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

Floor Speech

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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 879, I call up the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 130) providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Bureau of Land Management relating to ``Buffalo Field Office Record of Decision and Approved Resource Management Plan Amendment'', and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

The Clerk read the title of the joint resolution.

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Mr. WESTERMAN. Res. 130.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.J. Res. 130, which would repeal the Bureau of Land Management's misguided resource management plan, or RMP, amendment for the Buffalo Field Office in Wyoming, which was finalized in the twilight hours of the Biden-Harris administration.

Wyoming's Powder River Basin currently supplies 40 percent of the Nation's coal. The RMP amendment in question effectively halted future Federal coal leasing across a region in Wyoming larger than New Jersey and located in the heart of America's coal country. Without repeal, the RMP amendment will end coal production in the region entirely by 2041 and close 12 active mines.

The RMP amendment is a death blow to America's energy security, Wyoming's workers, and the economic backbone of the State itself.

It is projected that U.S. electricity demand will grow by as much as 128 gigawatts through 2029, and global energy demand is expected to double by 2050.

Coal is reliable, affordable, and essential to meet the increasing power demands of the AI revolution and advanced manufacturing. The RMP amendment locked up an astonishing 48 billion short tons of coal. That is enough to meet U.S. coal demand for the next 116 years.

Mr. Speaker, 92 percent of Wyoming's coal is exported to other States, helping keep the lights on and utility prices affordable in distant places as far as Texas, Illinois, and my home State of Arkansas.

Nationwide, residential electricity prices have increased by 13 percent since 2022, and overturning misguided policies like this RMP amendment will help make the cost of living more affordable for families across America.

It is time to unleash our domestic resources to put this money back into the pockets of American families by repealing the Biden administration's anti-American energy policies. What is more, instead of working with the State, the Biden administration blatantly ignored local opposition at every stage of this process and rammed this RMP amendment through to appease environmental extremists.

The Biden administration provided a limited opportunity for public comment or engagement on this RMP amendment. Wyoming's Governor, a unified congressional delegation, locally elected officials, Tribes, and local communities all expressed strong opposition to this plan amendment. The previous administration ignored them all.

According to local representatives, it is suspect and disturbing that such a dramatic change to the current land use plan would solicit such little engagement during the public comment period. Campbell and Johnson County commissioners who represent the local communities affected by this plan stated that whatever information they provided to the BLM in this process was ignored by the Federal agency.

Overturning the RMP amendment takes power from bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., and returns it to the people of Wyoming.

The BLM also ignored Tribal input in developing this RMP amendment. The Navajo Transitional Energy Company, which is wholly owned by the Navajo Nation, provided detailed comments opposing this amendment. They were all dismissed by the BLM.

In a letter they submitted to the agency, they stated:

``BLM consistently downplayed the reasonably foreseeable negative impacts of the mines' closures on the surrounding social justice communities. And it did not even consider the jobs lost in the downstream communities that rely on the [Powder River Basin] coal.''

Energy security is national security, and Wyoming's energy industry remains indispensable to ensuring that America stays energy dominant. Wyoming's Powder River Basin, with its low-sulfur coal, produces the world's cleanest burning coal. We should be focused on exporting this abundant natural resource to our allies abroad, not burying this baseload power under layers of bureaucracy.

By passing this CRA today, we are advancing President Trump's executive orders on unleashing American energy and reinvigorating America's coal industry. We are also restoring hundreds of millions of dollars in future revenue for Wyoming's K-12 public education system and protecting more than 4,000 high-paying jobs in rural Wyoming.

In conjunction with the pro-energy policies included in the working families tax cut law, this CRA also has the potential to generate more than $260 million for the Federal Treasury.

This CRA helps the U.S. remain energy dominant and will lower prices for families, strengthen our economy, and boost real wages for hardworking men and women. I urge my colleagues to stand with Wyoming, stand with American workers, and stand for energy security by supporting this resolution.

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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I sincerely appreciate the birthday wishes from my friend across the aisle. That means a lot to me.

If I had a birthday wish of my own, it would be to make energy more affordable for the American people, to help the good folks of Wyoming to have a livelihood and to not only keep prices down, but keep good- paying jobs across this country that are in the energy industry. We know that we need more energy going forward. We need more electrons on the grid. We need a larger grid. We need to all work together to do those things, but if this resource management plan amendment by the previous administration was balanced, I would hate to see a heavy- handed resource management plan amendment by the previous administration because this took a sledgehammer to an established industry in the State of Wyoming.

I am sure my distinguished colleague from the great State of Wyoming, Representative Hageman, who is the lead sponsor of this legislation, will go into detail what this would mean to Wyoming if this plan amendment stays in place.

Hageman).

Mr. Speaker, it has been mentioned that U.S. coal is dying. U.S. coal is being murdered. There has been an attack on it for many years, and some people will not stop until they see it gone. That would be to our own demise because we depend so much on the energy not only from coal but from natural gas.

We need more nuclear power. We need more hydropower. We need all kinds of new power, and this isn't the time to be attacking our fuel sources. We will have a debate on the Arctic Slope and the Coastal Plain, but when we are talking about Wyoming, we are talking about coal and really the backbone of our electrical generating and distribution system.

I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Stauber), the chairman of the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee of the Natural Resources Committee.

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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close and continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Since my colleague mentioned the SPEED Act, which we will be marking up in committee on Thursday, even though it is not on the floor today, I will put in a shameless plug for our bipartisan legislation that is not only tech neutral, but it is agnostic to the project, the project type.

It would definitely help us produce more energy in America, and it will also help us to build things in America again, something we desperately need to do. We will debate that Thursday, and, hopefully, some day we will be out here debating it on the floor.

This particular RMPA that is on the floor today is because the Biden administration, on their way out, pushed something through by rule that they could never get passed into law. The CRA, I remind you, is so that Congress can exert its legislative authority over an administrative agency or over an administration.

I would remind future administrations not to make dumb rules when they are going out the door or somebody in Congress will be standing here maybe on the other side of the aisle doing a CRA to turn back the rulemaking ability that is not lawmaking, as we are instructed to do in the Constitution as the legislative branch.

Mr. Speaker, in response to the actual RMPA that we are talking about, the CRA on it today, now is the time to unleash American energy. The Buffalo Field Office resource management plan would not only devastate Wyoming's energy workforce but it would raise prices nationwide.

We are in a competition. We are in a competition with China that certainly hasn't backed off on building coal-fired plants. As a matter of fact, they are building at a rate of about one every 2 or 3 days coming online because they know they need reliable energy. They need affordable energy. They need that to establish their manufacturing dominance and to beat us in the race for AI.

Mr. Speaker, we can't allow that to happen. Even though China produces twice as much electricity as we do today, we shouldn't discriminate against any energy source. We should try to produce as much energy as we can so that we can win in that competition.

By passing this CRA, we are restoring the BLM's multiple use and sustained yield mandate and preventing future administrations from locking up America's natural resources. The era of curtailing multiple uses of our Federal lands hopefully is over. It is time to usher in a golden age of unleashing our energy and mineral resources.

Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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