Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009
Floor Speech
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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I would like to talk a minute, if I could, on my amendment.
Imagine you run a small company, a small, independent oil-and-gas operation in Wyoming, and you have about a dozen people you employ--people who are getting good benefits, people who have health insurance, people who have retirement benefits--and you are applying for a permit to explore for energy. As a result, people are going to be put to work, your business is going to grow, and the economy of your community is going to prosper.
Well, the success of your business strategy relies on the Government, unfortunately. It relies on the Government to process your application and to provide you with a response--is it OK to explore or is it not OK? The law says the Government has to let you know in 30 days up or down, yes or no, is it OK. Well, you have 30 days to get geared up. You are waiting for your response.
Now, Mr. President, when you put in that application, you also had to send in $4,000--$4,000 for each well. So if you are applying to do 10, that is $40,000, but you know you are going to get your response in 30 days. Well, the calendar proceeds and the clock winds down and you begin checking your mail every day. Nothing arrives. Each day for 30 days you check your mail. Nothing. You have called the agency but no permit. They say they are deferring a decision. Another 30 days passes. Nothing. You wait another 90 days and still no permit. You have paid your $4,000 but no permit.
Half a year has passed--as has happened to many people in Wyoming--and what do you have? Nothing. You have sent in $4,000, you have waited 6 months, the Government has promised you an answer in 30 days, and you have nothing--not a yes, not a no, nothing.
That is the situation that small business owners in my State are facing every day. It is a sad state of affairs when the Government can't meet its own deadline.
Meanwhile, the backlog of these permits at the Bureau of Land Management continues to grow. As of February 14 of this year, in the field office in Buffalo, WY, Johnson County, the Bureau of Land Management has over 2,600 applications for permits that are still pending--2,609 permits still pending. For those applications in Buffalo, WY, Washington has collected $4,000 per permit. That is over $10 million. The energy producers in Wyoming continue to wait for an answer.
America's independent producers drill and manage 90 percent of America's wells. They produce 82 percent of America's natural gas and 62 percent of American oil. There are approximately 5,000 of these independent producers in the United States, and on average they have about a dozen employees. These are small businesses. These small business men and women create jobs in the United States. These folks are entrepreneurs whose hard work and innovative skills are integral to meeting our Nation's energy needs.
The fees to apply for a permit place an especially heavy burden on small independent producers without any tangible benefit whatsoever. Congress should be focused on promoting job growth not on imposing additional fees on U.S. energy investment and production. Unfortunately, the fee is just the beginning of what these independent producers are facing. The administration has already moved to restrict oil-and-gas exploration and development in the United States. The administration is proposing more fees, more taxes, and more restrictions on these activities. None of this will make the United States more energy independent. None of the administration's proposals will make the Federal Government operate more efficiently.
I have talked to a number of these folks who are in this business, and they tell me if the money that was collected from this application fee--this $4,000 per permit--were actually used to hire more people to help process the permits, then they could actually understand there is some purpose in this fee, that it is being used to help with studying this, looking at this, getting more people to work through these 2,600 applications for permits, for which they still have no answer.
Unfortunately, that is still not the case. The fee doesn't go to the Bureau of Land Management to reduce the permit backlog. It doesn't go to hire more people to look at these permits, to say if we should give them a yes or a no.
At the very least, all of the revenue should be spent on reducing this permit backlog so that the Government can keep its word to let people know in 30 days yes or no, up or down. Instead, this money is going into the Washington black hole.
So I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. We should not be rewarding the inefficiency of Washington and the way this Government is currently working.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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