Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2025
Floor Speech
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Madam Chair, let me start by saying the critical habitat that I am concerned most about is rural America, the backbone of this country, the breadbasket, and the energy basin that is feeding, clothing, and fueling America.
What I am concerned about with respect to endangered species after almost 4 years of this administration are farmers and oil and gas producers who turn the cranks on the greatest economy in the world, who keep the consumers' cost of energy down, and who basically produce through hydrocarbons 90 percent of everything we use.
However, they are being attacked with a whole-of-government assault, and this, I think, is just one more example.
I rise to offer an amendment to prohibit the funding of the Biden- Harris administration's attempt to regulate these cowboys, plowboys, and roughnecks in rural America who truly make America great.
This administration has decided to list in this case six freshwater mussel species that in their own report and own words are moderately healthy. In doing so they jeopardize the livelihoods, the way of life, and the tremendous contributions of our agriculture and energy producers locking up 1,500 miles of rivers causing our farmers and ranchers to be in jeopardy of criminalization, essentially, for the things they do to make an efficient agriculture production for an affordable and abundant supply of food for every American.
Madam Chair, I offer this amendment. I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' to defund what I believe is blatant overreach. Stand up for the God-fearing, hardworking, freedom-loving farmers, ranchers, and energy producers in the heartland.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Madam Chair, may I ask how much time do I have remaining.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. If the Endangered Species Act were so important to my colleagues, then we wouldn't go 30 years without reauthorizing it. If it is a national priority, then we ought to look at it, do our congressional oversight jobs that we were sent here to do, and determine if it is working or not.
I can't imagine, to my colleague from Maine, that her fishermen would appreciate being locked out of their livelihoods and what they contribute to the Maine economy any more than my producers of agriculture who put food on the table for folks in Maine and all over the country.
I really believe we have gotten this thing so out of whack when we talk about critical habitat for these freshwater mussels that are healthy. There is nothing healthy about the ag economy. There is an ecosystem that we ought to all be concerned about because if we can't feed ourselves and if we don't have food security in this country, then we don't have a strong nation.
We are blessed with tremendous resources. The greatest of those resources are hardworking farmers, ranchers, fishermen, and others who help feed Americans and take tremendous risks, weather risks and market risks. These guys live with tremendous debt. They borrow and they pray to the good Lord that the weather will work out, and they have been experiencing record drought in my home State of Texas.
Now they have to contend with healthy, freshwater mussels in 1,500 miles of river. It seems to me we have this thing upside down. Yes, we want to steward our environment. Yes, we care about wildlife and habitat of all kinds, but we seem to have moved a human flourishing objective somewhere down below where it ought to be, which is at the top along with these farmers, ranchers, and energy producers.
God bless them. They have so much to contend with with all the overreach coming out of EPA's Waters of the U.S. I could go through a litany of things that they are suffering one blow after another, one regulation, one overreach after another, and now these freshwater mussels that are apparently, according to their own reports, healthy.
We ought to care more about the critical habitat of farming and farmers than we do freshwater mussels that are healthy.
Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Madam Chair, I rise to offer an amendment to defund the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services plan to expand the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge by an unprecedented 1,000 percent.
Madam Chair, think about that. We are out in the breadbasket of America, in the panhandle of Texas, Muleshoe America, and they take a 6,400-acre refuge and they want to expand it to 700,000 acres.
My chairman over here from Idaho is the only one who recognizes that we have the highest level of indebtedness in the history of our Nation, surpassing World War II. We are in relative peace and prosperity, and it is only going to get worse. The wheels are coming off. We spend almost $1 trillion to service the debt, just to pay interest, and that is going to more than double over the next decade.
We are in trouble. At $35 trillion, we are borrowing almost $8 billion a day to support this huge and ever-growing government. Like a hole in our head, the last thing we need to do is spend money to buy up more land to somehow either appease an environmental group or maybe just achieve what seems to be an odd objective of having the Federal Government own and operate a third of our land. They can't manage the land they have.
I just got back from Glacier National Park. It is beautiful. I want those parks to be managed well for wildfire management and recreational use. They are beautiful, and we are blessed.
The gentleman who runs that facility on behalf of the American people said he can't get to but 10 percent of the land, and we are trying to go 1,000 percent expansion in Muleshoe. The sandhill crane and pronghorns are not on the Endangered Species List. They are stable.
I don't understand why we are here. Let's think about the critical habitat versus human flourishing, the human habitat, and the American people habitat.
We have Social Security and Medicare, which will be insolvent in the next 10 to 15 years. Their unfunded liability combined is about $135 trillion. We have a farm bill that needs to be resourced. We have infrastructure that is crumbling.
We have a Defense Department, which is for the common defense, the first and most important job of the Federal Government, but because our debt and interest is squeezing our ability to fund our national priorities, we are now below 3 percent of investment in military for the defense of our country per GDP for the first time since prior to World War II.
Is this what my Democratic colleagues think is a national priority?
I mean, that is the problem with this place, is we don't prioritize. Our system of resourcing the people's government is completely irrational. We don't have to pay for anything. We don't take it out of their pockets, so they don't revolt. They would. If we took the $2 trillion that we borrow every year, they would revolt.
We ought to be able to find some waste and unnecessary spending. Maybe we ought to prioritize like every other American that is suffering with the worst tax of all, which is inflation. They have to prioritize, or they don't eat and can't take care of their families.
This is a bad deal. It is overreach. It is crazy.
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Mr. ARRINGTON. Madam Chair, I have to say this: People don't trust the Federal Government anymore, and I don't like that because it is going to make it very difficult for us to govern and keep the peace and domestic tranquility and to have us love each other as fellow Americans.
They trust the Federal Government even less over the last few years because they have seen it be weaponized against them in the name of clean air or clean water in terms of ponds, puddles, and ditches on farmers' lands that have nothing to do with navigable waters, and this administration knows it. By the way, so do the courts because they threw it out, but it is just one after another.
Texas tried to do what the Federal Government advocated under this current administration and under border czar Harris' leadership. They tried to defend our sovereign border and protect our citizens. With the stroke of a pen, this administration declared the Mexican mussel needed critical habitat, and they obstructed our ability to defend ourselves.
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