Providing for Congressional Disapproval of the Rule Submitted By the Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers, Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency

Floor Speech

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Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of today's waters of the United States, WOTUS, joint resolution of disapproval, and I stand in opposition to the Biden WOTUS, which is an attack on the Clean Water Act, an attack on States' rights to have oversight over non-navigable waters, and an attack on private property rights.

As the chairman and former ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, I have spent the last 2 years traveling to more than 40 States to hear directly from producers about the challenges they face. I was proud to be with Chairman Graves in his district, where we had a gathering and a hearing, a listening session on this very topic-- burdensome regulations, record inflation, high input costs, the politicization of crop protection tools, supply chain disruptions, and now you can add an egregious government land grab to the list.

Make no mistake about it, this rule isn't about clean water. It is about the Biden EPA's appetite for power.

America's farmers, ranchers, and landowners deserve a WOTUS definition that is fair to agriculture and maintains the historical reach of the Clean Water Act, neither of which is accomplished by the Biden administration's flawed rule.

Simply recognizing longstanding agriculture exemptions that have been too narrowly applied for decades does not make up for once again plunging our rural communities into regulatory ambiguity.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves and Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee Chairman David Rouzer for leading this important effort, and I urge a ``yes'' vote.

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