Energy and Water, Legislative Branch, and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, it is not entirely unusual to have policy in an appropriations bill. It happens with some regularity. In fact, it happened in the corresponding House appropriations measure.

What we are talking about here is some of the worst kind of lawmaking that occurs here in the swamp, in Washington, DC. Congress sets forth a broad, vague standard, and an executive branch agency figures out the rest, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

In 2015, the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers came up with a clean water rule, also known as the waters of the United States rule, one that effectively dramatically expanded the jurisdiction of the Federal Government over land in the United States, in some instances saying that if a plot of land is wet some of the time, some of the year, during any particular year, you can be subject to massive fines totalling millions of dollars if you do anything on that land, subject to the arbitrary determinations of Federal bureaucrats.

This is something that garnered bipartisan support in the 114th Congress. We had 49 cosponsors and ended up having 53 people vote to undo this under a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval. That was Republicans and Democrats. Tragically, President Obama vetoed that measure, and we were unable to secure the votes to override that veto.

This particular measure is in the House appropriations bill that corresponds to this one. I urge my colleagues to support it and to oppose the motion to table.

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