Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2025

Floor Speech

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Ms. TENNEY. Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer my amendment No. 91 to reduce the salary of Council on Environmental Quality, CEQ, Chair Brenda Mallory to $1.

Mr. Chair, I have spoken numerous times on this floor about the dangerous rule proposed by the Federal Acquisition Regulation Council, the FAR Council, titled: ``Federal Acquisition Regulation: Disclosure of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate-Related Financial Risk.''

This disastrous rule proposed by the FAR Council has numerous constitutional, national security, and practical concerns, none of which have been adequately addressed by the FAR Council. However, as part of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee's ongoing investigation into the basis for this rule, it was uncovered that the CEQ, which does not possess rulemaking abilities, pushed the FAR Council to implement its radical agenda and publish this rule.

First and foremost, this rule requires that all Federal contractors that do business worth more than $50 million with the Federal Government must disclose scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions.

This rule also seeks to require major Federal contractors to comply with the Paris climate accords, which have never even been ratified by the Senate.

The most objectionable part of this rule is the requirement that companies set climate targets and then have them validated by one specifically named company called Science Based Targets initiative, or SBTi. SBTi is a non-American, foreign, London-based company, which inherently carries national security concerns.

Under this rule, every major Federal contractor, including companies critical to our national security and our defense industrial base, would have to provide this foreign-owned company with information about all of their scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions and then strategize on how to reduce them.

Despite the existence of numerous American-based companies that could fill the same role, the FAR Council and CEQ chose a foreign company as the sole source provider because SBTi is nothing but a front for Democratic donors and advocacy groups.

SBTi is owned by the We Mean Business Coalition, which is a project of the New Venture Fund, which is managed by the dark-money super-PAC known as Arabella Advisors. Arabella Advisors, for those who don't know, is the George Soros-funded leftwing advocacy group that funnels dark money into leftwing causes and candidates.

To summarize, the Biden administration has named a subsidiary of one of their top donors, a leftwing, dark-money organization, as the sole source provider for all climate target validating for all major Federal Government contractors.

During a hearing in the Science, Space, and Technology Committee on this rule, even the Democratic witness said that SBTi was a poor choice for this role, yet CEQ and the FAR Council forged ahead anyway.

No Federal bureaucrat should be mandating that companies funnel money into the Democrats' dark-money operations. This is the very definition of corruption.

As the head of CEQ, Brenda Mallory played an integral role in pushing for this rule. Her salary must be defunded.

I look forward to working with Chairman Lucas, Chairman Obernolte, and all of my colleagues on the Science, Space, and Technology Committee to expose the corruption behind this proposed rule and halt its finalization and implementation.

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Ms. TENNEY. Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Ms. TENNEY. Mr. Chair, I rise to offer my amendment No. 92 to the Interior appropriations bill to prohibit funding for President Biden's Executive Order No. 14019, titled: ``Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting.''

This order requires Federal agencies to use their power, influence, resources, and Federal funding to enter into agreements with nongovernmental organizations to conduct voter registration and other mobilization activities.

Mr. Chair, this executive order is nothing but a blatant attempt to transform the Federal Government into a partisan get-out-the-vote machine for Democrats. The Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency should be completely nonpartisan and should not be using taxpayer funds and resources to actively engage in get-out-the-vote operations that have nothing to do with the departments' core missions, not to mention the obvious mission creep and Hatch Act violations that this activity triggers.

Mr. Chair, President Biden should not be weaponizing Federal agencies and the Federal Government, using American taxpayer dollars to manipulate and steer our elections in a partisan manner.

Let me be clear. The Department of the Interior is actively carrying out Executive Order No. 14019. The Heritage Foundation has subpoenaed numerous documents and emails related to the Department of the Interior's implementation of this radical executive order, including this interim plan, which, for the record, is fully redacted. Mr. Chair, I wonder why the Department would fully redact this plan if it had nothing to hide.

As the cofounder and chair of the Election Integrity Caucus, it is my privilege to introduce this amendment to restore transparency and confidence in our democratic process while keeping partisan Federal bureaucrats and the swamp, literally, from deliberately tipping the balance at the ballot box.

I stand firmly behind the concept of one citizen, one vote, as enshrined in our Constitution. However, I do not support this blatantly partisan mobilization of the Federal Government for political purposes.

The funds appropriated in this bill should be used as intended, such as to protect public lands for hunting and fishing, not implementing a partisan get-out-the-vote initiative using Federal dollars and Federal employees.

Mr. Chair, I urge all of my colleagues to support this amendment, which will preserve election integrity and stop the Biden administration from transforming the Department of the Interior into a get-out-the-vote, partisan machine for the Democrats.

Let's make voting great again.

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Ms. TENNEY. Mr. Chair, I respectfully disagree with my colleague's interpretation of this bill.

I can't think of anything worse than having people who are on an important mission working in the Department of the Interior or other agencies engage in partisan get-out-the-vote efforts, being at the polls, and helping people vote.

That is not their job. That is the job of the States. Each one of the States is required under law to make sure to administer our elections, to be sure that we have one citizen, one vote, and that we have free and fair elections and access to voting. That is not the job of the Federal Government. In fact, Federal employees are prohibited from this kind of illegal activity under the Hatch Act.

For that reason, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and prohibit our dollars and our employees from being forced to engage in partisanship at the ballot box instead of working on keeping our communities safe and keeping our environment free from some of the interference that we are seeing from the Biden administration.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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