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
Mr. Speaker, I wish Chairman Westerman a happy birthday, but even that goodwill does not change the fact that this is bad legislation. So, unfortunately, I am going to have to rise in opposition to the bill while wishing the gentleman a happy birthday.
Mr. Speaker, we are all grateful that the Republican shutdown is finally over, but millions of Americans are still on the cusp of losing healthcare. They are struggling to put food on the table. After their 7-week paid vacation, I can't imagine anything more disconnected than for House Republicans to come back here and make their first priority not helping working families to make ends meet but jamming through more favors for their billionaire buddies.
These three Congressional Review Act, or CRA, resolutions treat America's public lands like they are just lines on a balance sheet. They silence public opinion, ignore the fires and storms that are made worse by climate change to make fossil fuel extraction the number one priority going forward for how we manage our public lands. Wildfire defense, public safety, recreation, and conservation all take a backseat now to maximizing corporate profits, even in our most fragile landscapes like America's Arctic.
Americans want clean air, clean water, and accessible public lands, not handouts to polluters. Overturning balanced, forward-looking BLM plans in Wyoming and Alaska is a colossal mistake.
Across the Federal land management agencies, plans like these are the foundation for responsible, sustainable management of our public lands. RMPs are the product of extensive public input, rigorous scientific reviews, and meaningful Tribal consultation. Balancing the activities on our public lands from energy development to recreation is what these plans do.
They reflect the needs of communities, industries, and ecosystems. They outline a clear vision for the stewardship of millions of acres of public lands.
Let's look at the Buffalo Field Office RMP targeted by this particular resolution. It was developed after a court found that the previous plan failed to address the public health and climate impacts of unfettered coal mining in the region. Importantly, the current RMP was also developed after robust Tribal consultation and public input. Are we just going to throw that all away?
Mr. Speaker, I strongly oppose H.J. Res. 130, which would repeal the current balanced RMP for BLM's Buffalo Field Office in order to prop up the coal industry in Wyoming's Powder River Valley. The plan targeted by this resolution ended new coal leasing in the region because of its harm to the climate and public health and because of decreasing demand for coal.
At the same time, the plan allowed existing mines to continue to operate through the end of their current leases. Rescinding this plan means locking us into unnecessary emissions and energy costs at a time when the planet and the American people cannot afford it. It also puts us on a treadmill of litigation and uncertainty, sending us back theoretically to a plan that was already adjudicated to be illegal. Maybe Republicans are waiting for a new plan to come forward from the Trump administration, I guess, hoping that a future court will decide that it is not substantially similar to the ones that have been thrown out with your CRA. This is something that my friends across the aisle simply haven't thought through. There is so much chaos and uncertainty when the sledgehammer of the CRA is used in this reckless manner.
House Republicans already passed, and the administration implemented, unprecedented giveaways to the coal industry through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including slashing the royalty rates for coal from 12 percent to 7.5 percent and opening more than 13 million acres of public lands for coal leasing.
Yet, even with these handouts, it is not enough to reverse decades of market contraction in the coal industry. The coal industry is dying. What Republicans don't mention is that BLM's coal lease sales this year have either failed to reach market value, been indefinitely canceled, or received little to no bids.
Rather than simply redoing this RMP through the well-established public process, which the Trump administration is already doing, House Republicans want to overturn it using the CRA, again an extremely blunt instrument, that will throw us into great uncertainty and litigation for sure.
This choice would lock out the perspective from previous Tribal and public engagement and ban the agency from ever again issuing a substantially similar RMP, leaving land policy frozen in time and frozen in some kind of a limbo with incredible uncertainty and chaos.
House Republicans want to permanently enshrine fossil fuel extraction as the top priority for millions of acres of public land across the country, no matter the cost. They are picking winners and losers here, blocking affordable renewable energy projects, and sacrificing our public lands in the process.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reject these reckless resolutions that would upend millions of acres of public land management and reject this entire familiar playbook from congressional Republicans.
They are trying to deepen our dependence on dirty fossil fuels that pollute our air, contaminate our water, and harm the public health while doing everything possible to slow, stop, or sabotage the development of affordable renewable energy. Our constituents deserve a lot better than this. We deserve clean, affordable, and reliable energy. We deserve good-paying jobs and affordable healthcare. We shouldn't sacrifice America's health, environment, and livelihoods in order to do it.
This legislation and my friends across the aisle are on the wrong side of history trying to prop up the dying coal industry. They are on the wrong side of public land management. They are on the wrong side of the American people's pocketbooks as they face rising electricity costs.
Mr. Speaker, that is why I oppose this resolution, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, it occurs to me that as we are having this debate, pretty much the rest of the world is in Brazil right now for the climate conference. Of course, the Trump administration has disgracefully pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement once again, and we have no Federal delegation at all.
As the rest of the world convenes to accept the reality of the climate crisis and to accept the related reality of coal being the biggest contributor to carbon pollution, and the entire world is talking about how to phase down our dependence on coal pollution and fossil fuel pollution, we are here in this alternate reality of the Republican majority, where my colleague from Wyoming calls it climate lunacy.
It is a sad, sad testament to, frankly, the disgraceful leadership of this Republican majority that propping up the coal industry with discounted royalties, massive subsidies, millions of acres of land giveaways, and now this misuse of the Congressional Review Act is the official policy of the Republican majority. It is just almost unthinkable, yet that is where we are.
Mr. Speaker, it is a little bit rich to hear all of this concern about jobs and the poor electrician who is going to lose a job and to hear all of this concern about the energy that we desperately need to meet projected demand increase.
What we are really hearing across the aisle is a very selective concern about some jobs and about some types of energy. At the same time as we are having this debate about a desperate scheme to try to prop up the dying coal industry, not just with this CRA but with the discounted royalties, the massive public land giveaways, and all of the other favors that have been doled out to this industry, the Trump administration is trying in every way it can to kill off the clean energy industry, which generates far more jobs than coal. Far more people stand to lose their jobs, far more electricians, like the one my friend was just so concerned about a moment ago, stand to lose their jobs because of this war on clean energy that my friends across the aisle are just fine with.
Now, Chairman Westerman said we need all types of new energy. I guess we will have a chance this week to find out if that, too, is just more happy talk, more hollow words because there will be a markup on his legislation on permitting. Democrats have been asking for meaningful changes to this war on clean energy as the first item to have a serious negotiation and discussion about. We will find out.
I hope that Mr. Westerman delivers on his promise to work in good faith with Democrats and to do something about the war on clean energy. Unless and until he does and unless and until my colleagues across the aisle stop pretending that an entire industry with far more jobs than coal and far more energy that can be brought to bear to meet rising demand at far less cost, until they stop pretending that that war on clean energy is not happening, all of this, frankly, is just political theater.
Mr. Speaker, to the point about the so-called viability of coal, let's just zoom in on the coal industry in the Powder River Basin, the very place that would be impacted by this CRA. On October 6, the Bureau of Land Management held a lease sale for 167 million tons of coal on public lands on the Montana side of this specific basin. The BLM received one bid that valued each ton of coal at one-tenth of one penny.
The administration rejected that bid and canceled the lease sale because that abysmal price did not meet the requirements of fair market value outlined in the Mineral Leasing Act. That is the reason that the BLM came together to finalize the Buffalo Field Office RMP amendment, to address decreasing demand for coal, which is both the dirtiest and the most expensive form of energy.
House Republicans would give away our public lands and waters to big coal for pennies, fractions of pennies. The coin that they are phasing out as practically worthless is about as valuable as the coal they are trying to subsidize.
This resolution will do nothing to address skyrocketing energy bills in Wyoming or anywhere else. A conservative former Wyoming State representative recently penned an op-ed that really speaks to what is happening on the ground: ``We need responsible legislators, who do not rely on wishful thinking, to make long-term policy decisions.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I strongly oppose this resolution.
Using the CRA to overturn this RMP and the others that we are debating this week will throw our public lands into chaos. It completely sidelines the input and perspectives of local communities that have spent years working with BLM on this plan. It is another reckless attempt to prop up the fossil fuel industry and line the pockets of polluters, all at the expense of affordable energy and good- paying jobs.
The Buffalo Field Office RMP allows existing coal leases to continue with reasonable safeguards to reduce emissions and protect land and water. Congress should not be overturning this plan with the sledgehammer of the CRA.
I strongly urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the resolution. I urge my Republican colleagues to think twice about the consequences of this action and setting this chaotic precedent.
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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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