Nomination of Debra Anne Haaland

Floor Speech

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Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Daines for his leadership on this issue.

The only thing the previous speaker and I have in common is agreeing that it is high time that we had a Native American woman to lead the Department of the Interior.

On behalf of the people of Wyoming, I am opposing President Biden's nomination of Congresswoman Haaland to serve as Secretary of the Interior.

As Secretary, she will continue the job-killing, anti-energy attack on Wyoming's livelihood that President Biden started during his first week in office.

Let's recap just how bad President Biden's Executive actions are for my State.

A University of Wyoming analysis found that Wyoming stands to lose nearly $13 billion in tax revenue if we don't lift the Biden ban on new oil and gas leasing and drilling on Federal lands. To put this in context, $13 billion in tax revenue would educate 60,000 Wyoming students from kindergarten through high school graduation. It would fund the University of Wyoming for the next 59 years. It would fund our public safety and corrections budget for the next 68 years. And it would fund the Wyoming Department of Health for the next 26 years. These are real numbers, and the Biden ban is having real consequences.

In Wyoming, we put the tax revenue from Federal land leases to use educating our kids, caring for the sick, and funding public infrastructure.

Maybe this sounds like my complaint is just with President Biden. That is how Congresswoman Haaland would have you see it. Congresswoman Haaland says that she will simply be following the administration's orders and implementing its agenda at the Interior Department. This isn't exactly encouraging for a number of reasons.

The White House's very first action in implementing their climate change agenda is on track to cost my home State a whopping $13 billion in revenue. I shudder to think what their next action will cost us, especially with Department heads committed to blindly enacting the Biden agenda without consideration for the extraordinary impacts it will continue to have on energy States like Wyoming.

Second, Secretaries have an incredible amount of power to make decisions on how an administration's agenda gets implemented. Based on her own public statements and actions, Congresswoman Haaland is more radical in her positions than President Biden.

None of these facts are particularly encouraging to folks in Wyoming and the West who will be devastated by the policies that Congresswoman Haaland plans to champion. What we need is a Secretary who understands the issues that westerners face. We need someone who knows the ways that States like Wyoming are contributing to America's energy independence and doing so in increasingly environmentally friendly ways. Banning permitting on Federal lands in Wyoming means banning access to 68 percent of Wyoming's minerals. For our State and our country to remain energy independent, we need someone at the Department of the Interior who recognizes that if we shut down producers at home, we are only increasing the power of polluters like Russia and China abroad.

Conservatives are regularly attacked as anti-science and anti- environment. This couldn't be further from the truth. I can tell you there are no greater stewards of our land than the people who actually work it, be it farmers, ranchers, or energy producers. We care more about the land and natural resources than just about anyone. It is our livelihood.

But it is more than that. It is our way of life. We know that responsible care for the land means that we have to have a healthy give-and-take with the land.

In Wyoming, we support both energy protection and conservation, fossil fuels and clean energy technologies. Wyoming leads the Nation as the biggest net energy supplier at the same time that we are driving the future of carbon capture and utilization technology.

Representative Haaland and the Biden administration claim their ban on leases supports the environment, but this ban actually hurts environmental conservation efforts. Energy development on public lands helps to fund conservation, including the Land and Water Conservation Fund to the tune of billions of dollars.

Additionally, since 2000, the United States has had the largest absolute decline in emissions of any country. We did this while at the same time rising to become the world's top energy producer. The truth of the matter is, you can be both environmentally friendly and energy friendly. In Wyoming, we are doing both. Under the Biden and Haaland administration, we will do neither.

I want to add one more thing. I recognize the longstanding connection of Native Americans to the land. Representative Haaland has that connection, and I honor her heritage and appreciate how significant the nomination of a Native American to lead the Department of the Interior is to the Tribes and to indigenous people. But there is no connection between her heritage and her support of the Green New Deal and attacking oil and natural gas production as a means to address climate change. If our goal is to reduce emissions, then our focus should be on clean air, not attacking energy production.

We can achieve our environmental goals through things like carbon capture while remaining energy independent.

For these reasons, I urge my colleagues to oppose Representative Haaland's nomination to serve as Secretary of the Interior.

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