Budget Hearing – Department of the Interior

Committee will come to order. Uh this afternoon I would like to welcome Secretary of Interior, Doug Burgum. Uh while it doesn't look like many people are here yet, uh this is a fly-in day and most people will be coming in during uh the fly-in. We generally don't do mark-ups on uh fly-in day but uh

Fly-in.

it's important that we get these uh these hearings done so I'd also like to welcome and thank Congressman Cole for joining us today in his role as full committee chair. Chairman C- Chairman Cole is the first Native American to ever chair the Appropriations Committee and continues to be a champion for Indian country, and a great supporter of this subcommittee. I'd also like to to uh welcome ranking member Rosa Delora, a good friend of all of ours that's been a supporter of this committee, and and I'm glad to have her here today. Uh, Mister Secretary, it's a pleasure to see you again for this subcommittee - before this subcommittee. You and I had a to meet recently and I enjoyed hearing about your first year as secretary of interior and about your continued commitment to improving the department in service to the American people. Our hearing today will address your fiscal year twenty twenty-seven budget priorities for the department of interior and provide you with an opportunity to share some accomplishments and outline your goals for the for this coming fiscal year. I look forward to hearing more about your work on reshaping the agency with a focus on producing domestic energy, securing critical minerals and promoting and expanding recreational and commercial access to healthy and productive public lands. And to hearing more about ways in which we can continue to prioritize prioritize our treaty and trust obligations throughout Indian country. For fiscal year twenty twenty seven, the President's budget requests roughly fifteen billion for the Department of Interior programs under this subcommittee's jurisdiction. Today's discussion helps inform our budget review process. It helps us gain fuller understanding of your priorities and the vision for the future of the department and for us to share our priorities, and grapple with areas where we may disagree. One of the priorities of this subcommittee, under both Republican and Democratic leadership of is upholding and fulfilling our treaty and trust responsibilities. We look forward to continuing to work together to direct funding to tribes' greatest needs including health care education law enforcement, and community economic development. Finally, no discussion of this budget will be com-

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, and thank you, Mr. Secretary, I do really appreciate you being here today and thank you so much for your recent trip to Maine.

Yes.

I know it was greatly. appreciated by the parks, the tribes and others that you were able to meet with. But I have to say unfortunately after a year of observing this administration and its impact on our country I have some very deep concerns. The Department of the Interior is supposed to protect and manage our natural resources to uphold our trust and treaty obligations and to follow the science. Instead from my observation this administration is bending the department's mission to serve the interests of oil and gas companies. And the administration's policies are allowing unfettered consumption of natural resources in this country. We have seen that very clearly in the Gulf of Mexico, where last month the administration convened the so-called " God Squad" and approved an extraordinary exemption from the Endangered Species Act protections for offshore de- drilling. That decision would be alarming enough on its own, but it was even more disturbing because it came from an administration that seems determined to weaken every safeguard that stands in the way of industry profits. Speaking of those critical safeguards, sixteen years ago on this day, the Deepwater Horizon explosion killed eleven workers and devastated the Gulf with the largest and most destructive oil spill in America's history. In the wake of that disaster, investigation found investigations found that employees had inappropriately croat close ties to the oil and gas companies and the agency was then broken up. because the oversight model had failed so badly. Yet this budget proposes reviving that disgrace structure, potentially returning us to the days of corruption and a model that jeopardized worker safety and the environment. The administration has also taken dramatic steps to block renewable energy development, eliminating competition for oil and gas and reducing the amount of energy produced at a time when our country's overall energy needs are growing. Shortly after taking office, the White House moved quickly to halt offshore wind development and took sti- steps to rein in solar and wind projects. Why? Why are we knee-capping industries that create jobs, expand our energy supply, and help address the climate crisis? Because this administration's energy policy is based on political grievance, ideological hostility, and of course, propping up big oil and gas. Plus, we know Trump has I don't understand it, but a a vendetta against windmills. And the courts vacated the president's wind moratorium and stopped the president from blocking five current leases. The administration took the unprecedented step of spending nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money to coerce a private company into abandoning offshore wind projects. And now we know the administration's public justification for that deal does not hold up. Newly disclosed settlement terms show company was not required to make any new investment in American oil and gas production at all. Instead, it could simply claim credit for spending that it was already planning to make, including fossil fuel projects that had already moved forward. To make this deal even more stunning, the waste of the taxpayers' money is being used to reward a company for abandoning clean energy, while helping to prop up more oil and gas development at the very moment that families are getting hammered by high energy costs. Americans are struggling with high utility bills and higher gas prices. Yet this administration chose to spend nearly a billion dollars not to build affordable energy but to kill it. All of these dirty deals are to benefit the industry and it's at the expense of American people who are now paying an average of four dollars and four cents for a gallon of gas. According to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, gas prices could peak at four dollars and thirty-six cents a gallon. costing the average household seven hundred and forty dollars more for gas this year. So it makes no sense to me why this administration would be actively sabotaging renewable energy which we know is cheaper and more affordable of an energy option for families. To tell you the truth, this just makes me very angry. I don't even usually speak this long, but it makes me that angry. This administration's policies are causing an affordability crisis, and there seems to be a lack of focus on what the department's mission actually is. It seems to me that the White House has you distracted with duties unrelated to being secretary of the interior. For example, what does bringing back a case of gold from Venezuela have to do with the DOI's mission? Meanwhile, our national parks are falling apart, staff are stretched thin, and the budget proposes to further gut them with a two thirty-two percent cut. Science should be at the core of the department's management decisions, but this budget eviscerates the US Geolog- Geological Survey, a vital research agency, cutting its budget by sixty-six percent. And the budget abandons our trust and treaty obligations to Native Americans, slashing the Bureau of Indian Affairs by twenty-seven percent and the Indian and Indian education by thirty-two percent. I have been appalled to watch this administration decimate the staff at the department and it certainly looks as if it is trying to deliver the final blow with The department is on a dangerous course. This budget would only make the damage worse, and as the ranking member of the subcommittee, I will do everything in my power to oppose these reckless cuts and fight the administration's destructive policies. I hope you will put politics aside, listen to the serious concerns that will be raised here today, and please take immediate steps to pull this department back onto a safer and more responsible course. So thank you again for being here. I look forward to your answers to our questions and I yield back.

Thank you, ranking member Pingree. Uh, now I'd like to yield to the chairman of the full committee, Mister Cole.

Thank you very much, uh, Mister Chairman, Chairman Simpson, ranking member Pingree. I appreciate you holding this hearing and, uh, I wanna, uh, certainly, uh, uh, thank you, uh, again for, um, all the focus you have on this topic. Secretary Burgum, welcome, uh, and thank you for testifying before the subcommittee on the administration's budget proposal for the Department of Interior for fiscal year twenty twenty seven. Over the past year, this White House has worked with urgency to remake the federal bureaucracy and rebalance America's natural resource policies. Cutting red tape fuels opportunity and enhances our competitiveness. I believe in our ability to innovate and work together to achieve shared conservation goals while preserving the economic vitality of our communities. When we make the right strategic federal investments and govern effectively those resources pay dividends, in the form of stable economic growth and the creation of good paying jobs. Uh, to that end, Miss Secretary, I appreciate your efforts to implement strategic reforms at the Department of Interior. I look forward to hearing about what you have been able to accomplish and about your vision for the future of the agency as we begin the FY twenty-seven appropriations process informed by your experiences in your first year as secretary. You're doing important work. The department manages our beloved national parks and conserves our public lands to keep them healthy and productive for future generations. The agency plays a critical role in upholding the government's tribal trust and treaty responsibilities, work that is of the utmost importance to me personally and I know to each and every member of this subcommittee. It's imperative that those programs are supported by budget requests that reflect their importance and impact on native communities. Our trust and treaty uh obligations are national commitments to be honored. Tribes already do their best with limited resources, and further reductions in funding for services and self-governance have real and serious consequences in Indian country. That's why it's paramount that uh thorough and proper tribal consultations are conducted when changes to programs are proposed, it would impact the delivery of services. I look forward to hearing more about uh agency plans to support these programs, and improve efficiencies and upholding these sacred responsibilities. Thank you for being here today, Secretary Bergen. We will continue to work with you collaboratively on executing your agency's mission and ensuring constituent needs are met. With that, I yield back.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, now I'd like to yield to Ranking Member of the full Committee on Appropriations, Mr. Loro, for any opening remarks that she might have.

Thank you very much, uh, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, Pingree, for holding this hearing and, Mr. Secretary. Uh, thank you for being with us today and testifying and uh, looking forward to our questions and answers uh, with you. Uh, the American people sense that this administration is out of touch. While the cost of living continues to climb, while the price of gas, groceries, utilities and everyday goods goes up and up, this administration is asleep at the wheel. They do not have any idea of what the American people need or want. That disconnect between what the public wants and what the administration does is present in the proposed budget for the Department of Interior. Rather than address the problems that are actually impacting people's lives the Trump administration is proposing to slash billions of dollars across a range of programs that protect wildlife maintain public lands and promote clean energy programs that enjoy broad public support. The National Park Service is the most popular government agency in the United States. According to the Pew Research Center, seventy-six percent of Americans have a positive view of the agency. The public are rightly enamored of the natural beauty of our country, uh, and that our country is blessed with. They are overwhelmingly supportive of the good work that the National Park Service does to maintain and to protect our park lands. Yet, in their budget proposal, the Trump administration slashes funding for the National Park Service by more than one billion dollars. That includes a more than twenty-five percent, seven hundred and sixty million dollars as a cut to operations, a ninety-three percent cut to natural recreation and preservation, and a ninety-four percent cut to the historic preservation fund. These cuts will impact the public's access to our national parks, and negatively affect the visitor experience. Visitation is rising, but if these cuts are implemented, more and more people will arrive at our national parks, they will find them mismanaged, unsafe, shut down entirely due to lack of resources. As a result, people will be unable to fully experience the beauty that these parks have to offer, and public support for them uh will be put at risk. But I believe that is the goal of this administration, so that when they move to sell off more land to big corporations who want to drill for oil or cut for lumber or mine for coal, They will meet with weaker opposition and less of our public land will be preserved for public use. The president's budget request also proposes cutting the national wildlife refuge system by twenty percent, hampering conservation efforts, putting more species at risk, and eroding the overall quality of our environment. The administration proposes the outright eliminating all funding for renewable energy under the Interior Department. slowing our transition to a green energy economy, while global competitors like China race far ahead. In fact, we are seeing right now how vulnerable our continued reliance on fossil fuels makes us, as President Trump's war of choice with Iran devolves into a conflict over who controls the global supply of oil. Meanwhile, the American people are forced to shoulder the burden of a forty percent increase in gas prices so far, which President Trump admits will likely get worse. The Trump administration also proposes slashing funding for the US Geological Survey by thirty-seven percent. That weakens our ability to observe, to understand the impact that their dangerous policies are having on the environment. The future that this administration envis- visions with this budget proposal is one of fewer national parks, shrinking public lands, more extinct species, dirtier air and water, and higher profits for fossil fuel executives, who are the only people who stand to benefit from these disastrous cuts. I look forward to hearing, uh, Mister Secretary, your answers to our questions today and to hearing an explanation as to how decimating these agencies will help to solve any of the problems that the American people are facing. I thank you and I yield back.

Thank you, Ranking Member DeLauro, with that, Mister Secretary, you may proceed with your opening statement. Your full statement will be included in the record.

Thank you, Chairman, and, uh, Chairman Cole and Ranking Member DeLauro and Subcommittee Ranking Member, uh, Pingree, uh, and Subcommittee Chairman Simpson, uh, it's great to be with all of you today. and the distinguished members of this subcommittee. Thanks for the opportunity to testify today in support of the President's fiscal year, twenty twenty seven budget request for the Department of Interior to discuss uh what we're doing to make America safer, stronger, more beautiful and more prosperous. Interior's twenty twenty seven budget totals just over sixteen billion in current authority of which nearly fifteen billion is within the is within the jurisdiction of the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations subcommittee. The budget reflects President Trump's priority to pursue American energy dominance, uphold law and order, make federal lands safe and accessible for all Americans, all of which will make life more affordable for families across the country. The department touches the lives of millions of Americans. We manage America's vast energy supply and natural resources. We honor federal trust responsibilities and unique relationships with tribal nations. We deliver water to the west. We fight fires and force the law, and steward our treasured wildlife, refugees and national parks. Interior's efforts to expand across the country uh ensure border security and the safety of Indian country. Our law enforcement officers have removed illegal growing operations on public lands and have removed millions of dollars of opioids from our commitment communities including constipating thousands, tens of thousands of fentanyl pills. This broad portfolio uh is reflected as America's balance sheet. Uh, all of these assets are worth tens of trillions of dollars, uh, that should be responsibly managed, conserved, as, and as they were designed and designated in many cases since inception, should be put to use for the benefit of the American people. While prior administrations have handcuffed prosperity and locked Americans out of the land that belongs to them, the Trump administration is doing the opposite, unlocking access and prosperity through recreation and responsible use, including by our nation's hunters and anglers. This summer, we invite all Americans to share uh in the access they deserve as we celebrate our country's two hundred and fifty th anniversary. Interior is taking steps to recognize Americans' rich history and celebrate the bright future that is being built under President Trump's leadership. The twenty twenty-seven budget focuses on the continued beautification of interior's most used assets. To continue addressing deferred maintenance, the budget proposes a reauthorization of the great American Outdoors Legacy Restoration Fund, or LRF, for an additional five years. Uh, we certainly would appreciate this commi- subcommittee's support on that. Through the LRF, the department invests in properly maintaining assets and infrastructure, so visitors can continue to safely enjoy our national parks and public lands for years to come. This budget also includes, uh, several new proposals, including one, the Presidential Capital Stewardship Program that provides for priority construction and beautification projects in and around the nation's capital region to address years of neglect and inadequate maintenance. This program will support the President's Make America Beautiful Again projects, improve safety and accessibility, rehabilitate historic buildings and landscape, and enhance our architectural grandeur. The budget also includes an increase of over a hundred million dollars for the United States Park Police, which as you all know is a separate group from the park rangers uh that serve our national parks. Uh the US Park Police is the oldest federal law enforcement agency in the country, founded by George Washington in seventeen ninety-one. Uh and it's actively engaged in addressing the District Columbia's crime emergency. Under the president's leadership uh that it's enabled the US Park Police to expedite hiring of more than three hundred new officers to help keep America's capital and our national park lands here within the capital, safe and beautiful. The department is also focusing on making its operations more effective while reducing cost. The budget features three proposals, designed to improve efficiency while further, including a further strategic unification of the Forest Service wildland fire programs into the department's new U S wildland fire service. The budget consolidates uh the Endangered Species Act and the marine mammal Protection Act implementation responsibilities uh from NOAA to the Fish and Wildlife Service to reduce cost and streamline permitting for key facets of our economy. The budget also reunifies the departments to offshore minerals management bureaus into a single entity, the Marine Minerals Administration. Streamlining governments of offshore energy and mineral resources will deliver greater value to the American public and ensure the safe, expeditious and orderly development of the outer continental shelf energy and critical mineral resources. These unification efforts will make our work to manage fires, forests, wildlife and offshore resources faster, smarter and more effective. Uh, Interior is committed to increasing energy development on our public lands, uh, establishing our position as the dominant in crit- dom- as dominant in critical minerals, uh, releasing the stranglehold that China has on critical minerals over the US economy, and making sure that we've got the proper and secure supply chains, while protecting our economic and national security. The department has eliminated burdensome, redundant, ideological and counter-productive regulations that undermine efficient land management and economic development. We've restored access to the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. Uh, we held a record lease sale last month, which generated more than a hundred and sixty-three million for the treasury. and this will help capitalize on the country's vast and affordable energy resources. And in compliance with the Working Families Tax Cut Act, uh, we are scheduling and holding energy lease sales as required by law, and reducing royalty rates to increase supply and lower costs for Americans. The ongoing regulatory reform is of cutting red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy across a r- a range of industries, including energy development, coal and critical minerals mining, agriculture, ranching and logging logging that will unlock American prosperity, deliver better outcomes for American people and for our tribal nations, and secure financial returns on federally owned land and mineral interest. The department uh estimates that revenues in twenty twenty-seven will now exceed over twenty billion dollars which is more than offsetting the operational costs to run this department. The budget uh also advances key administration priorities, including upholding trust responsibilities in empowering Indian country, conserving America's wildlife and natural resources, and making public lands accessible to all Americans for hunting, fishing, recreational, and other uses. We are expanding efforts to cooperate with tribes and federal agencies to fulfill federal trust responsibilities by committing to open door engagement, transparency, and sustained communication with all five hundred and seventy-five federally recognized tribes. In twenty twenty seven the department will also continue its commitment to advancing tribal sovereignty, promoting economic opportunities, reducing the tremendous probate backlog that was inherited, and combating violent crime and the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous people. Millions of Americans visit interior managed lands each year, fueling a booming outdoor recreation economy, estimated at one point three trillion dollars, and supporting almost three percent of the jobs in America now in outdoor recreation. Building on on the hundreds of visitor facility improvement projects underway around the country that will be the focus of celebrating America's upcoming two hundred fiftieth anniversary. The budget focuses resources on visitor facing operations at parks, wildlife refuges and across public lands. This will help improve the visitor experience, drive tourism, create jobs and generate revenue for local entrance communities, all while promoting responsible stewardship of our natural resources. In closing, this budget is about putting America first in doing what's best for the American taxpayer. As Interior moves forward these initiatives, advance responsible resource management, economic prosperity, cultural preservation, and serving the interests of the American people in securing our country's fur- future. I appreciate the subcommittee's support for the department's mission, and I look forward to working closely with you to advance the President's priorities.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Uh, as I understand it, uh, Chairman Cole and Mr. Lora have other meetings that they have to get to subcommittee marks and stuff. So, I'm gonna call on them first. Mr. Cole?

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Uh, Mr. Secretary, in November, Department of Education announced that Interior would begin to take on a greater role in administering Indian education programs through an inter-agency agreement with uh the Department of Education while your agency begins to manage these new programs, I would strongly recommend, I'm sure you will, carrying out uh thorough tribal consultations to ensure that there are no funding award delays or program disruptions that would potentially harm. As you know, if that money doesn't arrive, literally, we've got got kids that uh are not gonna get the educational benefits they're entitled to. So given that, what resources is BIA receiving to support these additional programs which haven't had to do them uh in the past? And is there an adequate number of staff to efficiently administer these new programs? Uh, and are they receiving the training they might need?

I Thank you, uh, Chairman. Uh, the answer is, as part of that transfer there's four programs that are coming over from Department of Education to the Bureau of Indian Education. Uh, with that there's, uh, sift sixteen FTEs that are coming to help manage those. Uh, and I'm certain that as those uh people come some of those are actually the people that were doing it uh at at education they're being detailed over to bie so we should have both transfer of knowledge as well as transfer of programs to administer and keep those dollars flowing out to our our uh tribal communities

i appreciate that and i would just ask you keep us up to date as i go cuz it's a new function for you to do and uh but an important one uh when it comes to programs that serve indian country my focus is always on a approving service delivery. Can you give us some examples of how, in your view, uh, this initiative should enhance these programs for native youth and adults?

I, are you referring specifically to the Department of Education transfer?

Education, yeah.

Well, I think one, one of the reasons why they're, they selected those four programs, uh, cuz some of them are grant-based, is because of the existing systems that already exist within, within the Bureau of BINI BIA in terms of managing grants. uh, and doing all the appropriate uh consultation. So I think that it was a it was a nice fit, cuz it basically fits in with work that we're that we're already doing. So I think the team uh that I've met with at at BIA is is uh is I I would I would excited is probably too strong of a word, but they're they're definitely up to the task of receiving this uh uh this responsibility from the Department of Education.

OK, thank you. As we talked about briefly beforehand, Chickasaw National recreation area resides in my district in sulfur oklahoma the area was struck by a tornado in twenty twenty four leaving the community and the recreation area the park itself needing serious infrastructure uh and rebuild efforts a pivotal part of disaster recovery efforts is getting the engineering surveying construction contracts underway uh how's the the department doing in working to expedite these contracts so the rebuilding efforts can uh move ahead uh expeditiously.

Well, one of the things of course we're working on across the whole department is uh responsiveness uh you know think of it in terms of uh the private sector like customer service measures but you know when we've got a, when we have a, when we have a grant program, we've got dollars they have to get out the door, what can we do to make sure that we're building business processes to make sure we're following all the rules but still doing it quickly so we can have impact. I know in in the particular case of the recreation area you're talking about, I think there's uh uh re- recently there were some additional uh contracts uh I think may I'm just from memory I think maybe thirteen million dollars worth across four contracts that were being pushed out. Uh but you know these are things that we're taking we take a look at all these things, and we're saying how can we do this better, faster, more efficiently. I think one of the things that it speaks to is we've got really uh aging IT across a lot of these business processes and that's one thing we're taking a hard look at on how we can provide better tools and systems to be able to uh you know deploy the capital where it goes more quickly and more responsibly

uh again this is uh an area we touched on before but i think it's important to get in the record the staff that work at national parks and recreation areas play a huge role as you know in providing positive experience and safety for tourists and visitors many parks certainly including the one i represent Chickasaw National Recreation has struggled to hire uh essential permanent staff and i know you've implemented some reforms and changes to try and speed that up and give uh the local managers more flexibility i'd like you to talk a little bit about that.

well thank you yeah what we discovered this issue is like all over the country which is there's an opening and people are trying to hire then they would have to go through a a really burdensome federal hiring process it within the park service we'd have to post people would apply from all over the country uh there is you know ranking system of of you know who who who's eligible who's not uh meanwhile the folks in oklahoma have just got an empty position and maybe it takes six months to go through this process and then you get somebody hired and then they don't they can't find a place to live cause some of our national parks are you know housing is an issue then they all come to all of you and say we need tens of millions of dollars for housing i one of the things that came up you know through the ranks the front line says would you just allow us to hire people locally without going through the federal process if we can find someone who's qualified to do this job there already lives in an entrance community or nearby and we said great so we've established local hiring uh it's been in the last month it's been out there I was uh in four western states in the last two weeks all the superintendents I spoke to were thrilled about this because it solves a housing problem it speeds up hiring uh it gets someone who might live in the community and not transfer out they can be a long-term team member there uh in addition to that with the fifty five hundred summer hires which we posted last fall uh we were able to get a change those were always limited to not to exceed not to exceed six months we've got a change uh a waiver for this year not to exchange not to exceed nine months it'd be great if the appropriations subcommittee could make that permanent because that flexibility if uh someone needs to hire someone for seven months or eight months if the if the you know if a particular park you know the busiest season is you know fall leaf season in October November and then we have to get rid of staff in end of September because their six months is up even though they've been hired and trained and there and they'd like to keep working I mean giving the flexibility and if you take you know five thousand six monthers and turn them in and five thousand nine months or it's really giving you another twenty five hundred uh effectively it's like hiring seventy five hundred people for six months, same in terms of you know hours worked uh but you've got a you know you've got fewer people uh, the better trained can stay longer and then they can come become repeat summer hires. So we're making some common sense changes which we hope can help out on the, the local hiring, hiring and staffing.

I really wanna, uh, commend you for that effort. Uh, I mean, I think too often and this is probably true across the entire federal government, uh, we, we run these agencies, uh, to the convenience of the people that, that work in the agencies, not to the convenience of the people who are supposed to be served, and particularly don't think about the local impact, uh, uh of waiting for months as positions are filled as we wait for people to be picked someplace else to move so i think this is really a revolutionary uh change and one that has a lot of positive benefits so i just wanna publicly commend you for your efforts in this regard i think it's important to move in the right direction uh with that yield back Mr. Chairman

thank you Mr. Chairman Ms. DeLauro

thank you very much Mr. Chairman i just have a a quick note this was i was not gonna it's not part of my questioning but I worry about transferring uh the programs from education uh uh to uh to BIA. Quite honestly, BAI doesn't have a great track record and I don't know whether or not the funding that goes along with those uh programs is gonna come over to BIA, and I'm uh you know concerned that they will be uh that will - they will be short-changed. But um let me - it's - it's worth remembering that roughly this time last year the so-called Doge was running rampant across the federal government. Uh, just as Trump had taken office, uh, putting in proverbial gasoline on the fire, that is his cost of living crisis, with a chaotic tariff policy, uh, Musk and others were firing thousands of employees and rescinding job offers. National Park Service, NPS, was among the federal agencies that was hardest hit by this destruction. August, by August NPS had lost roughly a quarter of their staff. While some positions were reinstated by court orders, that found those actions to be unlawful. Many others retired earlier took buyouts. Um, pleased that the final fiscal year twenty twenty six agreement that we signed into law in January included three point three billion for the NPS, by which we rejected a proposed one point two billion dollar cut. Uh, and we did that in a bipartisan, bicameral manner. We also were able to put uh, uh, guardrails into the statute, including requiring NPS to hire and retain sufficient park staff to perform the agency's mission, to give Congress notice of any significant reorganization or mass firing efforts, given that another potential reduction in force could be catastrophic for park staffing. Um, what is the major reason Congress so roundly rejected the proposed cuts last year? Quite simply, Mr. Secretary, our national parks remain that extraordinarily popular. Many parks in the system saw record attendance in twenty twenty five. With the exception of twenty twenty, every year over the last decade, now ranks among the ten busiest years for the uh N NPS. So, disappointed to learn that for fiscal year twenty twenty seven, this administration is proposing to slash seven hundred and thirty six million dollars, roughly twenty percent from the NPS b- budget, more uh uh and and and uh more and that and that there's gonna be another round of buyouts, deferred resignations uh was offered to their employees, Can you tell us, does the department have targets for how many National Park Service staff it can lose to these buyouts? Isn't this just another way to preempt congressional action on this budget?

Uh, first of all, uh, well, thank thank you for the question, sir, and I know that this committee, uh, and like many Americans, cares deeply about the national parks, so there's no question that we're all, we all care deeply. I think there, if we can have a discussion about, um, about staffing, uh the first question we need to ask is uh not just how many people are in the national park staffing total but how many of those people actually work in a park. Turns out when we when we arrived last year uh when there had been uh a lot of hiring going on over the last four years people working remotely a lot of the, lot of the numbers that you see uh that you're that were they were they were not, they were not not only not working in a park we could even find out which park or national park historic site they were attached to. So the goal that we've had from the beginning is to get more people working in our parks. Last summer, in spite of everything that you've described in both your opening remarks and just now,

Mm-hmm.

we had parks last year that had, including some of our biggest, like Yellowstone, where we had more people in the parks last summer than we'd had for years,

Mm-hmm.

because we were focusing on filling the roles that were citizen-facing roles. That still is our thing. We need less people at districts, regions, uh, service centers, headquarters, et cetera, but we need people actually in the parks. There's another, the big numbers that you're talking about, again, I would uh, uh, know that there's an, an, I'm sure we'll talk about it, but we're creating the wildland fire service. And so there is transfers in this budget where there are uh, lots and lots of people across wildlife refuges, BIA, and National Park Service that were designated as wildland firefighters. that are moving to the wildland fire service they will still have a national park uh uniform they'll still be fighting fires uh but that may be where you're seeing some of these dramatic percentages that you're describing is actually a it's a transfer it's an inter-transfer within the budget as opposed to a dramatic a dramatic cut

uh-huh but well but there have been dramatic cuts i think you would have to agree with what do's did last year i'm not making up the numbers they they they cut back with a a quarter of the staff uh there were some that were reinstated by court order um and then they took buyouts,

the the only the only the only doge cuts the only doge cuts were people

and let me just say

that have been hired within the last twelve months and they were all re-offered jobs back so the fact that there was a massive reduction in the national park or anywhere across Ontario related to doge is just not simply not factual

ok well listen uh there were there were buyouts

there were buyouts

there were buyouts are there any uh does the department have targets for how many parks of the stuff it can lose to buyouts If you don't hit an arbitrary target with buyouts and retirements, are you gonna plan to move to uh t- to terminations?

There's no no plans for uh rifts uh and we've just completed uh a buyout. And the buyout the the early retirement uh if you wanna call it was offered to people primarily that weren't offered it last year uh to give them an option.

Why? Why why why don't you get for us, because we did put guardrails in the in the bill last year that had to do uh with the staffing

Yeah. following all of those very closely that were put in the bill last year.

OK, so that it's clear to the committee that we're following the letter of the law. It will be important to know how many people were gone,

Yes.

how many people were reinstated, are we looking at the same numbers, how many were pe- people, you know, uh, took a buyout, uh, uh, and what you're doing now with r- with regard to buyouts. If we're gonna transfer, uh, p- programs from education to, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, to - to - to interior, uh, who are the people that are gonna handle, uh, those those information that you know those programs if you're if all these people are gonna be in the parks

Yep.

who is gonna handle you know the the issues of

There's sixteen peop- sixteen people coming from Department of Education to manage the four programs that are being transferred over so uh

Mm-hmm. And the is the money coming as well?

Yes it is.

OK, great. Let me k- Do I have time to ask another question, Mr. Chairman? Thank you. A fish and wildlife service, similarly dire, the budget is proposing to consolidate the service along with the National Marine Fisheries while also proposing to make underlying cuts, quote, it's a class of move from the budget playbook. When you try to starve an agency, what you do is to consolidate and then you cut. It's very similar, that's what's gonna happen with education. I'm gonna fight education in being dismantled, but that is what's happening. Consolidate, and then you slash the funding, so there's l- l- less less money uh uh to deal with the missions that these agencies have to uh uh uh uh take out. Just like the Park Service, the agencies are stretched thin, understaffed, oversubscribed, again, largely a function of the indiscriminate and careless cuts that Doge made last year. Um, n- for example, National Wildlife Refuge System supports conservation efforts like the Stuart McKinney National Wildlife Refuge in my home state of Connecticut. The administration is proposing steep cuts. What's worse, some components of Fish and Wildlife Service for complete elimination, including state and tribal wildlife grants. Your budget talks about up the importance of prioritizing the promotion of recreational access to our refuge systems and expanding opportunities for hunting and fishing but doesn't shifting the focus cutting funding guarantee that conservation efforts are going to be able are going to suffer in this process.

Uh, I don't I don't think so at all, again, again, there is a separate firefighting unit inside of US Fish and Wildlife which is being transferred to the proposed wildland firefighting group which is a separate budget area. So in the budget there's a big net increase in in wildland firefighting. So you have to net that against the thing that you're seeing as cuts, cuz we're moving them in, uh, within the agency even. We're taking the four, we have a firefighting group in us fish and wildlife we have firefighting and bia we have firefighting in the room

what what's gonna happen to the state and tribal wildlife grants what's happening uh uh uh uh to the um uh that's slated for for total elimination what's happening to the cuts in the stuart mckinney national wildlife refuge

what we which cuts are you talking about specifically

i'm talking about there are two areas the wildlife refuge system

mmm

Stuart McKinney National Wildlife Refuge, they are they're the administration is proposing steep cuts in in that effort. When I look at uh in some components of the Fish and Wildlife Service are proposed for complete elimination. That includes the state and tribal wildlife grants. Is that wrong?

Uh th- there on the there there's a was a review done of the grants on the grant side and that is an area where there's been a substantial review we found organizations that were receiving grants from interior where uh eighty to a hundred percent of the revenue of that of that NGO was a grant from the federal government and yet those organizations we were the sole source of their revenue but they would have a a CEO making six hundred and fifty thousand dollars and four or four hundred thousand dollar lobbyists

let me let me just ask you cause my time has gone well well over here. I hear this from state foreign operations, we cut these programs, it's it would be very interesting because we can't get any information. We may agree with you.

Mm-hmm.

Give us the reasons why all of these grants are cut, the organizations are cut, et cetera. For what, why? Give us the rationale. And as I say, maybe we will agree,

Mm-hmm.

but it's impor- we just can't take, to be very honest, we just can't take your word for saying that there was you know six hundred fifty thousand dollars, there was this there that's I heard this over and over and over again in the last several months without any backup, without any data or information about what's happened. That would help us make determinations as to whether you're on the right track or we have to do something else. So, Mr. Chairman, I thank you and I yield back.

Thank you. Uh We really can't talk about the DIA budget without talking about wildfire fighting as we have mentioned it a couple of times already I understand the department

Mm-hmm.

has consolidated all fire activities from Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs as well as operations within the Office of Aviation Services and the Office of Wildland Fire into this new wildland fire agency I have several questions that I'll kind of combine into one uh recognizing Fire season is now year-round and the service has largely already seen a good amount of action this year. Can you provide an update on how things are going? How is the new U. S. wildland fire service more prepared, efficient and effective in fighting wildfires? And secondly, understanding that many wildfire fighters are not full-time firefighters, uh, how has this consolidation impacted federal land management activities within the bureaus and offices in which the firefighters were moved to the U. S. wildland firefighting service.

Uh thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh let me start with a clarification at the very top, that there is not a consolidation uh that word has been used here, but in the effort uh of related to wildland fire, it's unification. We had four dedicated groups fighting fire across BLM, US Fish and Wildlife, uh the B BIA and the National Park System. Uh think of it as the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. But we had no Joint Chiefs of Staff. Uh, we had, uh, incidents that I saw as a governor. My last, uh, couple months as governor. We had a fire that broke out in North Dakota, uh, a wildland grass fire. Uh, we called for federal help, uh, on a Saturday morning at six AM cuz we knew our black hawks wouldn't be able to manage it. And on, uh, and the federal government aviation services arrived on Tuesday. Two ranchers had lost their live uh a tremendous amount of livestock had died in the fires and it turns out in after review that the aircraft that was would have helped put this fire out quickly was on the ground in Bozeman Montana a short flight away from where the fire was in western North Dakota. So that was my own personal experience before ever knowing I might end up in this job. Last year some uh uh people may be familiar with the Dragon Bravo fire which started by a lightning

Yeah.

strike uh in the uh Grand Canyon National Park uh in on the fourth of July. Uh on July thirteenth uh nine days later a historic lodge in the North Rim burned down. Um the adjacent to that land was BLM land where the fire was put out. BLM was operating under their operational thing under uh under suppression, the National Park Service was operating. strategy called containment. Containment didn't work due to high winds and the conditions. Uh, this, you know, catastrophic loss was a, was something that occurred after we had already begun the process of saying we need to have a Joint Chiefs of Staff, we have to have leadership, we have to have firefighters on the front line that report to firefighters, that report to firefighters, that report to firefighters all the way up through the chain, as opposed to firefighters reporting to land managers who may think oh if I let it burn I'm gonna take care of some uh you know take care of some of my uh uh fuel load management uh efforts so it and so we we've uh did a we announced the the unification we posted a position we did a national search we hired Brian Fennessy uh in experience began his first fourteen years as a hot shot and went up through all the ranks worked in federal agencies worked in state agencies and was the fire chief for San Diego County uh most recently so we understood the the tremendous issue that California was having with fires uh he has got his uh four leaders uh you know established for the four groups we've got nine geographic leaders all fire fighters uh they're building building this thing with input from the bottom but top-down and we're gonna be ready to go for this what will be maybe an extraordinary fire season we have a we the the chief will report directly up to the secretary's office as to being buried down below. Some of the biggest air quality issues we've had in America have been related to uncontained uh fires some of the biggest losses of timber resources we've had related to fires we spent nine times as much in B just in BLM last year fighting fires, as we did on that's money out the door from the taxpayers as money that came in the door from us doing timber sales. And so we we have we we've got to flip that around because it's just unaffordable to let our national resources burn it kills

Mm.

and it's killed the timber industry but it's also killing the communities that were dependent on that timber eh whether it's for you know recreation or timber harvesting so this is the uh the end we've we've we've established uh i've sent out a secretarial order that across the four uh groups uh that were already under interior that we're gonna be under full um suppression that's the at the beginning of this fire season if you get a fire you put it out

mmm

uh we've gotta reserve both our dollar and our human resources and our aviation resources for the rest of the year we've also unified the aviation resources so we don't have a situation like I described where nobody knows how to make a decision across all of this we can then send the most appropriate aircraft uh to help on suppression quickly so it's under a good shape the budget also includes and one of the the big the transfer dollars in there it the budget includes as it did last year the component of the US Forest Service into Interior, so they would become the fifth leg of this group uh that would then also uh be be into the same reporting structure where firefighters would report up to firefighters.

Right. That's uh, a- and that's a challenge that we looked at last year, and this committee uh asked that a report be done, independent report uh directed by uh the Secretary of Interior and Secretary of Agriculture Where are we on that report?

Well, we are, I I'd say we're progressing ahead, and of course uh we've got a uh, Brooke Rollins and I have got a great working relationship. She's hired a terrific leader for the US Assistant Secretary for the US Forest Service, who's gone through all of the centering conservation, Mike Borin. And uh Mike Borin is uh um also uh highly supportive of this unification effort to make sure that we do a better job fighting, but the uh Um, I don't have a specific date for the report yet, but I'll check on that.

I, as I told you when we met uh earlier last week uh that this might be the best idea since sliced bread, I just don't know, there's still some questions that have gotta be answered and stuff, and once those are answered then we can then we can deal with this, and uh it might be the right thing to do. Uh, my challenge is what's left with the department if you take wildfire fighting away from say the forest service and put it in interior. how does the how does the forest service function and stuff so that's a that's a separate issue but it's uh some questions that we need to ask before we do it and stuff so we look forward to working with you on this and seeing if we can uh establish the best service we can

yeah and i and i would just say on the on the uh with the proud heritage we have in each of these if you're a whether you're if you're a us forest service firefighter if you're a blm firefighter uh you keep your uniform you keep your badge but on your other sleeve i mean if you're in the armed services you have an american flag you'll have a badge on the other sleeve that says US wildland fire service and everyone will know that uh when we're fighting fires the fires don't know whether they're on federal land state land private land BLM versus whatever but it should you know break everyone's heart to see that you know on the fire map last year that we had a you know the jaggy edge of here's a fire that expanded over thirteen days and caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage and on one side of the line it's a straight line and I'm like is the map wrong is the printer wrong and they said no that's BLM land. BLM put it out, I mean the same fire.

Yeah.

So it's like we you know we we part of this is we have to take accountability responsibility and but we have to put an organizational structure in place where if we say we're gonna put a fire out that everybody's on the same page.

And I I will tell you now, as I've been studying this, some of that responsibility or some of the fault in the responsibility is Congress's fault in that we write diff- different laws and different rules for the Forest Service and the BLM and stuff and I think that's gotta change.

Well, a- absolutely, and one of the things that we will be doing, cuz we have the ability within Interior to do it, but we've got different pay scales, different retirement plans, different everything. I mean, we've got cases of people that, you know, train, get on board in one agency and jump to another one because they might have, you know, s- some better benefits than the other one. We've gotta have a unification around how we think about compensating and recruiting and hiring and and uh and then from an equipment standpoint, it'd be great to get some unif- unification as well.

Absolutely. Miss Pingree?

Yeah, thank you, Mister Chair, and um and I really appreciate the work you're doing in trying to dig in on this idea of, as as you said very well, you know, it may be the best thing ever to combine these, but just having a better understanding of it and on the heels of that, you know, we're talking about the potential of another extreme fire season, the cost of it, the cost of human lives, um the cost of real estate and property, and then just the number of people it takes to fight the fires. And we never talk about um And we're not going to, I'm not bringing it up. But, you know, the fact that we are in some extreme weather here that seems to contribute to the amount of fires that we have that may be related to climate change. And I don't understand, and I appreciate your um in, you know, talking about the major purpose of the Department of Interior having American energy dominance I do not understand why this administration is so reluctant to talk about renewable energy and so unwilling to keep up our investment in renewable energy when we know that fossil. But I just I wanna dig in on one of the things that you could see was just I found very upsetting and uh brought it up in my opening remarks and that is this uh nearly billion dollar payout to um Total Energies. So Total Energies is one of the five companies that had offshore wind projects. Uh they were all uh suspended by this administration under you. Um the particular project that um Total Energy had was four gigawatt capacity off uh New York and North Carolina. Um it was very detrimental to lose that because that would have been part of the Atlantic grid fastest way to add capacity um electricity costs are rising on the east coast I know that very well and um I don't understand uh an administration that doesn't say all of the above and so it seems like you've targeted offshore wind as one of the things to get rid of. In this case the courts reject did the argument of the administration that there was some national security concern. I don't know exactly what they were cuz they were not um public. Um, but now you're asking us to believe that somehow you're still justified in this nine hundred and twenty-eight million dollar payment. The judgment fund, which I understand that you're using, can only be used if there is a final judgment or some imminent litigation. I'm not clear who approached who first about this deers deal. Did total energies come to the department? Did the department go to total energies? Did total energies Um, if no claim has been filed, then what justification is there for imminent litigation, rather than a sort of political payoff to get this done? Um, I just don't understand this argument that you're making here and why you're spending a billion dollars of taxpayer money, why you have um negated five of the projects that were projected to be out there, and given the American public the opportunity to have renewable energy, as well as your interest in oil and gas. So can we start there and can you explain any of that to me?

Yeah, I'd be happy to. Uh, first of all, uh, we we have to uh um disagree on a couple of facts. One is that uh that this is uh affordable, uh the highest cost electricity we produce in America is offshore wind and and some of the most disruptive to the environment is offshore wind. Uh the the and also the total agreement was not one of the five that's under litigation it was a separate one. And there, I also just strongly uh reject your characterization. Uh, this is a, this is a refund of money that Total gave to the United States of America. They paid to buy an offshore lease. That nine hundred and twenty-eight million dollars was their money that they gave us. And they uh were, they then see themselves as being uneligible to uh build on that, so it would have been lost dollars. uh, when the Biden administration, you know, canceled, uh, pipelines arbitrarily on day one with executive order, there was, uh, American companies that lost billions of dollars, people lost jobs, uh, all of the, uh, the things that happened, and there was no, there was no kind of, oh, well, you guys paid a bunch of money, if we're gonna arbitrarily cancel something, then maybe we should pay it back. Here, there was, there is a national security concern, the national concern came from the Department of War, uh, the five the five projects that are actually under construction kind of wrap around uh the New York area where we've got some of the highest populations in the country and it's very close to the population center and if anyone would understand how the war has been fought between Russia and Ukraine or it's being fought in the Middle East uh right now the uh low flying swarm drone drone swarms are what's happening it's when people aren't you know or you know it's less piloted and more autonomous is flying and it's also as we also know that there is autonomous undersea the the department of war uh report that came out that said it was a national security concern matches those that are done by sweden sweden has cancelled offshore projects due to concern over over uh uh national security concerns there is clear it's not it's not a theory it's not a whatever it's just true that when you've got a six hundred foot or higher tower, most of these offshore towers are taller than the space needle. There's hundreds of them that are out there and they've got blades that are two hundred and fifty feet, you know, spinning, you know, the outer edge moving at more than a hundred miles an hour. They have uh set up enormous amounts of radar interference. So if we want to endanger, you know, our greatest population area because of the, of someone launching a drone swarm attack uh in, you know, at our country through that or autonomous undersea because the vibration of the when they're operating also affects and distorts sonar so would gives us less detection ability if someone is coming across across there but then when we have this uh this offshore wind each of those towers has to be connected by a cable just one of those five that was under litigation had over four hundred and sixty miles of deep sea trenching there was no permit required you know whatsoever let's go up there and blow up the bottom of the ocean the the the all of the marine fishermen from the new england area uh that have come forward and said it's killed our fishing area uh has been tremendous they were lined up at the department of uh ag last week when they were setting up their their seafood office cheering cheering out loudly that the finally that the that the that there had been a stop to putting these uh wind farms right in the middle of where they did uh all of their fishing we had more whale groundings than we've ever had for the marine mammals issue uh because when you're pounding those and building those pylons in the ground uh we know from fifty years ago from go back to the the you know the seventies with the whale song how far whale whale voices can conduct underwater a pounding it's up over two hundred decibels a rock concert you can lose your hearing at a hundred and forty two hundred decibels pounding these things into the ground

Sorry I I I have to stop you here.

under

Yeah you have to get You just had the God squad get rid of the endangered species act in the Gulf of Mexico, which will probably be the end of the rice whale. So I'm sorry, but so many of these arguments. I just I I I I mean you can provide me with some facts. I don't agree with UN costs. I don't agree that they're disruptive. I represent the Gulf of Maine. Believe me, if I thought this was disruptive, we wouldn't be permitting offshore wind off the coast of Maine. Uh, I, you know, I'm sorry. We just disagree on some of these arguments, but and I understand your argument and you know, back in the Biden administration, I'm not going all the way back there, um, but this was a billion dollars that you're giving back, you can decide it's unaffordable, but that is now for the company to understand. Do you have another plan to re-permit that? Are you gonna have another company go in there? Um, there there's no good argument for taking it away. I, I, and, and, I just wanna be clear,

There's there's no good,

I mean

there's no good argument for taking company's money and then not refunding it if they're uh if they if they're choosing to be unable to use it.

But You can say all these things. I don't know all the national security agreements because the courts kept that under seal. I didn't go into the skiff or whatever skiff there was around that. But um the courts threw that out. So the courts said to you um there were no good national security arguments. So I don't know all these things that you're saying to me now.

That that's a that's a mischaracterization. The in some cases the court said it's not an issue cuz the blades aren't turning yet. And as soon as the blades start turning, then they would be a national security.

If you're gonna be talking about pounding and those kinds of things, then we can't have offshore drilling and you wanna re-permit the whole east coast for offshore drilling.

OK.

If you wanna talk about danger to marine mammals and danger to fisheries, you know, my next question, when I come back to it, is gonna be about what happened with the deep water horizon, and you wanna reduce the permitting standards there. There there's a there's just a lot of hypocrisy in the argument.

There's n- there's there's no, there's n- zero desire to do anything but continue to improve on the process, and in your opening remarks uh you made a statement which I also disagree with that said that somehow the findings showed that there was an issue and therefore these agencies should be broken up uh it didn't say that it said there wasn't enough inspections it said there weren't people present from uh the at that time MMA present observing those pressure tests on those on those blowout well devices and with uh with this organization we have would have or are proposing now to go back we've kept honor oh that's the group that does the revenue so the revenue is in a separate group but having the people that are doing the inspections and the regulation in the same group makes uh enormous amount of sense it's not about cutting corners it's not about lessening thing it's about improving our ability to make sure that we never have a deep water horizon again and and to to suggest that somehow anybody in the industry or this administration wants that to happen we'd be willing to do that that's that's ludicrous why would we wanna do anything that would harm our country, our industry, our wildlife. Why would we wanna do that? We wouldn't wanna do that.

Because it appears to me that this administration is trying to roll back regulations wherever they can about whether it's about toxicities in the, toxics in the environment or in this case, and I'll just jump right into that one, I was gonna save it for the second round but I'll just get it done. Um, you know, uh, I went back and looked at the Deep Water Horizon tapes and the in the investigations that were done, and one of the things that were was of deep concern to people is that Um, there was a combined organization that was doing both the permitting and the inspections. Um, there was an incredible amount of corruption. I'm sure you've read about it and seen what was going on at that particular moment in time, because of the close relationship between the oil and gas industry and the people who were doing the permitting and it was recommended that we separate those two agencies. So, I would love to see more about how you think there will be protections, but um, as with so many things about this administration and the ranking member full committee said the same thing. Um, you've already announced this transition and you're moving forward with our congressional action we don't get to see what you're trying to do differently. I would love to. If you wanna make the case to me that somehow this isn't gonna repeat those exact things and that the God's God wasn't set up to so that you can do more damage to endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico I'd love to see all those things, but we don't currently have that because this administration gives us so little information. And it, I just wanna be clear. The administration is also attempting to roll back other reforms, such as the blowout preventer regulations and decommissioning requirements. And I had forgotten till I rewatched all the videos from that horrific oil spill and the loss of eleven lives of those people who were on that rig, that the blowout preventer um, hadn't been properly inspected and it was a big cause of the problem. So why would you be rolling back at this moment in time and how can I feel confident that we're gonna have adequate environmental and human protections in what you wanna do in the future and drilling for more oil.

Well, first of all, we're not rolling anything back. So you have to stop saying things that aren't true when, because it's not true, we're not rolling anything back. I just got done saying that we are, that we're actually making sure that we have our team members present during the inspections and the uh of the, of those blowout preventers. Specifically it's one of the things that we wanna make sure that we, we're doing and and this new organization is gonna make sure that we do that. So we're, you and I are trying to solve the same problem.

Could we see more about what you're planning to do in combining these two organizations to have a better level of confidence that we're not going back there again?

Yes, yeah, I'd be ha- happy to share what we're doing.

And I've used up plenty of time here, but I'm just gonna go back to the beginning to say it is ludicrous in my mind to say that you have deep security concerns and fishing concerns and all these other things about offshore wind, yet you wanna increase the amount of oil drilling off the coast of the east coast in Alaska and everywhere else, it's hard for me to believe that that is not more dangerous, and I would like to see the information that you have to tell me otherwise. Thank you, Mister Chair.

Miss Floyd.

I feel like I'm your attorney sitting over here with you on the side of the table, I forgot I actually had to ask questions as well. Uh, thank you for being here. I wanna start with the Great Salt Lake. Um, as you know, the president put a billion dollars in his budget for Salt Lake restoration, and I know it's early days and your team is still working on what that's gonna look like. So I just have an ask that, that you work with me and my team and our state and make sure that we have a good plan in place if we're gonna be investing in restoring the Great Salt Lake. Let's make sure it's something that, uh, helps us for decades to come.

Uh, yes, absolutely, we look forward to working with you and the governor and the team and Bureau of Reclamation to uh make sure we have that plan.

OK? Thank you. Um, America the Beautiful, when when parks, national parks sell park passes, they get a cut of the revenue from that park pass. And now with so many of the America the Beautiful passes being bought online, um, and digital passes, some of the high visitation parks, like the ones we have in Utah, are losing out on revenue, um, when it gets split evenly between some of the low visitation parks that don't take the same wear and tear.

Mm-hmm.

that the high visitation parks do. How is the department addressing that to make sure that we're still taking care of the, the backlog and the maintenance issues at these parks that get millions of visitors a year?

Well, I think one thing uh which we talked about earlier is the uh in encouraging uh this committee to support uh the reauthorization of GOA which of course uh included dollars for uh deferred maintenance so that would be uh is is one piece uh your what you're However, on the increase in the, you know, online purchase of the park passes, this is a, uh, a, uh, I I see a relatively new phenomenon, Mm-hmm. but it's great that, it's great they're popular, it's great that people are buying them ahead of time, help produce lines, getting into the parks. Uh, but it's something from a revenue standpoint we're gonna have to take a look at, to see what, uh, on the major parks that have the highest visitation, what kind of, uh, lost revenue they might have. And so we'll, we'll take, we'll take a look at that. But the good news, the good news is people wanna get to the parks and a lot of people are buying the parks. Yeah.

Yeah, we'd love to work with you two on innovative ways maybe

Yep.

that we can help out these high visitation parks.

Yep. Well, I I know you've got multiple large high visitation parks in your district, so.

Which we're really proud of, but we wanna make sure that we're taking care of them.

Mm-hmm.

Um, the NEPA regs. As the chair of Western Caucus, I led a letter with Rep. Hageman and twenty-three of our colleagues in support of the new NEPA regs. Thank you for those. Um, can you just explain quickly how moving the regs from the CFR to the par- departmental handbooks will help improve the process for Americans who are project proponents or concerned about uh especially on public lands projects.

I wanna make sure the first part of that question was related to was

NEPA, right.

NEPA, OK. Yeah, uh on uh yeah there there the the goal of course uh here on the regulation is to basically make sure we, you know, we're following the law and there had been a lot of uh I don't wanna say regulatory uh creep, if you will, over time, uh, that got out of the bounds of that, and so in - in the cases of - of how we're approaching this is that if there was things that would be uh considered uh you know in - you know, interesting suggestions for people to consider, but aren't part of what it takes to actually get the permit, uh, we pulled uh the eighty percent of the - of that, you know, that growing and growing and growing forever regulation that was slowing down uh all kinds of projects both you know on federal and private and state land uh to push it into an appendix uh so it's still there for people to take a look at but then this can help uh both project proponents and project opponents understand that uh it's gonna be litigated over the piece that was actually the law which is about twenty percent of what that the weight of that of those rules were.

Thank you. Uh I really appreciate that you're taking a look at that. It's something we talk about a lot on Capitol Hill uh we haven't been able to do much about it.

I think the number is a one point five trillion dollars of capital is proposed in America to be spent that's waiting for a permit.

Yeah, it's crazy. And a lot of the capital gets eaten up in the permit process. I just have one more question. Um, and it has to do with access to roads on public lands. So the m- the minimization crit- criteria which came because of an executive order has resulted in closed roads and loss of access to a lot of the public land in my state. Um, I've introduced CRAs to keep access open in specific places, but can we work to protect road access on a broader basis, and take a look at the minimization criteria?

Uh, yeah, I'd be happy to, and I think on, in, in your case, uh, given the, um, the given, given the amount of public lands in Utah, you're, it's a state where I think we're at over sixty percent is public lands, uh, access matters, uh, and we're trying to make sure that we're increasing access as opposed to reducing it, so would be happy to uh, specifically review with you any particular, um, sites or locations where we could work together to see if we can come up with a solution.

Thank you. And I just saw news today about DOI implementing the Congressional Review Act on Glen Canyon National Recreation Area to make sure that it's being treated like a recreation area and I just wanna say thank you for that, and I yield.

Mr. Harder.

Uh, thank you, Mister Chair, and thank you, Mister Secretary, for for being here. Uh, I'm gonna start by saying something that I really agree with you on uh in establishing the national energy dominance council which you chair this administration said we must expand all forms of reliable and affordable energy production drive down inflation grow our economy create good paying jobs and re-establish american leadership uh that sounds pretty good to me uh and i really share a vision where it should be easier to build more affordable energy unfortunately the record that i see doesn't always match that rhetoric, especially the pause uh that was started uh at the interior department uh July of last year on wind and solar. Since then, eighteen gigawatts of solar have been cancelled or stalled, four gigawatts of wind, five hundred projects total, at a time when I think our grid needs the cheapest electrons it can as fast as possible. Uh, help me understand what's going on. I know there's been a little bit of a thaw since then, and thank you for that. Uh, tell me what's the hold-up on getting solar and wind projects out the door.

Well, the, the key thing here is part of uh, uh, understanding the, it, it, again I don't wanna debate on, on cheapest, but there is this view that has been held and said here many times that, that somehow wind and solar is, you know, or solar, wind earlier, wind was the cheapest, solar is the cheapest. Uh, I just have to say, you know, we had a huge winter storm like eight weeks ago. This is undisputable. Fern was here. It would affect the twenty-two states. Uh, the, during that storm, wind and solar at the peak moments produced two percent of the total electricity. And yet, in the northeastern part of the country where the storm was centered, has spent hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing wind and solar. So, the wind and solar doesn't work right now, today, unless you use taxpayer subsidies. And those taxpayer subsidies were, were what promoting this thing. We had, and, and people in many cases w-

L- let me just pause there, Mr. Secretary. I, I hear that argument, but you've instituted higher standards for wind and solar projects, right? To move forward a wind and solar project, it requires personal approval from your office, is my understanding. To do an oil and gas project, it doesn't. So you're telling me that the market doesn't want these projects, why not let the market decide? W- the you you're complaining about favoritism in the past, it feels to me, like this is department is putting a thumb on its scale, why not have the same standard for all projects period?

Well, mmm, the market is not building uh offshore wind for example, there are zero zero people trying to build offshore wind,

I'm talking about offshore wind.

no but uh since since the since the subsidies you know were eliminated, no one's building it. cuz it's just not it's not effective. Solar, uh there were there were concerns there about uh you know again supply chain security, because as you know a lot of these solar projects were uh built almost exclusively with Chinese made solar panels. You know that's that's an issue for national security. And so there

There's more national security risk in doing solar than doing nuclear or gas plants?

There is if you're building a If you're building a, it's, it's, it's the same as Huawei was a few years ago, I mean, if you're buying Chinese equipment and then you've got the ability for them to listen to every call and - and l- and follow every text that's sent, that's one thing. But on the solar panels, the same thing where, you know, us being dependent on - on a rival for a s- for a supply for solar panels. And some of the other parts that we view we wanna make sure is because some - some of the solar panels in the prior admin- some of the projects in the prior administration it was the exact flip of what you're saying, where things were green-lit if it was wind and solar, and in some of those cases with our multiple use mandate that we have on BLM, like in the case of Nevada, where if we got solar panels that are being built over the top of of uh, you know, rare white sage uh, in inclosystems,

I I I hear you, sir.

then we we have to review those.

I I uh, where we are right now, I see that there is again one standard for one type of of energy and another standard for another type. I don't think that's good policy, and I don't think it's sustainable. You've talked about the need for permit reform. I want permit reform yesterday. I think any precondition for moving that forward is gonna require a level playing field for all types of energy. So, uh, I know that's, uh, a legislative question as well,

I- I- I would say another factor in the,

but I, I think that's

in the thinking is beyond just the project of generation itself, it's also the grid. Because in places in our country where we over-rotated towards sources that are dependent on the weather, then and we build highly expensive transmission lines as well, then when the sun goes down, the wind's not blowing, there's no electrons going down those transmission lines. The co- the cost of all of that is borne by the person paying for the electric bill. So, we we're we're i- we're where weather dependent intermittent can work, is if we have enough base load. It has to be the right mix between those two.

I hear your perspective. Again, I think if we have a level playing field, we let the market decide, we have one type of permit process for everybody, be a huge improvement it it i i hear the complaints about previous administrations putting their thumb on the scale what i see now is secretary level approval required for one type of project but not for another and again i i don't think that's sustainable or a good policy but moving on uh i wanted to to quickly talk about wildfires nine months ago uh wildfires are a big issue in california uh thank you for some of the work that you've done on that i think it's an area of wide bipartisan agreement nine months ago i sent you a letter asking about the wildfire wildland

Ye- yes,

Sure.

and - and I'll - and I'll personally, uh, take accountability and apologize to you cuz we should be responsive to, uh, people that are writing to our department, so I'll follow up on that.

We got a lot going on, but, uh, we can

But if - and if our team - if I need to, I'll ask you again if we can get a copy of the letter you sent nine months ago, cuz we'd like We wanna be responsive to that.

We could do it. I think it's an area we wanna be able to work together on to make sure that you and the Forest Service have all the tools possible.

Thank you.

Uh, one last issue on, uh, gas prices. Uh, big issue across all of the country, but especially in an area like mine. Last week I was paying eight dollars a gallon, uh, at the pump, which I know for some of my colleagues sounds insane. Even for California, that's pretty extreme. Uh, you're the chair of the president's national, uh, energy dominance council. What should I be telling my constituents when they tell me that they can't afford to fill up at the pump?

Well, I think that you should tell them that, that the state of California should, because you're talking about gasoline and Cal-

Not just, not just the California problem. I mean,

No.

you know, folks are paying four bucks, Now, how many people use gasoline? fifteen a a gallon all across the country. How many people use gasoline?

Yes. Uh, and the, California has a special challenge, uh, in that there's been a California imports more oil from foreign countries than any other state, sixty-three percent. Uh, they were one of the only states that was dependent on, on, on oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz. Uh, the number one importer from California was Iraq, uh, where it was coming in. There used to be forty refineries in California. There was eight, now there's seven, seven going to six because of the regulatory environment. And so now, we have oil that's shipped around the world to be refined in Korea to arrive back in Long Beach California's refined product. So a big chunk of the cost in California, excluding the taxes which are high, but just looking at the core price, is because of the supply chain that comes to California. And you can't right now get gas from the Permian, from the Bakken, from whatever. California's is it's California became Hawaii. They turned themselves into an e- energy island, uh, and and that's the root cause of the of the high prices. So, what you tell your constituents is is that the there has to be a policy change which is California's is uh is essentially a national security risk because if if we really had an issue uh then and you couldn't and those ships couldn't arrive everyday if there aren't ships arriving everyday in San Francisco Bay and in Long Beach offloading energy uh there would be lines in California when the rest of the country there would be no lines because we've got uh an excess supply in the rest of the country, but we've gotta we have to import it into California.

Thank you. Well, I've exceeded my time, but thank you uh, Mister Chair.

Mister Amadei.

Thank you, Mister Chairman. Um.

Welcome, Mister.

Secretary, um. Just real briefly. No disrespect to to African-American folks in the country, but in Nevada, at all points in time, BLM stands for the Bureau of Land Management. And so recently, you know, Black Lives Matter. It's like it's always been BLM. You own eight out of every ten acres, not BLM, but the federal government does. in the state. So while Utah is, has got a whole bunch, um, nobody is more dependent upon federal land management policy than Nevada is. You got you got uh Bureau of Rec, you got Forest Service, but the biggest one by far is BLM. Can you tell me what your number one Nevada specific priority is, as the Secretary of Interior? What's number one on your list when you wake up and you go? Those guys between California and Utah. And by the way, We got a whole bunch of our gas in Las Vegas and Western Nevada from you folks. People are thinking about driving to Elko to buy it from Utah. But anyhow, what's the number one priority?

Well, ha- having just been back in uh in Nevada um in the last uh two weeks, and had a great uh you know rancher round table, I would be saying you know number one is to make sure that we uh stop, you know, I mean get get the burdensome regulations that are killing ranching in America on public lands. Uh, and along with that we got a big wild, you know, horse and barrel problem in Nevada that we've, that's uh, you know, wrecking havoc on, on all, on the uh, the, on the habitat. But the, at a higher level than any, than any of that is actually uh, is on the, the mining and mineral side. And of course uh, Nevada uh, ha- had a rich history of mining and can again, and one of the things is we face as a nation our incredible, incredible dependence on China for critical minerals, Nevada can play a huge role as you know uh in in getting us back into the game uh doing that but it's uh Nevada is a uh um and then the third thing of course uh having uh spent time uh with your governor uh and with staff recently as we got you know the uh um you know making sure we got adequate water supply for uh for for southern Nevada. Those are all things that are on top of the thing but again you're you're as you said eighty percent of the land we spend a lot of time uh is federal land, we spend a lot of time thinking about Nevada.

So, when you're talking about land management, I get the economic development side and the effect on on private business and what whatever. Any plans for the checkerboard? Because several people here have mentioned access to public lands. And as and as you know, you've got it in Utah. When you talk about the checkerboard from the Transcontinental Railroad, that locks that up. X miles on either side of it. And so, and every other one's one, any plans that that are starting in in in your department, to say, " Here's consolidation." Not, you'll win. You know, somebody gets more than the other, it's like it's checkerboard. So here's our blocks, and here's private blocks. Maintain a- any plans at all at at at the uh, at the department level to address checkerboard?

Well, where where we're allowed to by law, we're happy to uh, you know pursue and address that we did last year complete a uh a a checkerboard effort in uh elimination in in utah uh and so we've seen the the results uh can work where we were we were able to swap lands to

any plans for nevada

don't no no plans that i'm aware of right now but if you've got some ideas or suggestions we're happy to work with you uh and your staff

ok um uh i heard the talk about the fire stuff and that And that's all great and I'm a little concerned that the we were asking for a report and it's been a year and people gripe about Congress's timeliness, which is fair. Um, but one of the things I didn't hear you say, and we got this leg, we got that leg, these guys over here, Forest Service is the fifth leg. Is there a leg on that? You you said that the head guy's gonna be from San Diego. I've spent a lot of my time over the years when you got a type whatever team coming here coming there. with calls from local fire chiefs going I I need you to call whoever the incident commander is from, sometimes it's from Cal Fire, so we talk slower for Cal Fire. Other times, I just couldn't help that, you know.

Well, we need it.

Yeah. Other times it's, you know, forest service, BLM, whatever. I I would like to know who to talk to to say where's the, uh, I know the plan's being, the recipe is being finalized. I'm hoping that there's a there's a part in there to go One of our big things is, since you guys are gonna go around and and hot shot it and go to wherever you're needed, that there is something dedicated to making sure we talk to, I didn't even hear mention of state foresters, not that they're blameless in anything, but the local folks, the state, so that we don't have this and this isn't at you personally obviously, or even at the Department of Interior. We're from the federal government and we're here to help you, and you talk about your frustration in North Dakota where it's like, I just need the plane. from one hour's flying time away. But that's a great example of there better be a six leg that talks about local liaison, having a seat at that table of five or six or whatever it is. Any thoughts on that? Is anybody in charge of that at your unification process?

Uh, yes, and and we'll h- there'll be a leader for Nevada who will be responsible for that, as part of the geo- it's one of the geographically designated areas in the

So how you gonna pick them, do you know?

Yeah.

OK, we're gonna have a Nevada person. Who is it? Southern Nevada, Northern Nevada, cuz your acres are in the north.

Mm-hmm.

No disrespect to the trips to Las Vegas, I mean it's a hard place to talk people into going to. But the majority of the mission is north of there.

Mm-hmm.

You're retired.

Yeah. Thanks for that, Mister Chairman. Um, last thing, who do I talk to, it's probably in the accounting thing. didn't you guys touched on it a little bit in previous stuff? You know, how are we gonna fix the deal in park service? We're gonna hire a local, all that other sort of stuff. I have six BLM districts in my district. And it's always, hey, we got we got range cons, where where those things are empty, we got this, that, and oh by the way, even the fire personnel is like, yeah, we're gonna hire them, we're gonna speed that up, which is all good. But oh by the way, we gotta figure out where they're gonna live. To renting hotel motel rooms blah blah blah for them just to live at if they're in the winemucca district or whatever they can't afford to take the job wherever it may be on those far flung missions and for several congresses it's like hey what are we gonna do about the peeps so they can afford to live where anything underway in that or is it still just it's great work and hope you can be a little bit self-sufficient or sleep in the back of your car because you're working in the ely district office anything floating around

well is your question about housing or is it

my my question is about we either whether you provide them housing or whether you pay them more whether you whatever it's like they can't afford to take the job and work out in the hinterlands

mmm

and it's been like yeah we need to do something about that we do anything about that

Well, I I know that we've got we've had housing issues expressed and affordability exists in the National Park Service, uh, around our uh, especially around our entrance communities, uh, but would happy to happy to follow up with you if there are specific areas in Nevada where you think that we've got the same same issue cuz that's not one that I had I had heard, uh, about during our from from

I hear it every district office I go to, so I will follow up with you.

Yep.

And also, by the way, I would be remiss You got a a a guy who's the State Director of Nevada, John Rabe, who I guess is pulling the plug here in a couple weeks. Please replace him with somebody as good as him. Problem solver, true pro, sorry to see him go, and I won't put any of my other real feelings about that he's a quitter or stuff like that on the record at the hearing. I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

Thank you.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you. And um I I I don't wanna get into re-litigating um what happened uh last week in the Senate with the boundary waters but I do have some questions about how moving forward the Department of Interior might be looking at things. And I'll I'll send you the questions but I'm just gonna let you know what's coming to your office.

OK, thank you.

As you're aware the Senate passed uh the Congressional Review Act, a CRA resolution, it overturned a twenty twenty-three mineral withdrawal for the headwaters of the boundary waters. The mineral withdrawal overturned, um, you know, puts great risk. All these mines have failed to date, uh, so- uh, toxic sulfide or copper mining, uh, to contaminate this water. And as you're well aware, being from our neck of the woods, this is twenty percent of the purest water in the forest system, probably some of the purest water in the world. Now, this is my opinion. Uh, I believe that the Trump administration has possibly weaponized the CRAs to get a do-over when the political winds are in the, are in the administration's favor. The CRA wasn't created to overturn public land orders, uh, especially one that's nearly three years old. The Biden administration followed the law. The withdrawal for the boundary waters, uh, was conducted following a federal land policy management act known as FLIPA. And it was notified, Congress was notified of the withdrawal in twenty twenty three. Following that notification, following the law, Congress had ninety days to adopt a resolution of disapproval. The Congress did not act. The window of the disapproval closed. And now we just had what happened in the Senate last week. Now, this process had been in place since nineteen seventy. It's the same process that my - my colleague, uh, now, uh, Secretary Zinke used when he was secretary. He followed - he followed the law. Um, so this is the first time in the history of the department that the interior has submitted a public land order to Congress under a CRA. So it's it's changed it's changed the landscape. So here's what I I'm trying to understand going into the future. Uh, and I as I said, I'll submit these so you they whoever needs to help you write them so we all have the same uh language down pat. Uh, so my first question is gonna be, are public land orders no longer governed by uh of flip-flop. Can Congress expect a flood of public land orders now that this CRA has been overturned? And um you know maybe it's just this one case, maybe it's just for the boundary waters but we are gonna see that happen when the state of Mon- Montana and Washington you know the boundary waters got singled out in the early two um in the first Trump administration and so I wanna know what the the process is, is flip-flop gonna be modified now? And if it is, we need to do public notices and have public hearings and do all that. So I look I look forward to figuring out what what the landscape's gonna be like in the future. So here are some of my my and these might be questions and concerns shifting gears. Um I wanna talk about a couple of things that I'm very concerned about. And I know you care deeply about as governor um you had great relationships with with with tribes and you know I have eleven in Minnesota and some of them are our brother sister tribes. Um there's a cut of twenty uh uh seven percent to the BIA and it's grossly underfunded, this committee tries to put as much as we can into it. Um there the tribal loan program has is is at risk of being zeroed out and this is the one that really has me concerned um um Mister Burgum, the BIE, that's the Bureau of Indian Education, There's a twenty three percent cut to that, but I don't know if the Department of Education informed you what they were doing too. The Department of Education is sending four programs your way. So that's gonna be even a larger cut. So I'd like to work with you on what we can do um to help those programs that have been, um really um underfunded. And then uh on solar, if you get a chance in your travels, can go to the reservation it's wind river it's uh in wyoming they have uh using some money from the biden administration when when we were working on solar there are homes in the wind river for the first time ever that have a solar it's a us company uh and um they do amazing work um their uh they're training the tribes how to set up their own uh projects maintain them and everything else so we to be able to roll this out throughout some of the other tribal nations. There's still gonna be a need for propane, but anything we can do, you know, moving propane to these rural areas, as you and I know, is very, very expensive. So if you get a chance, if you could put Wind River on your list. The other thing I'm gonna ask is could you get me the national security information? National security was used in the boundary waters, even though it's a foreign owned company that took the leases, a foreign owned company that, uh, uh will be shipping uh the the the ore when it when and if it's ever mined to china and it'll be sold on the global market um uh my colleagues on the other side of this argument I they kinda dropped the argument after I pointed that out but I'm uh mister Elzey and I are both on the appropriations uh defense uh subcommittee and I would like to see all these national security arguments because we have never had anyone from the pentagon raise them to us So it would be very helpful for me to see and really dig into and understand how all these um wind and other solar projects that you're talking about are national security. So with with that, uh, Mister Chair, you know, being a teacher, I guess I gave the secretary some homework. But I wanna thank you for uh making sure that all the school kids from the states around in the five-state area get to go into a wonderful place in the in the Science Museum in Saint Paul. and Sierra National Parks. I thank you for that, sir. I yield back.

Thank you.

Thank you. Uh, Mr. Cloud.

Thank you. Thank you, Mister Secretary, for being here. Thank you, Chairman, for having this hearing. Uh, I I wanna first of all just thank you for the hard work that you're doing. I I find it kind of ironically humorous, uh, that someone on this committee would accuse you or this administration of being a sleep at the wheel. especially after four years of uh defending an auto auto pen presidency um it's very uh it's very obvious that uh you're knowledgeable in what you're managing uh that you and this administration are active and proactive while they may disagree with what you're doing you're certainly engaged and uh I wanna thank you for that um I couple issues that were brought up that I wanted to talk about one talked about the park maintenance and how there's a backlog uh and then also um the uh number of employees that we have there seems to be kind of a um a a tendency to measure our success or our productivity based on how many employees are on the payroll as opposed to whether the work's being done um and then we can look at the previous administration when it came to uh maintenance backlog and we saw more dollars in in your uh agency and your department meanwhile the backlog increased dramatically so they're not necessarily related that more dollars equals uh backlog or more employees equals work done um I wanted to ask you what is being done uh when it comes to the backlog and then on the employee issue I don't know if you've been made aware of this but uh after President Trump was sworn into office the first time there was stood up and halt national parks service uh that initially launched itself as the internal resistance movement of the national parks service i. the trump administration now they since been very careful about digitally scrubbing their footprint where it doesn't say internal anymore but we talked to those within the national parks service who says this is very much alive it's being done on work time and it goes pretty high in the organization at least as of some months ago So, uh, wanted to see, I I think you agree that anyone serving in the executive branch should be serving at the pleasure of the president and under the authority, uh, designated in, uh, by, uh, the president of the United States or the people to the president of the United States. What's being done to, to clean that up and then what's being done on the maintenance backlog?

Uh, let me take the, uh, uh, maintenance backlog first and I appreciate, Representative Cloud, your understanding, uh, sort of the difference between the operating line and the cap capital expenditure line because uh one of the things uh when we talk about budgets you know going up and down, uh it just in an overall uh coming into this thing um last year it was clear that based on the all the hiring that had occurred but all the hiring that had occurred were people working remotely and weren't actually working in in our parks or refuges, that we had a it it increased the people cost of the line but we were decreasing the the expenditures relative to capex. So trying to get those thing, get the business model back in in line so that it was, would actually be working, uh, is, is what we've been trying to do and I think we're making some good progress there. But again, uh, the uh, the reauthorization of Undergoa, the, you know, the uh, LRF uh, would be fantastic, cuz I, I think the estimate for backlog now has grown to thirty-five billion dollars uh across Interior. across uh you know the assets range.

This is a decades old issue, it's not like it appeared last year.

Yep. Yeah, and we we need we need to uh we need we need to absolutely get after it. It does is this is you know everybody that's worked in these problems knows that that number doesn't get smaller cuz there's a tipping point, where if you don't repair a road, you don't repair a building, you don't repair a roof, at some point you go past the repair thing and then you flop drop into replace and then the number just jumps up to the next level. So again, appreciate that. We are um uh working hard to make sure that we've, you know, both got the resources but also the procurement, because sometimes when we've got deferred maintenance, we run into these issues where the federal procurement is so, uh, complex, uh, that, you know, I w- I was out at the Presidio and they had, they had vandalism on twelve windows, and a year later he had twelve broken windows and he was still going through the procurement process to replace twelve windows. And if it had been, if the National Park Foundation or the Presidio Foundation you know, could have been able to take over that project. Uh, you know, they would have replaced them the next day. And, and so again, working with these partner organizations, friends group, National Park Foundation, other foundations, if we can get more, uh, more dollars and more authorities to them, then sometimes we can actually take care of these things when they cost a lot less. Uh, as far as the, uh, the, the sort of the, uh, the underground as you're as you're describing it, that's there, uh, yeah, this has been a, uh, um we it's a a no a known a known problem and we're uh trying trying to address it but also trying to address it with education there's a lot of fear-based uh fear-based organizations uh one of the one of those is a group called the National Parks Conservation Association uh which uses the national parks name but they you know they hire lawyers and they fund candidates that are uh uh you know opposed to this uh agenda and it's not they're not spending any of the money they raise to actually do conservation.

Wow.

And so it is a, the, you know, there's plenty of, plenty of folks that are out there that are benefiting from the " Be afraid, be afraid, this is what's happened to your parks." But they don't say, send the money to the parks. Send the money to the National Park Foundation. Send the money to us, uh, so that, you know, and we'll, we'll solve the problem, but they're, they're not investing in, in actual conservation. So it is, it is a, um, you know, challenging environment to work in because there's real, there's, there's large business models, it's also almost become like an industry of uh attack, you know, spread misinformation, generate, you know, generate fear and then generate revenue, uh but not actually work to solve the problem that they profess to be concerned about.

Wow. Well, thank you for that insight. Uh, that's, yeah. Um, touching on American energy dominance, you've done a lot on that. uh, and certainly this administration has, kinda bringing us back to, uh, specifically to base load energy, uh, to cheap energy, affordable energy. Obviously we have a conflict in Iran that's creating a temporary issue, but we were on the right path and I'm sure soon will be, uh, again. Uh, and even then we're right at about what Biden era prices were, uh, even given the conflict going on.

We're a, we're a dollar below,

A dollar below.

below what the high was during the Biden administration,

Yeah.

so it's

So that's pretty extraordinary, actually. Um, currently I think we bring in about ten billion dollars in our land. Uh, it's an amazing resource of our country. The, some estimates say we could bring in hundreds of billions of dollars if we were able to use it all uh properly which would be an amazing benefit to the taxpayer. Uh, s- some s- some states though, in some states you're actually managing over fifty percent of that state's territory as well, and so maybe there's an issue of whether we're, especially with the maintenance backlog, owning too much um one issue you mentioned as well was wind i i appreciate what you're doing with wind i'm sitting to a a guy who knows a whole lot more about radar than i do uh for sure uh but my my understanding is that turbines cause beam blockage shadowing attenuating of signals that they can create blind spots uh they produce false targets reduce detection sensitivity they complicate tracking of aircraft you could also say missiles as well Uh, and this seems to me like this would be a national security issue to have along our coast. Uh, so I I think, uh, the decisions you're making there are, uh, very, very important. Could you speak to what you're doing? We're in a race against China for AI, among other things. Uh, that is really an energy race, uh, and the importance for us to do what we can to to ramp up energy production very speedily. And again, base load energy, could you talk to what you've been doing on the side of permitting to help us ramp up energy uh permitting quickly?

Yeah, we're, yeah, thank you. Uh, it is, uh, we are in an AI arms race with China, and this is uh interesting cuz it's the first time in history that w- we've been able, it's a miracle that we can turn electricity uh into light or heat. I mean, we take that for granted, but it, we've never been able to turn electricity into intelligence before. So the demand for electricity is gonna go up. the value of electricity is is is skyrocketing. And and the under the under the the framework of what was always called an energy transition, if you took a look at the the actual uh gigawatts being generated, we weren't transitioning under under that pol- those policies we were actually doing energy subtraction.

Oh yeah.

We were prematurely shutting down base load from hydrocarbons, shutting down base load from nuclear, and then adding intermittent. Uh, and then you, at a time when you need it most, if the uh, you know, the sun wasn't shining, the wind wasn't blowing, then it was uh, you know, we - we were having a shortage of electricity. So part of what we d- in - in the AI research with China, China last year added ninety-three gigawatts of coal last year. One gigawatt would - would run all of the Denver Metro or all of Utah. Uh, um, it's a - it - you know, it's a lot of power, but they did ninety-three. They're opening up a - a gigawatt coal plant every four days. Uh, so they're racing ahead on electric generation, uh, and people make comments about China doing renewables, but they're doing a base load at a level that allowed them to also do, uh, you know, do the solar that they were investing in as well. The, the, in terms of the permitting, uh, part of what we had to dr- drive through is, is how do you generate the power and then how do you, you know, and how do you, um, get it connected to the grid. The good news is we didn't have to come up with an appropriation, because the the five hyper-scalers, the largest uh, you know, tech companies in the country that are all driving towards AI, their capital budgets for this year, for this year right now, is over four hundred million dollars. I mean, this is the, I mean, there's never been an appropriation to say, oh, we gotta appropriate federal dollars to go build electricity. But the nation's been, you know, crawling along at sort of a w- a uh, in the tech industry you know, using about one percent of the nation's electricity over a period of time. And then now that's the area that's really causing the huge demand push, uh, relates to the manufacturing, uh, of AI. Uh, so to - to do two things. One is we said we've got to stop shutting down base load. If you wanna protect any of these intermittent sources we have now, and make sure that the grid doesn't collapse. So we literally, through the authorities that Chris Wright has as the Secretary of Energy, uh worked with the power companies to get people to stop prematurely shutting things down, or ordering them to not shut down. That kept seventeen gigawatts on the grid. Without that during the storm Fern uh we would

Yeah.

have had tens of millions of Americans without power. Just two months ago, I mean we were we were at a we were at a crisis level and people were like, why you know, why'd they declare an energy emergency? Uh it was you know the that was the big thing last year. Well it was we declared it on day one because we knew that our grid was at risk because of the over rotation towards towards you know intermittent uh and weather dependent sources versus the the base load. The on the permitting side, part of that is getting through the FERC queue, but because the incentives were so high uh for for for the winds wind and solar projects and then battery to accompany those, uh the ninety-five percent of the FERC queue was was related to uh the uh the these highly subsidized taxpayer subsidized sources. So working with FERC uh working with local grid operators like PGM working with others around the country to say we've gotta get the interconnects done faster uh we've gotta get siting done faster we've gotta allow that capital flow to actually do it and it's not federal dollars I mean the market wants to build more power and they're willing to build it behind the meter they're willing to build it off the grid with the new taxpayer or the rate payer protection plan which the white house drove uh with the PGM grid agreement, which eight democrat governors and five republican governors all signed all agreeing uh that uh that you know to figure out a way to be able to add add power add ai and not have your rates go up cuz the cuz the idea that you're gonna have a you have a fixed cost thing called the grid and if you have somebody that comes in that's willing to pay for power uh that doesn't mean rates are going up that could mean that another person is willing to cover the cost of the existing grid that's there in north dakota we built a 1.2 billion dollar uh, AI factory and the rates went down for everyone around there. But now I see everyone's campaigning for office. I'm gonna be against AI manufacturing cuz rates are gonna go up. Those two things don't necessarily go together. They go together if you have a bunch of other policies or if you're trying to mask the fact that you over-rotated towards the the wind and solar and I and and people may get offended when I say that but when the wind and solar was that's the thing, you still needed everything else. For when the wind's not blowing, the sun's not shining, you still needed all the other power you can't like shut down the other stuff and then what do you do when the wind's not blowing the Germans actually came up with a new word for it it's like this long and it's got you know all consonants and no syllables but it is it means dark doldrums and they've had companies

hmm

they've had companies that have announced that they've missed their earnings this year as renewable companies because the wind didn't blow as much as they thought it was and it was cloudier doesn't have to be like night time if it's cloudy during the day you generate less electricity So the, the, the, the, Germany spent a half a trillion dollars on their green dream, and they produced twenty percent of less electricity, and their rates are three times as high. It's not about, you know, and that all happened before the, the, the, any conflict in the Middle East. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with you can't build out an electrical grid on something that's weather dependent, and then you still, and you've got complete redundancy. You still need the base load. You still need everything else,

Mm-hmm.

and you've added this new thing, and then you've subsidized this thing. That costs more. Uh, and and but people just weren't honest about what the green premium was. It was like the transition was gonna we're gonna have something that's better, but it's gonna cost the same. No, there was that second part was never said, cuz it was never true. It was always gonna cost in some cases double. And now you've got capital flowing, and the capital's gonna flow to the parts of the country that have low electric prices. That's where all the capital's going. And and it it's very uneven, just like we have a difference in gas prices. We have, you know, it's a spread of three or four, some parts of our country, electricity. three or four times more than other, and those places are not seeing the capital flows, cuz advanced manufacturing and distribution, everything that's gonna use robotics, whatever, is gonna require more electricity. And so we're gonna we're gonna see some parts of our country look more like Europe, where there's a lack of investment and other parts are gonna be booming, and it'll be on it'll be uneven. And it's all it's all driven by policy, and it's not it's not ideological, it's it's economics,

Yeah.

it's physics, it's it's just what it is, it's not it's not like oh somebody's right or somebody's wrong it's just it's it's it's things that are immutable uh in terms of the cost side of these things but and then and then we we have a uh uh so what we're trying to do is make sure that capital can get deployed faster and that's easy in some parts of our country

mmm

uh you know because it gets down to the a lot of times state level policy so we're work working hard to bring on more power and more ai uh cause you can't we can't lose the ai arms race it's non-optional I mean, that is, that is completely national, national security. But, and you don't have to go through a briefing. I mean, if, if you got Iran launching five hundred projectiles at Israel last year, all timed to arrive at the same time, uh, without, without AI, you know, Israel, you know, I mean, Israel shot down one of those attacks last year. There was four hundred things that were coming at low level. There was, you know, they were gonna arrive in eight hours, the, you know, the autonomous slow-moving drones that are flying at the height of a wind tower. Then you had you know, another ninety things that were coming that were gonna arrive in three hours, and then you had ten hypersonics that were gonna be there in ten minutes, all timed to arrive say like at five PM. And they shot down, you know, like ninety-six percent of them because you didn't have everything targeting, oh, we're all gonna shoot at the first one and then we've missed the next four hundred ninety-nine. Well, that happened last year and then Americans were like, OK, what's, you know, what was the score of the ball game? I mean, like, it wasn't even like, it wasn't even like page three here, what, wha- what, eh, an ally of ours just had five hundred projectiles launched,

Right, right.

time to come the same thing and they shot them all down and somebody didn't say, how did they do that? It wasn't because you had some guy with a, you know, with a machine gun, you know, like World War Two movie, you know, this is, this is, this is AI, AI, you know, Golden Dome, Iron Dome, it's AI. And if you don't, if you, if somebody's AI is better, you lose that battle. So there is no national security today without AI. And China's winning, winning the electricity race right now. We're ahead of them on chips, we're ahead of them on software. They're ahead on electricity. We've gotta catch up.

Well, thank you for your work on that.

Yep. Thank you.

Chairman.

Charlesy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here. I wanted to talk to you about two things in the time that we have left. Number one is travel and f- law enforcement. The other one's Battlefield and National Parks. Each year, Chairman Simpson and Ranking Member Pingree hope a tribal wi- hold a tribal witness round table event spanning over multiple days where tribes across the nation come to share their testimonies with Congress. Conversations are extremely valuable and always moving, and especially on the treaty violation issue. But last year, a conversation I highlighted my concern with the lack of law enforcement available in Indian country. FBI has recommended two point four officers per thousand people. In a high crime area, I'd say that's probably inadequate,

Mm.

but some tribes have less than point six officers per thousand people. This gap has allowed organized crime to take major advantage of our tribal l- lands whether it's uh human trafficking or the traffico- uh trafficking of narcotics. I understand you're familiar with this issue from your time as servant of governor of North Dakota, now you know you're working on it, but murdered and missing uh missing indigenous people and their relatives for me, uh and for this entire uh committee is an extremely important issue. And under your watch, I think this can be solved, but it needs absolute involvement from your from your uh personal office to help deal with this. The other one is um Battlefield National Parks, and when my son Jack comes up to visit me in Washington, we take time to visit one of the nearby parks. Uh, Gettysburg is in an outstanding shape, Antietam not so much, needs some help. Uh, he's a major history buff. Uh, but his food new favorite place is Fort Washington. And uh, it uh, it's an incredible value to have had this park in the local area. It's only twenty-five minutes south of here. Um, but I'd like to show you some pictures of Fort Washington, and I'm not doing this to put you Only because Steny Hoyer, it's in his district and he and I are gonna go visit it together. It's a beautiful place, but it needs some serious work, and not in the matter of tens of millions of dollars, but if you use utilize John Now or David Rubenstein, American Battlefield Trust or something like that, partner with some of these lesser um visited parks, I think it would go a long way. What we have here is the batteries down at at um at Fort Washington, and you go down some steps, anybody can go down here and have access to these These doors right here are gigantic. This is, they're about fifteen feet high. I should have taken a picture with somebody there. But they're hanging off their hinges and they're a safety issue. They can be taken off or replaced for a few thousand dollars. Let's see the next one, Grace. This is the watch house at the gate. The main gate is right here. It's a beautiful facility. It's absolutely built like a Mack truck. Um, there's another term that I would normally use, but Mack truck's gonna have to Do. So there's some drainage coming off of here and it's coming down to here's the the main gate to the fort right here. You can see some of the some of this is has gone away, some leakage right here, and then we'll show the next picture. This is inside the gate house where it's just literally falling down. People have access to all of this stuff. And and there's some some bricks that are falling down. Wouldn't take too much money to fix something like that up, but for safety reasons, and if you haven't been to Fort Washington, I encourage everybody to go to it. But anyway, it's it's just something that's a a high priority and if we can't fix these and make them look like they're supposed to then we need to shut them down until they are fixed. The priority that I had today was in the short time that we had left, I wanna be uh respectful of your time, is the the MMI PL uh or MMI PR issue, if you could engage me on what you've been doing on that.

I'd happy you let me first say thanks for bringing the photos and one of the things that of course is in the budget. uh, that came from the White House was a ten billion dollar, uh, capital expenditure fund for deferred maintenance for the capital region, which would include Fort Washington, uh, because we've got a lot of examples like that that are out there. So thank you for bringing those to light.

Oh, by the way, thank you. Uh, there were three, uh, FTEs until last year, the, the elderly, uh, um, park, uh, ranger who knew everything about that place, she retired and they didn't fix it. There's hundreds of acres out there and only two park rangers, so that's a big deal too. But thank you for that.

Okay. Thank you. Uh, uh, yes, as, as you noted, uh, ha- have, uh, sadly direct experience in this as governor where we had multiple cases, uh, of, uh, missing and murdered indigenous, in this case women, uh, in North Dakota. Uh, it's where I first became aware of the fact that there was a, you know, caseload of, of, uh, over six thousand cases that the, uh, FBI has, uh, with very little resource against it, uh, and Uh, and I was always, uh, shocked, uh, by that, uh, as, as I think anyone is, cuz it's a, a, I mean, our nation has the ability if we, you know, lose a co-ed on spring break, there's gonna be a ten-part Netflix series about it. And then, uh, someone goes missing in, uh, you know, from one of our tribal reservations and it barely makes a local paper. And we, we, last year we had, uh, one of our advisory boards, I had, uh, twelve regions, two each, uh, twenty-four tribal leaders. there we uh as part of that we had uh uh the FBI attend for the first time over at interior invited them over to hear first hand we had families that were there that had lost uh lost family members uh every but everybody around that table is familiar with it so trying to raise uh uh raise awareness uh the FBI last year agreed for the first time to commit to have a task force uh to uh work on it but as you know there's a lot of these things are cold cases which is again it which then goes back to the lack of local law enforcement and then some cases uh the reporting time frame in North Dakota on cases that we thought we might have been we're able to resolve uh you know nobody reported it till five days you know well we thought she was here we thought she was there we thought she was you know doing this and then and then all of a sudden oh then they're gone then we can kind of leap into uh leap into action fortunately in in North Dakota we had worked hard to develop MOUs between uh the our own state BCI and our state highway patrol where we actually had the ability to get in cuz some parts of our country there are no MOUs and so local law enforcement so it goes straight from the tribe to the feds and then you're basically calling you know a regional or Washington DC office and it hasn't been a hasn't been a priority. So in terms of law enforcement in general we're understaffed we got capital capital maintenance and equipment needs relative to uh both you know detention centers uh that we have around the country and detention centers, oh it's just like a building that it, you know, for that we, in eastern Montana we had a case there on the Crow reservation which is huge, where there was not a detention center, the one that was there is closed down, looked probably like the one, like the photos you had. Uh, so, there's a, um, someone who commits a minor crime, knows he's gonna get hauled off by the one person who's on patrol at night, gotta drive him over to Lame Deer, well he's over there, then the drug deal is going down over here, you know,

Right.

org- in an organized way, this person's gonna get released, you know, they do that, and then in the crossfire, a ten year old kid is killed. You know, I mean, th- this is, I mean, these are the the nasty side effects if we don't have the,

Right.

if we don't have uh the right kind of uh uh staffing and the right kind of resources to do it and as you noted uh there is organized crime. I've had some some people have said, " Oh, that's not true." In North Dakota we did an organized event with the uh, back in uh uh, when I was governor, that involved uh state, federal, local and tribal. And we arrested fifty-five people in one day across three reservations. All of them with ties back to a gang in Detroit that was tied to a cartel in Mexico. And they were coming into North Dakota on Amtrak where there's no TSA. So get on, get on Amtrak with a bag of guns, a bag of of pills and a bag of cash and get off at Devil's Lake to go to Spirit Lake. They would get off at Rugby to go to Turtle Mountain and they would get off at Minot to go to MHA uh and they they were uh, you know, organized recruiting, selling, you know, all of the things that they're doing and so it's a um it's a it's a real it's a real issue. If if there's other ideas that you have about how this committee and how we can get more resources specifically against this, uh be uh be be interested to collaborate with any or all of you on that front.

Well I think popular culture, it's starting to become a big deal, we're seeing a lot of TV shows and I'm sorry that it's it's taken this much but uh it is in popular culture, it's become an issue and I'm um I'm glad to see that it's become an an issue and that people are talking about. I'll just close with this because we're out of time. Thank you for indulging me, is that American Indian and Alaskan Native women experience a murder rate ten times higher than the national average. I'd like to close with that. It's tragic. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

Uh

i think miss pingree has few other questions miss McCollum you have a yeah i have a i have a few things i wanna mention one is you mentioned a wild horses and burros we spent a hundred and forty four million dollars on wild horses and burros last year uh if you can solve that problem i don't care what happens to the rest of we've been trying to deal with that for so long that it that it's crazy i'm glad that mister brought up the murder and missing indigenous people I know that, and I appreciate the increase in the budget request uh to deal with that. You're absolutely right. Nobody's focused on it because they're Indians. And they're out oftentimes in the middle of nowhere. And uh I've, I've been on this committee for twenty-four years. And I like to think that I have delved greatly into Indian issues because southern border of my hometown was Fort Hall Indian Reservation so I've dealt with them for a long time worked on the reservation all that kind of stuff. And about, it was about five years ago, first time I ever heard this issue. After all the time I had served on this, on this committee, I was watching a PBS TV program, and they were talking about it, that we lose six thousand murdered and missing indigenous people every single year. That's twice as many as died on September eleventh. General public doesn't know that. I bring that up in a speech and they all go, you're kidding me. Why haven't I heard that? I think one of the biggest problems after we held a hearing on it, is jurisdictional issues. We need to be working with the FBI, with Ju- or with Justice Department, with uh the Department of Interior and stuff, cuz when I talked to him he had, he is I can understand most Indian issues, but when I get to law enforcement it gets very confusing, uh for a variety of reasons. But if you're an a tribal member that commits a crime on a reservation, you're treated one way, if you're from another tribe, you're treated another way, if you're a white person that gets treated on, that commits a crime on a reservation, or if you're an Indian that commits a crime off a reserva- it is a joke. And until we start recognizing that these tribes can control their own lands and have jurisdiction on their own lands, and prosecute crimes on their own, on their own lands and so forth, uh, I think we're losing our track. So we need to sit down with you, with the department, with your department, with uh, the Justice Department and others and see and obviously with the tribes and see if we can work through uh the jurisdictional issues on this issue but it is to me one of the most uh devastating issues that we deal with and we've gotta solve this problem so I'm just gonna say that couple other things I'm I just wanna mention that are important issues, the fire funding fix uh as you know a few years ago it took me years to get this passed that we decided to treat wildfires like we treat every other natural uh natural disaster, so that we would end the fire borrowing out of other accounts and everything to fight wildfires. Uh, this budget authority increased by one hundred million dollars each year, uh, in fiscal year twenty twenty seven is the final year of its authorization. So it doesn't need to be authorized this year, but it does next year to be reauthorized. I like to get a head start on things. Uh, I'd like to do it this year. And what I'd say, if there are any changes uh that you or your department would recommend for fixing this or for uh reauthorization of this ways to improve it let us know. Uh I've talked with the Chairman of the Resources Committee and would like to go through the Resources Committee to get it reauthorization reauthorized and I think I'm gonna try to try to get that uh done this year but I would certainly appreciate your input on it uh Sage Grouse Management. I've included a provision in our bill since I think two thousand fifteen, except for like one year. I'm sorry. But It was, anybody thinks this is a partisan issue, it's not. It was actually Sac- Secretary Salazar when they were talking about listing sage-grouse, that went to the states and said, develop sage-grouse management plans in your state. And the states got together and worked on that and did it. we have a plan that has been approved as equal with fish and wildlife services as as the state of Idaho's and stuff and so they've they've been working on this for a number of years because they got local landowners involved in it in the sage-grouse committees and stuff so they have a part in it now all of a sudden the federal government comes back in and says no we're gonna take over all this local landowners going why the hell am i devoting all my time to this and stuff and you lose their support so I've put uh provisions in our law uh area in our bill all the time that prevent them from listing sage-grouse while these plans are being worked on. And so I suspect, I don't know for sure, but I suspect somebody will probably add it to a bill again this year. So but it's not it's not that we're not trying to protect sage-grouse. It's that there's a way to do it that doesn't involve the federal government and stuff. That involves the states and letting the states do that. And of course that affects North Dakota also, cuz you're a sage-grouse state also, aren't you? Yeah.

Hmm.

Uh, This is a question though. In November the administration published four proposed rules that would restore endangered species act regulations to their proven two thousand nineteen and two thousand twenty frameworks. The feedback I heard on these proposals was positive, that these revisions really would allow the agency to take a balanced common sense approach to species listing delisting and critical habitat determinations. Anytime we try to make a change to the ESA, somebody's gonna accuse us of not caring about species and letting them die off, and all that kind of stuff. Could you walk us through the changes and how they would improve the department's implementation of the Endangered Species Act?

Uh, I can at a high level. Uh, the, with the f- roughly across the four, take the four different things are again just all, uh, I would call them common sense and efficiency, uh, gains going back to uh making sure that we're focuses on protecting wildlife versus using it uh as a weapon to to stop development. I mean it there's there are it's also an industry that's been created around uh u- using that to stop just about anything that wants to get built in America

Yep.

and where where it may or may not have any impact on on wildlife so the the uh so I I mean I commend you and others worked on those originally and putting them in there cuz I think it's a good, it's a good grounding base point to um for, you know, for build policy that's based on the law and based on common sense, based on the science.

Well, it is. I said for a long time the Endangered Species Act really wasn't about preserving species. It was about protect, it was about uh uh controlling land and water and that's the problem.

Mm-hmm.

Uh and one of the real problems is trying to uh delist species once they're listed. and stuff so

well it is I mean to the point that that the uh ninety seven percent of the things that have ever gone on that list have never come off and so I think if the idea of creating the list would be to celebrate hey we saved something it's coming off the list I mean

yeah

Shelby that's what that would be the whole point if we're all like we wanna save something but instead the culture right now is people celebrate when something gets on the list we got we got something

yeah

yeah

on the list we got it on the list it's like great when when we celebrate when stuff coming off nothing ever comes off it's it's like the hotel California you can't You check in, you can't check out, so,

Check in but you can't check out.

so it's like it, and I mean, cuz if if we, if anybody had a program that was designed fifty years ago, and you said the goal was to save species, and ninety-seven percent of the time you concluded you hadn't, I think Congress might take a look at that and go, " This isn't working.

Yeah.

It's not working the way it is." And then when we try to change it, everyone's like, " Oh, you don't care about species." No, we care about species, we care about saving them. Can we work on something that would actually work?

Yeah.

I mean, even if it was fifty-fifty, you'd be like great half the time we saved them or you know let's keep up the good work but if ninety seven percent of the time they're they're still on there and they're like no site no line of sight of them coming off uh cause like i said then it you you run out of places where you can actually build something in america and

yeah yeah

it's a we we we we we have to be able to do do both protect species and and uh build things

we had a maybe you heard about a bird hearing uh last thursday in our committee in our full room we had uh uh an organization that brought in a lot of endangered birds from around the world and stuff it was very interesting but we had the Peregrine Fund there which is located in Boise and they they uh

Mm-hmm.

help save raptors all around the world. They've been in existence for thirty or forty years something like that. They've never filed a lawsuit. They find that they get better results by going out and working with ranchers and other people to preserve these species and educate them to that, that it is better to work with them and it's it, and it's more valuable to have them on their land because the Alpamato falcon falcon needs the same grasslands as cattle do.

Mm-hmm.

And they can work together and they, that's how they saved the Alpamato Alpamato falcon by uh talking with uh Texas ranchers uh and that's why it's down there, that's how they did the condor and stuff. But they've never filed a lawsuit and I find that very interesting. Uh, and it's a different way to work to preserve species. We don't always have to use lawsuits to do it. But anyway, Miss Pingree?

Thank you, Mister Chair. Um, we did get rid of DDT and we got the bald eagle back. So we have made some progress in some places and

Mm-hmm.

sometimes there is just something else we have to do. And I I do wanna just uh reinforce what Mister Elzey and the chair have said many times about murdered and missing. Indigenous women, it's been really important that this committee has put such a focus on it, so I appreciate the stories that you shared, Mister Secretary, and do think that when we uh when we hold our hearings we often hear that we meet about fifteen percent of the need for law enforcement in an Indian country, and that certainly has a huge impact, so when it comes to resources there are things that we could do um to increase uh our ability to to help with that situation, so um I've come to the conclusion that you and I could argue all day, um, or maybe into the evening, and I don't wanna do that with all of your time. Um, but I will say I'm I'm I'm disappointed about a couple things I wanna be clear about. I, um, you know, we had a chance to meet you last year. I looked over the role that you had played as governor of North Dakota. Um, I always think it's good to have governors in these jobs cuz you have to take such a comprehensive view of what goes on in your state. I looked up, um, your proclamation in twenty-three for clean energy week and you You extolled the virtues of all sources of energy, hydropower, solar power, wind power. You mentioned in that proclamation that one third of the energy in your state came from wind power um and that you were fifth or sixth in the nation in wind power. Texas is one of those states. Iowa is one of those states. And we've really proven that renewable energy can make a difference. So I disagree with your argument that we shouldn't be investing and I think what Mister Harder said is it just starting to feel like there's a double standard. Maybe you felt like The other administration had gone too far in the other direction, but by, you know, many accounts, we subsidized oil and gas to huge levels. It's about thirty five trillion dollars at the federal level, thirty five billion dollars at the federal level, and the IMF says it's closer to a trillion dollars when you really look at, you know, all of the benefits that oil and gas gets, um, the costs of it, the health costs of it, um, environmental damage, and certainly at the federal level when I talk about thirty five billion, I'm talking about tax breaks. Um, the use of public land at d- at low prices, environmental loopholes, um, and just many of the things, I just disagree with many of the things that you said. I mean, we uh, yes, we have solar panels that are Chinese made, but that's part of the problem is that the previous Trump administration and other administrations wouldn't make that investment up front, to make sure we built our own industry. We're about to see that happen with electric cars, because of what this administration has done to discourage people using cars and believe me they're gonna buy them with gas prices staying this high, but they're all gonna just pour in from Canada now because electric cars are gonna come from China via Canada so I think we make a huge mistake um when you talk about the intermittent supply of those powers you know in most situations and I'm sure you did it in your state you built it into the process you talk about having you know base load I'm not arguing with you about that I'm arguing with cutting out the opportunities for solar and wind. Um, and that's critically important. I looked up something that um, ISO had said, let's see if I can um, ISO New England, I'm sure you know they control our grid in New England, and and when they saw those five projects were cancelled, they said these projects are particularly important to system ro- reliability in the winter when offshore wind output is highest, and other supplies of fuel supply are constrained. It goes on to talk about many other things and why we were counting on that. in the northeast in those wind projects. I'm lucky enough to live in an offshore community myself. We're served by wind power. The wind blows all night long. The problem is we don't always know how to capture it, but we're trying to build up our battery capacity so that we can capture that. So we have ways to do this. We're not investing in that technology with this administration, and I think we make a huge mistake in doing that. So one of our arguments is just that, you know, you're not thinking about reliability in all forms of it at a time when as you said people are gonna be putting up more ai the demand is gonna be increasing um and we're just gonna need more electricity and the last was um about regulation i i just wanna be clear i i don't wanna i don't want you to think i'm trying to use any misstatements or political vitriol to argue back at you but when i was talking about um the issues that i have deep concerns about around the um offshore oil drilling and some of those changes that you're making I did look it up. Um there are adjustments being made to the blowout preventer regulations, it was the blowout preventer that was a deep cause of what happened in the deep water horizon and in to decommissioning requirements, so I double checked. There are changes that you're making and I'm worried that it will lessen the standards. I'm very worried about this combining of administrations will put us back to where we were before so. Um, that's kind of repeating and arguing the points that I've already made, but I think I'm right and you're wrong. So, just had to say it. And I'm trying to use facts.

I- if I can be clear on one thing, that we're uh, in this administration we support hydro, great form of base load, we support nuclear, which has been under attack, uh, in parts of our country and we're doing great things to try to bring nuclear back. geothermal uh represents a huge opportunity for this country and the, and where the advancements in geothermal is gonna come from is getting to um, you know, advances in, advances in material science which are gonna be driven in large part by AI, but it's also gonna be driven by all the knowledge we've gained uh through the entire uh the um the shale revolution, cuz the shale revolution really is where pers- precision drilling has come from. I mean the ability to go deep and go very precisely, uh, which is what it took to develop things like the Marcellus, the Permian and the, and the Bakken. Uh, enormous precision, enormous technology going into that is gonna really help on geothermal. So I'm, I'm very optimistic that we're gonna have, uh, uh, what, you know, are, would be considered, uh, base load, and in many ways, mmm, more, mmm, better for the environment than, than what it takes uh, cuz you know with with electric uh, you talk about electric cars cuz the high gas prices, the electricity uh, prices you know you know under under the intermittent sources, it's gonna be very high. So, I mean, it's not like it's a big savings, and I think you know you're you seem to have a lot of facts. So you know that you have to drive a a a car, uh, an EV about seventy thousand miles just to get break-even on a CO two basis. It's not some immediate thing where I start consuming more electricity that I, that I've, you know, ma- had this instant gain because there's no, uh, no emissions. And, and then all of the, the comparisons that people would use around comparing

Fuel is cheaper.

Cheaper?

You know, fuel is cheaper.

Fuel is not coming from the roads.

Which fuel is cheaper?

Fuel electricity is currently ch- it's currently cheaper to drive an electric car than a gas-powered car. For just the fuel.

Interesting. Um, OK, well, I, the uh, the, the, I guess it depends on just like what part of the country you're in, because electricity costs different prices in different places, but I mean we saw the big drop-off in purchases in electric cars as soon as the subsidies went away. People were buying cars because of the subsidy and the concentration of electric cars uh in terms of where purchases occurred uh was, was very confined to certain areas and as it should because if you're driving an electric car in North Dakota in cold weather you don't get the mileage that you do in someplace warm uh and and then we had um in in so we would have these things where the subsidy was the same whether you were living uh in Alaska or North Dakota as if you were living in Arizona and we had the same subsidies for solar if you were in uh a northern climate versus if you were in southern Utah and and so if if you're if you, if you're ever gonna get back to, hey, we gotta subsidize these things, uh, to make them work and we gotta use taxpayer dollars to do it, uh, then latitude needs to be, come into the, the thinking because the, the, these things vary a lot in both the production of electricity and the consumption of electricity, based on temperature. Again, that's just physics. Uh, but it was, uh, it was a one size fits all, uh, in terms of how we were, you know, thinking about these subsidies which also led to really uneven uh, you know, uneven and maybe unexpected things, but I'm just saying again, it to, to suggest that we're not for uh, clean and base load power when, when this administration has done more for nuclear with the four executive orders that came out last year, there's billions of dollars capital flowing back into small modular nuclear. Uh, the example that Representative McCullum used on the Wind River uh example, is a great one because there are places where where you can't get transmission to rural areas. We're having solar on top of a household to be an adjunct to um some sort of hydrocarbon like uh

OK, I'm just gonna freeze that in time, so you did say something positive about solar on top of a household. Just wanna just wanna remember that and that's a very good so we don't need,

Well As long as it's supposed to

everybody does need to be on the grid, just just to be clear, my house has solar power on the top roof of my household and so I just plug in my car and I make my own electricity and it all works well.

Yep. And it and it is taxpayer.

Just I just plug it more often and

And I'm guessing a taxpayer subsidy help pay for the panel, and then you gotta do something.

I did do it before we had the taxpayer subsidies,

OK.

but but I did appreciate that we did that, but if you're gonna spend thirty five billion dollars a year subsidizing oil and gas, it's not a bad idea to subsidize those houses that could benefit from it.

I'm. I won't get into a debate about the number that was and and who produced that number and what that means cuz that's that's a cumulated set of projected costs, as opposed to an actual an actual thing where we were sending federal money out to companies doing these projects. So, I mean, the, you know, and we we started off the conversation talking about offshore wind. Uh, the we could you could you could have a hearing of offshore wind people and they from Europe or from and they would all come in room and say that we weren't we knew we weren't really producing uh electrons, we were just harvesting tax credits. I mean, they'll tell you that. I mean, they that that's why they that's why they were pursuing those things. It made economic sense. They're, these are shareholder driven global companies. They were pursuing and coming to do projects here not because it was the cheapest form of electricity or because it was was because it was the subsidies were so massive. I mean the project value was really, really high.

But you see them throughout Europe. Most European countries now depend on some form of offshore wind, certainly Norway, Denmark, Sweden.

Yeah, and they are, they are their electricity costs are through the roof and and their economies like Germany are are uh um are you know are collapsing because they don't have reliable electricity in an era where everybody needs electricity.

They don't think we're always in any kind of collapse.

No, because they have a trillion dollar sovereign wealth fund built by selling North Sea oil. That's why that's why they have it.

They've invested it in renewables. I I really I I should not keep doing this.

Yep.

I apologize, Mister Chair, I thank you for your time as I said, I have a feeling you and I could do this for quite a long time,

We could,

so.

but I I want you to know that there is a bro broad set of things and it's not like everyone's, everyone says all of the above, why can't you do all of the above? The last administration said all of the above, and then there was a set of rules that were completely punitive against the stuff that we needed to actually you know have base load power in this country. It was just too early, it was too premature to say we're gonna shut all that down and we're gonna transition. It was, it w- there again there was no transition happening, it was subtraction at a time when we need addition. So the, the with, with the with the support for hydro- geothermal, nuclear, uh, and hydrocarbons, uh, that's what, that's what we need right now, uh, because we, we have, in some places we have a lot of renewables. My home state, which you mentioned, that worked in North Dakota because we grew our base load. We weren't shutting down our base load and transitioning. We knew that we needed more. And when we were doing both, you know, guess what state, DOE did a report, guess what state had the lowest electric prices in the country? North Dakota had the lowest electric prices. Yes, who had the highest increase in demand. for electricity, North Dakota. When people say, oh the demand for electricity is up because of a data center and our prices are high, that's a false correlation. And, and, and it's, and I worry about the Northeast. The Northeast has got twenty percent of our population, and it's on track to get about two percent of the next wave of capex spending in the country, because people aren't gonna invest someplace where, you wouldn't put a wheat mill where wheat costs three times as much. No one's gonna come in and, and put in the next generation capital expenses in a place where the electricity prices are high and that's you know why i've enjoyed working with ned lamont he gets it he gets that that there has to be natural gas from pennsylvania we have three dollar gas in pennsylvania and during this winter it was fifteen bucks in maine why are we subjecting nor why are we why why are we subjecting americans to having to pay more to heat their home and more for the electricity uh because we can't build horizontal infrastructure uh in this thing it was cheaper to buy pennsylvania gas in europe this winter than it was in new england Uh, and so, and so, anyway, we're, we, if we, if the people want affordability in this country, then part of it is, the equivalent of three dollar gas is like fifty cent diesel. I mean, when you take the energy component. I mean, we, we, we've been blessed with this amazing abundance, uh, of, of natural gas in this country and, and it's, it breaks my heart to think that it's not being utilized. I mean, Maine, eighty percent of their homes is, are heated by by heating oil, dirty, it's a dirty fuel. At the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that heating oil was coming from Russia, we're importing into New England just like we import into California foreign sources of dirty product when we c- we've got clean American natural gas right here, which is did, uh, done more to lower CO two emissions, which was always the stated goal of the movement was to lower CO two, so that against the thing that was against the thing that was doing the most to reduce CO two emissions.

We have dropped that number from eighty percent. down to closer to sixty five because we've increased the amount of heat pumps, we've had a huge effort in our state to have rooftop solar, so we have been actively trying to change that,

Yep.

and we do have more natural gas utilization than we used to, but we've had real investment in heat pumps.

Which is great, and it and it'd be and we're wor- working with all the New England governors, we've had you know multiple calls with all of them together and saying how can we do that and we did get the uh um and and I I misspoke when I said NED cuz that's Connecticut but I when i when i uh

but i like ned limone too so i was like yeah

yeah but i i was saying but uh again with uh um with the working to make sure that we can get you know low cost affordable reliable secure energy to every state is part of what we we we're we're working on and we appreciate those governors that have been collaborating with us to try to make that happen because the uh um and and and it was nice to celebrate the nessie pipeline uh because that's gonna that's gonna bring you know, h- help bring natural gas to two point one million homes in the New York, Long Island area, which will then have benefit, benefit, uh, to Connecticut and others. But it's a, um, you know, that's gonna save more than a thousand dollars a year on home heating costs. I mean, that's billions of dollars a year for one little thirty mile pipeline.

Hmm.

You know, I mean, and we could, we could repeat that and we would have, if we, and if we had support to get that done. I mean, the estimates are that we could save people in New England, uh, you know, eight billion dollars a year just with by getting by having more uh more natural gas and then then you'd start to see along those corridors those energy corridors you'd start to see economic development occur cause people say hey I can afford to build in you know in New York and New England if I know I can get the same price for for gas here that I can in Pennsylvania

Thank you Mr. S-

thank you

Got a feeling this could go on for some time huh yeah

that's what I mean

uh thank you uh Mister Chairman for or Mister uh secretary for being here today we appreciate your thoughts and responses on these important issues and look forward to working with you as we put together the twenty twenty seven budget thank you

well thank you thank you and and there were a number of questions my staff has been here

thanks

writing them down and we'll uh we'll uh follow up uh and uh we we know that there's been uh questions but also concerns we want to address your concerns uh and we want to answer your questions so thank you for for the time that you have

i appreciate that there is one thing i will bring up i agree with miss McCollum in that Indian education has been very important to this committee too, and when you saw the pictures of Port Washington, I could show you some pictures of Indian schools that look just like that. And I know that they didn't put any request in for building for Indian schools, that's something that we will do when uh we write our bill, but it is very important that we address Indian education cuz frankly,

Yep.

just like we think that's the future of the American people, that's that's the future of Indian tribes also.

Mm-hmm.

is the education system. So, appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you.

The hearing is closed, is adjourned. Closed, adjourned, whatever.