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Floor Speech
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Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, I rise to object to H.R. 8413, the Swanson and Hugh Butler Reservoirs Land Conveyances Act. I want to be clear. I want to assure my colleague from Nebraska that I don't object on the substance of the bill itself.
As she alluded to just a moment ago, there is a larger effort underway to pull together a package of public lands and water bills like this one. We have over a hundred pending land and water bills, in fact, that are awaiting final consideration. And, yes, there is only about a week or so left before the holiday recess. But there are a lot of bills awaiting final consideration, and so we need to make sure that they can pass altogether as a final package, both out of fairness and out of efficiency--the way the process works here.
I understand that this particular bill is a priority for Senator Fischer and the Nebraska delegation and their constituents. I respect that. I appreciate that. I, too, have land and water bills before the Senate that are universally supported by constituents and constituencies in my State that I am working hard to get enacted before the end of the Congress.
And, in fact, as a member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I can report to all of you that, just last month, we held one final business meeting in committee, and we reported out nearly 80 bills, most of them with unanimous, bipartisan support. So the holdup here, the objections here, et cetera, continue to not so much be on substance but the process being what it is. There is so much good work that we are trying to finalize for so many States in the final days of this Congress.
So I think, to help get us there, I want to continue to urge Chair Manchin, urge Ranking Member Barrasso and their House counterparts, Chairman Westerman and Ranking Member Grijalva, to continue working and negotiating in good faith to assemble a public lands and water package that will be of tremendous service to the country. And I urge both the Senate and House leadership to agree to move all lands and water packages that we can send to President Biden as soon as possible.
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