Providing for Further Consideration of H.R. National Defense

Floor Speech

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Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Speaker, good morning. I rise in opposition to amendment No. 455. It is currently almost 2 a.m. here on the House floor and most Americans are asleep. In China, they are finishing up with lunch, and after the videos we have seen this week, it is possible that Hunter Biden is on to his second fix for the night. Sadly, we are here on the floor trying to sneak in land grabs to the NDAA.

This Federal land grab would lock up 400,000 acres in Colorado with no regard to the terrible consequences this would have on the constituents of Colorado's Third District.

The bill also seeks to permanently prevent responsible oil and gas production on nearly 200,000 acres. While Americans are paying record- high gas prices, while Biden is shipping our oil reserves to the Communists in China, Democrats here in the House want to lock up more of our oil and gas underground never to be seen or utilized.

Mr. Speaker, 65 percent of the lands impacted by this amendment are in my district. Numerous stakeholders from the American Colorado Farm Bureau to the Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce all oppose the CORE Act. It is stuff like this that ticks the American people off, and it is why the GOP will have the majority in November.

There are reasons why the Senate rejected this bill outright. It is because the American people don't want it. I am proud to have worked with them last time we passed the NDAA to remove this from the final passage. There are good reasons why it is so unpopular.

The CORE Act threatened to accelerate wildfires due to its numerous wildfire designations and other provisions that restrict Federal agencies' ability to actively manage their lands. Are Coloradans supposed to simply stand by and watch more and more of our State get swallowed up in wildfires?

That is what this legislation would do.

Nothing good happens after midnight, and this bill is no exception. I do believe that my colleague from Colorado wants cleaner air and cleaner water. I would ask him to help me in managing our public lands rather than locking them down. We all want to be good stewards of the land that we have been given.

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Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to amendment No. 456, an amendment that would add the Protecting America's Wilderness and Public Lands Act into this year's NDAA.

This bill would add nearly 1.5 million acres of new wilderness and permanently withdraw 1.2 million acres from mineral production. Democrats already locked down our businesses, they locked down our churches, and they locked down our schools. But that wasn't disastrous enough. Now they want to lock down our public lands.

Approximately 550,000 of those 1.5 million acres that will be locked up by these new wilderness designations are in my district. Over 55 percent of Colorado's Third Congressional District is already Federal land. The last thing that communities in my district need is further restrictions imposed by government limiting what they can do on public lands.

People back home impacted by this lands package have raised significant concerns ranging from the loss of recreation, the elimination of multiple use of the land, and the overall threats to local rural economies.

However, one of the biggest concerns in the Western States is the increased threat of disastrous wildfires that will result from the new wilderness designation and other land grabs in this bill. Wilderness is the most restrictive land use designation possible. It prevents active management in our forests which is critical to preventing catastrophic wildfires.

Placing my district under lock and key will prevent all Americans from being able to access the lands and experience our majestic purple mountains firsthand.

I have also visited the HAT facility in Eagle County. I have talked to our military pilots who would actually lose some of their land that they currently train over. This is a national security threat. They need that land to be able to train as they protect our country and then, of course, the 1,200 miles of river that would be designated wild and scenic, well, that is not fair.

That is in my district. I am not going to the gentlewoman's district and designating the 16th Street Mall wild and scenic, but I do believe we can all agree that it is pretty wilderness down there.

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