President's FY 2027 Budget Request for Department of the Interior

Morning. Committee will come to order. We're gonna hear today from Secretary Burgum as we discuss the fiscal year twenty twenty-seven budget uh from the United States Department of the Interior. Welcome, Mister Secretary. I'll begin with my opening statement, followed by Ranking Member Heinrich's opening statement, and then we'll turn to Secretary Burgum. for his opening statement followed by questions uh from members of the committee. Uh, I wanna note that that today uh Senate Democrats are having their policy retreat. So for today's hearing, ranking member Heinrich has requested that we recognize Democrat senators based on order of seniority r- rather than being subject to the early bird rule and we're happy to honor that. So Republican senators will be recognized based on their order of seniority for those who were here at the gavel. uh, and order of arrival for those, uh, arriving afterwards. Um, uh, but Democrats won't be subject, uh, uh, to that one. Uh, and I'll begin. Uh, Mister Secretary, President Trump campaigned on a promise to unleash American energy. And delivering on that promise runs directly through the department that you lead in, in so many respects. When you assumed office, you inherited a department uh, that had been alienated against its own purpose, certainly against that particular purpose, under your predecessor, the Biden administration, did everything to power i- i- everything in its power to dampen energy production and narrow access to federal land. Lease sales were canceled or, in many cases, delayed. Permits were slow-walked and in some cases revoked. The Biden administration didn't view the federal estate as a natural as a national asset to be actively managed. Instead, use was treated with suspicion and access became conditional, revocable, and increasingly rare. We were sold a lie that demand could be managed from above, that supply would quietly adjust to political preference, and that the consequences could be deferred. Predictably, supply chains drifted further overseas, leaving us more exposed to decisions made abroad, outside of our control. Wildfire threats grew more severe, and coordination remained fragmented and slower than the scale of the problem under, uh, today's circumstances required. The boom in artificial intelligence, coupled with the development of advanced manufacturing, proved just how untenable the previous administration's approach was. For these reasons, I was relieved to see that your FY twenty twenty-seven budget request shows a dramatic departure from that approach. Under your proposed budget, there is a renewed emphasis on unleashing American energy and America's mineral dominance. Least sales are being put back on a predictable schedule, pursuant to the Working Families Tax Cut Act. Permits for oil and gas projects are no longer the insurmountable barrier that they once served as. Mining in the United States is gaining ground from coal to critical minerals that underpin modern manufacturing, energy systems, and the technologies shaping global power. These efforts will reduce our dangerous dependence on foreign adversarial nations, instead favoring American workers and American ingenuity. Mister Secretary, you have many accomplishments already under your tenure, but you still have monumental tasks ahead, and you're tackling those every day. Now last year, more than five million acres burned, causing billions of dollars in damage and placing entire communities at risk. Interior's unification of federal wildfire programs into a single wildland fire service, acknowledges that the current system hasn't been working as it should. For too long, responsibility has been split across agencies with overlapping authorities, with inconsistent priorities, and no clear chain of command. I look forward to hearing more about your plan for how this structure will be used, how it will improve coordination and accelerate response, while bringing accountability to a system that's too fall, that's too long, uh, fallen far short. Lastly, I want to commend you for your work in leading the country's commemoration of America's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, or as, uh, King Charles put it yesterday, uh, the semi-quincentennial. That's a word that very rarely makes an appearance in the English language. Uh, uh, and that's why we call it America two fifty. That's a lot easier to say. That effort forces us to look back at what made this country possible. We're a nation of builders. of producers and those who refuse to accept limits imposed by circumstance or by our own reluctance. The decisions made in this department and your department sit squarely in that tradition. If we fail here, we fall behind. If we get it right, we shape our destiny on our own terms for our own betterment and, uh, the betterment of those who will come after us. I have utmost confidence in you, Mister Secretary, in your ability to, uh, get the job done and get it done right. And I look forward to your testimony today. Uh, I recommend Breynem.

Thank you, Chairman. The budget proposal that we're discussing today tells us a lot about what this administration's priorities are. And I was very pleased to see that you have abandoned last year's proposal to get rid of many units of the national park system. But even though you've agreed to keep our park units, budget request makes clear that this administration is not committed to keeping the park service intact. Uh, this budget would decimate the management of our national parks and monuments. And while you have said that the cuts are not targeting staff physically located at park units, the management of our parks relies on the entire workforce of the national park service. It doesn't matter whether a particular wildlife biologist or archaeologist or botanist or historian works at one specific park, or supports multiple parks from a regional office, eliminating those positions means that our national parks will go without the science-based management and conservation that they need, and that the American people have frankly come to expect. And the damage that this proposal will do to our public lands doesn't end with the parks. At the Bureau of Land Management, which manages nearly half of our public lands, this administration would cut the land resources account by forty-eight percent. That's just a fact. The Wildlife Management aquatic resources program by seventy percent. It would cut management of national conservation lands, including our national monuments, recreation areas, and national trails by seventy-five percent. And I would point out that those national monuments are major drivers of economic development in my state. I don't know anyone in New Mexico that thinks we spend too much money on wildlife. We may spend too much money on a war in Iran, but we don't spend too much money on wildlife. People often say that budget proposals in Washington are a statement of our values. You fund the things that you care about. What this budget proposal tells me is that this administration does not prioritize our national parks, our public lands, does not care about remembering and telling our nation's history, does not value our wildlife, and does not prioritize our tribal communities. It also tells me that this administration isn't serious about permitting reform because defunding the agencies that issue permits for new energy projects means that permits don't get issued, creating red tape rather than cutting it. Even the courts have said that The Department of Interior needs to stop illegally stalling wind and solar projects, and yet there are still no projects moving to construction. Instead of trying to appeal this recent decision or defy it, the Department of Energy needs to comply with the court's order, start approving permits for clean energy projects on federal lands. And if there is any hope of Congress passing bipartisan permitting reform, the the administration needs to make use of the permitting system that we have, instead of trying to break it. I know the American people care about all of these things, and I am confident that the disregard this administration has for our public lands and waters will not be allowed to degrade and destroy our national heritage. Thank you, Chairman.

Thank you. Um, okay, uh, Secretary Burgum will now turn to you for your opening statement and your written statement will also be admitted for the record.

Thank you, Chairman, and thank you for the opportunity to be with you today and ranking member Heinrich and the distinguished members of this uh committee. And thanks for the opportunity to testify in support of President's fiscal year twenty twenty-seven budget request for the Department of the Interior and discuss what our team is doing to make America safer, stronger, more beautiful, and more prosperous. Uh, as all of you know, this Department of Interior touches the lives of millions of Americans. uh, across fourteen time zones. Uh, we manage America's vast energy supply and natural resources. We honor federal trust responsibilities in our unique relationships with tribal nations. We deliver water to the west. We fight fires. We enforce the law. We steward our treasured wildlife refuges and national parks. Our efforts extend across the country to ensure border security. The Department of Interior manages forty-one percent of the southwestern border. and the safety of Indian country. This broad portfolio is part of America's treasured balance sheet, tens of trillions worth of assets that belong to the American people and should be responsibly managed and conserved and, as, as the law states, put to use, uh, for their benefit. Uh, while the prior administrations have handcuffed and locked Americans out of their land and water, the Trump administration is doing the opposite, responsibly unlocking and both access and prosperity through recreation and sustainable use, including by our nation's hunters and anglers, who we know financially support conservation more than any other groups. This budget reflects President Trump's priorities to pursue American energy dominance, deliver services more efficiently, uphold law and order, and make federal land safe and accessible for all Americans, all of which will make life more healthy and more affordable for families across the country. Under this administration, Interior is committed to increasing energy development on our public lands and waters, re-establishing our position as dominant in critical minerals, and protecting our economic and national security. Energy dominance can be simply defined as the ability to sell energy to our friends and allies so that they don't have to buy from those waging war against against us, uh, and those waging terrorism against us. Energy dominance also means that we have supply to keep energy prices uh, home so Americans can prosper. We have eliminated burdensome ideological and counter-productive regulations that have undermined efficient land management, overstepped uh legal boundaries, constrained economic development. And, well, we've done this while maintaining appropriate protections for our wildlife and the environment. Ongoing regulatory reform to cut red tape will continue to secure supply chains unlock American energy deliver better outcomes for the American people and tribal nations and secure the financial returns in a sustainable way for the American people on their their federally owned land and mineral assets. Those returns on those assets can help solve the enormous, uh, backlog of deferred maintenance that we have as a country that never seems to get funded through appropriations. Last month, the department held record lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, generating record revenue, creating opportunities for the those Native Alaskans that live, uh, in the North Slope borough. And following Congress's direction and the Working Families Tax Cut Act, we are scheduling and holding energy lease sales according to the law, to increase supply and lower costs for Americans. The department estimates that revenues in twenty-twenty-seven will exceed nearly twenty billion. That makes the Department of Interior unusual across the federal budget in that we will have more revenue coming in than expenses going out uh and we believe that, as we can we can manage this this department in a way to have the revenue go up, to have more resources to manage, more financial resources to manage our natural resources. So again, uniquely, we're ha- more than - the revenues this year and this budget will - will offset operational costs of the department. And think of us as a cash flow positive that contributes back to the American people and to the treasury. Uh, the department is also reducing costs by making our operations more effective and more efficient. This budget, as you have all read, includes three unification proposals, and I specifically say unification, not consolidation, because we're unifying, uh, without, uh, cutting corners, but we're unifying to improve efficiency. Uh, two of those include unifications that are across departments, uh, coordinated by, uh, the White House and with the support of the con- the consola- of the - of the, uh, multiple i- the multiple departments. And a further one is just within our own uh department. Uh, one of the two, uh, the further strategic unification of wildland fire programs into the department's new US wildland fire service. It's considers the consi- the, the unification of the parallel and often redundant work. I mean, I'm, excuse me, that was the first one. The second one is, is the unification of the parallel and often redundant work of the Fish and Wildlife Service, and NOAA under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, uh, combining both of those activities into the Fish and Wildlife Service. So there's one place for people to go, uh, if they're trying to find out, uh, where a, where a mammal or a fish might be endangered, as opposed to having to go to two separate agencies. Uh, the, the, the reunification of the departments to existing offshore minerals management bureaus is a something that occurs just within our own department. But we're combining Boehme and Bessie, into a single entity in marine marine minerals administration, streamlining the governance of offshore energy and mineral resources will deliver greater value to the American public and ensure safe expedition orderly development of the outer continental shelf energy and critical minerals resources while keeping the revenue coming from those offshore resources uh which was a concern of over a decade ago into this a separate organization. Uh these unification efforts will streamline bureaucracy and make our work to fight fires, manage our forests, protect our wildlife and the environment, and manage our mineral resources all faster, smarter, and more effective. The budget also advances key administrative priorities, including upholding trust responsibilities, empowering Indian country, conserving America's wildlife and natural resources, and making public lands accessible to all Americans for hunting, fishing, recreation, 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 probate backlog, and combating violent crime and the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous people. Millions of Americans visit interior managed lands each year, fueling a boom of outdoor recreation economy. and supporting jobs in small businesses nationwide. It's estimated that the outdoor recreation economy is now reaching one point three trillion dollars, uh, and employs three percent of the American public. Uh, two hundred and twenty-six- the twenty-twenty-seven budget focuses on, on, uh, the continued, uh, maintenance and beautification of interior's assets. One big ask that I would have of this important committee is for your full support for the expeditious reauthorization of the great american outdoors act legacy restoration fund which was passed by congress and signed by president trump in his first term a reauthorization for an additional five years would again help us protect these important resources and tackle the growing deferred maintenance backlog through this fund the department invests in properly maintaining roads bridges water systems visitor centers and other assets so visitors can continue to safely enjoy our national parks and public lands for years to come. In addition, as we celebrate America's two hundred and fiftieth, the budget focuses resources on visitor-facing operations at parks, wildlife refuges and across public lands. This will help improve visitor experience, drive tourism, create jobs, and generate revenue for the - our important partners in local interest communities, all while promoting responsible stewardship of our natural resources. This budget also includes a new proposal, the Presidential Capital Stewardship. program for priority construction and beautification and deferred maintenance projects in and around uh the large national capital region to address years of inadequate maintenance. This program will support the President's Make America Beautiful Again agenda and projects will improve safety and accessibility, rehabilitate historic buildings and landscapes, improve infrastructure in the greater capital region, including our highways and underground infrastructure, and enhance the overall visitor experience in Washington DC and the surrounding area. The iconic monuments, memorials and landscapes supported by these projects will continue to be protected by the United States Park Police, a separate law enforcement group, one of five that are law enforcement groups that are part of Interior. The US Park Police was founded by George Washington in seventeen ninety-one. Under prior administrations, this uh force had been uh essentially defunded. Under President Trump's leadership, The U S Park Police has expedited the hiring of more than three hundred new officers to help keep our nation's capital and national parks safe and beautiful. This budget includes an increase of a hundred and eleven million dollars for these dedicated law enforcement officers, the equipment and the tools they need to operate to keep our national capital region fully staffed and safe. Simply put, this budget puts America's first and Americans' first while ensuring peace and prosperity for our country's future. I deeply appreciate this committee's support for the department's mission, and I look forward to working closely with each of you to advance the President's priorities. Thank you.

Thank you, Secretary Burgum. We'll now begin our five minute rounds of questions, and I will begin. Uh, Mister Secretary, since January first, more than twenty-three thousand fires have burned over one point eight million acres nationwide. The, uh, failure uh, past administrations to conduct active land management has helped turn the West into a giant tinderbox but under your leadership changes are finally happening. How will the, um, uh, it'd be lovely for you to just sort of explain to us how the US, uh, wildland fire service will improve the interior's ability to mitigate risk in the streamline operations and get the wildfire crisis under control.

Thank you, Chairman. Uh, as this committee knows, there are four separate firefighting, uh, units within the Department of Interior. Uh, they are, are held within, uh, four of our, uh, bureaus. So we've got a separate one for the National Parks, US Fish and Wildlife, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Bureau of Land Management. Uh, in some cases these are large, the Bureau of Land Management in many states, m- uh, manages forests larger than the US Forest Service. The budget also includes the unification represents the unification of the firefighting portion of the, of the US Forest Service, which currently resides in, in, under the USDA, uh, to have that fifth firefighting group also come under this structure. So that's reflected in the budget. Uh, what we have across these five firefighting groups today is we've got courageous young men and women well-trained and capable to go out and fight fires. Think of it as the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force, the Coast Guard. But we don't have a joint chiefs of staff. We find ourselves when a fire doesn't understand the difference between state land, private land, is it BLM land, national park service land, fire doesn't care. Uh, but we, we get to the top of this chain and without a joint chiefs of staff, we don't have the ability to make decisions about deploying uh aircraft appropriately and e- expeditiously. And we haven't had, we haven't had leadership in some of these organizations. The leadership would be a, a hot shot firefighter on the front line, reports to a firefighter, but at some point in the chain they report to a land manager that might be saying, hey, I'm constrained in my budget, I've got to, I I got a fire here, but I gotta let it burn because I have no budget for being able to do any kind of forest management. Well, right next door we might have someone else that says, no, that's it's ninety degrees out, the wind's blowing seventy miles an hour, we have to take an approach of of uh extinguishing this fire, uh so we've gotta focus on suppression. And we have another group that is focusing on containment. This happened to us last year where we had fires that burned out of control, uh, adjacent to each other on federal lands. Uh, so we, with the, with this proposal, we've, we have proceeded within our own department. We've hired a head of the National Wildland Fire Chief, uh, with great experience. Uh, he's been making the rounds, uh, with Congress. We're happy to set up meetings with any of you or your staff, uh, for him and, and myself or a Deputy Secretary to talk about this, but this is a much needed change. In addition to this unification, we're also taking a look at pay, retirement benefits. We've had folks that come, they get trained, they join one and then they decide, oh, I, I get better pay in the, in the other agency, I'm gonna switch to that one. We've gotta be unified across all of this. The support from the front lines is high, uh, in the, in the, in the, and I'd say the implementation that we're moving ahead on right now, as we head into this, this season. It gives us the ability to say, if we put out a sectoral order, so now the wildland fire chief reports all the way up to the secretary's office, to me, not someplace else, five different locations. One order saying, eh this year with this incredibly dry year in the west, we are under full suppression. If there is a fire, as of the, when that issue went out, secretary'll order a few weeks ago, there's a fire, we're putting it out. We can't waste human resources. We can't waste financial resources, aviation resources, this spring, hoping, uh, that some of these fires are gonna go out on themselves. So this is a long overdue, uh, been talked about for decades, long overdue, uh, we're charging ahead. We would love to have the full support of this committee.

Great. Thank you. And I, uh, I I like the, uh, joint chief's, uh, analogy. Uh, " War on fires." Uh, President Trump's budget, uh, includes a provision to reauthorize the legacy restoration fund, but with some needed reforms. Our land management agencies have a deferred maintenance backlog that adds up, uh, to - to more than thirty billion dollars, would it be? Which is an increase from when the LRF was created. This is in part because current law provides permanent funding to buy more land and to increase the federal estate, uh, but only growing the maintenance needs, and so if we don't catch up with that, we'll, we could get even farther behind. So, Mister Secretary, as we discuss reauthorizing the legacy restoration fund, will you work with us to make reforms to ensure that the deferred maintenance backlog decreases.

Yes, absolutely, sir.

And I I thank you also for your commitment on the Colorado River issues that we face. As you know, the outcome of ongoing negotiations um have had um will have a massive impact on on Utah and and on the west. Will you commit to being transparent in working with the upper basin and including providing maximum possible notice for actions impacting the Colorado River, Specifically in the upper basin.

Yeah, absolutely, and I'd say we've taken unprecedented action in this dry year. We've had uh the seven uh governors of those states of all upper and lower basin all been in my office with the exception of one uh that had to remote in. We've had two video calls with uh including one with all seven western states governors on this thing so it's not just the water managers, we're talking secretary to governors as we try to address these issues and we'll keep that transparency and regular communication up.

Great. Thank you. Senator Heinrich.

Thank you, Chairman. Um, first I wanna say I I very much appreciate your testimony with respect to reauthorizing the Great American Outdoors Act Legacy Restoration Fund that is one of the most u- ubiquitously bipartisan policies that that this committee has produced in the last uh, in the last decade. So, um, we look forward to working with you on that. Um, I am concerned that over the last year we have seen a hollowing out of the Department of Interior. Um, nearly twenty percent of Department of Interior staff have been, uh, either pushed out or have left or have retired. And, and yet the department recently offered another round of deferred resignations. And I hear from my state on the ground about not being able to get messages returned, uh, phone calls back, permits, um, uh, permits, uh, approved. So why is the department continuing to offer buyouts and deferred resignations when that only deepens our ability, um, the, the, the existing staffing shortages, and more importantly, the ability for people to actually actively manage these landscapes?

Well, I'd, first of all, I would just say that I, I reject the overall thesis that somehow we have, uh, well we haven't no one's been pushed out the only way people have left is with voluntary uh retirement programs

uh i have personal friends who feel pushed out

i understand people may feel that way but the fact is that

i mean when they got the fork in the road email and i know that didn't come from you it came from um someone who's not even in the government anymore people got the message

yeah and all of those all of those initial uh doge uh things from from the initial first weeks of the thing, though those were all stopped by unions and courts and they were all offered their jobs back. So, uh, us rehashing the history for me.

But they got the message that they weren't welcome, and many of those people just moved on, and they were some of our most experienced folks.

Well, it, it is true that across the federal government, that the, the federal government employees today, like they are in many state governors' governments, have a massive number of people that are at or above retirement age. Uh, and so the, that, that's just a, that's a case, and we, we uh, w- when people have taken the voluntary retirement it also, uh, we've got an organization when you've got that many people stacked at the top, uh, it doesn't create a lot of opportunity for young people moving up. So there's the, the flip side is people are saying, hey, now I've got an opportunity to stay, uh, and have a long career in this agency. But their, to use, to see your specific question about the recent, uh, r- thing, there was groups of people last year that did not have the opportunity to take the voluntary retirement. Uh, that was a small group. I mean, across the, we started with sixty five thousand people, the group that were, that, that were offered and then considered this round, uh, were about fifteen hundred people that were never offered the opportunity last year. Uh, of those that accepted it, we rejected over five hundred of those because we have the ability to say, yeah, if you take it but we determine with the Park Superintendent that you're essential, uh, sorry, you can't take the, the, uh, the early voluntary retirement. But number of those folks were working in areas like communications, uh, like Human Resources where we were substantially overstaffed. When we finally, when I got in here we couldn't even find out how many people worked in HR, how many people worked in comms, how many people actually worked in a park. There was no IT systems. Turns out we had over two thousand people working in HR for sixty five thousand people. That's one HR person for every thirty team members. You know, that's off by a ratio of three to four versus a private sector company the same size. And I don't blame them, I blame the fact that we have underfunded not just maids we've underfunded it so badly that people don't even have the tools to do their job but we're working to to to fix that as well and so uh this is the last round of voluntary that we're doing as this group there'll be about a thousand people that'll take early retirement but none of those are for related to front-line jobs in parks we will end up

secretary i'm i'm running out of work

we we will end up with we will end up with more people working in parks

you've burned eighty percent of my time so i appreciate your response i wanna i wanna jump to one more issue before my time is Last week a federal judge determined that wind and solar companies are likely to prevail in their lawsuit against the Trump administration's policies blocking uh those energy projects. The judge placed a preliminary injunction on your department implementing policies designed to block new energy projects coming online. Um, will you comply with that judge's order?

Uh, fir- first of all, we disagree vehemently with a with a district uh, DC judge's, uh, view that somehow, uh, having appropriate reviews of energy projects on our internal procedures, uh, is gonna be

Well, appropriate reviews are one thing, but, uh, my, um, the chairman used the phrase, permits were slow-walked. We're not seeing permits move off your desk. Permits are being slow-walked. So there was an injunction, are you gonna comply with that judge's order?

Uh, well The Solicitor's Department will respond to any act of litigation, but as I said, we disagree we disagree with this, and

Well, i- I'll - I'll just be very blunt. If you want - i- if permitting reform is a priority, the permitting system has to work. And if - if you want members of my caucus to support permitting reform, we have to know that balsam strikes are gonna be called, that there is not a thumb on the scale of this system.

If, if

And that confidence does not exist right now, secretary.

Well, I, I would say I would be thrilled if, if there was gonna be unanimity about not having the thumb on the scale,

Hmm.

because we just came out of four years

So let's do that together.

We came out of four years of that, and we're, and as we try to get back to a balanced

Both sides are likely to say, like, their side had the thumb on the scale here, our side had the thumb on the scale there. Let's make this, let's make this a system where you can't do that.

I think that would be fantastic. Love to ha- love to have your support, uh, to do that. But the - the - To be clear on this court order, it just - it - it's - it's absurd to me that a court would say that we can't review projects. That's basically what it says. And that - and that's an internal executive branch, uh, uh, e- element to be able to do that.

You can review projects, but at some point you have to make a decision. We've got six projects that have gone through the entire review. They have EISs and EAs that are ready to go. They're all just lacking your signature. That's not review. That is by definition slow walking.

Senator Bresson.

Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Uh, thank you very much. Uh I'm grateful for you to be here. I just want to thank you for all you're doing. Um, wanna briefly thank you and your team for offering efforts to amend the Rock Springs RMP. I I wanna thank you, Mr. Secretary, for continuing to work with the stakeholders in Wyoming toward a plan that, uh, considers the state's priorities. So thank thanks for all of that. I did want to talk about the overpopulation of wild horses. Uh, there are about seven thousand wild horses in excess in southwest Wyoming. Uh, this overpopulation has a terrible impact on the health of the landscape. The Biden administration canceled and delayed horse gathering for two years. Uh, mismanagement greatly set Wyoming back in our Bureau's, in the Bureau's mission to responsibly ma- manage the wild herds in the west. Twenty twenty five, Bureau of Land Management announced a plan to remove over three thousand wild horses in this area of of Wyoming and Congress has already provided the funding to do it uh on Friday April twenty fourth just uh last last Friday the BLM field anou- office announced that they won't be able to start these gatherings until August of twenty twenty seven uh due to pending litigation ca- can you just describe what's going on and bring us up to date?

Well, uh, certainly, uh, Senator, you understand the, uh, tremendous, uh, issue we have not just in Wyoming but in other western states where, uh, we have a, uh, growing and out of control wild horse and burrow issue which is, uh, which is, uh, affecting, uh, the landscape, affecting ranchers, affecting the economics of local communities. Uh, we of course are, this has been a long-standing problem, uh, that was, uh, made worse as you described during the prior administration from not uh doing things like horse gathers but whether there's horse gatter gathers, there's fertility treatments, there's uh a uh a sales to uh that are subsidized to families, there's all kinds of approaches but we are doing everything we can to get back to the the lawfully required level uh of these things but it is a serious it is one of the serious issues that we have in the west right now.

uh i i appreciate i'm think wondering if you'd be willing to start rounding up the horses based on what's called the appropriate management levels while the rock springs rmp is being amended as a possibility

yes absolutely

thank you i wanted to move to the colorado river basin it's something that's a great concern uh to all of us on the on the committee uh specifically the seven states of the upper basin you know includes wyoming colorado new mexico and utah and currently the upper and lower basins have still not come to a consensus agreement through negotiations to determine the operations of of lake powell and lake mead Uh, we need a short-term and as well as a long-term solution that provides Westerners the water certainty that we need. Uh, on April seventeenth of this year, the, uh, Bureau of Reclamation published its, uh, twenty-four month study showing that Lake Powell will reach critical elevation as, uh, early as this summer. The Bureau's planning on releasing an additional either sixty-six hundred thousand to one million acre feet of water from Flaming Gorge, which is of great, great interest to me. Does the Bureau have any plans to, in the works, to restore the water being released in Flaming Gorge?

Well, as we work through the, essentially the emergency situation we have and the orders that went out on, on uh, recently in April were related to the twenty year compact which had a drought response uh procedure. So we're following those in the final year, this twenty year compact, that's what we're following as we do that. Certainly the refilling uh of glen canyon is gonna take additional uh additional moisture coming from someplace obviously we would love to recharge the whole system so happy to work with the upper basin and everybody we can but we've got a we have a situation where we've got more water allocations and we have water

yeah

and so it's gonna be a challenging year and we're seeing that in the inability for the seven states to come to any kind of agreement

yeah well i appreciate i mean you look at the history of this and now we're about a hundred three or a hundred four years into this compact it was based on misunderstanding of how much rain they would expect, what kind of moisture they were expecting. When they came up with that they used wet years, which was a mistake in their calculations over a hundred years ago. And then they never saw, foresaw forty million people, uh, drawing from this, whether it's, uh, Las Vegas, whether it's Phoenix. So they made some early mistakes that we now are in the situation having to deal with. Uh, I, uh, I understand that the lower basin met with the bureau just, just last week. Uh, is the department still committed to the seven base, seven state basin solution, and would the agency be willing to meet with the upper basin as well.

Yep, yes and yes.

OK, thank you. In terms of permitting, um, y- Congress currently, as you know, engaged in serious conversations about permitting reform. What do you view as a top priority in permitting reform?

Well, it, I, I believe that, uh, having permitting reform is unleashing the capital. There's an estimated one point five trillion dollars that's been approved by states, universities, small businesses, corporations that's waiting for a permit at the state,

Thank you, thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you.

Senator Horono.

Thank you, Mister Chairman. Uh, when you were before this committee earlier, um, you were asked information about who's been fired, who's been uh retired, et cetera, et cetera. We did not uh get that information from you and subsequent to that, I think a number of us wrote letters to you asking for this information. And you head a department that has had that had around seventy thousand employees. Is that correct?

Uh, it it was hard to find out the exact information, but the closest we could come to was it was around sixty five thousand uh a year ago.

OK, so that's a lot of employees and and so my question remains uh how many people have been fired, took early retirement, where are we in terms of the uh number of employees that you have? And I know that a whole bunch of them work for the park service and you know, all of those kinds of areas that have been tremendously cut, so Why don't you provide us with that information today?

I'd I'd be be happy to get back to you on the number of people that have taken early retirement the uh number earlier voluntary retirement uh you used the word fired, the only the only time anyone would have been fired from the organization is if they'd somehow had a a uh an action uh so we're talking small number of people that would have actually been fired.

You mean that if if people were fired, they actually were fired for cause? is that what you're saying

yes yes

so um we you were asked this last time it's been about a year why are you not prepared to give us this information today and especially the the people who are working for our national park services etcetera these are the people who interact with the with with the public

well i agree

and uh i'd like to know what kind of cuts have been imposed on those services as a result of cuts to the workers workforce

Well, the goal of course is, is to have no cuts to services and no cuts to hours and no cuts whatever, because we had so many people working for the park service that didn't work in a park. It was after it took us two months to find out a number roughly, the estimate was roughly about twenty six thousand people that were working for the park service. But understand the HR systems that were never funded were so disparate and so, I mean there was just no information. We couldn't even find out, we still today are trying to find out about two percent of the sixty five thousand. we don't know which units they're attached to. They they were so much there was so much hiring where people were working from home,

Um I'm I find that

that when they're working from home in sometimes in a location we're sending a check that's nowhere nowhere near a national parking lot.

Excuse me, Mister Secretary. I find it very uh totally unacceptable that you don't know what's what's going on in your own department. But of critical interest to me are the people who are in employee at interior that actually deal with uh for example with the park services so you know you but we don't we still don't have that information. Let me get on to another question, uh earlier this year I joined a number of my colleagues in sending a letter to you expressing concern about efforts by the National Park Service to erase history on sites that discuss things such as Native American history and slavery, for example the removal of the slavery exhibit at the President's house in Philadelphia. And your response, which I only recently received yesterday uh fails to answer any of the questions we asked and instead you stated quoting you the NPS is entrusted with preserving and interpreting our nation's heritage and must insure Park interpretive materials accurately reflect American history and not partisan ideology. Mister Secretary, is slavery a partisan ideology?

Uh let me start with the uh examples that you have uh if you'd care to

I would say that that the the question I'm asking you is a yes or no question, because you uh you you said you're removing this information because you don't want any

I I'm responding to the statement that you made at the beginning of your remarks,

ideology.

which is false. Uh

How about answering the question that I asked you right now, is

Uh your question is ba- your question is based on a false premise.

slavery a partisan is slavery a partisan ideology that require the removal of information on slavery and your park?

You you're basing this question on the idea that somehow something has been removed. I would invite you or your staff to go to the to the either the web site. You can see the the information that is still there. Some of these examples that are floating around the media that saying things have been removed they haven't been removed. In the case of Philadelphia, there's a weird injunction where we can't put the new signage up. Uh, and and yet the what is on the new signage, which is not uh, which is not uh, hiding any points of our history, uh is available for anyone to read and i would invite i would invite you i would

so you um

invite you to read the the language that we have and see if it's objectionable uh to then there there in and of course there is it is not an ideology

so is your answer slavery is not a partisan ideology so your answer is no it is not a partisan ideology

there's a there's a double negative there but i would just say that the the the the characterization that somehow there was a desire to whitewash history and hide aspects of our history is just simply false, and all all someone has to do rather than