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. VASQUEZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for the time.

Mr. Speaker, first, coming from New Mexico, let me tell you that I have gone through the RMP process firsthand in my own Las Cruces district, the TriCounty RMP, and those are long and painful processes. They take a lot of public input and a lot of painful meetings. Those plans are developed with the input from residents from all sides of the aisle who represent different parts of what are our public lands and that mandate to have multiple-use lands. They are not meant for just one industry. They are meant for everybody that uses those public lands.

When I served on the U.S. Federal committee to advise the Forest Service, we got all of these stakeholders together to implement the 2012 planning rule, and it was the same deal. We did it deliberately. We did it with all stakeholders at the table. These RMPs are actually developed with public input from every community, not from one single stakeholder group. That is the painful process that it takes to update these plans, many of which haven't been updated since the 1980s.

It is important that we take into account the time and effort of not just the agency staff and those folks who show up to those hard meetings and hear the public out, but the public who comes out, in my district sometimes driving 30, 40, 50 miles, just to attend one of those meetings so that they can eventually get to an RPM, knowing that that will be the law of the land.

Today, I rise in opposition to all the CRAs, but in particular, I want to talk about one very special place.

In 2017, when the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's Coastal Plain was first officially opened to drilling, supporters promised that the sale would raise significant revenue. Instead, only three bidders emerged. The first mandated lease sale brought in less than 1 percent of the $2.2 billion that Congress was told to expect, less than 1 percent. That burdened taxpayers with an additional $2 billion in national debt.

Why? Well, because the Arctic is one of the most expensive places on Earth to drill, and investors in the oil industry know this. In fact, BP and Shell already abandoned their Arctic proposals, even paying to exit those leases. Financing has dried up completely, with nearly every major U.S. bank and 20 global insurance companies having publicly pledged not to finance Arctic drilling projects. Yet, here we are.

The Coastal Plain is too remote, too costly, and too risky to make drilling financially feasible, especially when we already produce record oil and gas volumes elsewhere at a far lower cost to taxpayers, including in my district, the Permian Basin.

Let's be clear, Arctic drilling will not lower gas prices. With no existing roads, pipelines, or infrastructure, any Arctic oil would take years to reach the market, if it ever does.

I know this myself because this is a picture from when I was in the Arctic.

This is also a question of what we value. The Arctic refuge is the only national wildlife refuge that protects a complete Arctic ecosystem. It is called the crown jewel of our public lands, and it is called that for a reason. I saw why firsthand when I was there last summer.

This special place offers unmatched, truly wild fishing and hunting opportunities for all Americans. When you catch your first Arctic char in the Canning River on the Coastal Plain, it is a moment you will never forget as an American. These lands have provided sustenance to the Gwich'in and the Inupiat peoples for millennia.

The bottom line, setting the unique wildlife and recreation values of America's Arctic aside, using the CRA to overturn land management plans is bad policy, bad economics, and bad land management. Truly, it is a disrespect to the constituents who showed up to those meetings to create that RPM in the first place, year over year over year.

By treating every resource management plan as a rule that is subject to the CRA, Congress is throwing the legal status of every oil and gas lease, every grazing permit, and recreational activity across the West into question.

I ask my Republican colleagues: Why pursue the CRA process when this administration has already revised the plan in question? They have already opened up the Coastal Plain, so why do this?

We should vote ``no,'' not to score a political point, but because this proposal simply doesn't make sense and won't work.

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