Mining Regulatory Clarity Act of 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1173, I call up the bill (H.R. 2925) to amend the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 to provide for security of tenure for use of mining claims for ancillary activities, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. 2925.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2925, the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act of 2024.
In May 2022, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower decision revoking an approved mine plan for the Rosemont Copper Mine Project in Arizona. Commonly called the Rosemont decision, this determination upended decades of regulatory precedent and specific U.S. Forest Service regulations that allow approvals of operations on or off a mining claim so long as these operations meet environmental and regulatory standards.
If allowed to stand, the Rosemont decision would require the discovery and determination of a valid mineral deposit, meaning that operators must prove the existence of a commercially developable deposit on a claim before a plan of operations can be approved.
However, operators' plans of operations must include the intended uses of the surface of the mining claim, including those for waste rock placements, mills, offices, and roads. The mining plan of operations is key in determining the economic feasibility of a mining site, which in turn factors into the basis of determining which mineral deposits are commercially developable and, therefore, valid.
In short, the court's ruling puts the cart before the horse and fails to reflect the actual process of how one develops a mine. This bill would restore status quo as it existed before the misguided Rosemont decision and clarify that mine operators can continue to operate on Federal lands as they have for decades.
According to the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, ``It is the policy of the United States that . . . the public lands be managed in a manner which recognizes the Nation's need for domestic sources of minerals.'' The Rosemont decision blatantly disregards this statement.
With mineral demand expected to grow exponentially in the coming decades, Congress must safeguard and defend the country's ability to access our own resources.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to join me in support of H.R.
With all due respect to my friend from New Mexico, I greatly appreciate her passion to protect this administration, to protect an administration that is having an attack on American mining, on American energy that is causing prices to increase, for inflation to go up, and it is causing us to be more dependent on our adversaries like China for minerals and elements, like Russia, OPEC, Venezuela, all of the above, Iran, for our energy. I understand that she is passionate about that, and I respect her passion.
When we talk about an old, archaic mining law that Ulysses S. Grant signed into law in 1872, I am reminded of something our Founders did long before that.
In 1787, they passed or established our Constitution that says that there is separation of powers, that the legislative branch legislates and that the executive branch enforces.
Now, almost 250 years later, we have got an administrative branch, and thanks to the administrative state in the Administrative Powers Act, we have bureaucrats that think their job is to legislate.
We are not changing the law, the mining law. We are pushing back on rules that are being pushed out by an administration that thinks it is their job to legislate.
I will remind my friends across the aisle that 2 years ago, they controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House. They had an opportunity to change the mining law, and they didn't do it. We are not changing the mining law. We are pushing back on overreaching regulations from the administration.
As I talked earlier about the Constitution and how it is the legislature that makes the laws, it is not through an administrative rule and it is also not by court decision, not the third branch of government that gets to make the laws. It is Congress that gets to make the laws.
When the Court has stepped in and made a ruling that creates uncertainty, it is causing mines not to be developed in the United States. Mining companies don't know if they can get a permit. If they cannot get a permit, they have to prove that there is material there before they get a chance to develop the permit. We need this legislative fix that only Congress can provide, to provide clarity and certainty so that we can develop these mineral resources here in the United States, which simply isn't happening today.
I will remind my friends across the aisle that under the law that this bill would codify, operators must still, as they have for decades, submit a mine plan of operations to the BLM or Forest Service for approval before building a new mine under the authorities that we would be giving them in this legislation.
The Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service both have strict time-bound requirements on what a claimant must do to maintain a claim and what they can do with a claim on Federal land to conduct mining.
If a claim holder does not meet these requirements, BLM or the Forest Service has the power to enforce compliance or immediately suspend the claimant from the area.
Now, while my friends across the aisle are doubling down on this administration's attack on American mining and energy development, while they are cheering on the Ninth Circuit, Republicans are taking action.
Mining is not happening in the United States because of the impediments that my friends across the aisle are causing.
Where is mining taking place? It is happening in China. If you go back just to 1995 and take one mineral that is critical to the lower- carbon energy sector that my friends talk about so much, you can't do that without copper. In 1995, the United States produced over three times more copper than China. If you look at 2020, China is producing about 10 times more copper than we are.
This is one metal. We could repeat this chart for critical elements and for other metals. If you look at it for steel, we produced more steel than China in 1995. They produce 12 times more steel than we do today.
When these renewable energy projects take place, when mandates are put out there to build electric vehicles, where are these materials coming from? We don't have the processing capacity anymore either. We have got two copper smelters. China has got over 50.
China controls 60 percent of global production, an estimated 90 percent of processing, and over 75 percent of manufacturing of critical minerals. In terms of individual minerals, China refines 72 percent of global- refined cobalt, 98 percent of global gallium, and 85 percent of global- refined rare-earth elements.
China also currently dominates the world's electric battery market, producing about 90 percent of the raw materials and 77 percent of global EV battery manufacturing capacity.
Disallowing domestic mining will only drive both our allies and ourselves into further reliance on China. We are disallowing mining at the same time we are putting mandates out there for people to drive electric vehicles.
By breaking even the first link in the Chinese global supply chain, we will be able to send strong market signals to American companies looking to invest in domestic mining and processing ventures. That is what H.R. 2925 would do.
The Republican ideas are pro-America and pro-American supply chain. They are using the resources that God has blessed us with. If we don't pass this bill, we are just going to be more reliant on China, and we are going to see less development in the U.S.
Mr. Speaker, I find it very rich that my friends across the aisle are bringing China into the equation now. The simple fact is that, under this administration and under this court ruling, nobody is going to be mining in the United States. They know China is not going to mine anything here under their policies, but also no American companies are going to be able to develop mines under their policies.
At the same time, they are pushing this electrification of everything and electric vehicles. They approved billions and billions of dollars in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. That is hard to say because we all know it drove inflation higher. In that bill, the IRA, they approved billions of dollars to invest in things that require metals and critical minerals.
The question was asked in the opening statement: Who wants this? Who wants mining in the United States?
I think the answer is everybody wants what comes from mining except my friends across the aisle. They don't want it in their backyard. They want their cake, and they want to be able to eat it, too. They want to have all these metals and critical elements that can be used to make and manufacture the things that they think are going to save the planet, but they just don't want it to happen here in the U.S., where we have the strictest mining laws, the strictest labor laws, and the strictest safety laws. We do things right here. We recover mines correctly.
What they want to do is have all their electric cars, solar farms, windmills, and transmission lines and magically get this material from somewhere else.
There are mines. There are still mines all across this country, but the fact is they are not even coming close to meeting the demands that we have. Even though we have everything we need in the U.S., it is just in the ground.
Reaching net zero emissions by 2050 would require more copper than has been produced over the entire course of human history. That is the challenge we face under Democratic policy: a demand for more copper than we have mined in human history between now and 2050 if we were going to get to net zero emissions.
How are we going to do that if we don't use the elements and minerals that God has blessed us with here in our country? The simple answer is that we are going to have to rely on somebody else to supply that. Guess who the number one supplier of nearly every one of those metals and elements is in the world today? It is China. That is the simple fact.
We can make a decision to either support H.R. 2925 and support American minerals and resources, or we can leave the status quo under the Rosemont court ruling and rely more on China and others, even Russia. We have talked about nuclear power, which could be a great contributor to zero emission energy. Most of our uranium now comes from Russia.
So whom do we want to rely on? Where do we want that wealth to go when Americans spend their money on energy and minerals? I would rather it stay here in America supporting American mining, supporting American jobs, and supporting American processing and manufacturing.
Mr. Speaker, there is another side to this story, as well. My colleagues can try to frame it that they are okay with it in their backyard because they have some of it there, but for the future, they don't want any more of it in their backyard.
I am from Arkansas. We have about 10 percent of our landmass as Federal lands, but when you go out West, Federal lands can account for as much as 86 percent of the land area in certain States and can account for 75 percent of our Nation's metals production.
When you look at that, Mr. Speaker, more than one-half of federally owned public lands are already either restricted or banned to mining operations due to withdrawals under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the Antiquities Act, and specific congressional actions.
If land hasn't been withdrawn from operation under the mining law, such as the land outside the Grand Canyon, then no new mining claims can be staked.
So, I am asking, how much is enough? How much of our land do we have to lock up and say that you can't have access, can't manage it, can't produce energy off of it, and can't mine on it?
It seems as if, as time goes on, the answer is all of it. We want to lock all of it up. We want to be reliant on somebody else who is doing a lot more damage to the environment somewhere on the planet than we do here in the U.S. when we mine in a very environmentally friendly manner and sustainably with the highest levels of standards.
Mr. Speaker, we can try to frame this any way you want to, but when we are having to import so much of our metals and critical minerals when they are right here in the ground in the United States, then that is a ``not in my backyard'' policy.
Mr. Speaker, I want to assert my firm belief that we should not be mining uranium in the Grand Canyon.
Nobody was ever proposing to mine uranium in the Grand Canyon, but a favorite talking point of my colleagues across the aisle is to say that these evil mining companies are going to be mining uranium in the Grand Canyon.
It is as if there is going to be this big excavator reaching over the side, digging out and making the Grand Canyon even more grand. The uranium deposits are well outside the boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park. They are in land north of the Grand Canyon between the boundary of the Grand Canyon National Park and the State of Utah.
It is an easy talking point to say that we are going to ban mining in the Grand Canyon. Guess what, Mr. Speaker? I don't know anybody who wants to mine in the Grand Canyon.
I do want to reiterate and push back on the assertion that the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act is unnecessary and that mining companies should have to prove the existence of a valid claim before beginning any operations.
A 2020 Department of the Interior solicitor's opinion stated: ``As a practical matter, requiring the discovery of a valuable mineral deposit before allowing any reasonably incident mining uses, including the removal of any minerals, puts the cart before the horse, since such uses and removal are necessary to make a discovery. If entering open lands to explore for and develop minerals is considered `unauthorized' unless or until miners have proven a discovery of a valuable mineral deposit, they could not, as a practical matter, ever discover a valuable mineral deposit and all mining would effectively be prohibited. Such an outcome was clearly not the intent of Congress, in no small part because such an interpretation would also leave many, if not most, miners legally in trespass.'' That all came from that solicitor's opinion.
It is clear that H.R. 2925 is a legislative fix that only Congress can provide. It is needed to provide clarity and certainty in the United States' ability to responsibly mine materials essential to our national security and to make us economically competitive.
Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, again, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 2925. Contrary to the misconceptions that I have heard regarding the bill, this legislation does not grant mining companies free license to do whatever they want on Federal lands. It does not exempt mining activity from NEPA or any other environmental review. It does not allow companies to subvert governmental authority or oversight. It simply restates over a century of mining law and decades of regulatory practice.
In passing this bill, we will reaffirm American miners' rights to operate under the law, just as they have done for decades, to provide the essential materials we depend on every day.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Amodei for his work to bring H.R. 2925 to the floor, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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