Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the time.

Mr. Speaker, I do represent the Second District of New Mexico. That is the part of New Mexico that lies on the border with Mexico.

Make no mistake about it: This issue is one that is important to the entire Nation. We are talking about a single subject, and that is securing the border. That is all the discussion is about. The rest of the spending in the bill, maybe it is right, maybe it is wrong, but that is not part of the discussion. The discussion is: Are we going to secure the border or not?

The gentleman from Ohio had it exactly right, that the President sat there and said we are going to take this in front of the American people. He said: I will take responsibility for it, and we are going to have that discussion.

But then the Speaker of this House has said we are not going to have the discussion.

We came here as Members of Congress to make important decisions, sometimes very weighty decisions, sometimes very hard decisions. Frankly, this decision is not that hard: Secure the border. That is it.

That is all we are asking for from this institution and from our friends in the Senate, but somehow we are finding that that is too hard an ask. The American people don't think it is too hard an ask.

It is not that it is a racial question. The Second District of New Mexico is 52 percent Hispanic, 60 percent overall minority. They agree. No matter how they feel on immigration, no matter how they feel on amnesty, they agree that the border must be secure. They agree that we must know who is coming here and why they are coming here.

As we watched the people gathered in Tijuana, there are concerns about exactly who makes up this group. A secure border allows us to answer those questions. An open border does not allow us to answer those questions.

So I am here tonight to stand with my friends in the Freedom Caucus to say to the Speaker, to say to the leaders, that we simply need to take up this question. We have the amendment. It is very straightforward, very simple.

Mr. Speaker, I support the amendment. I support the question: Will we secure the border? The answer should be yes.

Mr. Speaker, in June, New Mexico's unemployment rate ticked down to 4.9 percent. This is the first time the State's unemployment rate has gone below 5 percent since September of 2008. And just for perspective, one year ago, in 2017, the unemployment was at 6.1 percent.

When we passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs bill, New Mexico didn't immediately feel the results, but now people are being filled with confidence, businesses are hiring, they are expanding, and people are going back to work.

But an even more remarkable development was the right to export our oil. Two counties in New Mexico are driving a surplus that is causing America to extend above and beyond where Saudi Arabia is currently producing. We are on track to become number one. That is after decades of saying that we had reached peak oil in the country.

When we release the ingenuity of the American worker, America can compete with anyone. These things are happening. America is better off today because of what we have done here in Congress as the Republicans.

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

Mr. Chairman, in the West, water is the key to everything. One small family, the Gosses--I met them my first year in Congress in 2003--has been fighting a 30-year, protracted battle with the Forest Service over the water and access to the water.

They have been to two different courts, and the courts said, yes, the water is theirs. The Forest Service responded to the first court by fencing the water in. They said the 23 acres around it was their acreage and they couldn't walk their cows to get to the water.

The Gosses went back to court, and found that the court said, okay, they don't have a right to walk the cows on your 23 acres, but they do have a right to move the water to the cows through a pipe or a ditch. The Forest Service responded by electrifying the fence.

That is the kind of fight that we are in right now. A couple years ago, I stood out over that water for about 2\1/2\ or 3 hours with the Forest Service, the Gosses, and we all negotiated that the fences could be brought in, that accommodations could be met, that we could find habitat other places. And it was all agreed we would get to the water.

Then, subsequently, the Fish and Wildlife Service said, well, there is a jumping mouse. They admitted themselves that the science was not very good, that they had never seen one of the jumping mice there, but they thought it might be there. They admitted that the science was very terrible.

Despite the lack of any scientific evidence, despite everything, now that area has been shut back off.

There are many areas where the jumping mouse could have a critical habitat, but the agency just refuses to do it.

So my amendment is quite simple. It simply says that the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse cannot be listed as endangered or threatened until they do some better science. It is a very straightforward amendment where we are trying to find the balance between the Endangered Species Act and the need for jobs, the need for an economy in the West. And that revolves around open spaces, ranchland, water. It all comes together in this one single issue.

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

Mr. Chairman, with respect to the gentlewoman, if the science underlying the decision was sound, and even the Agency itself has admitted that the science was seriously flawed--if the stakes were not so high--the entire listing of species would demand sound science. So this is a serious problem throughout the West and throughout the United States.

If it weren't a matter of being able to provide jobs and have economies in these big rural areas of New Mexico, and there are no other tax bases in those areas, so as we crowd out the ranchers, then counties simply don't have the revenues to survive themselves.

If the stakes weren't these, then I would listen more closely to the gentlewoman's arguments. But as it is, I just don't think that we can sustain a decision like this. If the Fish and Wildlife Service had showed up at that meeting where we found other critical habitat within a couple of miles, it is just that critical habitat didn't block access to this source of water, the only source of water in that section of the ranch, and these are ranches that are on mountain ranges.

So you have the inability for cows to cross the mountain ranges over to the next range. Also, it is miles in between some of the loading stations and the water stations.

So these are things that compel me to say that we have to find something different here. We want the Agency to reconsider it, to look for better science, to look for better critical habitat.

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

Mr. Chairman, again, I respect the gentlewoman's opinions and observations.

I would point out that these are 1907 water rights, which, in New Mexico, water rights are given, and the earlier, the better. So they can't get access because of the listing of a species. The science is very flawed.

The Agency had the opportunity to go out to the forest with us. And that day, they simply turned down the opportunity to meet with us. We had the State forester, the head of the U.S. Forest Service of New Mexico there. We had the regional forester. Everyone was there except the people who really needed to be there. They refused our invitation.

I have been working on this single issue for 14 years myself, so it is not like we haven't been discussing the issue at length.

Again, with that, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the amendment.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, this issue is very similar to the last one.

As we approached the year 2013-2014, discussions were going on with Fish and Wildlife Service about the potential listing either as endangered or threatened of the lesser prairie chicken. We began to ask for volunteers. We asked for farmers and ranchers, for oil and gas companies, to work together to really come up with a collaborative plan in order to avoid the listing for the lesser prairie chicken as either threatened or endangered, and the industries responded very well.

To date, partners in that effort have contributed more than $64 million in enrollment and mitigation fees. They have agreed to conserve more than 150,000 acres of habitat.

It was at that point that the Fish and Wildlife Service said, okay, this is the best effort we have had in this collaboration nationwide. They were all ecstatic. Then they turned around about a month later and simply listed the lesser prairie chicken.

Again, the science was somewhat lacking in that. So, in 2015, a Federal district court looked at the issue, and they vacated the finding and said that the Fish and Wildlife Service took no account of the ongoing conservation.

Keep in mind that the conservation efforts actually have been working. Just this year, the number of birds is up from 30,000 to 39,000, so almost a 25 percent increase in the population. That is exactly what these collaborative efforts were intended to do.

The court found that the Fish and Wildlife Service didn't conduct a proper analysis and that the analysis they did was neither rigorous nor valid.

So we are simply asking, in this amendment, that the lesser prairie chicken not be listed, that it be delisted.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Estes).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), the chairman of the subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, again, I would point out that the collaboration was unprecedented across the Nation. What is going to happen, if this collaboration fails, is that others are going to say, okay, that collaboration process simply doesn't work.

Though, again, the courts, we are simply agreeing with the court findings in the matter that the Fish and Wildlife Service failed to ask very important questions and needs to reaccomplish the evaluation.

All in all, the States and local areas can and will pitch in to help the species survive. But the heavy-handed approach coming from the Fish and Wildlife Service simply, again, is going to kill jobs and kill the potential of collaborative efforts.

Mr. Chairman, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the Triple Crown is one of the most significant achievements in all of sports, but especially in the sport of horse racing.

In fact, it is such a rare achievement that only 13 times since 1875 has it been accomplished. This year, Mike Earl Smith, also known as ``Big Money Mike,'' jockeyed his thoroughbred horse, Justify, to achieve the Triple Crown.

Now, the Triple Crown, in order to win it, you must win the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes all in the same racing season. And Mike did just that. It was only the second time in the last 40 years that it has occurred.

Mike is the oldest jockey to ever win the Triple Crown. He was born in Roswell, New Mexico, and raised on a farm outside of Dexter, New Mexico. He has been racing since age 11. He won his first professional race in 1982 at the Downs at Santa Fe.

At one point, he broke his back and returned from that. In 2003, he was inducted into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame; in 2013, into the New Mexico Sports Hall of Fame. Winner of nearly 5,500 races, these three this year set Mike into the history books.

Congratulations, Mike.

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

Mr. Chairman, before I start, I would like to join my colleague from North Carolina in recognizing the leadership of Chairman Shuster on this important bill and the manner in which it is brought forward with full amendment process allowed.

My amendment is fairly simple. It simply asks that the Corps of Engineers would pay their bills. The Corps of Engineers, according to an authorization under WRDA of 1999, is allowed to enter into projects where a cost share is joined in with communities and organizations throughout the States.

Many locations in New Mexico are still owed money for projects that were commissioned over a decade ago. The town of Bernalillo, the city of Rio Rancho, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, and the county of Bernalillo all have projects that are owed money.

One of those projects, a simple arsenic treatment facility, cost $12 million. The Corps and the community both agreed that they would move forward with the project and the cost sharing agreement. A decade later, the Corps still owes money on that particular project.

At one point, the Corps expressed they had forgotten that they owed that money; so it is just important for the government to pay its bills on time.

This amendment is fairly simple and straightforward. It just authorizes that and ensures it.

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

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

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the chairman of the Agriculture Committee having this bill in such good form for us today, but I have an amendment which addresses the forests in the West.

We are facing an unprecedented fire season this year. The drought has been extreme in many of the western States. We are facing decades of management by a Forest Service that decided that we can manage forests in the West, where we have arid climates and not enough rainfall, the same as we have managed in the East, where they have plenty of rainfall.

As we find the droughts continuing, we have trees that are stressed by disease, by the drought, by pests, and, then when catastrophe strikes, when a fire actually starts, it just burns the entire landscape. Usually, these forests are not going to be regrown for decades. They will have soft undergrowth brush that comes up in the meantime, but no large trees, no national forests, as we know it. They are overgrown. The thinning projects that would restore forest health aren't happening due to the lengthy delays, costly regulations, and litigation.

The Forest Service budget has stayed pretty constant, but the thinning projects, the cutting, the balanced thinning projects that would restore the health to our western forests, have declined precipitously since the 1990s. From the 1950s to the mid 1990s, timber harvest averaged somewhere between 10 and 12 billion board feet. From 1996 until now, they have only harvested between 1.5 and 3.3 billion board feet. This has occurred while the Forest Service budgets, again, have been enough to accommodate the programs.

But in 1993, the spotted owl was listed as endangered. The scientific understanding, at that point, was that the spotted owl would go extinct because of the logging, because we were cutting trees. About 80 percent of the timber industry across the Nation was killed. In New Mexico, we used to have 123 mills. Those were reduced down to one or two that are still operational today. That is the devastating impact that the decision on the spotted owl had.

Twenty years later, President Obama, and then-Director Ashe, determined that: Oh, logging wasn't the problem. It was other predators.

So they killed the logging industry. They killed the thinning of projects in the West over a mistake in their scientific assumptions. The government is directly at fault for thousands of acres of timber that are being burned annually across the West.

The Forest Service is forced to do expensive and time-consuming surveys in project areas every 5 years. They are hesitant to manage because of how close they are to the nesting area of the spotted owls, even though the understanding has been given that logging is not the problem.

In the Mescalero, which butts up against the Lincoln National Forest--both are approximately the same size, about a million acres-- the spotted owls are actually moving en masse across to the thinned areas in the Mescalero. The fire, instead of burning up habitat, drops down. When it is burning through the Lincoln, it hits Mescalero, drops down, and becomes a grass fire. Every indication tells us that we are managing incorrectly, but still, the Forest Service is not able to do large projects.

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

Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson).

Mr. Chairman, my friend from Pennsylvania was pointing out about the problem with storm waters running off. Bonito Lake, in the middle of the Lincoln National Forest, close to Ruidoso, provides water for Holloman Air Force Base and for Alamogordo. It is 75 feet deep, just a small lake in the middle of the forest.

After the fire, the Little Bear fire, the next rain put 50 feet of fill into

that lake. So, 75 feet; 50 feet now has mud and debris in it. All the fish were killed, and it is no longer usable for drinking water. That is what is going on in the West. Our watersheds are destroyed, our forests are destroyed, and our grazing habitat is destroyed, all because of the management of the forests.

This amendment does a very simple thing: It allows the Forest Service to go in and do large-scale projects. Typically, they will be in a million acre forest, cleaning 30 to 50 acres at a time. This allows them to get very large-scale projects to where we can restore the health of our forests. It is a commonsense amendment.

Mr. Chairman, again, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. Chair, this amendment deals with a small community that is kind of circled around by the Gila National Forest.

This amendment basically is going to allow the Forest Service to sell parcels of Forest Service land to the village of Santa Clara. It is a small village. About 2,000 people live in it. They, like many of our mountain communities, like many of our communities in the Forest Service, are slowly starving to death.

The land that the Forest Service would sell to them is adjacent to the village. It is not a part of the larger national forest. It is just an isolated parcel. The Forest Service does not want to manage this land.

It is in the state that it is in because it was set apart back in 1869 as a part of the Fort Bayard Military Reservation. Because the land is reserved as a military post, it cannot be disposed of in the normal fashion by the Forest Service. They must be released by law.

Back in 1968, there was a bill that released other parcels of Fort Bayard to be sold and to be distributed to the State. This parcel just was not included in that for some reason, so the amendment steps around and includes that now to where the Forest Service would be allowed to dispose of the land.

It would have to be appraised. It would be sold through normal processes. It is just that it requires a law to do it. It cannot go any other way.

The village is desperately in need of expansion room. Like I said, this Forest Service land butts up against the village and stops their growth, stops their economic potential, and it is a very key piece of property for the village, but it is not a key piece of property for the Forest Service.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this noncontroversial amendment, and I urge its adoption.

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

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

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

This amendment would reauthorize the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, CFLRP, for another 5-year period. This program was initiated in 2009, and, basically, it aims to restore vital sections of our national forestlands.

There are two projects in New Mexico, the Zuni Mountains and the Southwest Jemez, with over 420,000 acres total, that would be covered under this collaborative project.

The Zuni Mountains project supports one of the last mills in New Mexico. We used to have 123 mills that processed timber. Now we are down to just one or two. That destruction in the capacity and the infrastructure for our national forest has been devastating to our ability to really accomplish projects of selective thinning and balanced management of our forests.

The extension of the program is going to provide enough certainty so that this last mill operator can make investments that will reduce the cost of conducting forest management activities in western New Mexico.

If we lose the mill, if it does, in fact, close--which should not be an option--it is going to increase the cost of the projects due to transportation costs. So it makes sense for the government, it makes sense for the U.S. Forest Service, the taxpayer, and the local economy to keep this mill open and to find others that would reopen with these collaborative projects that come under this program.

This program is a good starting point, and, when paired with other reforms that open up more acreage for treatment, it is going to increase the profitability of restoration projects. That will, in turn, save taxpayers money.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this noncontroversial amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I was proud to just cast a ``yes'' vote to open the government back up.

I would observe coming into the Capitol tonight that they had Members and staff all kind of in the same car line, so I just barely made it here for that vote.

I have heard all day long that we should be funding the government for the full year, and we should be doing it right. In fact, we in the House have passed all 12 appropriations bills. They are sitting over in the Senate.

If the Senate Schumer shutdown was desired not to occur, then all they could do is bring up those full-year funding bills, allow them to come to the floor, and we fund our military, we fund all of the healthcare, the opioids, and every other single thing.

That would require the Senate Democrats working with the Republicans over there, and we saw 2 days ago that is not going to happen. Today, under duress, it did, but we are still facing the same problem. We need nine Democrats in the Senate to help the Republicans get to the 60-vote majority.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding and for his work on this bill.

As he mentioned in the opening statements, there is a provision in the bill that allows the Santa Clara Ohkay Owingeh 99-year leasing program to move forward. That is in resolution to the long-standing problems that we face there. So just a significant provision that affects these two units but also the underlying concept that we are going to recognize the sovereignty of our Tribes.

As many people know, some of the Tribes are faced with just very difficult poverty conditions throughout the history of their Tribes since they have been on the reservations, and I work with close friends of mine who are trying to solve these problems and to find resolution to long-term prosperity on the Indian reservations.

So when the National Labor Relations Board reversed its long-standing status of recognizing the sovereignty of our nations--70 years they had recognized that. In 2004, they simply reversed it without much explanation, without any warning, and certainly without precedent.

It has caused things to be much more difficult, especially in States like New Mexico. So the Tribal leaders are saying: We should be sovereign. We should be allowed to make these sorts of decisions ourself without the Federal Government coming in and putting the bureaucracy there.

The underlying concept of the bill is one that simply says we want prosperity on Native American lands, we want their sovereign actions to take care of themselves, to move themselves forward. That is what the entire Nation says is the American Dream. Let's let that occur for the Native Americans in this country. I think the provisions of the bill are very important.

We have been working for 6 years now in Native American housing, another way to help move prosperity into Native American lands. Again, I support the concept of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for bringing this subject to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I suspect I might be one of the few Members of Congress whose first house was a manufactured house. Not only that, but I represent a district where 50 percent of the homes are manufactured housing.

I think that it is important that we kind of separate the two discussions. If the CFPB were looking at the abuses and going after the abusers that I have heard talked about from the other side, there might not be a discussion today, but that is not what the CFPB did.

What the CFPB did is say that all balloon notes are bad. I can't find any bank, from the East Coast to the West Coast, that will come into New Mexico and lend $33,000 for a used mobile home and put it on a 30- year note. You can tear up a mobile home within days.

So balloon notes are simply made in order for people to come in and check. They didn't use them to maybe put bad adjustments and higher interest rates or anything. They just want to be able to look.

So they generally put these loans on a 5-year basis. At the end of 5 years, if everything is good, we continue to roll it. We don't start from scratch. We don't charge you prejudicial interest.

But all balloon notes were made illegal by the CFPB. They were declared to be prejudicial in their nature when they weren't.

Qualified mortgages were another way that they shut off the lending for the manufactured housing in our district. Owner-seller financing was another way.

What happens in New Mexico, somebody will buy a trailer house, a manufactured home. They will live in it, pay for it, buy another one, and over their lifetime accumulate 10 or 15. Then, when they retire, they begin to sell one at a time.

If you sell more than one or two, the CFPB said: You are now a broker-dealer, and we are not going to let you operate unless you become licensed. So it shut off much of the access of just one seller selling to another.

We brought the CFPB in. We brought Kelly Cochran, about 5 years ago, to

walk through these and say: Please, we understand what you are trying to do. No one wants to be protecting those who are violating consumer rights, but just get it within its lane.

Kelly Cochran was there for almost an hour and admitted that she was not aware of the many things brought up that were on-the-ground problems. They never changed them. Mr. Cordray continued to assert that he had solved all the problems, when he had never solved any of the problems.

Most of the banks in New Mexico--and I live right on the Texas line-- in that region of Texas and New Mexico, just quit offering to finance manufactured housing. That meant the people who needed it the most had no access to credit.

We discussed these items in the open hearings many times with the CFPB Director, Mr. Cordray, and it just seemed like they could never get focused on those.

This bill today is simply saying that we have people with a need, and they have to be able to get access to loans to finance houses to live in. It is the way I began. It is the way I want other people in New Mexico to begin. Let's just restore order to the market. That is what we are trying to do.

Mr. Speaker, I support the bill.

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

Mr. Chairman, our national forests are overgrown, and the thinning projects which would restore them to health are delayed by lengthy and costly regulations and litigations. In New Mexico, it takes a look like this: the top picture is a picture of one of our national forests, and the bottom picture is a picture from an area that has been thinned.

Now, take, for example, the Lincoln National Forest near Ruidoso, the Mescalero Forest is butted right up against it, so we are able to get a good comparison.

Now, typically, the forests in the West look like this: widely spaced trees and mostly grass in between, so when the fires came, they were grass fires. The tree rings show us that every 8 years a fire occurred, and it would keep the small underbrush and the small diameter trees, the small, unhealthy ones, it would keep those burned out and our forests, again, looked like this.

But because all of the thinning projects and all of the timber projects have been canceled for decades now, our forests, instead, look like this. When wildfires happen, they burn catastrophically and burn everything in their sight.

So my amendment today simply allows the Forest Service to move forward on balanced thinning programs in large scale. Typically, they do all of the paperwork, all of the studies for small acreage, maybe 30 acres or 50 acres. Since the forests are about a million acres, you would never get through and never get the forest restored to its health, and that is the problem.

The Forest Service has been working with me on the language for this amendment and submitted almost exact language that we have put here on the floor today. They agree with us that they should restore the forest to its health, but the environmental groups and the outside litigation have stopped the programs completely.

Now, in New Mexico, this means jobs, but it also means the health of our environment, and it means the destruction of endangered species, because when the fires burn through, we get the effect on the next page; again, this is that same Lincoln National Forest that we were looking at just a second ago. This is after the Little Bear fire, which burned 255 homes and almost 40,000 acres.

We almost lost the entire town of Ruidoso. If the fire had just capped over the mountain, it would have burned straight down the side. The winds were exactly the direction which would have caused that.

So the Forest Service is agreeing with us that we need to do some thinning, and we are not going to be able to do it without legislative language, so this amendment is being offered here today.

We used to have 123 mills working in New Mexico clearing timber, processing it. We have got vast national

forests, and all of those have been shut down. The spotted owl came along in 1993, and the findings from the Fish and Wildlife Service was that logging was the reason that the spotted owl was going extinct.

Over 20 years later, Dan Ashe, the head of Fish and Wildlife Service, said: Oops, we made a mistake and we burned down the West, and we have ruined our forests over a mistake. There was actually another predator out there. We still have the problem to go in and clean up these forests before they burn and before they look like this.

Another real problem that exists is when we burn our national forests, then the watersheds are going to be choked up with mud, with ash, and with everything else.

This is Bonita Lake there in that same Lincoln National Forest near Ruidoso. It provides the drinking water for several major communities in the southern part of the State. That lake was about 75 feet deep, pristine water, had fish in there. It was a recreational area right in the middle of the national forest.

The Forest Service was alarmed at how much damage was going to occur to this lake if they didn't log above it, so they put in a project. They were sued and work grounded to a halt. They did not get to thin that area above the lake. A fire occurred, this fire that you just saw in the previous slide. Now, that 75-feet-deep lake is filled with 50- feet of mud and ash. It killed all of the fish. It is not suitable for drinking. The community does not have the money in order to drain that lake and to refill it.

So that is what we find in the West because of these forest management processes. My amendment would simply allow the Forest Service to move forward on large-scale projects. They would still have to do all of the studies, everything. They would just be expedited.

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

Mr. Chairman, the problem we are trying to solve--the gentleman asked the question--is that we are burning our forests down. We are burning up the habitat. We are burning up the endangered species. This was 40,000 acres. We had another fire in the Second District of New Mexico that was over 300,000 acres and they burned without regard. They burned human life. They burned animal life. They burned habitat and they contaminate our waterways.

Those are the problems that we are trying to solve. The Forest Service agrees with us that the restrictions are too great, and they have worked with us on the language, understanding that they must go through the studies, they must do the work that is required, but we can expedite those in order to do larger-scale thinning projects. Otherwise, we will never get the forests in the West cleared up.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is a good amendment. I urge its passage, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to rise today in support of the fiscal year 2018 budget resolution.

On behalf of Chairman Hensarling, I would like to take a moment to speak about the instructions given by the chairwoman of the Budget Committee to the Financial Services Committee to find savings of $14 billion.

Now, that is what we were sent here to do: to find those places where it makes sense to cut the budget and we don't harm anything. In fact, in this case, the Financial Services Committee is going to help things in rural communities by finding those savings that the chairwoman instructed us to find.

Several years ago, the Democratic majority passed the Dodd-Frank resolution, the Dodd-Frank Act. That enshrined too big to fail. It created unaccountable agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Earlier this year, this body passed H.R. 10, the Financial CHOICE Act. That was trying to prune back the capabilities of CFPB to hurt the rural areas, which it had been doing in my district.

Carlsbad National Bank recently shared with us how it takes them 185 pages to complete a mortgage loan, 185 pages for a small bank for just the simple resolution of buying a home.

Many times our community banks are simply stopping to offer that service. No one else is willing to come in to New Mexico and lend into these rural communities. So we are facing a very serious problem.

Sometimes community banks are having to consolidate. That hurts rural communities even worse, because the consolidation usually moves the bank's headquarters outside the State or outside the community. It weakens the fabric of the community.

So by finding the savings in this budget resolution which we were instructed to do, we not only save the money, but we also stop the encroaching regulations that CFPB is putting out, harming the rural communities, harming rural homeowners.

So for those reasons, I gladly support H. Con. Res. 71, the Budget Resolution Act, and urge its passage.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I might consume.

Onshore Order 3, put in place by the last administration, creates a number of unnecessary and duplicative burdens that cause energy production to be much more difficult.

Now, many people visualize that oil wells are drilled into the ground and then they just produce oil on their own; that it flows to the surface magically, and it remains unabated through the life of the oil well. It is not true at all.

What actually happens is that there is a pool of oil at the bottom of the well, and as it is produced, the production gets smaller each day until eventually the small production is classified as stripper well production.

Now, the Saudi Arabians, about every 10 years, come in and kill the stripper wells because that would be approximately 2 to 3 billion barrels of oil a year they could produce that would be shut down here.

In my home county of Lee County, New Mexico, we hunker down when we see these economic attacks coming, and we simply make it through; not because it is economic, not because it is productive, but because it is one of the few economic drivers of New Mexico. Oil and gas provides about 40 percent of our teachers' pay, 40 percent of police pay. So it is just our way of life.

But the stripper wells are not extremely economic. So when this Onshore Order 3 came into place, it actually is assisting the Saudi Arabians to try to drive stripper wells out of existence because it is the small producers, it is the guys who will stay there and produce the wells when nobody has economic interest in them. They like sweeping up the crumbs off of the energy table.

So Onshore Order 3 puts in processes that require monitoring that is already provided at the point of sale. So it is not as if somehow the government's being cheated. It just is trying to squeeze more out of these uneconomic wells.

The estimates are that we have shut down a great number of those wells, affecting teachers' pay, affecting the economy of New Mexico, killing jobs.

So my amendment is very simple. It would prevent funds from being used to fund the BLM Onshore Order Rule No. 3.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), the chairman of the committee and subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman).

Mr. Chairman, I think it is clear that what is at stake is 2.6 billion barrels of oil a day made from wells that make maybe one or two barrels, three barrels a day. They are not extremely economic, but those businesses are located in New Mexico. Those businesses keep their headquarters there. They are just small mom-and-pop operators that care enough about the energy business to stay out there, and so when the government does things that says we are not going to let you operate, that we are going to shut you down, it accomplishes what the Saudi Arabians have never been able to accomplish, and that is defeat the spirit that says we can survive any attacks.

Mr. Chair, again, I urge people to support this amendment and the underlying bill, H.R. 3354, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, the venting and flaring rule was, again, put in place by the last administration, intending for BLM to regulate methane. Historically, that had been regulated by the EPA.

Now, keep in mind that methane production from oil wells is down 21 percent since 1990, while production is going up. Production is going up, methane production is down. So we wonder why the administration came at the last second to put this rule into place.

Basically, the argument is exactly the same for opposing that venting and flaring rule that what is at stake are not the good wells. Those wells are going to produce in their economic with whatever burdens are placed on them. What is at stake are the stripper wells which, again, make up 2.6 billion barrels of production in the U.S. every day, 145 million barrels of production in the State of New Mexico. So you can imagine the economic catastrophe if that 145 million barrels weren't available to the State to both tax and to provide jobs.

Again, 40 percent of New Mexico's pay, roughly the teachers' pay, the police pay, roughly that much comes from oil and gas production. You can do the math and see how much New Mexico would be affected if this venting and flaring rule continues to place the burden on the well.

The estimates are for each well that a cost of $60,000 is going to be required to come into compliance. Again, keep in mind that this rule comes after the methane is more carefully controlled today under greater production than it ever has been. The estimates are that we will lose thousands of wells if this venting and flaring rule continues.

Again, it is the stripper wells which are most at harm. If we lose the 2.6 billion barrels of stripper well production every year because of the high cost of implementation of the venting and flaring rule, that is going to mean we are less energy independent, that we rely more on outside sources. It is going to drive the price of gasoline up. The people who can afford it least are the people at the bottom of the economic ladder. They will be the ones penalized most by rising prices of gasoline and decreasing supplies of oil.

Mr. Chair, again, I would urge people to support this amendment, the underlying bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), the chairman of the subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gosar).

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

Mr. Chairman, water is life. We understand that in the West maybe more than anywhere else in the world. So any time we are talking about water, we are talking about life, we are talking about the ability to have an economy, we are talking about jobs, we are talking about communities. It affects us deeply in the West.

When the original bill, H.R. 23, was being marked up, my friend, the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Torres), brought a concern to the members of the committee, saying that she felt like the underlying bill did not adequately address Tribal water rights.

Tribes are some of the areas of deepest poverty in the country. As she brought that up, it struck my attention that we should take a look at it.

Ultimately, her amendment failed in committee, but the two of us, with the chairman and the sponsor of the bill, huddled after the committee meeting and decided that we should move forward with our concerns. Those concerns are reflected in this amendment today.

Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Torres), to speak about this issue.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tipton).

Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to how much time I have?

Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Huffman).

Mr. Chair, Tribes in New Mexico and across the West depend on water for agriculture, they depend on it for their families, they depend on it for spiritual reasons. Without rights, water can be taken by anyone.

The amendment that Mrs. Torres and I put forward is just trying to say that rights are personal. They are private property rights, and no government can take them away. It is a reasonable amendment.

I appreciate the gentleman from Colorado's observations. We will attempt to see that those observations are dealt with in a meaningful way. In the meantime, I simply ask Members of the House to join with me in voting for this amendment to H.R. 23.

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

Mr. Chair, credit is one of the most powerful devices of our financial system. It was designed over time by modern societies. In some countries, credit is simply not available to those who need it the most: people at the bottom of the ladder.

In the United States, we have got a well-developed system where credit is available no matter how bad their credit rating might be. That is, it was available until the Dodd-Frank regulation created the