Providing for Congressional Disapproval of A Rule Submitted By the Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency--Veto

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I want to agree and second everything that my colleague from Missouri, Senator Blunt, had to say--that 99.7 percent of his State is underwater according to the EPA.

We had a hearing, and I looked at a map of Wyoming that the EPA presented. It looked like the entire State of Wyoming was underwater, according to the EPA. This is an incredible overreach on the part of this administration, this EPA.

It is so interesting, because the President of the United States said: Well, if you have better ideas, bring them. If you have better ideas, bring them. Well, we did. A number of us cosponsored bipartisan legislation--a number of Democrats supported it, as well--to allow for Congress to establish the principles of what a new EPA rule would look like. It didn't say to get rid of the whole thing. It said there are ways to make it better; let the people on the ground make those decisions.

Who are the best stewards of the land? Here we are. The Presiding Officer, the former Governor of South Dakota, knows that the people of his State have a much better love of the land of South Dakota, just as the former Governor of North Dakota, who is on the floor, knows that the people on the ground in North Dakota have a much greater love of the land and respect for the land and desire to protect the land and the water and to keep the water clean, just as we do in Wyoming and in Missouri. That is what this is about.

It is about letting people who have the best interests and who are the best stewards of the land make those decisions--not, again, a Federal grab. It is absolutely absurd, and it shows a President of the United States who is acting in a way that I believe is lawless to the point that the courts have now weighed in.

The courts have begun to weigh in on the concerns with this rule that we are going to vote on today. We hope we override the veto of the President, because the courts have said: Hey, we need to take a pause. Judge Erickson of the District of North Dakota on August 27 issued an injunction that blocked the waters of the United States rule in 13 States because he said the rulemaking record was ``inexplicable, arbitrary, devoid of a reasoned process''--devoid of a reasoned process. Yet the President is saying: Oh, no, they have got it all right. The President is wrong. The United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals put a nationwide stay on the rule in October. The court stated in granting the stay that ``the sheer breadth of the ripple effects caused by the rule's definitional changes counsels strongly in favor of maintaining the status quo for the time being.''

Yet the President of the United States ignores it all. Congress needs to have a say. The courts are having a say. The President needs to realize that his actions have huge impacts--negative impacts--on the economies of our States, our communities, and certainly of the entire country. So it is a privilege to be here to join my colleagues from South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri, and soon my colleague from Iowa who will weigh in, supporting the effort to override the President of the United States on this specific piece of legislation.

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