House Republicans Stonewall Opposition To Their Radically Anti-Public Lands Budget Bill
Congressman Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) called the GOP proposal “an environmental wrecking ball” and said Americans “will see this as the betrayal that it is.”
House Republicans appeared poised Tuesday to advance an unprecedented dismantling of public land protections that would vastly increase energy and timber production while weakening conservation measures, rescinding already-allocated agency funding and blunting critics’ ability to challenge faster-moving lease sales in court.
The sweeping rewrite of American federal land policies is included in the House Natural Resources Committee’s portion of the budget reconciliation bill, which the committee marked up at a lengthy hearing on Tuesday. The Republican majority repeatedly batted away attempts to amend what Rep. Jared Huffman (Calif.), the committee’s ranking Democrat, called “the most extreme anti-environment bill in American history.”
The 100-page bill would rescind funding from the Inflation Reduction Act for federal agencies like the National Park Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration, and the U.S. Forest Service, while turbocharging public land leasing for minerals, coal, and oil and gas projects — including on some lands that secured protections after protracted political fights. The bill mandates both the USFS and the Bureau of Land Management to boost timber production by 25 percent and would slash the royalty rates that coal, oil and gas companies pay to extract resources from federal lands.
And in many cases the budget bill strips away the judicial review process that would allow critics to challenge many of those changes in court, while handing lease applicants the ability to sue government agencies for moving too slowly to advance their projects.
Sitting beside a sign with a picture of President Donald Trump that read “WRECK-ONCILIATION,” Huffman condemned the Republican proposal as a “massive giveaway” to rich, special interests, full of “indefensible” proposals that the majority of Americans “hate.” He argued the bill is not only “an environmental wrecking ball” but “a reckless fiscal boondoggle on ketamine,” and warned Americans “will see this as the betrayal that it is.”
"It's not about deficit reduction, it's about powerful groups that fund GOP campaigns and they have decided this is the moment to strike,” he said.
Republicans on the committee described the bill as the fulfillment of a mandate they say voters gave the GOP when they elected Trump and other Republicans in November, including to achieve “energy dominance” and rein in the national debt.
“It’s time to get our fiscal house in order,” Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), the committee’s chairman, said Tuesday. “House Republicans have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver on President Trump’s agenda by passing a reconciliation bill that unleashes the full power of American energy and innovation, builds upon Tax Cuts and Jobs Act tax cuts to grow our economy and set our nation on a more responsible fiscal path into the future.”
The reconciliation process allows Republicans to pass budgetary legislation without a single Democratic vote. On Tuesday, GOP lawmakers on the committee killed amendment after amendment introduced by Democrats, including those to block the bill’s mandates for oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and mining development adjacent to Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Republicans largely steered clear of debating any proposed amendments, despite Democrats repeatedly prodding them to engage. At one point, Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.) dubbed Republicans the “robot caucus.” At another, someone played the sound of crickets as Republicans sat in silence after being asked a direct question.
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) questioned whether GOP leadership put party members under a gag order.
“Why are you here?” Neguse asked. “Why attend this hearing, just to sit here for 10 hours and say nothing? This is what your constituents pay you for? Why not defend your values? Defend the provisions in this reconciliation bill?
When Westerman finally did weigh in on an amendment, it was only to dismiss Democrats’ dozens of amendments as “primarily designed to undermine the reconciliation process.”