Providing for Congressional Disapproval of the Rule Submitted By the Bureau of Land Management Relating to ``Miles City Field Office Record of Decision and Approved Resource Management Plan Amendment''

Floor Speech

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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, I strongly oppose all three of these Congressional Review Act resolutions on the floor because the reality is that these would overhaul years of public input. They would silence Tribal voices and erase science-based planning, all so that this administration can hand millions of acres of our public lands over to the fossil fuel industry for extraction.

Public lands should be our country's proudest legacy. They are our natural heritage, a national treasure, and the agencies responsible for stewarding them, like the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, diligently manage these resources for the future through the careful development of these resource management plans and forest plans.

The BLM plans, or the RMPs, are carefully crafted to establish safeguards for wildlife, recreation areas, and watersheds, and to identify suitable areas for energy development, as well. That also includes grazing, logging, and other commercial activities. They have to balance all of it in these RMPs.

It is also based on robust input from communities, stakeholders, the public, and government-to-government consultation with the impacted Tribes, as well.

The Republican majority has proven time and again that they don't want any of that public process. They simply want to hand things over to Big Oil and Big Coal, and this week, they are right back at it.

The majority is making us vote on legislation that would turn the management of public lands upside down, throwing it into chaos, all just to score that quick win for their fossil fuel buddies because the existing plans don't give away the store the way they would like to.

It doesn't matter that this might upend the system that grants land ownership to Alaska Native veterans of the Vietnam war, which is what one of these RMPs does, or that the Tribal governments have spent years working in good faith with the Federal Government to develop land management plans that both allow for energy development and protect subsistence hunting and fishing resources.

That is what they are blowing up with these CRAs, not to mention that if these CRAs are signed into law, the validity of every single permit, lease, and Federal approval that has been issued based on these RMPs would suddenly be called into question and subject to litigation.

I remind my colleagues once again that they don't have to go down this road.

The gentleman from Colorado mentioned that the CRA has never been used to overturn a resource management plan. There are perfectly valid ways of achieving the same goals in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. It is what the Biden administration did to update these plans, and it is what the Trump administration has already announced it intends to do.

I certainly expect to disagree with the outcomes and the objectives of the Trump administration's efforts to amend these RMPs. If they followed the formal process at least, though, we would have a chance to make our case in that process, and it wouldn't imperil existing permits and leases. Most importantly, it would require community input and Tribal consultation.

I strongly urge my colleagues not to continue this race to the bottom. Republicans have already thrown so many norms out the window. Republicans have already disregarded Democrats in all of their legislation and have started this radical appropriations process, where it is party line, Republican only. So many norms are being trashed, and now, for the first time, they are going to do this using the CRA on resource management plans.

Stop the race to the bottom. Vote against this CRA resolution package.

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