous communities in Alaska.

This bill is an instrument of blunt force that allows for extraction across Alaska in places that are too special and too fragile to drill.

It would reinstate oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an area known to the Gwich'in people as ``The sacred place where life begins.'' These were leases the Biden administration canceled because they were based on shoddy Trump-era analyses.

The bill would withdraw the administration's rule to protect over 13 million acres of public land in the NPR-A, a region that is already feeling the impacts of oil and gas development.

It would undo protection of 125 million acres of the Arctic Ocean from offshore drilling, and it would undo the reinstatement of the Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area. In the Bering Sea, an oil spill would be beyond detrimental. It would be catastrophic.

Rolling back these protections is the wrong approach. We can't simply give these lands and waters away to the highest bidder.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this bill and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

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

We have a process problem. Last week, the Rules Committee issued a notice for amendment submission for this bill, and 16 amendments were submitted: 12 from Democrats, 4 from Republicans.

We really should be having an open, robust, and lively debate, but no. The amendment debate this afternoon will be really quick because all six Natural Resources bills up this week, with all six of those bills, this is the only bill that was open to any amendments, and Republicans made only one, this one, this fossil fuel industry wish. That was the only one made in order.

Republicans have made a mockery of what they promised, and they boasted about back in the early days of this Congress.

They guaranteed it would be a robust and open process. Half the time, the Rules Committee isn't even open, but when it is, it is cooking the books like we see this week with this one single amendment for us to debate.

With other bills that have been up this afternoon, the so-called Mining Regulatory Clarity Act, my colleague, Representative Leger Fernandez, filed several amendments, amendments that Ranking Member Grijalva previously offered at the bill's markup.

They would prevent foreign bad actors, for example, including adversaries like China from mining our Federal lands, something that is all too common today through their thinly veiled American subsidiaries, but no, that was not ruled in order, so we don't get to talk about it.

Yesterday at the Rules Committee hearing, Chair Westerman told us he didn't accept the amendment because it wasn't worded properly.

Well, this language was already in the Republicans' prized H.R. 1 where it was included as a Republican amendment, so it is hard to take that argument seriously.

Maybe they realized H.R. 1 would never become law and that is why more than a year later, Republicans still haven't sent that bill even to the Senate, or maybe they realized foreign bad actors also happen to be padding their pockets.

If that is not the case, I am eager to continue working across the aisle to get these bad actors off our Federal lands, and we will be following up.

Now, back to Alaska. The amendment we are here to debate would do nothing but make the bill more extreme. It would prevent the administration from designating any further special areas without an act of Congress, preventing further protections for an area that is so fragile, special, and ecologically important.

They blocked debate on every other amendment, including my amendment to require a study on the impacts to subsistence resources, another to prohibit the Secretary from issuing the lease sale until revenue is raised at least to the level that CBO estimates, and one to prohibit oil and gas leasing in the Arctic Ocean.

Representative Peltola, the sole House Representative for Alaska, filed an amendment to protect the critically important Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area, but Republicans refused to let that proceed. This is not good faith debate.

I will end with a word about my friend's statement that he asked Secretary Haaland repeatedly about Tribal consultation. My friend would have been well-served to listen to Secretary Haaland and learn a thing or two about Tribal consultation. She is the highest-ranking indigenous person in American history. She knows a thing or two about this subject, including the fact that a nonprofit advocacy group, which is the consultation that my friend was referring to, is not a group she has to meet with or consult as part of Tribal consultation.

Tribal consultation is government to government. That is how it works. If there was a little more listening and a little less screaming and table-pounding, there might be a better understanding of Tribal consultation across the aisle.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of Mia Monroe upon her retirement from the National Park Service after 50 years of extraordinary public service.

A Bay Area native, Mia grew up in San Carlos, in a family that valued connections to the natural world and encouraged exploration from the beach and the redwoods to their garden at home. Mia absorbed this appreciation of the environment, organizing the original Earth Day at her high school and creating the first recycling center in San Carlos in her family's basement. While pursuing her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley, Mia signed up to volunteer with the Sierra Club and met Amy Meyer, a legendary Bay Area environmental advocate who was leading the effort to protect the Golden Gate area by turning it into a national park. Amy became a mentor to Mia and the two would become lifelong friends with a shared passion for environmental stewardship.

In 1972, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) was successfully established. Shortly thereafter, Mia began leading student trips to the park as part of her work for the San Francisco School District where she taught students about science through outdoor education. When this program ended, she was recruited by the GGNRA in 1978 to become a park ranger. Her first assignment was at Fort Point coordinating youth environmental education programs. Her supervisor, aware of Mia's background in forestry, suggested she trade posts with a Muir Woods ranger who was interested in military history. A better fit for both, the trade became permanent, and Mia formally began her career at Muir Woods in 1982.

Mia was stationed at the Muir Woods Redwood Creek Watershed for over 40 years. During that time, she held a variety of positions and led innumerable projects to restore and protect the local ecosystem and connect countless visitors, traveling from across the globe, to the natural environment. In addition to her service with the National Park Service, Mia is one of the founders and the lead coordinator of the Xerces Society's Western Monarch Count, which engages volunteers in collecting data on the overwintering monarch population on the Pacific coast. Her work has contributed to the rise in attention to critical monarch conservation efforts. She is also a member of the Steering Committee for One Tam, a cooperative environmental advocacy organization composed of the National Park Service, California State Parks, the Marin Municipal Water District, Marin County Parks, and Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

Mr. Speaker, I have personally worked with Mia Monroe for more than a decade on a diversity of critical issues affecting the GGNRA. Known for her forward thinking, deep knowledge of the local ecosystem, and welcoming demeanor, Mia leaves an indelible legacy on Muir Woods, the greater Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and all those visitors whom she has taught and inspired. I respectfully ask that you join me in expressing heartfelt gratitude to Mia for her generosity of spirit, innumerable good deeds, and in sending her best wishes on her next endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Beyer), one of the most passionate and knowledgeable champions for wolf preservation in the Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his eloquence and thoughtfulness, which stands in such contrast to the Kristi Noem school of animal welfare that we see reflected in the legislation before us.

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

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

Throughout this Congress, my Republican colleagues have tried at every turn to weaken our bedrock environmental laws. The Endangered Species Act has, of course, been one of their favorites to attack.

Once again, Republican leadership has taken an opportunity to vilify an endangered species today, here on this floor, to sacrifice it to their precious industry groups. Guns, oil, and polluters has come to be what this GOP stands for, at least in this Congress.

Last summer, they rushed to the House floor with bills to increase the extinction risk of the lesser prairie-chicken and northern long- eared bat. Today, it is the iconic gray wolf.

Do my Republican friends truly have nothing better to do with their time, with the time of this body? We should be working on issues that make a difference to everyday life in America, but this Congress has been mostly about Republicans fighting with each other in a circular firing squad. The only time they seem to take a break from that is when they want to do something to enrich the wealthiest Americans, harm the environment, or, now, to kill wolves.

This bill is falsely named. It is called the Trust the Science Act. It would legislatively delist the gray wolf in the Endangered Species Act in the lower 48. That is not something that is done based on science. It is something this bill would do by political fiat.

The gray wolf is one of America's most iconic species. While it is making a comeback, the science and the facts on the ground tell us that it still needs help.

This bill would make it so that not a single gray wolf in the United States, in the entire country, would be protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Yes, it is true that the Yellowstone National Park wolf reintroduction is one of the great success stories of the ESA.

We saw that as apex predators, wolves help to rebalance and revitalize vibrant ecosystems and flourishing wildlife populations in one of the crown jewels of our National Park System.

The ESA has kept the wolf from going extinct. We have gone from several hundred wild wolves in America, and these were inhabiting the northern parts of Michigan and Minnesota, to approximately 7,500 wolves today with populations in at least 11 States.

That is the ESA in action. It is a great success story, but that doesn't mean that we can just unfurl a banner and declare, ``mission accomplished.'' We certainly cannot do that when the folks who took wolves to the brink of extinction are ready to rev up the wolf-killing machine once again and put us right back on that path to extinction.

Wolf numbers have grown in the Western United States, but the ESA rightly requires more than just population counts for delisting. Otherwise, we can quickly devolve right back to where we started.

There are still a lot of factors that go into species recovery; habitat destruction, disease, the regulatory and recovery efforts by States that would have to take over management of the species if it is delisted, and a lot more.

The ESA requires that the Fish and Wildlife Service use the best available science to assess all of this, not just population numbers, before they make any delisting decisions. Importantly, the Fish and Wildlife Service must consult with Tribes.

Right now, the service is following these processes and developing a recovery plan, but if this bill was signed into law, all of that would be skipped. They would have to ignore any scientific evidence of remaining threats to the wolf. This is the danger of legislatively delisting a species.

While I believe my colleagues are capable of going on to Google and pulling up some population numbers on gray wolves, it is pretty brazen to suggest that they, as Members of Congress, are more qualified than the scientists and experts with years of training to determine if a species is actually recovered.

The ultimate goal of the ESA is to recover species and then set them up for success post-recovery. We need durable, not temporary outcomes.

Passing this bill would simply call wolves recovered, but that does not make it so. The bill ignores science, and it sends a species back down the path to extinction by reinstating a Trump-era delisting rule that the courts have overturned because it violated the Endangered Species Act, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act.

This bill ignores the careful analysis of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the past year. It ignores the fact that although wolf populations are doing well in some places, they haven't met recovery goals in others.

It does nothing to require Federal consultation with Tribes, and on top of that, there is nothing in the bill to push States to improve their conservation measures for wolves.

When wolves were delisted in 2011 and 2021, some States raced to approve the killing of significant portions of their wolf populations, even using harvest quotas.

States in the Northern Rockies actually incentivized hunting. They paid hunters to kill wolves. This does not demonstrate a commitment to conserving the species once it is delisted.

All of these State policies would simply further villainize wolves and reward the type of killing that caused the population to crash in the first place. So no, a simple head count is not a scientifically sound basis for declaring open season on the gray wolf.

My Republican colleagues know that what they are trying to do will never stand up to scrutiny in the courts.

It would never stand up to consideration of the best available scientific and commercial data, and that is why this bill prohibits judicial review. That really gives the game away. If you really trust the science then you shouldn't be afraid of a little scrutiny.

Based on the talking points that we have heard throughout this legislative process, this is all just so people can shoot more wolves.

Why would Congress invest millions of taxpayer dollars in recovering this iconic species just to turn around and let States start killing them all over again?

We will hear a lot in debate today about how these apex predators, which are vital to our ecosystems, are scary, cold killers. That is ancient ignorance, not science.

If we are lucky, we may even hear some of the wild conspiracy theories that we have heard in previous debates about larger, faster, more aggressive Canadian gray wolves. We have heard practically everything except the claim that these Canadian wolves have laser eyes.

Congress shouldn't be overriding conservation decisions made by scientists. Fortunately, when we saw this type of extreme and baseless language a few years ago, a dozen Republicans trusted the science and voted against it.

I urge my colleagues and fellow conservationists to actually trust the science and to vote ``no'' on this trust the ignorance act.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, when you call a bill the Trust the Science Act, you probably shouldn't rely so heavily on narratives that seem like a mix of Little Red Riding Hood and YouTube conspiracies about the chupacabra.

You should actually listen to wildlife managers and scientists, and you should also be thoughtful about lessons that we have learned in the past when Federal delisting led to State management that adopted many of those stubborn anti-predator myths.

We know what happens in many of these States when Federal delisting occurs. In 2021, Idaho passed legislation allowing for 90 percent of their gray wolf population to be culled by nearly any means, including killing pups.

In Wisconsin, one hunting season alone wiped out over 30 percent of that State's gray wolf population. In Montana, they allowed increased bag limits and hunting of wolves just outside of national parks, a quota of 40 percent of the State's wolves.

These States in the Northern Rockies pay hunters up to $2,500 per gray wolf, and they have authorized expanding killing methods including traps, snares, night-vision equipment, bait, and motorized vehicles and dogs to track and kill wolves.

States have legalized the hunting of wolves under the guise of predator control, and with this designation, malice toward wolves is actually precluded from animal cruelty laws.

This has led to some disgusting acts of torture and abuse. Just last month, we saw that a man in Wyoming hunted down a wolf, struck the animal with a snow machine, muzzled the maimed wolf with duct tape, and brought it in to show his buddies in a bar while it was suffering.

This is the kind of tender mercy that apparently my colleagues across the aisle suggest for thoughtful management of the gray wolf.

The punishment of this individual, by the way, a $250 fine; not for the gruesome abuse of an animal but for wrongful possession of live wildlife. If he had simply killed it, there probably would have been no punishment at all.

Wolves in Wyoming can be hunted year-round without a license. The identity of the hunter who kills the wolf is protected by State law.

Hunting down the wolf and purposefully hitting it with a vehicle, that is also considered just hunting in Wyoming.

House Republicans love to point to State management as the solution to our biodiversity crisis. I think we all can agree that we should celebrate when species are successfully recovered and management is returned to States.

However, this bill would turn over management to States that have proven an unwillingness, a stubborn unwillingness to conserve the species further, and that would put wolves at risk in the lower 48 States.

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

Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman from Colorado brought up Tribes in her opening remarks, and I am glad, because we should be talking about and thinking about Tribes on this subject.

Tribes are not interested in scaring people into killing wolves. For many Tribes, wolves are sacred. They are an integral part of the land- based identity that shapes their communities, beliefs, and customs. Like bears, wolves are considered closely related to humans by many North American Tribes, and the origin stories of some Northwest Coastal Tribes tell of their first ancestors being transformed from wolves into men.

In Shoshone mythology, the wolf plays the role of the noble creator god, while in Anishinaabe mythology, a wolf character is the brother and true best friend of the culture hero. Among the Pueblo Tribes, wolves are considered one of the six directional guardians associated with the east and the color white and associated with protection, ascribing to them both healing and hunting powers.

Wolves are also one of the most common clan animals in Native American cultures. Tribes with wolf clans include the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Chippewa, Algonquian Tribes like the Shawnee and Osage, the Pueblo Tribes of New Mexico, and Northwest Coastal Tribes.

It is essential that the United States Government uphold its trust responsibilities to engage in meaningful, good-faith consultation with all affected Indian Tribes.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Tribes were not consulted as the treaty and trust responsibilities required when the Trump administration delisted the gray wolf. That is unacceptable. Ignoring Tribal voices erodes Tribal sovereignty.

After the wolf was delisted, Tribes sued the State of Wisconsin for violating Tribal treaty rights by authorizing the hunting of hundreds of wolves in 2021. No wonder this bill attempts to bar judicial review.

Tribes should be allowed to lead in identifying conservation measures for the wolf populations that are culturally sensitive. If this legislation is enacted, Tribes will have been left out of the process yet again and will face further violations of their treaty rights by State actions.

During the hearing on this bill, the Fish and Wildlife Service reaffirmed its commitment to consulting with Tribes during the species status review. I was glad to hear this commitment. I believe the United States Government's relationship with Tribes, and the conservation of wolves, will both be better for it.

This bill, which reinstates the Trump rule, which Tribes opposed and were not consulted on, would further erode our government's trust responsibilities to Tribes while putting the gray wolf at risk. We should reject this political attempt to sidestep science and Federal trust responsibilities and instead let the Fish and Wildlife Service do its job, go through the species status review in meaningful consultation with Tribes, and follow the best available science.

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

Mr. Speaker, my friends across the aisle have a pretty selective interest in numbers. They seem to want to take a single aggregate number for the wolf population in the United States and legislatively delist that population in a way that contravenes science, contravenes the way the Endangered Species Act is supposed to work, but they ignore a lot of other numbers.

Let's talk about some numbers. First of all, when we try to scare people about wolves, we should probably acknowledge that you are far more likely to die falling out of bed than from a gray wolf attack. My colleague, Mr. Beyer, explained that not once in the last 100 years has someone died from a wolf attack in the United States.

Wolves rarely attack people, and in the majority of documented cases, which are very few, humans ended up provoking the wolf or feeding it to cause that encounter. Further, wolves are a minimal threat to livestock, despite the hue and cry that we hear about this. Wolves are responsible for the loss of fewer than two-hundredths of a single percent of livestock every year.

Dogs and coyotes are responsible for far greater numbers of livestock losses, and even those losses fall well behind losses due to illness or weather. While there is inherent risk in raising livestock in wolf habitat, the losses are small. Importantly, ranchers are compensated for any financial loss due to wolf predation.

We need to base listing, delisting, and all other wildlife management decisions on science, not conspiracy theories, not unfounded fears, not myths, not political whims.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, the legislation before us today would take a significant step backward in protecting gray wolves from extinction by legislatively delisting the species across its entire range without any scientific analysis.

As I said before, every one of us in this room probably has an opinion on whether wolves should be delisted, but in many ways, that shouldn't matter. Congress has no business listing and delisting species. We aren't the scientific experts tasked with assessing population numbers, recovery goals, and continued threats to those species.

Unfortunately, if Congress delists the species, States that have so far demonstrated a stubborn unwillingness to conserve the species will be left responsible for leading recovery and management efforts.

The gray wolf was nearly eliminated from the landscape because these types of anti-predator laws decimated the population, leading to the listing of the species under the Endangered Species Act in the 1970s.

For this reason, at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to committee.

If the House rules permitted, I would have offered the motion with an important amendment to this bill to provide a necessary backstop if Congress legislatively delists the gray wolf. At the very least, the infrastructure needs to be in place to stop excessive killings or any other threats to wolves if they start decimating the population and sending it back toward extinction.

My language would create that backstop. It is simple. If the population declines too much, then emergency list the species, providing 240 days of protection, while the Service conducts a status review.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record immediately prior to the vote on the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I hope my colleagues will join me in voting for the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reject H.R. 764. As we have heard today, this is a bill based on fear, ignorance, and conspiracy theories that condone the inhumane killing of wolves.

Our Republican colleagues have made it clear that they intend to convince the Nation that wolves are just cold killers. Maybe that is good politics in some places to vilify wolves, to stoke the inhumane killing of wolves--running them over with snowmobiles and trucks, trapping, torturing, and finally shooting them, maybe after you put duct tape around their mouth and brought them in as a trophy to show your buddies at a bar.

All of that might work in some places, but most Americans understand the value of wolves. They understand that these creatures are foundational to ecosystem functions. They keep prey in check. Most Americans admire the intricate social structures of the wolf pack. They want to live in balance with nature, including predators.

This bill ignores the science, turns a blind eye to Tribal treaty rights, and removes judicial oversight of the delisting process to reinstate a faulty Trump-era rule. The gray wolf was listed as endangered because the predator control methods of the past had nearly eliminated the wolf from the landscape. Reinstating the Trump- era delisting rule will bring those anti-predator laws and policies right back into action and put us right back on the path to extinction.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this sham legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 615, a bill that incorrectly claims in its title that recreation access is threatened by efforts to protect wildlife from lead poisoning. Instead, this legislation could actually reduce the areas open to our sportsmen and - women because it is a wrongheaded attempt to take away a commonsense tool for allowing sustainable hunting and fishing.

Specifically, this bill would ban the Fish and Wildlife Service, the BLM, and the Forest Service from prohibiting or regulating the use of lead ammunition or tackle on Federal lands that are made available for hunting and fishing.

Lead regulations and bans actually make sense. When wildlife forage for food, they inadvertently consume spent shot or tackle that is left in the environment. This lead accumulates in animal tissue, where it causes neurological and immune system impairments and anemia, slowly poisoning these animals until they die. When one animal dies of lead poisoning, the lead accumulated in its tissue then becomes a hazard to scavenging animals.

We see this in species like the bald eagle and the California condor. In fact, scientific evidence shows that over 130 animal species, including humans, have been exposed to or killed by lead shot or ammunition, whether directly or by ingesting prey poisoned with lead.

Twenty million birds and other animals die each year from lead poisoning. We know lead is a neurotoxin, and the science is clear that many species are negatively impacted. In a study from the USGS, almost half of all examined bald eagles exhibited symptoms of lead toxicity. The California condor was nearly driven to extinction by lead poisoning, leading the Republican Governor of my State, California, at the time to implement lead ammunition restrictions in condor habitat.

Some States, such as Maine, Vermont, and California, have instituted restrictions on lead ammunition in fishing tackle. This bill could make it extremely difficult for Federal land managers in those States to simply carry out those same logical, beneficial restrictions on Federal lands.

Banning lead products when we know they pose harm is not a radical idea. We have banned lead in paint, pipes, and household items because we know lead poisoning is a serious problem. Scientists are continuing to discover further evidence of its harm to people and wildlife.

There are ample alternatives to lead-based tackle and ammo at virtually the same price. People already can and do use these alternatives in areas where lead is banned. No one is losing access due to lead bans, but our wildlife and habitats are safer because of them. It is a win-win.

Why are Republicans pushing this bill? Well, I can't say for sure, but I can say that at the hearing on this bill, Republican Members and witnesses didn't have much to say about lead bans causing problems for hunters and fishers. What my colleagues aired was their ideological opposition to anything that regulates firearms in any context for any reason, including ammunition.

Let's not pretend that this bill is about solving a problem for sportsmen and -women. This bill would likely result in closures of hunting and fishing areas.

The National Wildlife Refuge System's mission is to conserve, manage, and restore wildlife and their habitats for future generations. In the face of a changing climate, habitat loss, disease, and other pressures, our wildlife increasingly rely on the protections and resources of the refuge network. That is why, by law, refuges cannot be open for hunting or fishing if doing so is incompatible with the purpose of the refuge. Additionally, many of these refuges were established to recover and conserve endangered species.

Guess what happens if refuge managers can no longer restrict lead ammo and tackle? They are going to face a dilemma. What happens when they are faced with a decision to open an area to hunting and fishing or not open it? If they are concerned that lead-based gear could jeopardize endangered or threatened species, then the most likely outcome will be to not allow any hunting. They will have no choice but to close off these habitats to hunting and fishing.

My colleagues have to think through the consequences of poorly written legislation like this. Committee Democrats have been pointing this out for months, but House Republicans are forging ahead at full speed.

Preventing the Federal management of pollutants does nothing to protect or even maintain access, and it is in direct opposition to the conservation goals shared by sportsmen and -women and Federal land managers.

The hearing on this bill shed a lot of light for me on the thinking behind it. When it comes to guns, and now ammo, any type of restriction is too much for Republican ideology, even if it means closing off hunting areas for actual gun users.

That is where we are, and that is why Republicans refuse to move forward on commonsense gun safety regulations, assault weapon bans, and other things that the American people overwhelmingly support.

That is the problem. House Republicans need to listen to the people instead of pushing an ideological agenda that Americans are not asking for. The entire House schedule this week misses the mark. It elevates rightwing ideology over the actual needs of the American people. It tells us once again what the GOP has devolved to. Unfortunately, it stands for guns, oil, and polluters.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reject this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, just a reality check. No one has lost hunting or angling access because of lead ammunition or tackle restrictions. That has not happened, but if this management tool is taken away from fish and wildlife managers, and lead pollution and lead poisoning is allowed to continue to build up, my colleagues will start to see the loss of that access.

This ready-shoot-aim approach to wildlife management is actually going to hurt the people who the gentleman says he wants to protect.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Dingell).

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I am continually puzzled by the things that my friends across the aisle embrace and seem to hold sacred from toilets that require five gallons for every flush, to inefficient incandescent lightbulbs that even the market and consumers want nothing to do with, and, of course, today, we hear this love affair with lead.

I think it is really important to remember that the science is really clear. Lead is harmful to both humans and wildlife. It causes neurological, behavioral, muscular, and cognitive impairment. The Center for Disease Control states there is no acceptable amount of lead exposure. None.

In my home State of California and many other places, we have almost lost iconic species, the California condor in our case, because of lead ammunition and the way it bioaccumulates in the environment, especially for scavengers like the condor.

We cannot save the condor, even though we have had a very successful reintroduction. There are signs we could recover this species, but we can't do it if we have this stubborn rule that restrictions on lead ammunition are off the table because of Republican ideology.

Look, we have hundreds of studies documenting that lead ammo and tackle cause both acute and chronic lead poisoning. Its impact on hundreds of species and millions of individuals is not even debatable. Yet this bill requires a completely unworkable standard for fish and wildlife managers to even consider restricting lead.

It would require the Secretary to determine that: a decline in wildlife population at the specific unit of Federal land or water, they would have to determine that lead is the primary cause of that decline, and they would have to use field data from that specific unit of Federal land or water.

This is a completely unworkable standard. That is why the National Wildlife Refuge Association has pointed out that it is functionally impossible.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, a lot of points have been made about this bill, but I think the one that needs discussion in my closing remarks is the fact that this bill seems to have achieved the unthinkable: It is bad for literally everyone.

It is bad for wildlife as it restricts land managers' ability to limit harmful lead pollution in the environment. It conflicts with the Endangered Species Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and land management laws, such as the National Wildlife Refuge Administration Act.

It is bad for States. It is unclear whether Federal land managers could even carry out State laws that ban the use of certain types of lead ammunition or tackle on neighboring Federal lands.

It is even bad for hunters and anglers who will be left with less land and water available for hunting and fishing because of this wrongheaded legislation.

You might think that this bill would be a boon for the gun industry, but even there, it is hard to see how less land available for hunting would somehow lead to greater gun and ammunition sales.

Most hunters and anglers want to contribute to improving wildlife conservation in this country, but this bill makes their efforts more difficult.

At the end of the day, the only thing that this bill does is score a few cheap political points by yet again villainizing the big bad government for doing its job--in this case, for carrying out key wildlife conservation laws and keeping hunting areas open.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to reject H.R. 615, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, or CBRA as we call it, is a great example of successful Federal land management. When President Reagan signed it in 1982, he explained that without this statute, the Federal Government would be subsidizing development in risky areas and would subsequently be on the hook for disaster costs when storms inevitably hit these vulnerable regions.

He said that CBRA would ``halt the Federal subsidy spiral,'' by discouraging Federal investments in development on storm-prone coastal lands, lands that, if developed, would put human lives and property at risk, and also cost taxpayers billions of dollars in disaster relief.

In the years since this law was enacted, the U.S. taxpayer has saved over $9.5 billion in disaster costs alone and the act has protected millions of acres of habitat.

Mr. Speaker, I will hand it to President Reagan. Signing this bill into law was actually in line with conservative conservation, mainly because CBRA was and is the type of innovative policy we need to conserve habitat and make our coastlines more resilient to climate change, all while saving American taxpayers money.

I thank Mr. Rouzer for working with Democrats to produce a bill that we can all support today. As the bill was originally introduced, it would have amended CBRA to allow taxpayer dollars to subsidize taking sand from CBRA units for beach renourishment at a handful of beaches outside the CBRA system.

Without careful limits, this practice can be destructive to fish and wildlife habitat. It can also cause more erosion for communities downdrift of the sand borrow site.

I said during our hearing and our markup on this bill that if we are going to grant an exception to CBRA like this, we need to be careful. We need to ensure that it is in the spirit of CBRA, meaning that we need to first protect habitat and coastal barriers and not let Federal subsidies spiral into a cascade of more and more Federal subsidies in these areas.

Democrats raised this concern during committee consideration, and I thank Mr. Rouzer and my other colleagues across the aisle for working with us and finding a bipartisan solution.

This amended version of the bill that we are voting on today would instead provide that, in the case of a federally declared disaster and with careful environmental analysis, a narrow exemption can be granted for using a CBRA unit as a borrow site for towns in a state of emergency.

With this clarifying language, I am pleased to support the solution and the revised bill. I do also hope that this bill's passage in the House will help build some momentum for the broader CBRA package that Representatives Kiggans and Blunt Rochester, as well as Senators Carper and Graham and others have been negotiating.

We need responsible, equitable, science-based management of public lands and taxpayer dollars, and I think this updated version of H.R. 524, in combination with that broader CBRA package, would achieve that objective by addressing the issues at hand and protecting the integrity of the CBRA system.

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

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, this bill, H.R. 2560, Mr. Keating's Sea Turtle Rescue Assistance and Rehabilitation Act, would establish a Federal grant program to support response and rehabilitation efforts for federally protected endangered sea turtles.

As my colleague across the aisle mentioned, all six of the species of sea turtles in the U.S. are either threatened or endangered, and human activities, such as urban development, accidental capture, vessel strikes, and marine debris entanglement, are causing increasing sea turtle strandings. A stranded sea turtle is defined as one that has been found either dead or still alive but unable to go about its normal behavior due to injury or illness.

As a result of more frequent stranding events, the Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network was created. This is a coalition of 50 Federal, State, and private partners that responds to stranded sea turtles and collects information to help us better protect and ultimately save them.

Now, NOAA Fisheries oversees the coordination of this network, but it is the dedicated local organizations that actively respond to stranded turtles. They gather crucial scientific data, facilitate the transportation of sick and injured turtles to rehabilitation centers, and play a pivotal role in educating the public about the importance of sea turtle conservation. I am pleased that we are here today supporting these efforts.

The legislation before us would create a grant program that funds the recovery, care, and treatment of stranded marine turtles, as well as the collection of stranding data for scientific research and facility operating costs.

This act is a step in the right direction for our national efforts to recover our endangered sea turtle populations, and I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Keating), the author of this important legislation, a champion of sea turtle conservation, and a Representative from the other national seashore. I represent the great Point Reyes National Seashore on the West Coast, and Mr. Keating represents our East Coast brother seashore, sister seashore in Cape Cod.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close. I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of Matthew Hymel upon his retirement from the County of Marin after more than two decades of extraordinary public service.

Raised in Western Pennsylvania during the economic hardships of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Matthew has long been interested in how the government can shape public policy to support struggling communities. In high school, his family moved to California, where Matthew obtained a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. After graduating in 1988, he attended John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, earning his master's degree in public policy.

Matthew returned to California and took a position at the Legislative Analyst's Office in Sacramento. After six months, government-wide layoffs prompted Matthew to relocate to the Bay Area, where he worked as a budget analyst for the city manager of Oakland and then for the controller's office in San Francisco. In 1997, newly elected Mayor Willie Brown was impressed by Matthew's budget development work and hired him as his budget director. Matthew worked his way up through the City and County of San Francisco to the role of Chief Assistant Controller, before joining Marin County in 2002 as Chief Assistant to County Administrator Mark Riesenfeld. In 2005, the Board of Supervisors chose Matthew as his successor and at the young age of 38, Matthew assumed the role of Marin County Administrator, a role he has held for almost two decades

As Marin County Administrator, Matthew successfully managed a multimillion-dollar annual budget, supervised administrative work for the county's 2,000 employees, and provided the board of supervisors with timely research and recommendations. He led with intelligence and stability during the economic challenges of the 2008 through 2010 recession, pension obligations, and the COVID-19 pandemic. He worked closely with other agencies, nonprofits, healthcare providers, and the Marin County Office of Education to establish a cohesive approach to minimizing the pandemic's impact on the community.

Upon his retirement, Matthew leaves the county with a strong fiscal position and administrative plan focused on integrating cross- departmental initiatives that address racial equity, capital improvements, behavioral health, affordable housing, and homelessness. Beyond his outstanding budget management, Matthew is known by his colleagues and the Marin County Board of Supervisors for his collaborative work style and humble demeanor. He is an exemplary public servant.

Mr. Speaker, as Matthew Hymel retires after 22 years of service to Marin County, I respectfully ask that you join me in expressing heartfelt gratitude to Matthew for his innumerable achievements in improving the quality of life for the staff and residents of Marin County and in sending him best wishes on his next endeavors.

Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to H.R. 7023, another example of team extreme's polluters over people agenda.

Folks may be wondering why we are talking about a bill that tries to gut the Clean Water Act in what is supposed to be energy week for House Republicans. The answer is pretty straightforward. This week actually has nothing to do with energy policy. It certainly has nothing to do with clean water policy.

The common thread is team extreme's bromance with polluting industries who want to dismantle our environmental laws so they can poison our air, water, and climate without any accountability. That is why we are debating this terrible bill that will roll back 50 years of clean water protections.

Now, in the Sackett decision, the Supreme Court severely limited Clean Water Act protection for tributaries and headwaters. The decision was a disaster, and it is why Congress right now should be trying to move legislation that builds up and protects the Clean Water Act. We should be giving the EPA further tools to hold industry accountable, to safeguard the power of States and Tribes so that they can protect sensitive ecological areas and embolden our communities to have an active role in the permitting process for projects that will impact their livelihoods.

Republicans are doing the exact opposite here. In the aftermath of Sackett, they are trying to gut the Clean Water Act even further by removing the EPA's ability to deny Clean Water Act permits, by removing NEPA and ESA protections, as well as State consultation. Republicans are trying to eliminate judicial review, making it virtually impossible for a community to challenge a project that has been hastily approved through this new permitting process.

The bottom line: This makes it a lot easier for polluting industries to wreck our lakes and rivers and streams. It puts polluters over people.

It is worth remembering, in the face of these constant attacks on our environmental protections, why we created the Clean Water Act in the first place. The purpose was to protect communities and the environment.

Just 50 years ago, we had lakes and streams that you couldn't wade into, much less fish in. There were rivers that caught fire and couldn't be put out. Team extreme wants to take us back to that. In typical fashion, they try to hide the effects of this bill behind a euphemistic title: The Creating Confidence in Clean Water Permitting Act.

If Congress had a truth-in-labeling requirement for bills around here, this would be called the dirty water permitting act. Enough of the gaslighting. Enough of putting polluters over people.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman who is bringing the receipts today, and I appreciate this conversation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 6009, the Republicans' polluters over people act 2.0.

For anyone following the work of team extreme, the Republican majority, in the 118th Congress, Mr. Speaker, you have probably figured out the pattern by now. Things like governing are really hard for team extreme: funding the government, avoiding a catastrophic debt default, and having an orderly legislative process so you are not continuously improvising and keeping the whole world in limbo while Congress sputters.

Team extreme has failed miserably at the basics of governing because they are too busy sowing chaos, fighting with each other, and competing for who gets the most bookings on FOX News and Newsmax.

Passing serious legislation that tackles pressing issues and solves problems is definitely out of favor in this Congress. I suppose to look busy for the C-SPAN audience, they give us warmed over versions of their polluters over people act every few weeks.

When you can't govern and you can't legislate, Mr. Speaker, this performative stuff is what you do over and over. It is rinse, lather, and repeat with team extreme in this Congress.

It is reminiscent, really, of how they operated when Donald Trump was President and they had a Republican majority in both Houses of Congress. We kept hearing about infrastructure week every few months without any serious proposals and certainly without any serious legislation. However, when Democrats took back Congress and the White House, we showed them how to do it. We delivered results: an historic bipartisan infrastructure law that is making transformative differences in communities all over America.

Nonetheless, we have swung back now with team extreme back in charge here in the House, and it is the old performative playbook again. In this Congress, it is usually involving cheerleading for Big Oil and Gas. That was H.R. 1. That is clearly what this spin-off bill before us today is all about. It is political performance art for the fossil fuel industry.

Since we have seen all of this several times before and since these bills, thankfully, will go nowhere, let's just take a moment to remind those who get all their news from rightwing media that team extreme's entire energy narrative, that this poor fossil fuel industry is struggling under the oppressive burden of environmental regulations, and that unless we provide even more financial and regulatory giveaways to this industry, America will fall behind in the competition for global energy dominance. All of this is a complete fiction.

America is already the world's dominant producer of oil and gas. We are the top exporter of oil and gas. We are awash in oil and gas, and those poor fossil fuel companies are awash in record profits thanks to price gouging the American consumers. They are rolling in so much money that they are giving massive executive bonuses and dividends, and they are doing stock buybacks. In addition, of course, they continue to lobby to protect their Federal subsidies and to oppose climate action.

This is not an industry that needs more of our help. Nonetheless, American consumers who are paying at the pump for all of these profits and stock buybacks do need our help. They need an alternative to the fossil fuel roller coaster and to the tyranny of the pump. They also need a planet that their children and grandchildren can live on, and so they need Congress to get serious about tackling the climate crisis and accelerating the clean energy transition.

With these bills today, and, frankly, with all of the stunts and antics that we have seen from team extreme in its dysfunctional Congress, Republicans are saying that they don't care about any of that.

With H.R. 6009, they are trying, once again, to repeal parts of the historic climate actions we took in the last Congress and take us back. They want to repeal the modest fossil fuel royalty reforms we enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act to protect taxpayers.

They are trying to repeal a very modest royalty reform and claw that back, and all that this reform would do is give taxpayers a fair return on the public resources on public land that this industry has been extracting on royalty rates that hadn't been touched for a century.

Mr. Speaker, the reason that we increased those royalties was to finally

confront the problem of fossil fuel companies with their subsidies extracting these public resources and sticking taxpayers with the bill to clean up their messes.

This is not controversial. It is popular. Ninety-one percent of Western voters want to see oil and gas companies, not taxpayers, paying the bill for this cleanup.

With these performative bills we are back at it again: a fake narrative that exalts the fossil fuel industry above everything and everyone else.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''