Critical Mineral Dominance Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 4090, a bill that hands the mining industry, amazingly, the power to gut its own regulations while doing nothing to secure American mineral supply chains or help make life more affordable for the American people.

It is more of the same from House Republicans and this administration, more favors for their billionaire buddies, and more ways to enrich themselves all at the expense of the American people, who are struggling.

If we asked everyday Americans right now to list 100 things that you care about that you want Congress to be working on to make your life better, I promise you that giving more sweetheart deals to multinational mining corporations would not be anywhere on that list. I can think of a thousand better ways to spend our time than debating this bill on the House floor. We could be reining in the out-of-control agency ICE, which is terrorizing communities around the country and murdering people in the streets.

We should be addressing skyrocketing healthcare costs, which our Republican colleagues seem to have forgotten entirely about. We could be talking about how to lower energy prices, including the skyrocketing utility bills caused by Donald Trump's crazy war on clean energy, but no. We are back here, once again, talking about deregulation designed for and by the mining industry.

H.R. 4090 would codify parts of President Trump's executive orders on mining. I will say that we can agree on many of the bill's stated goals: creating good jobs, strengthening our supply chains, reducing the global influence of our adversaries, and safeguarding national security.

The stated goals are one thing. Then there is what actually is in the bill, what the bill does, and that is quite another thing.

We should not confuse the mining industry's best interests with the public interest. This bill would direct the Interior Secretary to take all necessary steps to expedite and approve certain priority projects with no restrictions on who operates the projects, what they mine, or where.

There is nothing to stop this administration right now from prioritizing mines owned and controlled by our foreign adversaries. That loophole, that glaring problem, that national security threat, is not corrected at all in this bill. There is nothing to require a focus on minerals actually needed for clean energy and national defense. There is nothing to prevent the administration from approving mines on sensitive public lands or even in our national parks. These are all simple safeguards that, for some reason, are not in this legislation. That is ripe for abuse and misuse of our public resources when you advance a bill like this.

In prioritizing lands for mining, the bill makes no mention of minimizing conflict with neighboring communities, like Tribes, or protecting other important natural resources and uses of public lands like logging, grazing, and recreation. The bill also looks to the mining industry itself for direction on which regulations to roll back, and again, no public input and no Tribal consultation.

My colleagues across the aisle often tout the United States' environmental and labor protections as the best in the world, but as protections are eroded in favor of polluters over people, who is to say that basic protections for drinking water and worker safety aren't the next targets?

Mr. Speaker, our environmental laws have reined in the industry's worst pollution and abuses, but regulations being successful doesn't mean that we no longer need them. Nothing in this bill guarantees that minerals mined here will stay here or benefit Americans.

Time and again, we have suggested guardrails that could be put in place, into bills like this, to make sure that foreign adversaries don't end up taking advantage of all of these corporate giveaways that our Republican friends keep putting on the table. It ensures that they don't come here and, practically for free, extract our publicly owned natural resources and take them to other parts of the world and use them in ways that are not in our interests. We keep offering these guardrails. Our Republican colleagues keep saying no.

Under the General Mining Act of 1872, anyone, including subsidiaries of foreign adversaries, can claim our publicly owned materials, mine them for free, ship them abroad into the global market, and do nothing to help the interests of the United States of America.

Time and again, we have raised this glaring vulnerability with legitimate solutions on the table to address it, and our Republican friends refuse to work with us.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose H.R. 4090, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, there we have it, and I am sure not for the last time in this conversation. The risk of terrible environmental harm by this huge corporate giveaway is nothing to worry about because we have NEPA. We have the Clean Water Act. We have the Environmental Protection Agency. We have all of these environmental safeguards, every one of which is under withering attack from the same colleagues across the aisle who are moving bills like this and from this administration.

This is across the board. There is legislation to gut all of these bedrock environmental laws. There are actions by this administration and litigation moving forward from the industry.

Mr. Speaker, it is cold comfort indeed. I am, frankly, shocked that anyone across the aisle could even say these things with a straight face and point to our bedrock environmental laws as an assurance that nothing will go wrong for the environment, our public lands, our natural resources, Tribes, and others who are worried about this corporate giveaway.

Mr. Speaker, there they go again. For the second time, we hear references to NEPA, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the bedrock environmental laws, that they will protect us from all of these terrible scenarios that they say Democrats are raising as scare tactics.

I just can't think of anything less persuasive than hearing that kind of cold comfort from the very folks who are attacking every one of those bedrock environmental laws with other legislation and through administrative actions by this President and in the courts. It is remarkably hypocritical and certainly not very persuasive.

Now, when we think about this mining free-for-all that our Republican friends are trying to create with this legislation, we are not having this conversation in a vacuum. We have to think about who benefits.

Just 2 weeks ago, the Trump administration announced that it would invest over a billion dollars and take an equity stake in USA Rare Earth, a mining and manufacturing company. So much for concerns about socialism. Reporting uncovered that USA Rare Earth hired Cantor Fitzgerald to help with fundraising, a firm chaired by Brandon Lutnick. If that sounds familiar, it is because he is the son of Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick.

In October, the Trump administration announced equity investments in the mining company Trilogy Metals, while simultaneously directing agencies to fast-track permitting for Ambler Road, the controversial project needed to access Trilogy Metals' proposed mine site. Trilogy Metals' third largest shareholder is John Alfred Paulson, a Trump mega donor and an economic adviser. His Trilogy shares increased by $70 million in value after that announcement.

It is a similar story for Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who personally sold shares worth between $50,000 and $100,000 in the mining company MP Materials following a July announcement of one of these lucrative equity deals.

The administration is making a pattern out of picking winners and losers in the mining industry, and a suspicious number of those winners have close ties to Trump officials or Trump family members. This is an incredible grift that our friends across the aisle are playing into.

These deals tie taxpayer dollars to corporate balance sheets and incentivize administration officials to prioritize individual corporate interests over the broader public good.

Earlier this week, myself, Ranking Member Robert Garcia of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Ranking Member Martin Heinrich of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources sent a joint letter to the administration, demanding answers on Trump's taxpayer-funded mining spending spree.

To date, there has been no public disclosure of procedures or safeguards in place to ensure these ownership stakes do not influence permitting decisions, regulation, enforcement, contracting decisions, or other agency decisions relating to these mining and mineral projects. Before we give this administration even more power to enrich themselves and their friends at the expense of everyday Americans, let's get some answers to these basic questions.

Now, with that, Mr. Speaker, a lot has been said about China, the boogeyman of China, our adversary on the global stage. Yet, we have a bill before us that, my guess is, the People's Republic of China would absolutely love. Here to tell us more about that is the gentlewoman from New Mexico.

Leger Fernandez).

Ms. LEGER FERNANDEZ. Mr. Speaker, we keep hearing from the other side that we need to mine in America, and we just heard the ranking member talk about how if we are going to mine in America, if we are going to mine anywhere, we should make sure that it is done free of corruption. He didn't use that word, but that is the word that we are worried about.

What I am going to talk about today is that we should make sure where those minerals are going if we are mining in America. That is the question I keep asking: Where are they going? The reality is, because they keep refusing amendments that I bring up, those minerals are going overseas, and those minerals are going to China.

Under our outdated mining laws, a foreign corporation can set up a shell company to stake a claim. Guess what. They get U.S. minerals for free, zero royalty.

The Critical Mineral Dominance Act--these titles they have are always the opposite of what they do--this act that they are trying to sell the American people today, is yet another handout to multinational mining companies that will do nothing to stop our adversaries from shipping our publicly owned critical minerals overseas.

Mr. Speaker, at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to committee. If the House rules permitted, I would have offered the motion with an amendment to prevent Federal agencies from fast-tracking and approving mining projects if they are at least 10 percent owned or controlled by a foreign adversary like China.

In a hearing last year, I described legislation similar to what I am proposing to Trump's Secretary of the Interior Burgum. His response: ``I don't think we should be allowing foreign adversaries to mine critical minerals in our country.''

Sadly, Republicans must disagree with Secretary Burgum because they keep opposing every one of my amendments to protect American minerals from foreign adversaries.

With every rejection, they are telling the American people that they care more about big international mining corporations than they care about you, about your clean water, about your working conditions.

This bill would allow our adversaries to fast-track permitting, and the people who pay for that are United States citizens who those regulations are meant to protect.

It doesn't make any sense, except, as I mentioned earlier, that Republican bill titles are always the opposite of what the text says. This bill doesn't give the United States dominance. It opens the door for foreign ownership of our critical minerals.

Republicans always seem to stand with the richest corporations instead of Americans.

Mr. Speaker, if my friend from Minnesota actually heard us say the things that he just says he heard in his own mind, I am genuinely worried that we need to get an audiologist in here. I am glad that we have a court reporter and that we have a video record because we said nothing of the kind.

My friend, Mr. Westerman, did say something very important. I don't know if this was his intent, but he sort of made one of our points for us. We cannot mine our way to security with brute force because China controls 80 percent of the world's processing power and nearly 90 percent for rare earth elements. If our only solution is to just have more and more mines and to open up this mining free-for-all in the United States, as Republicans seem singularly focused on, we are essentially giving a gift to our largest adversary.

Let me tell you what this bill does to address the lack of processing capacity here in the United States--or anywhere outside of China-- nothing, absolutely nothing. That is what it has been throughout this Congress from our friends across the aisle--crickets about addressing the real problem when it comes to our competitive threat of China on processing but a rush to open up our public lands and gut our environmental laws for the mining interests.

Setting up a safe, environmentally sound processing industry in the United States and with our allies does have some barriers right now, but rarely is the lack of raw mine materials one of those barriers.

Take copper and lithium, for example. The Bipartisan Policy Center published a report last year that found that sourcing feedstock domestically or from free trade agreement countries was not a primary barrier to processing.

Much bigger barriers are competition for labor and a lack of price competitiveness, which are major barriers across the board. For some of the other essential minerals like cobalt, nickel, and rare earths, while feedstock is a challenge, it certainly isn't the only one. It is naive to think that fast-tracking mines alone will secure our supply chains and fix these problems.

Instead, we should support a responsible processing strategy, build a more circular economy, and innovate around low-impact mineral sources, like byproduct recovery from mine tailings and recycling, as Mr. Tonko from New York talked about a moment ago.

We need to train the highly skilled American workforce that we need to do all of these jobs. These are things that we need to be working together on. Instead, it is always a rush to open up public lands and give more corporate giveaways for mines.

It has been suggested that there is some sort of a spiteful agenda behind all this, a NIMBY interest where some States allow oil and gas extraction but they don't want it done in Minnesota and other places.

Leger Fernandez) to speak about some of those accusations that have been made.

Ms. LEGER FERNANDEZ. Mr. Speaker, I came to the floor to offer an amendment so that we could prevent our foreign adversaries from mining American resources for free and taking them across the ocean to their lands. When we let our foreign adversaries take our resources away for free, it doesn't do any good for American dominance or for American taxpayers.

My opponents in this argument have decided to attack New Mexico's oil and gas and mining interests. Let me remind the gentleman that in New Mexico--and I am pleased that in New Mexico we have a lot of oil and gas production, including in my district--we have wind and solar production, including in my district; we have mining, including in my district, but we do it with sensible regulation so that our clean water and air and the economic interest of our citizens are protected.

What I am suggesting to him is that the environmental protections that we have in New Mexico apply across the country because there was a time when it wasn't like that.

That is because there was a time when it wasn't like that. I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that in my backyard, where I played, where I drank water, and where we fished as children, those waters were destroyed by mining. That was because there wasn't enough regulation.

Guess who had to clean up that mining? It was taxpayers, taxpayers in the State, and not so much the Federal Government.

What we are trying to do is protect the taxpayers from these mining companies that will put profit above planet and will put profit above the interests of the communities that live there. It is because when they mined irresponsibly, they destroyed water and destroyed jobs.

Ms. LEGER FERNANDEZ. They destroyed things I care about. They destroyed fishing, and they destroyed farming. I am downstream. I own land. I own farmland that is downstream from those mining companies' destruction. I am trying to protect that. I am trying to protect everybody who relies on clean water, who is downstream from mining companies.

Mr. Speaker, let me tell you, there are 50 million gallons a day of contaminated water that is put into our groundwater and our streams from mines that didn't have regulation. That is what we are trying to do, to avoid an increase in that 50 million gallons a day of dirty water.

We cannot afford to destroy our water. We cannot afford to fast-track mining companies that aren't going to do the right thing by the American people. We cannot afford to send our resources overseas to China.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I oppose H.R. 4090 for all the reasons that have been discussed.

This is a bill that directs the administration to prioritize and approve mines, any mines that it wants, even ones owned by foreign adversaries, giving them an expedited path to mine our publicly owned minerals and to export them, usually straight to China.

The Republicans have named it the Critical Mineral Dominance Act, but they forgot to make sure that it was America that would benefit. Democrats have tried again and again to add commonsense guardrails to stop foreign adversaries from benefiting from our minerals. Republicans have repeatedly blocked these efforts with creative new excuses every time.

Let's drop the facade. This bill is not about American mineral dominance. It is not about critical minerals, either, because nothing in this bill limits the special treatment to strategically important minerals. Nothing in this bill would stop the administration from declaring a gold mine a priority and fast-tracking it. We have already seen them give millions of taxpayer dollars away to a gold mine in Nevada. Gold has never been critical, except when it comes to, I guess, decorating the White House.

This bill is an industry giveaway, pure and simple, and it leaves Americans footing the bill.

We have heard a lot of passionate talk from across the aisle about mining more here in America because we do it best and because we have such strong environmental and labor safeguards. However, this bill tells the Interior Department and the Forest Service to roll back those very regulations that my colleagues brag about and to go ahead and weaken pollution protections if the mining industry thinks they are too ``burdensome.''

Communities around the country know the consequences of unregulated mining all too well, especially Tribal communities who have borne much of the brunt of mining pollution: toxic waste, poisoned land, polluted water, and generations of pollution and disease.

Is this what it means to Make America Great Again? I think we can do a lot better than that. Democrats are willing to work to find responsible, strategic solutions to securing our critical mineral supply chains, but this bill takes us in the wrong direction, creating an industry-led free-for-all that allows anyone to mine our minerals, profit from them on the global market, and then leave Americans with nothing but the pollution.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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