Doug Burgum Testifies Before House Appropriations Committee

[8:21] We will come to order. This afternoon I would like to welcome Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum. [8:26] While it doesn't look like many people are here yet, this is a fly-in day and most people will be coming in during the fly-in. [8:34] We generally don't do mark-ups on fly-in day, but it's important that we get these hearings done. [8:42] I'd also like to welcome and thank Congressman Cole for joining us today in his role as full committee chair. [8:48] 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. [8:56] I'd also like to welcome Ranking Member Rosa Delora, a good friend of all of ours that's been a supporter of this committee and I'm glad to have her here today. [9:05] Mr. Secretary, it's a pleasure to see you again before this subcommittee. [9:09] You and I had a chance to meet recently and I enjoyed hearing about your first year as Secretary of Interior [9:15] and about your continued commitment to improving the Department in service to the American people. [9:20] Our hearing today will address your fiscal year 2027 budget priorities for the Department of Interior [9:26] and provide you with an opportunity to share some accomplishments and outline your goals for this coming fiscal year. [9:34] I look forward to hearing more about your work on reshaping the agency with a focus on producing domestic energy, [9:41] securing critical minerals and promoting and expanding recreational and commercial access to healthy and productive public lands. [9:47] And to hearing more about ways in which we can continue to prioritize our treaty and trust obligations throughout Indian Country. [9:55] For fiscal year 2027, the President's budget requests roughly 15 billion for the Department of Interior programs under this subcommittee's jurisdiction. [10:03] Today's discussion helps inform our budget review process. [10:07] It helps us gain fuller understanding of your priorities and the vision for the future of the Department [10:12] and for us to share our priorities and grapple with areas where we may disagree. [10:16] One of the priorities of this subcommittee, under both Republican and Democratic leadership, [10:21] is upholding and fulfilling our treaty and trust responsibilities. [10:25] We look forward to continuing to work together to direct funding to tribes' greatest needs, [10:29] including healthcare, education, law enforcement, and community economic development. [10:34] Finally, no discussion of this budget would be complete without mentioning our wildfire firefighters. [10:40] I look forward to hearing more about the Department's strategies and funding levels needed to support them in their fight to keep our communities safe and protect our force. [10:48] Secretary Burgum, thank you again for joining us this afternoon. [10:52] With that, I want to yield to Ranking Member Pingree for any opening statements that she might like to make. [10:59] Thank you, Mr. Chair. [11:00] And thank you, Mr. Secretary. [11:02] I do really appreciate you being here today, and thank you so much for your recent trip to Maine. [11:06] I know it was greatly appreciated by parks, the tribes, and others that you were able to meet with. [11:11] But I have to say, unfortunately, after a year of observing this administration and its impact on our country, [11:16] I have some very deep concerns. [11:18] The Department of the Interior is supposed to protect and manage our natural resources, [11:22] to uphold our trust and treaty obligations, and to follow the science. [11:26] Instead, from my observation, this administration is bending the Department's mission to serve the interests of oil and gas companies. [11:33] And the administration's policies are allowing unfettered consumption of natural resources in this country. [11:39] We have seen that very clearly in the Gulf of Mexico, where last month the administration convened the so-called God Squad, [11:46] and approved an extraordinary exemption from the Endangered Species Act protections for offshore drilling. [11:52] That decision would be alarming enough on its own, but it was even more disturbing, [11:57] because it came from an administration that seems determined to weaken every safeguard that stands in the way of industry profits. [12:04] Speaking of those critical safeguards, 16 years ago on this day, [12:09] the Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 workers and devastated the Gulf with the largest and most destructive oil spill in America's history. [12:17] In the wake of that disaster, investigations found that employees had inappropriately close ties to the oil and gas companies, [12:27] and the agency was then broken up because the oversight model had failed so badly. [12:32] Yet this budget proposes reviving that disgraced structure, potentially returning us to the days of corruption and a model that jeopardized worker safety and the environment. [12:42] The administration has also taken dramatic steps to block renewable energy development, eliminating competition for oil and gas, [12:50] and reducing the amount of energy produced at a time when our country's overall energy needs are growing. [12:56] Shortly after taking office, the White House moved quickly to halt offshore wind development and took steps to rein in solar and wind projects. [13:06] Why? Why are we kneecapping industries that create jobs, expand our energy supply, and help address the climate crisis? [13:14] Because this administration's energy policy is based on political grievance, ideological hostility, and of course, propping up big oil and gas. [13:22] Plus, we know Trump has, I don't understand it, but a vendetta against windmills. [13:27] When the courts vacated the president's wind moratorium and stopped the president from blocking five current leases, [13:34] the administration took the unprecedented step of spending nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money [13:40] to coerce a private company into abandoning offshore wind projects. [13:45] And now we know the administration's public justification for that deal does not hold up. [13:50] Newly disclosed settlement terms show the company was not required to make any new investment in American oil and gas production at all. [13:57] Instead, it could simply claim credit for spending that it was already planning to make, including fossil fuel projects that had already moved forward. [14:05] To make this deal even more stunning, the waste of the taxpayer's money is being used to reward a company for abandoning clean energy, [14:13] while helping to prop up more oil and gas development at the very moment that families are getting hammered by high energy costs. [14:20] Americans are struggling with high utility bills and higher gas prices. [14:24] Yet this administration chose to spend nearly a billion dollars not to build affordable energy, but to kill it. [14:31] All of these dirty deals are to benefit the industry and it's at the expense of American people, [14:37] who are now paying an average of $4.04 for a gallon of gas. [14:41] According to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, gas prices could peak at $4.36 a gallon, [14:48] costing the average household $740 more for gas this year. [14:52] So it makes no sense to me why this administration would be actively sabotaging renewable energy, [14:58] which we know is cheaper and more affordable of an energy option for families. [15:03] To tell you the truth, this just makes me very angry. [15:07] I don't even usually speak this long, but it makes me that angry. [15:10] This administration's policies are causing an affordability crisis, [15:14] and there seems to be a lack of focus on what the department's mission actually is. [15:18] It seems to me that the White House has you distracted with duties unrelated to being Secretary of the Interior. [15:25] For example, what does bringing back a case of gold from Venezuela have to do with the DOI's mission? [15:32] Meanwhile, our national parks are falling apart, staff are stretched thin, [15:37] and the budget proposes to further gut them with a 32 percent cut. [15:41] Science should be at the core of the department's management decisions, [15:47] but this budget eviscerates the U.S. Geological Survey, a vital research agency, cutting its budget by 66 percent. [15:58] And the budget abandons our trust and treaty obligations to Native Americans, [16:02] slashing the Bureau of Indian Affairs by 27 percent and Indian education by 32 percent. [16:08] I have been appalled to watch this administration decimate the staff at the department, [16:13] and it certainly looks as if it is trying to deliver the final blow with this budget. [16:18] The department is on a dangerous course, this budget would only make the damage worse, [16:22] and as the ranking member of the subcommittee, I will do everything in my power to oppose these reckless cuts [16:27] and fight the administration's destructive policies. [16:31] I hope you will put politics aside, listen to the serious concerns that will be raised here today, [16:35] and please take immediate steps to pull this department back onto a safer and more responsible course. [16:41] So thank you again for being here. I look forward to your answers to our questions and I yield back. [16:46] Thank you, Ranking Member Pingree. Now I'd like to yield to the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Cole. [16:51] Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member Pingree. [16:55] I appreciate you holding this hearing, and I want to certainly thank you again for all the focus you have on this topic. [17:05] Secretary Burgum, welcome, and thank you for testifying before the subcommittee on the administration's budget proposal [17:12] for the Department of Interior for fiscal year 2027. [17:16] Over the past year, this White House has worked with urgency to remake the federal bureaucracy [17:21] and rebalance America's natural resource policies. Cutting red tape fuels opportunity and enhances our competitiveness. [17:29] I believe in our ability to innovate and work together to achieve shared conservation goals [17:34] while preserving the economic vitality of our communities. [17:38] When we make the right strategic federal investments and govern effectively, those resources pay dividends [17:44] in the form of stable economic growth and the creation of good paying jobs. [17:49] To that end, Mr. Secretary, I appreciate your efforts to implement strategic reforms at the Department of Interior. [17:56] I look forward to hearing about what you have been able to accomplish and about your vision for the future of the agency [18:02] as we begin the FY27 appropriations process, informed by your experiences in your first year as Secretary. [18:09] You're doing important work. The Department manages our beloved national parks and conserves our public lands [18:15] 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, [18:24] work that is of the utmost importance to me personally and I know to each and every member of this subcommittee. [18:30] It's imperative that those programs are supported by budget requests that reflect their importance and impact on native communities. [18:38] Our trust and treaty obligations are national commitments to be honored. Tribes already do their best with limited resources, [18:46] and further reductions in funding for services and self-governance have real and serious consequences in Indian country. [18:53] That's why it's paramount that thorough and proper tribal consultations are conducted when changes to programs are proposed that would impact the delivery of services. [19:03] I look forward to hearing more about agency plans to support these programs and improve efficiencies in upholding these sacred responsibilities. [19:13] Thank you for being here today, Secretary Bergen. We will continue to work with you collaboratively on executing your agency's mission [19:20] and ensuring constituent needs are met. With that, I yield back. [19:24] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Now I'd like to yield to a ranking member of the full Committee on Appropriations, [19:31] Ms. DeLauro, for any opening remarks that she might have. [19:33] Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Pingree for holding this hearing and Mr. Secretary. [19:39] Thank you for being with us today and testifying and looking forward to our questions and answers with you. [19:47] The American people sense that this administration is out of touch. [19:51] While the cost of living continues to climb, while the price of gas, groceries, utilities and everyday goods goes up and up, [19:59] this administration is asleep at the wheel. They do not have any idea of what the American people need or want. [20:06] That disconnect between what the public wants and what the administration does [20:10] is present in the proposed budget for the Department of Interior. [20:14] Rather than address the problems that are actually impacting people's lives, [20:17] the Trump administration is proposing to slash billions of dollars across a range of programs [20:23] that protect wildlife, maintain public lands and promote clean energy. [20:28] Programs that enjoy broad public support. [20:31] The National Park Service is the most popular government agency in the United States. [20:37] According to the Pew Research Center, 76% of Americans have a positive view of the agency. [20:43] The public are rightly enamored of the natural beauty of our country and that our country is blessed with. [20:49] They are overwhelmingly supportive of the good work that the National Park Service does to maintain and to protect our park lands. [20:56] Yet, in the budget proposal, the Trump administration slashes funding for the National Park Service by more than $1 billion. [21:04] That includes a more than 25%, $760 million. [21:09] It's a cut to operations, a 93% cut to natural recreation and preservation, and a 94% cut to the historic preservation fund. [21:19] These cuts will impact the public's access to our national parks and negatively affect the visitor experience. [21:26] Visitation is rising, but if these cuts are implemented, more and more people will arrive at our national parks. [21:33] They will find them mismanaged, unsafe, shut down entirely due to lack of resources. [21:39] As a result, people will be unable to fully experience the beauty that these parks have to offer, and public support for them will be put at risk. [21:49] 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, [22:01] they will meet with weaker opposition, and less of our public land will be preserved for public use. [22:08] The President's budget quest also proposes cutting the National Wildlife Refuge System by 20%, [22:14] hampering conservation efforts, putting more species at risk, and eroding the overall quality of our environment. [22:21] The administration proposes the outright eliminating all funding for renewable energy under the Interior Department, [22:28] slowing our transition to a green energy economy, while global competitors like China race far ahead. [22:36] In fact, we are seeing right now how vulnerable our continued reliance on fossil fuels makes us, [22:42] as President Trump's war of choice with Iran devolves into a conflict over who controls the global supply of oil. [22:51] Meanwhile, the American people are forced to shoulder the burden of a 40% increase in gas prices so far, [22:59] which President Trump admits will likely get worse. [23:03] The Trump administration also proposes slashing funding for the U.S. Geological Survey by 37%. [23:09] That weakens our ability to observe, to understand the impact that their dangerous policies are having on the environment. [23:16] The future that this administration envisions with this budget proposal is one of fewer national parks, shrinking public lands, [23:25] more extinct species, dirtier air and water, and higher profits for fossil fuel executives, [23:31] who are the only people who stand to benefit from these disastrous cuts. [23:36] I look forward to hearing, Mr. 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. [23:52] I thank you and I yield back. [23:56] Thank you, Ranking Member Delauro. [23:57] With that, Mr. Secretary, you may proceed with your opening statement. [24:00] Your full statement will be included in the record. [24:02] Thank you, Chairman. [24:07] And Chairman Cole, and Ranking Member Delauro, and Subcommittee Ranking Member Pingree, and Subcommittee Chairman Simpson. [24:18] It's great to be with all of you today and the distinguished members of this subcommittee. [24:22] Thanks for the opportunity to testify today in support of the President's fiscal year 2027 budget. [24:27] Request for the Department of Interior to discuss what we're doing to make America safer, stronger, more beautiful, and more prosperous. [24:35] Interior's 2027 budget totals just over $16 billion in current authority, of which nearly $15 billion is within the jurisdiction of the Interior Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee. [24:49] 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. [25:00] The Department touches the lives of millions of Americans. [25:03] We manage America's vast energy supply and natural resources. [25:06] We honor federal trust responsibilities and unique relationships with tribal nations. [25:11] We deliver water to the West. [25:13] We fight fires, enforce the law, and steward our treasured wildlife, refugees, and national parks. [25:19] Interior's efforts to expand across the country ensure border security and the safety of Indian country. [25:27] Our law enforcement officers have removed illegal growing operations on public lands and have removed millions of dollars of opioids from our communities, including conspicating thousands, tens of thousands of fentanyl pills. [25:40] This broad portfolio is reflected as America's balance sheet. [25:46] All of these assets are worth tens of trillions of dollars that should be responsibly managed, conserved, and as they were designed and designated in many cases since inception, should be put to use for the benefit of the American people. [26:00] 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. [26:15] This summer, we invite all Americans to share in the access they deserve as we celebrate our country's 250th anniversary. [26:22] Interior is taking steps to recognize Americans' rich history and celebrate the bright future that is being built under President Trump's leadership. [26:31] The 2027 budget focuses on the continued beautification of interior's most used assets. [26:37] To continue addressing deferred maintenance, the budget proposes a reauthorization of the Great American Outdoors Legacy Restoration Front, or LRF, for an additional five years. [26:48] We certainly would appreciate this subcommittee's support on that. [26:52] 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. [27:02] This budget also includes 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. [27:20] 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. [27:32] The budget also includes an increase of over $100 million for the United States Park Police, which, as you all know, is a separate group from the park rangers that serve our national parks. [27:45] The U.S. Park Police is the oldest federal law enforcement agency in the country, founded by George Washington in 1791, and it's actively engaged in addressing the District of Columbia's crime emergency. [27:58] Under the President's leadership, that has enabled the U.S. Park Police to expedite hiring of more than 300 new officers to help keep America's capital and our national park lands here within the capital safe and beautiful. [28:12] The department is also focusing on making its operations more effective while reducing costs. [28:17] 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. [28:32] The budget consolidates the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act implementation responsibilities from NOAA to the Fish and Wildlife Service to reduce costs and streamline permitting for key facets of our economy. [28:46] The budget also reunifies the Departments to offshore minerals management bureaus into a single entity, the Marine Minerals Administration. [28:55] 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. [29:09] These unification efforts will make our work to manage fires, forests, wildlife, and offshore resources faster, smarter, and more effective. [29:17] Interior is committed to increasing energy development on our public lands, establishing our position as dominant in critical minerals, releasing the stranglehold that China has on critical minerals over the U.S. economy, and making sure that we've got the proper and secure supply chains, [29:38] while protecting our economic and national security. [29:41] The Department has eliminated burdensome, redundant, ideological, and counterproductive regulations that undermine efficient land management and economic development. [29:50] We've restored access to the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. [29:54] We held a record lease sale last month, which generated more than $163 million for the Treasury, and this will help capitalize on the country's vast and affordable energy resources. [30:07] And in compliance with the Working Families Tax Cut Act, we are scheduling and holding energy lease sales as required by law, and reducing royalty rates to increase supply and lower costs for Americans. [30:18] The ongoing regulatory reform is of cutting red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy across a range of industries, including energy development, coal and critical minerals, mining, agriculture, ranching, and 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 interests. [30:41] The Department estimates that revenues in 2027 will now exceed over $20 billion, which is more than offsetting the operational costs to run this department. [30:55] The budget also advances key administration priorities, including upholding trust responsibilities and 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. [31:12] 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 575 federally recognized tribes. [31:25] In 2027, 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. [31:42] Millions of Americans visit interior managed lands each year, fueling a booming outdoor recreation economy estimated at $1.3 trillion and supporting almost 3% of the jobs in America now in outdoor recreation. [31:57] Building on on the hundreds of visitors of visitor facility improvement projects underway around the country that will be the focus of celebrating America's upcoming 250th anniversary, the budget focuses resources on visitor facing operations at parks, wildlife refuges, and across public lands. [32:15] 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. [32:26] In closing, this budget is about putting America first and doing what's best for the American taxpayer. [32:33] As Interior moves forward, these initiatives advance responsible resource management, economic prosperity, cultural preservation, and serving the interests of the American people and securing our country's future. [32:44] I appreciate the subcommittee support for the department's mission, and I look forward to working closely with you to advance the president's priorities. [32:51] Thank you, Mr. Secretary. [32:54] As I understand it, Chairman Cole and Mr. Laurel have other meetings that they have to get to, subcommittee marks and stuff, so I'm going to call on them first. [33:02] Mr. Cole. [33:03] Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. [33:05] Mr. Secretary, in November, the Department of Education announced that Interior would begin to take on a greater role in administering Indian education programs through an [33:14] interagency agreement with the Department of Education. [33:18] While your agency begins to manage these new programs, I would strongly recommend, and I'm sure you will, carrying out thorough tribal consultations to ensure that there are no funding award delays or program disruptions that would potentially harm. [33:33] As you know, if that money doesn't arrive, literally, we've got kids that are not going to get the educational benefits they're entitled to. [33:41] So, given that, what resources is BIA receiving to support these additional programs, because you haven't had to do them in the past, and is there an adequate number of staff to efficiently administer these new programs, and are they receiving the training they might need? [33:59] Thank you, Chairman. [34:01] 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. [34:10] With that, there's 16 FTEs that are coming to help manage those, and I'm certain that as those people come, some of those are actually the people that we're doing at education. [34:24] They're being detailed over to BIE. [34:26] So, we should have both transfer of knowledge as well as transfer programs to administer and keep those dollars flowing out to our tribal communities. [34:35] I appreciate that, and I would just ask you to keep us up to date as that goes, because it's a new function for you to do, but an important one. [34:42] When it comes to programs that serve Indian country, my focus is always on approving service delivery. [34:48] Can you give us some examples of how, in your view, this initiative should enhance these programs for native youth and adults? [34:55] Are you referring specifically to the Department of Education Transfer? [35:00] Well, I think one of the reasons why they selected those four programs, because some of them are grant-based, is because of the existing systems that already exist within the Bureau of Indian, BIA, in terms of managing grants and doing all the appropriate consultation. [35:18] So, I think that it was a nice fit, because it basically fits in with work that we're already doing. [35:23] So, I think the team that I've met with at BIA is, excited is probably too strong of a word, but they're definitely up to the task of receiving this responsibility from the Department of Education. [35:38] Okay, thank you. [35:39] As we talked about briefly beforehand, Chickasaw National Recreation Area resides in my district in Sulphur, Oklahoma. [35:46] The area was struck by a tornado in 2024, leaving the community and the recreation area, the park itself, needing serious infrastructure and rebuild efforts. [35:56] A pivotal part of disaster recovery efforts is getting the engineering, surveying, construction contracts underway. [36:03] How's the department doing and working to expedite these contracts so that rebuilding efforts can move ahead expeditiously? [36:12] Well, one of the things, of course, we're working on across the whole department is responsiveness. [36:18] You know, think of it in terms of the private sector, like customer service measures. [36:22] But, you know, when we've got it, when we have a, when we have a grant program, we've got dollars, they have to get out the door. [36:27] 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? [36:34] I know in the particular case of the recreation area you're talking about, I think there's recently there were some additional contracts. [36:43] I think I'm just from memory, I think maybe $13 million worth across four contracts that were being pushed out. [36:50] 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. [36:57] I think one of the things that it speaks to is we've got really aging IT across a lot of these business processes. [37:06] 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, you know, deploy the capital where it goes more quickly and more responsibly. [37:16] Again, this is an area we touched on before, but I think it's important to get into record. [37:21] 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. [37:29] Many parks, certainly including the one I represent, Chickasaw National Recreation, has struggled to hire essential permanent staff. [37:37] And I know you've implemented some reforms and changes to try and speed that up and give the local managers more flexibility. [37:44] I'd like you to talk a little bit about that. [37:46] Well, thank you. [37:47] Yeah, what we discovered this issue is like all over the country, which is if there's an opening and people are trying to hire, then they would have to go through a really burdensome federal hiring process. [37:56] Within the Park Service, we'd have to post. [37:59] People would apply from all over the country. [38:01] There is, you know, a ranking system of, you know, who's eligible, who's not. [38:06] Meanwhile, the folks in Oklahoma have just got an empty position and maybe it takes six months. [38:11] You go through this process and then you get somebody hired and then they don't, they can't find a place to live because some of our national parks are, you know, housing is an issue. [38:20] Then they all come to all of you and say we need tens of millions of dollars for housing. [38:24] One of the things that came up, you know, through the ranks of the front lines is would you just allow us to hire people locally without going through the federal process? [38:31] If we can find someone who's qualified to do this job that already lives in an entrance community or nearby. [38:36] And we said, great. [38:37] So we've established local hiring. [38:39] It's been in the last month. [38:41] It's been out there. [38:42] I was in four western states in the last two weeks. [38:45] All the superintendents I spoke to were thrilled about this because it solves a housing problem. [38:49] It speeds up hiring. [38:51] It gets someone who might live in the community and not transfer out. [38:54] They can be a long-term team member there. [38:57] In addition to that, with the 5,500 summer hires, which we posted last fall, we were able to get a change. [39:04] Those were always limited to not to exceed six months. [39:09] We've got to change a waiver for this year not to exceed nine months. [39:14] It'd be great if the appropriations subcommittee could make that permanent because that flexibility, if someone needs to hire someone for seven months or eight months. [39:24] If the particular park, the busiest season is fall leaf season in October, November. [39:31] 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 in there and they'd like to keep working. [39:38] I mean, giving the flexibility. [39:40] And if you take 5,000 six-monthers and turn them in and 5,000 nine-monthers, it's really giving you another 2,500 effectively. [39:50] It's like hiring 7,500 people for six months, same in terms of, you know, hours worked. [39:55] But you've got fewer people, the better trained, can stay longer, and then they can become repeat summer hires. [40:03] So we're making some common sense changes, which we hope can help out on the local hiring and staffing. [40:09] I really want to commend you for that effort. [40:12] I mean, I think too often, and this is probably true across the entire federal government, we run these agencies. [40:19] So the convenience of the people that work in the agencies, not the convenience of the people who are supposed to be served. [40:25] And particularly don't think about the local impact of waiting for months as positions are filled, as we wait for people to be picked someplace else and move. [40:34] So I think this is really a revolutionary change and one that has a lot of positive benefits. [40:39] So I just want to publicly commend you for your efforts in this regard. [40:42] I think it's an important move in the right direction. [40:45] With that, yield back, Mr. Chairman. [40:47] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [40:50] Mr. Laura. [40:51] Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. [40:52] I just have a quick note. [40:53] This was, I was not going to, it's not part of my questioning, but I worry about transferring the programs from education to BIA. [41:03] Quite honestly, BIA doesn't have a great track record. [41:06] And I don't know whether or not the funding that goes along with those programs is going to come over to BIA. [41:11] And I'm, you know, concerned that they will be, that will, they will be shortchanged. [41:16] But let me, it's worth remembering that roughly this time last year, the so-called Doge was running rampant across the federal government. [41:24] Justice Trump had taken office, putting in proverbial gasoline on the fire, that is his cost of living crisis with a chaotic tariff policy. [41:33] Musk and others were firing thousands of employees and rescinding job offers. [41:38] National Park Service, NPS, was among the federal agencies that was hardest hit by this destruction. [41:43] August, by August, NPS had lost roughly a quarter of their staff. [41:48] While some positions were reinstated by court orders that found Doge actions to be unlawful, many others retired earlier took buyouts. [41:56] Pleased that the final fiscal year 2026 agreement that we signed into law in January included 3.3 billion for the NPS, by which we rejected a proposed $1.2 billion cut. [42:08] And we did that in a bipartisan, bicameral manner. [42:11] We also were able to put guardrails into the statute, including requiring NPS to hire and retain sufficient park staff to perform the agency's mission, [42:22] to give Congress notice of any significant reorganization or mass firing efforts, [42:27] given that another potential reduction in force could be catastrophic for park staffing. [42:32] What is the major reason Congress so roundly rejected the proposed cuts last year? [42:37] Quite simply, Mr. Secretary, our national parks remain that extraordinarily popular. [42:42] Many parks in the system saw record attendance in 2025. [42:45] With the exception of 2020, every year over the last decade now ranks among the 10 busiest years for the NPS. [42:53] So disappointed to learn that for fiscal year 2027, this administration is proposing to slash $736 million, roughly 20% from the NPS budget. [43:06] More and that there's going to be another round of buyouts. [43:12] Deferred resignations was offered to the employees. [43:16] Can you tell us, does the department have targets for how many National Park Service staff it can lose to these buyouts? [43:25] Isn't this just another way to preempt congressional action on this budget? [43:30] First of all, thank you for the question, sir. [43:33] And I know that this committee, and like many Americans, cares deeply about the national parks. [43:37] So there's no question that we're all, we all care deeply. [43:40] I think there, if we can have a discussion about, about staffing, the first question we need to ask is not just how many people are in the national park staffing total, but how many of those people actually work in a park? [43:56] It turns out when we, when we arrived last year, when there had been a lot of hiring going on over the last four years, people working remotely, a lot of the, a lot of the numbers that you see 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. [44:16] So the goal that we've had from the beginning is to get more people working in our parks. [44:20] Last summer, in spite of everything that you described in both your opening remarks and just now, 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, because we were focusing on filling the roles that were citizen facing roles. [44:37] That still is our thing. [44:38] We need less people at districts, regions, service centers, headquarters, et cetera. [44:44] We need people actually in the parks. [44:46] There's another, the big numbers that you're talking about. [44:49] Again, I would, I know that there's an, I'm sure we'll talk about it, but we're creating the wildland fire service. [44:58] And so there is transfers in this budget where there are 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. [45:13] They will still have a national park uniform. [45:16] They'll still be fighting fires, but that may be where you're seeing some of these dramatic percentages that you're describing as actually a, it's a transfer. [45:25] It's an inter transfer within the budget as opposed to a dramatic, a dramatic cut. [45:29] Well, but there have been dramatic cuts. [45:31] I think you would have to agree with what those is last year that I'm not making up the numbers. [45:35] They, they, they cut back with a quarter of the staff. [45:40] Uh, there were some that were reinstated by court order. [45:43] Um, and the only, the only, the only dose cuts, the only dose cuts were people that have been hired within the last 12 months and they were all reoffered jobs back. [45:51] So the fact that there was a massive reduction in the national park or anywhere across interior related to doge is not simply not factual. [45:58] Okay. [45:59] Well, listen, there were, there were buyouts. [46:01] There were buyouts. [46:02] Are there any, uh, does the department have targets for how many parks staff it can lose to buyouts? [46:08] If you don't hit an arbitrary target with buyouts and retirements, are you going to plan to move to, uh, to terminations? [46:15] There's no, no plans for, uh, riffs. [46:18] Uh, and we've just completed, uh, a buyout and the buyout, the, the early retirement, uh, if you want to call it, was offered to people primarily that weren't offered it last year, uh, to give them. [46:29] Why don't you get for us? [46:30] Because we did put guardrails in the, in the bill last year that had to do. [46:35] We're following, we're following all of those very closely. [46:38] Okay. [46:39] So that it's clear to the committee that we're following the letter of the law. [46:42] It will be important to know how many people were gone. [46:44] How many people were reinstated? [46:46] Are we looking at the same numbers? [46:48] How many people, you know, took a buyout? [46:51] Uh, uh, and what you're doing now with, with regard to buyouts. [46:54] If we're going to transfer, uh, programs from education to, uh, uh, to, to, to interior, uh, who are the people that are going to handle, uh, those, those information, uh, you know, those programs? [47:08] Yep. [47:09] If you're, if all these people are going to be in the parks, who is going to handle, you know, the, the issue? [47:14] There's 16 people, 16 people coming from department of education to manage the four programs that are being transferred over. [47:20] Is the money coming as well? [47:21] Yes, it is. [47:22] Okay, great. [47:23] Let me get, do I have time to ask another question, Mr. Chairman? [47:26] Thank you. [47:27] A fish and wildlife service. [47:29] Similarly dire. [47:30] The budget is proposing to consolidate the service along with the national marine fisheries while also proposing to make underlying cuts. [47:38] Quote, it's a classic move from the budget playbook. [47:42] When you try to starve an agency, what you do is to consolidate and then you cut. [47:47] It's very similar. [47:48] That's what's going to happen with education. [47:50] I'm going to fight education and being dismantled. [47:53] But that is what's happening. [47:55] Consolidate and then you slash the funding. [47:57] So there's less, less money to deal with the missions that these agencies have to take out. [48:05] Just like the park service, the agencies are stretched thin, understaffed, oversubscribed. [48:10] Again, largely a function of the indiscriminate and careless cuts that Doge made last year. [48:17] For example, National Wildlife Refuge System supports conservation efforts like the Stuart McKinney National Wildlife Refuge in my home state of Connecticut. [48:28] The administration is proposing steep cuts. [48:31] What's worse, some components of Fish and Wildlife Service are proposed for complete elimination, including state and tribal wildlife grants. [48:40] 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. [48:52] But doesn't shifting the focus cutting funding guarantee that conservation efforts are going to be able are going to suffer in this process? [49:02] I don't think so at all. [49:04] Well, again, again, there is a separate firefighting unit inside of U.S. Fish and Wildlife, which is being transferred to the proposed wildland firefighting group, which is a separate budget area. [49:15] So in the budget, there's a big net increase in in wildland firefighting. [49:20] So you have to net that against the thing that you're seeing as cuts because we're moving them in within the agency. [49:25] Even we're taking the four. [49:27] We have a firefighting group in U.S. Fish and Wildlife. [49:31] We have firefighting in BIA. [49:32] We have firefighting. [49:33] What's going to happen to the state and tribal wildlife grants? [49:36] What's happening to the that's slated for total elimination? [49:44] What's happening to the cuts in the Stuart McKinney National Wildlife Refuge? [49:48] Which cuts are you talking about specifically? [49:53] I'm talking about the two areas, the wildlife refuge system, Stuart McKinney National Wildlife Refuge. [50:03] The administration is proposing steep cuts in that effort. [50:09] When I look at some components of the Fish and Wildlife Service are proposed for complete elimination. [50:16] That includes the state and tribal wildlife grants. [50:21] Is that wrong? [50:22] There was a review done of the grants on the grant side, and that is an area where there's been substantial review. [50:33] We found organizations that were receiving grants from Interior where 80 to 100 percent of the revenue of that NGO was a grant from the federal government. [50:44] And yet those organizations, we were the sole source of their revenue, but they would have a CEO making $650,000 and four $400,000 lobbyists. [50:53] Let me just ask the last question because my time has gone well over here. [50:57] I hear this from state foreign operations. [51:01] We cut these programs. [51:02] It would be very interesting because we can't get any information. [51:06] We may agree with you. [51:08] Give us the reasons why all of these grants are cut, the organizations are cut, et cetera. [51:15] For what? [51:16] Why? [51:17] Give us the rationale. [51:18] And as I say, maybe we will agree, but it's important. [51:21] We just can't take, to be very honest, we just can't take your word for saying that there was, you know, $650,000. [51:28] There was this, there, that's. [51:30] 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. [51:41] That would help us make determinations as to whether you're on the right track or we have to do something else. [51:47] So, Mr. Chairman, I thank you and I yield back. [51:51] Thank you. [51:52] We really can't talk about the DIA budget without talking about wildfire fighting as we have mentioned it a couple times already. [52:00] I understand the department has consolidated all fire activities from Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, [52:06] the 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. [52:14] I have several questions that I'll kind of combine into one. [52:18] Recognizing that fire season is now year-round and that service has largely already seen a good amount of action this year, can you provide an update on how things are going? [52:28] How is the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service more prepared, efficient and effective in fighting wildfires? [52:34] And secondly, understanding that many wildfire fighters are not full-time firefighters. [52:39] 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? [52:50] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me start with the clarification at the very top, that there is not a consolidation, that word has been used here, but in the effort of related wildland fire, it's unification. [53:04] We had four dedicated groups fighting fire across BLM, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the BIA and the National Park System. [53:13] Think of it as the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. [53:16] But we had no Joint Chiefs of Staff. [53:19] We had incidents that I saw as governor. [53:22] My last couple months as governor, we had a fire that broke out in North Dakota, a wildland grass fire. [53:29] We called for federal help on a Saturday morning at 6 a.m. because we knew our Blackhawks wouldn't be able to manage it. [53:36] And the federal government aviation services arrived on Tuesday. [53:42] Two ranchers had lost their lives. [53:45] A tremendous amount of livestock had died in the fires. [53:49] And it turns out, after review, that the aircraft that 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. [54:00] So that was my own personal experience before ever knowing I might end up in this job. [54:05] Last year, some people may be familiar with the Dragon Bravo fire, which started by a lightning strike in the Grand Canyon National Park on the 4th of July. [54:20] On July 13th, nine days later, Historic Lodge on the North Rim burned down. [54:27] The adjacent to that land was BLM land where the fire was put out. [54:34] BLM was operating under their operational thing under suppression. [54:40] The National Park Service was operating under a strategy called containment. [54:43] Containment didn't work due to high winds and the conditions. [54:46] This, you know, catastrophic loss was something that occurred after we had already begun the process of saying we need to have a Joint Chiefs of Staff. [54:57] We have to have leadership. [54:59] We have to have firefighters on the front line that report to firefighters, report to firefighters, report to firefighters all the way up through the chain, [55:06] as opposed to firefighters reporting to land managers who may think that, oh, if I let it burn, I'm going to take care of some, you know, take care of some of my fuel load management efforts. [55:19] So we announced the unification, we posted the position, we did a national search, we hired Brian Fennessy, an experience, began his first 14 years as a hotshot, [55:32] and went up through all the ranks, worked in federal agencies, worked in state agencies, and was the fire chief for San Diego County most recently. [55:40] So we understood the tremendous issue that California was having with fires. [55:45] He has got his four leaders, you know, established for the four groups. [55:52] We've got nine geographic leaders, all firefighters. [55:55] They're building, building this thing with input from the bottom, but top down. [55:59] And we're going to be ready to go for this, what will be maybe an extraordinary fire season. [56:04] We've, we, the chief will report directly up to the secretary's office, as opposed to being buried down below. [56:10] Some of the biggest air quality issues we've had in America have been related to uncontained fires. [56:15] Some of the biggest losses of timber resources we've had related to fires. [56:19] We spent nine times as much in, 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. [56:30] And so we, we have, we, we've got to flip that around, because it's just unaffordable to let our national resources burn. [56:37] It kills, it's killed the timber industry, but it's also killing the communities that were dependent on that timber, whether it's for, you know, recreation or timber harvesting. [56:46] So this is the beginning, we, we have, we have established, I've sent out a secretarial order that across the four groups that were already under interior, that we're going to be under full suppression. [57:00] That's the, at the beginning of this fire season. [57:03] If you get a fire, you put it out. [57:05] We've got to reserve both our dollar and our human resources and our aviation resources for the rest of the year. [57:11] 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. [57:19] And we can then send the most appropriate aircraft to help on suppression quickly. [57:25] So it's under a good ship. [57:26] 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 transfer of the firefighting component of the U.S. Forest Service into interior. [57:38] So they would become the fifth leg of this group that would then also be into the same reporting structure where firefighters would report up to firefighters. [57:49] Right. That's, and that's a challenge that we looked at last year and this committee asked that a report be done, independent report directed by the Secretary of Interior and Secretary of Agriculture. [58:02] Where are we on that report? [58:03] Well, we are, I'd say we're progressing ahead. [58:06] And of course, we've got a, Brooke Rollins and I have got a great working relationship. [58:11] She's hired a terrific leader for the U.S. Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Forest Service. [58:15] Who's gone through all of the center here in conservation, Mike Boren. [58:19] And Mike Boren is also highly supportive of this unification effort to make sure that we do a better job fighting. [58:28] But the, I don't have a specific date for the report yet, but I'll check on that. [58:33] I, as I told you when we met earlier last week, that this might be the best idea since life spread. [58:41] I just don't know. [58:42] There's still some questions that have got to be answered and stuff. [58:44] And once those are answered, then we can, then we can deal with this. [58:47] And it might be the right thing to do. [58:49] My challenge is what's left with the department. [58:53] 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? [59:00] So that's a, that's a separate issue, but it's some questions that we need to ask before we do it and stuff. [59:05] So we look forward to working with you on this and seeing if we can establish the best service we can. [59:10] Yeah. [59:11] And I, and I would just say on the, with the proud heritage we have in each of these, if you're a, whether you're, if you're a U.S. Forest Service firefighter, if you're a BLM firefighter, you keep your uniform, you keep your badge. [59:22] 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 U.S. Wildland Fire Service. [59:29] And everyone will know that when we're fighting fires, the fires don't know whether they're on federal land, state land, private land, BLM versus whatever. [59:38] 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 13 days and caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage. [59:49] And on one side of the line, it's a straight line. [59:51] And I'm like, is the map wrong? [59:53] Was the printer wrong? [59:54] And they said, no, that's BLM land. [59:55] BLM put it out. [59:56] I mean, the same fire. [59:57] Yeah. [59:58] So it's like, 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 going to put a fire out that everybody's on the same page. [1:00:08] And 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 different laws and different rules for the forest service and the BLM and stuff. [1:00:21] And I think that's got to change. [1:00:22] Well, absolutely. [1:00:23] And one of the things that we will be doing because we have the ability within interior to do it, but we've got different pay scales, different retirement plans, different everything. [1:00:30] 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, some better benefits than the other one. [1:00:40] We've got to have a unification around how we think about compensating and recruiting and hiring and, and, and then from an equipment standpoint, it'd be great to get some unification as well. [1:00:49] Absolutely. [1:00:50] Ms. Pingree. [1:00:51] Yeah. [1:00:53] Thank you, Mr. Chair. [1:00:54] And, and I really appreciate the work you're doing and trying to dig in on this idea of, as, as you said very well, you know, it makes sense. [1:01:00] You know, it may be the best thing ever to combine these, but just having a better understanding of it. [1:01:04] And on the heels of that, you know, we're talking about the potential of another extreme fire season, the costs of it, the cost of human lives, the cost of real estate and property, and then just the number of people it takes to fight the fires. [1:01:17] And we never talk about, 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. [1:01:29] And I don't understand, and I appreciate your, you know, talking about the major purpose of the Department of Interior having American energy dominance. [1:01:38] 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 fuels contribute to climate change. [1:01:49] climate change. But I just, I want to dig in on one of the things that you could see was just, I found very upsetting, and brought it up in my opening remarks, and that is this nearly billion-dollar payout to Total Energies. [1:02:02] So Total Energies is one of the five companies that had offshore wind projects. They were all suspended by this administration under you. The particular project that Total Energy had was four gigawatt capacity off New York and North Carolina. [1:02:19] It was very detrimental to lose that because that would have been part of the Atlantic grid, fastest way to add capacity. Electricity costs are rising on the East Coast. I know that very well. And I don't understand an administration that doesn't say all of the above. [1:02:37] And so it seems like you've targeted offshore wind as one of the things to get rid of. In this case, the courts rejected the argument of the administration that there was some national security concern. I don't know exactly what they were because they were not public. [1:02:53] But now you're asking us to believe that somehow you're still justified in this $928 million 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. [1:03:05] I'm not clear who approached who first about this deal. Did Total Energies come to the department? Did the department go to Total Energies? Did Total Energies file a claim? [1:03:15] 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? [1:03:24] 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 negated five of the projects that were projected to be out there, [1:03:35] 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? [1:03:44] Yeah, I'd be happy to. First of all, we have to disagree on a couple of facts. One is that this is affordable. The highest cost electricity we produce in America is offshore wind. [1:04:00] And some of the most disruptive to the environment is offshore wind. And also the Total Agreement was not one of the five that's under litigation, it was a separate one. [1:04:12] And also just strongly reject your characterization. This is a refund of money that Total gave to the United States of America. They paid to buy an offshore lease. That $928 million was their money that they gave us. [1:04:30] And they were they then see themselves as being uneligible to build on that. So it would have been lost dollars. [1:04:39] When the Biden administration, you know, canceled pipelines arbitrarily on day one with executive order, there was American companies that lost billions of dollars. [1:04:49] People lost jobs, all of 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 going to arbitrarily cancel something, then maybe we should pay it back. [1:05:00] Here there was there is a national security concern. The national concern came from the Department of War, the five the five projects that are actually under construction kind of wrap around the New York area where we've got some of the highest populations in the country. [1:05:18] 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. [1:05:27] Right now, the low flying drone drone swarms are what's happening. It's when people aren't, you know, it's less piloted and more autonomous. [1:05:38] It's flying. And it's also as we also know that there is autonomous undersea the Department of War report that came out that said it was a national security concern matches those that are done by Sweden. [1:05:50] Sweden has canceled offshore projects due to concern over over national security concerns. [1:05:57] There is clear. It's not it's not a theory. It's not whatever. It's just true that when you've got a 600 foot or higher tower, most of these offshore towers are taller than the space needle. [1:06:08] There's hundreds of them that are out there and they've got blades that are 250 feet, you know, spinning, you know, the outer edge moving at more than 100 miles an hour. [1:06:16] They have set up enormous amounts of radar interference. [1:06:20] So if we want to endanger, you know, our greatest population area because of the someone launching a drone swarm attack in, you know, at our country through that or autonomous undersea because the vibration of the one they're operating also affects and distorts sonar. [1:06:37] So it gives us less detection ability if someone is coming across across there. [1:06:42] But then when we have this this offshore wind, each of those towers has to be connected by a cable. [1:06:49] Just one of those five that was under litigation had over 460 miles of deep sea trenching. [1:06:55] There was no permit required, you know, whatsoever. [1:06:58] Let's go up there and blow up the bottom of the ocean. [1:07:00] The the the all of the marine fishermen from the New England area that have come forward and said it's killed our fishing area. [1:07:09] It's been tremendous. [1:07:10] They were lined up at the Department of Ag last week when they were setting up their their seafood office, cheering, cheering out loudly that finally that the that the that there had been a stop to putting these wind farms right in the middle of where they did all of their fishing. [1:07:28] We had more whale groundings than we've ever had before. [1:07:30] The marine mammals issue, because when you're pounding those in building those pylons in the ground. [1:07:36] We know from 50 years ago from go back to the you know, the 70s with the whale song, how far whale whale voices can conduct underwater. [1:07:45] Pounding it's up over 200 decibels a rock concert. [1:07:49] You can lose your hearing at 140 200 decibels pounding these things into the ground. [1:07:54] Sorry, I have to stop you here. [1:07:57] 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. [1:08:05] So I'm sorry, but so many of these arguments. [1:08:07] I just I mean, you can provide me with some facts. [1:08:11] I don't agree with you on costs. [1:08:12] I don't agree that they're disruptive. [1:08:14] I represent the Gulf of Maine. [1:08:15] Believe me, if I thought this was disruptive, we wouldn't be permitting offshore wind off the coast of Maine. [1:08:20] You know, I'm sorry, we just disagree on some of these arguments. [1:08:24] But and I understand your argument on, you know, back in the Biden administration, I'm not going all the way back there. [1:08:30] But this was a billion dollars that you're giving back. [1:08:33] You can decide it's unaffordable, but that is now for the company to understand. [1:08:37] Do you have another plan to re permit that? [1:08:40] Are you going to have another company go in there? [1:08:42] There's no good argument for taking it away. [1:08:45] I and I just want to be clear. [1:08:47] There's no good there's no good argument for taking companies money and then not refunding it if they're if they if they're choosing to be unable to use it. [1:08:55] You can say all these things. [1:08:56] I don't know all the national security agreements because the courts kept that under seal. [1:09:00] I didn't go into the skiff or whatever skiff there was around that. [1:09:03] But the courts threw that out. [1:09:05] So the court said to you there were no good national security arguments. [1:09:09] So I don't know all these things that you're saying that that's a mischaracterization. [1:09:13] They in some cases, the court said it's not an issue because the blades aren't turning yet. [1:09:18] And as soon as the blades start turning, then they would be a national security. [1:09:21] If you're going to be talking about pounding and those kinds of things, then we can't have offshore drilling. [1:09:25] And you want to re permit the whole East Coast for offshore drilling. [1:09:28] If you want to talk about danger to marine mammals and danger to fisheries, you know, my next question when I come back to it is going to be about what happened with the Deepwater Horizon. [1:09:37] And you want to reduce the permitting standards there. [1:09:40] There's there's just a lot of hypocrisy. [1:09:42] There's no there's zero desire to do anything but continue to improve on the process. [1:09:47] And in your opening remarks, 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. [1:09:58] It didn't say that it said there wasn't enough inspections. [1:10:01] It said there weren't people present from the at that time MMA present observing those pressure tests on those on those blowout well devices. [1:10:10] And with with this organization we have would have are proposing now to go back. [1:10:16] We've kept honor out that's the group that does the revenue. [1:10:20] So the revenue is in a separate group. [1:10:22] But having the people that are doing the inspections and the regulation in the same group makes an enormous amount of sense. [1:10:28] It's not about cutting corners. [1:10:29] It's not about lessening things. [1:10:31] It's about improving our ability to make sure that we never have a deep water horizon again. [1:10:36] And and to suggest that somehow anybody in the industry or this administration wants that to happen, we'd be willing to do that. [1:10:43] That's that's ludicrous. [1:10:44] Why would we want to do anything that would harm our country, our industry, our wildlife? [1:10:49] Why would we want to do that? [1:10:50] We wouldn't want to do that. [1:10:51] Because it appears to me that this administration is trying to roll back regulations wherever there can about whether it's about toxicities and the toxics in the environment or in this case. [1:11:00] And I'll just jump right into that one. [1:11:01] I was going to save it for the second round, but I'll just get it done. [1:11:04] You know, I went back and looked at the Deepwater Horizon tapes in the in the investigations that were done. [1:11:10] And one of the things that were was of deep concern to people is that there was a combined organization that was doing both the permitting and the inspections. [1:11:19] There was an incredible amount of corruption. [1:11:21] 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 are doing the permitting. [1:11:30] And it was recommended that we separate those two agencies. [1:11:34] So I would love to see more about how you think there will be protections. [1:11:38] But as with so many things about this administration and the ranking member of the full committee said the same thing, you've already announced this transition and you're moving forward without congressional action. [1:11:49] We don't get to see what you're trying to do differently. [1:11:51] I would love to if you want to make the case to me that somehow this isn't going to repeat those exact things and that the God Squad wasn't set up so that you can do more damage to endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico. [1:12:01] I'd love to see all those things, but we don't currently have that because this administration gives us so little information in it. [1:12:08] I just want to be clear. [1:12:09] The administration is also attempting to roll back other reforms such as the blowout preventer regulations and decommissioning requirements. [1:12:17] And I had forgotten until I rewatched all the videos from that horrific oil spill and the loss of 11 lives of those people who are on that rig that the blowout preventer hadn't been properly inspected and it was a big cause of the problem. [1:12:32] So why would you be rolling back at this moment in time and how can I feel confident that we're going to have adequate environmental and human protections in what you want to do in the future and drilling for more oil. [1:12:43] 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. [1:12:51] We 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 of the of those blowout preventers. [1:13:02] Specifically, it's one of the things that we want to make sure that we were doing in this new organization is going to make sure that we do that. [1:13:08] So you and I are trying to solve the same problem. [1:13:10] 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? [1:13:20] Yes. Yeah, I'd be happy to share what we're doing. [1:13:22] And I've used up plenty of time here, but I'm just going to 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 want to increase the amount of oil drilling off the coast of the East Coast in Alaska and everywhere else. [1:13:40] 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, Mr. Chair. [1:13:49] Ms. Malloy. [1:13:58] 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. [1:14:03] Thank you for being here. I want to start with the Great Salt Lake. As you know, the president put a billion dollars in his budget for Salt Lake restoration. [1:14:12] And I know it's early days and your team is still working on what that's going to look like. So I just have an ask 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 going to be investing in restoring the Great Salt Lake. Let's make sure it's something that helps us for decades to come. [1:14:29] Yes, absolutely. We look forward to working with you and the governor and the team and Bureau of Reclamation to make sure we have that plan. [1:14:36] Okay, thank you. America the Beautiful. When 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 and digital passes, some of the high visitation parks like the ones we have in Utah are losing out on revenue. [1:14:57] When it gets split evenly between some of the low visitation parks that don't take the same wear and tear that the high visitation parks do. How is the department addressing that to make sure that we're still taking care of the backlog and the maintenance issues at these parks that get millions of visitors a year? [1:15:16] Well, I think one thing which we talked about earlier is encouraging this committee to support the reauthorization of GOA, which of course included dollars for deferred maintenance. So that would be one piece. [1:15:32] What you're describing, however, on the increase in the online purchase of the park passes, this is a relatively new phenomenon, but it's great that they're popular, it's great that people are buying them ahead of time, help reduce lines, getting into the parks, but it's something from a revenue standpoint we're going to have to take a look at to see what on the major parks that have the highest visitation, what kind of lost revenue they might have. And so we'll take a look at that. But the good news is people want to [1:16:02] get to the parks and a lot of people are buying the park passes. Yeah, we'd love to work with you two on innovative ways maybe that we can help out these high visitation parks. I know you've got multiple large high visitation parks in your district. Which we're really proud of, but we want to make sure that we're taking care of them. The NEPA regs. As the chair of Western Caucus, I led a letter with Rep. Hageman and 23 of our colleagues in support of the new NEPA regs. Thank you for those. Can you just explain quickly how moving the regs from the CFR to the departmental [1:16:31] handbooks will help improve the process for Americans who are project proponents or concerned about, especially on public lands. I want to make sure the first part of that question was related to was NEPA. Okay. Yeah. On, uh, yeah, there, there, the, the goal, of course, uh, here on the regulation is to basically we make sure we, you know, we're following the law. And there had been a lot of, uh, [1:17:03] uh, 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 80% 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. [1:17:33] state land, uh, to pushed 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 going to be litigated over the piece that was actually the law, which is about 20% 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, uh, $1.5 trillion of capital [1:18:03] is proposed in America to be spent, but it's waiting for a permit. [1:18:07] Yeah, that'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, the minimization 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? [1:18:36] Uh, yeah, I'd be happy to. And I think on, in, in your case, uh, given, uh, um, given, given the amount of public lands in Utah, your, it's a state where I think we're at over 60% 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 it would be happy to, uh, specifically review with you any particular, uh, sites or locations where we could work together to see if we can come up with a solution. [1:19:04] 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 want to say thank you for that. And I yield. [1:19:16] Mr. Harder. [1:19:18] Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Mr. Secretary for, for being here. Uh, I'm going to 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. [1:19:34] Grow our economy, create good paying jobs and reestablish 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. [1:19:49] 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. [1:20:01] Since then, 18 gigawatts of solar have been canceled or stalled, four gigawatts of wind, 500 projects total at a time when I think our grid needs the cheapest electrons it can as fast as possible. [1:20:15] 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 holdup on getting solar and wind projects out the door. [1:20:25] Well, the, the key thing here is part of, uh, uh, uh, understanding the, that again, I don't want to 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. [1:20:50] 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 22 states. Uh, the during that storm, wind and solar at the peak moments produced 2% of the total electricity. [1:21:08] 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. [1:21:18] 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 people in many cases. [1:21:29] Let me just pause there, Mr. Secretary. 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. [1:21:44] It doesn't. So you're telling me that the market doesn't want these projects. Why not let the market decide that you you're complaining about favoritism in the past. [1:21:53] It feels to me like this department is putting a thumb on its scale. Why not have the same standard for all projects, period? [1:22:00] Well, the market is not building, uh, offshore wind. For example, there are zero, zero people trying to build offshore wind. [1:22:11] I'm not talking about offshore wind. No, but since, since the, since the subsidies, you know, were eliminated, no one's building it because it's just not, it's not effective. [1:22:19] 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. [1:22:33] You know, that's, that's an issue for national security. And so there's more national security risk in doing solar than doing nuclear gas plant. [1:22:41] 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. [1:22:49] I mean, if you're buying Chinese equipment and then you've got the ability for them to listen to every call and, and, and follow every text that's sent, that's one thing. [1:22:57] But on the solar panels, the same thing where, you know, us being dependent on, on a rival for us for supply for solar panels. [1:23:06] And some of the other parts of the review we want to make sure is because some, some of the solar panels in the prior, some of the projects in the prior administration, [1:23:13] it was the exact flip of what you're saying, where things were green lit if it was wind and solar. [1:23:18] 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've got solar panels that are being built over the top of, of, uh, you know, rare white sage, uh, in ecosystems, and we, we have to review those. [1:23:33] I, I, uh, where we are right now, I see that there is again, one standard for one type of energy and another standard for another type. [1:23:41] I don't think that's good policy and I don't think it's sustainable. [1:23:44] You've talked about the need for permit reform. [1:23:46] I want permit reform yesterday. [1:23:48] I think any precondition for moving that forward is going to require a level playing field for all types of energy. [1:23:54] So, uh, I know that's a legislative question as well, but I, I, another factor in the, in the thinking is beyond just the project of generation itself. [1:24:02] 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 built highly expensive transmission lines as well. [1:24:14] Then when the sun goes down, the winds not blowing, there's no electrons going down those transmission lines. [1:24:18] The cost, the cost of all of that is born by the person paying for the electric bill. [1:24:23] So we, we're, we're, we're, we're weather dependent intermittent can work is if we have enough baseload. [1:24:29] It has to be the right mix between your perspective. [1:24:32] Again, I think if we have a level playing field, we let the market decide. [1:24:35] We have one type of permit process for everybody be a huge improvement. [1:24:39] It, I, I hear the complaints about previous administrations putting their thumb on the scale. [1:24:43] What I see now is secretary level approval required for one type of project, but not for another. [1:24:49] And again, I, I don't think that's sustainable or good policy, but moving on. [1:24:52] Uh, I wanted to, to, to quickly talk about wildfires nine months ago. [1:24:56] Uh, wildfires are a big issue in California. [1:24:58] Uh, thank you for some of the work that you've done on that. [1:25:00] I think it's an area of wide bipartisan agreement. [1:25:03] Nine months ago, I sent you a letter asking about the wildfire wildland fire center proposal. [1:25:08] Uh, we're still waiting for an answer. [1:25:11] Uh, can you, uh, respond to this letter and at least give us a little bit of a sense on how we can work together? [1:25:16] Uh, not at this hearing, but, uh, on this wildfire center proposal. [1:25:20] Yes. [1:25:21] And, and I'll, and I'll personally, uh, take accountability and apologize to you because we should be responsive to, uh, people that are writing to our department. [1:25:28] So I'll follow up on that. [1:25:29] You got a lot going on, but if our team, if I need to, I'll ask you again, if we can get a copy of the letter he sent nine months ago, because we'd like, we want to be responsive to do it. [1:25:37] I think it's an area we want to be able to work together on to make sure that you and the forest service have all the tools possible. [1:25:41] Thank you. [1:25:42] One last issue on, uh, gas prices, a big issue across all of the country, but especially in an area like mine. [1:25:49] Last week, I was paying $8 a gallon at the pump, which I know for some of my colleagues sounds insane. [1:25:55] Even for California, that's pretty extreme. [1:25:57] Uh, you're the chair of the president's national, uh, energy dominance council. [1:26:02] What should I be telling my constituents when they tell me that they can't afford to fill up at the pump? [1:26:07] Well, I think that you should tell them that, that the state of California should, because you're talking about gasoline and not just a California problem. [1:26:16] I mean, you know, folks are paying $4, 15 a gallon all across the country. [1:26:20] Yes. [1:26:22] 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, 63%. [1:26:35] Uh, they were one of the only states that was dependent on, on, on oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz. [1:26:41] Uh, the number one importer from California was Iraq, uh, where it was coming in. [1:26:45] There used to be 40 refineries in California. [1:26:47] There was eight. [1:26:48] Now there's seven, seven going to six because of the regulatory environment. [1:26:52] And so now we have oil that shipped around the world to be refined in Korea to arrive back in Long Beach, California's refined product. [1:27:00] 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. [1:27:09] And you can't right now get gas from the Permian, from the Bakken, from whatever. [1:27:14] California's, it's, California became Hawaii. [1:27:17] They turned themselves into an energy island. [1:27:19] Uh, and, and that's the root cause of the, of the high prices. [1:27:23] So what you tell your constituents is, is that the, there has to be a policy change, which is, California's, is, is, [1:27:30] essentially a national security risk because if, if we really had an issue, uh, then, and you couldn't, [1:27:35] if those ships couldn't arrive every day, if there aren't ships arriving every day in San Francisco Bay and in Long Beach offloading energy, [1:27:43] uh, there would be lines in California when the rest of the country, there would be no lines because we've got, uh, [1:27:48] an excess supply in the rest of the country, but we've got it. [1:27:51] We have to import it into California. [1:27:53] Thank you. [1:27:54] I've exceeded my time, but thank you, uh, Mr. Chair. [1:27:57] Mr. Amaday. [1:27:58] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [1:28:01] Mr. Secretary, um, just real briefly, no disrespect to, to African American folks in the country, [1:28:10] but in Nevada, at all points in time, BLM stands for the Bureau of Land Management. [1:28:16] And so recently, you know, Black Lives Matter, it's like, it's always been BLM. [1:28:20] You own eight out of every 10 acres, not BLM, but the federal government does, in the state. [1:28:27] While Utah has got a whole bunch, um, nobody is more dependent upon federal land management policy than Nevada is. [1:28:36] You got a Bureau of Rec, you got Forest Service, but the biggest one by far is BLM. [1:28:41] Can you tell me what your number one Nevada-specific priority is as the Secretary of Interior? [1:28:47] What's number one on your list when you wake up and you go, those guys between California and Utah? [1:28:52] And by the way, we got a whole bunch of our gas in Las Vegas and western Nevada from you folks. [1:28:57] People are thinking about driving to Elko to buy it from Utah. [1:29:00] But anyhow, what's the number one priority? [1:29:02] Well, having just been back in Nevada in the last two weeks and had a great, you know, rancher roundtable, [1:29:12] I would be saying, you know, number one is to make sure that we stop, you know, [1:29:18] I mean, get the burdensome regulations that are killing ranching in America on public lands. [1:29:23] And along with that, we got a big wild, you know, horse and burrow problem in Nevada that's, you know, wrecking havoc on the habitat. [1:29:33] But at a higher level than any of that is actually on the mining and mineral side. [1:29:39] And of course, Nevada had a rich history of mining and can again. [1:29:45] And one of the things we face as a nation are incredible dependence on China for critical minerals. [1:29:52] And Nevada can play a huge role, as you know, in in getting us back into the game doing that. [1:29:59] But it's Nevada is a and then the third thing, of course, having spent time with your governor and with staff recently, [1:30:09] as we've got, you know, the, you know, making sure that we've got adequate water supply for for for Southern Nevada. [1:30:16] Those are all things that are on top of the thing. [1:30:18] But again, you're, as you said, 80% of the land we spent a lot of time is federal land. [1:30:23] We spent a lot of time thinking about Nevada. [1:30:25] So when you're talking about land management, I get the economic development side and the effect on private business and whatever. [1:30:32] Any plans for the checkerboard? [1:30:36] Because several people here have mentioned access to public lands. [1:30:39] And as and as you know, you've got it in Utah. [1:30:42] When you talk about the checkerboard from the transcontinental railroad that locks that up. [1:30:46] X miles on either side of it. [1:30:48] And so when every other one is one. [1:30:50] Any plans that are starting in in in your department to say, here's consolidation. [1:30:56] Not you'll win. [1:30:58] You know, somebody gets more than the other. [1:30:59] It's like it's checkerboard. [1:31:01] So here's our blocks and here's private blocks. [1:31:04] Maintain any plans at all at the at the department level to address checkerboard? [1:31:10] Well, where where we're allowed to by law, we're happy to, you know, pursue and address that. [1:31:16] We did last year complete a checkerboard effort in elimination in in Utah. [1:31:26] And so we've seen the results can work where we were we were able to swap lands lands for Nevada. [1:31:33] Don't know. [1:31:34] No plans that I'm aware of right now. [1:31:35] But if you've got some ideas or suggestions, we're happy to work with you and your staff. [1:31:41] I heard the talk about the fire stuff and that and that's all great. [1:31:45] And I'm a little concerned that we were asking for a report. [1:31:50] And it's been a year. [1:31:52] People gripe about Congress's timeliness, which is fair. [1:31:56] But one of the things I didn't hear you saying we got this leg. [1:32:00] We got that leg. [1:32:01] These guys over here, four services, a fifth leg. [1:32:03] Is there a leg on that? [1:32:04] You said that the head guy is going to be from San Diego. [1:32:07] 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, [1:32:14] I need you to call whoever the incident commanders from. [1:32:18] Sometimes it's from Cal Fire. [1:32:21] So we talk slower for Cal Fire. [1:32:23] Other times I just couldn't help that, you know. [1:32:25] We need it. [1:32:26] Other times it's, you know, Forest Service, BLM, whatever. [1:32:31] I would like to know who to talk to to say where's the, I know the plan's being, the recipe's being finalized. [1:32:37] I'm hoping that there's a part in there to go. [1:32:40] One of our big things is since you guys are going to go around 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. [1:32:58] And this isn't at you personally, obviously, or even at the Department of Interior. [1:33:02] We're from the federal government and we're here to help you. [1:33:05] 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. [1:33:11] But that's a great example of there better be a sixth leg that talks about local liaison having a seat at that table of five or six or whatever it is. [1:33:22] Any thoughts on that? [1:33:23] Is anybody in charge of that at your unification process? [1:33:30] Yes. [1:33:31] And there'll be a leader for Nevada who will be responsible for that. [1:33:35] It's one of the geographically designated areas in the area. [1:33:39] So how are you going to pick them? [1:33:40] Do you know? [1:33:41] Okay, we're going to have a Nevada person. [1:33:42] Who is it? [1:33:43] Southern Nevada? [1:33:44] Northern Nevada? [1:33:45] Because your acres are in the north. [1:33:46] No disrespect to the trips to Las Vegas. [1:33:48] I mean, it's a hard place to talk people into going to. [1:33:51] But the majority of the mission is north of there. [1:33:57] Yeah. [1:33:59] Thanks for that, Mr. Chairman. [1:34:01] Last thing, who do I talk to? [1:34:03] It's probably in the accounting thing. [1:34:05] For years we've been around and we've talked, and you guys touched on it a little bit in previous stuff. [1:34:09] You know, how are we going to fix the deal in Park Service? [1:34:11] We're going to hire a local, all that other sort of stuff. [1:34:13] I have six BLM districts in my district. [1:34:17] And it's always, hey, we got range cons where those things are empty. [1:34:22] We got this, that. [1:34:23] And oh, by the way, even the fire personnel is like, yeah, we're going to hire them. [1:34:28] We're going to speed that up, which is all good. [1:34:30] But oh, by the way, we've got to figure out where they're going to live. [1:34:34] Renting hotel, motel rooms, blah, blah, blah for them just to live at. [1:34:38] If they're in the Winnemucca district or whatever, they can't afford to take the job wherever it may be on those far-flung missions. [1:34:47] And for several Congresses, it's like, hey, what are we going to do about the peeps so they can afford to live where anything underway in that? [1:34:56] 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? [1:35:07] Anything floating around? [1:35:11] Well, is your question about housing? [1:35:14] My question is about either whether you provide them housing or whether you pay them more or whatever. [1:35:19] It's like they can't afford to take the job and work out in the hinterlands. [1:35:25] And it's been like, yeah, we need to do something about that. [1:35:28] We doing anything about that? [1:35:30] Well, I know that we've got, we've had housing issues expressed and affordability exists in the National Park Service around our, especially around our entrance communities. [1:35:42] 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. [1:35:48] Because that's not one that I had heard about during our. [1:35:52] I hear at every district office I go to, so I will follow up with you. [1:35:56] And also, by the way, I would be remiss, you've got a guy who's the State Director of Nevada, John Raby, who I guess is pulling the plug here in a couple weeks. [1:36:05] Please replace him with somebody as good as him. [1:36:07] Problem solver, true pro, sorry to see him go. [1:36:11] 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. [1:36:18] I yield back. [1:36:20] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [1:36:21] Thank you, Mr. Secretary. [1:36:22] Thank you. [1:36:23] Ms. McCollum. [1:36:26] And I don't want to get into relitigating what happened last week in the Senate with the Boundary Waters. [1:36:35] But I do have some questions about how moving forward the Department of Interior might be looking at things. [1:36:42] And I'll send you the questions, but I'm just going to let you know what's coming to your office. [1:36:46] Okay, thank you. [1:36:47] As you're aware, the Senate passed the Congressional Review Act, a CRA resolution. [1:36:51] It overturned a 2023 mineral withdrawal for the headwaters of the Boundary Waters. [1:36:56] The mineral withdrawal overturned, you know, puts great risk. [1:37:01] All these mines have failed to date. [1:37:03] A toxic sulfide or copper mining to contaminate this water. [1:37:08] And as you're well aware, being from our neck of the woods, this is 20% of the purest water in the forest system. [1:37:16] Probably some of the purest water in the world. [1:37:19] Now, this is my opinion. [1:37:21] I believe that the Trump administration has possibly weaponized the CRAs to get a do-over when the political winds are in the administration's favor. [1:37:31] The CRA wasn't created to overturn public land orders, especially one that's nearly three years old. [1:37:39] The Biden administration followed the law. [1:37:42] The withdrawal for the Boundary Waters was conducted following a Federal Land Policy Management Act known as LIPA. [1:37:49] And it was notified, Congress was notified of the withdrawal in 2023. [1:37:55] Following that notification, following the law, Congress had 90 days to adopt a resolution of disapproval. [1:38:01] The Congress did not act. [1:38:03] The window of the disapproval closed. [1:38:06] And now we just had what happened in the Senate last week. [1:38:10] Now, this process had been in place since 1970. [1:38:13] It's the same process that my colleague now, Secretary Zinke, used when he was secretary. [1:38:20] He followed the law. [1:38:22] 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. [1:38:31] So it's changed the landscape. [1:38:33] So here's what I'm trying to understand going into the future. [1:38:37] And as I said, I'll submit these so that whoever needs to help you write them so we all have the same language down pat. [1:38:47] So my first question is going to be, are public land orders no longer governed by LIPA? [1:38:54] Can Congress expect a flood of public land orders now that this CRA has been overturned? [1:38:59] And, you know, maybe it's just this one case. [1:39:04] Maybe it's just for the Boundary Waters. [1:39:06] We aren't going to see that happen when the state of Montana and Washington, you know, the boundary waters got singled out in the early two, in the first Trump administration. [1:39:17] And so I want to know what the process is. [1:39:19] Is Flipped on going to be modified now? [1:39:22] And if it is, we need to do public notices and have public hearings and do all that. [1:39:27] So I look forward to figuring out what the landscape is going to be like in the future. [1:39:32] So here are some of my, and these might be questions and concerns shifting gears. [1:39:38] I want to talk about a couple of things that I'm very concerned about. [1:39:43] And I know you care deeply about, as governor, you had great relationships with tribes. [1:39:49] And, you know, I have 11 in Minnesota, and some of them are brother-sister tribes. [1:39:54] There's a cut of 27% to the BIA, and it's grossly underfunded. [1:40:02] This committee tries to put as much as we can into it. [1:40:05] The tribal loan program is at risk of being zeroed out. [1:40:11] And this is the one that really has me concerned, Mr. Burgum. [1:40:16] The BIE, that's the Bureau of Indian Education, there's a 23% cut to that. [1:40:22] But I don't know if the Department of Education informed you what they were doing, too. [1:40:28] The Department of Education is sending four programs your way. [1:40:34] So that's going to be even a larger cut. [1:40:36] So I'd like to work with you on what we can do to help those programs that have been really underfunded. [1:40:44] And then on solar, if you get a chance in your travels and you can go to the reservation, it's Wind River. [1:40:50] It's in Wyoming. [1:40:52] They have, using some money from the Biden administration when we were working on solar, [1:40:59] there are homes in the Wind River for the first time ever that have solar. [1:41:03] It's a U.S. company, and they do amazing work. [1:41:10] They're training the tribes how to set up their own projects, maintain them, and everything else. [1:41:17] So we hope to be able to roll this out throughout some of the other tribal nations. [1:41:21] There's still going to be a need for propane, but anything we can do, you know, [1:41:25] moving propane to these rural areas, as you and I know, is very, very expensive. [1:41:29] So if you get a chance, if you could put Wind River on your list. [1:41:32] The other thing I'm going to ask is, could you get me the national security information? [1:41:38] National security was used in the Boundary Waters, even though it's a foreign-owned company that took the leases, [1:41:44] a foreign-owned company that will be shipping the ore when and if it's ever mined to China, [1:41:52] and it will be sold on the global market. [1:41:55] My colleagues on the other side of this argument and I, they kind of dropped the argument after I pointed that out. [1:42:01] But I'm, Mr. Elsie and I are both on the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, [1:42:09] and I would like to see all these national security arguments because we have never had anyone from the Pentagon raise them to us. [1:42:16] So it would be very helpful for me to see and really dig into and understand how all these wind and other solar projects [1:42:24] that you're talking about are national security. [1:42:26] So with that, Mr. Chair, being a teacher, I guess I gave the Secretary some homework. [1:42:33] But I want to thank you for making sure that all the school kids from the states around in the five-state area [1:42:40] get to go into a wonderful place in the Science Museum in St. Paul and see our national parks. [1:42:47] I thank you for that, sir. I yield back. [1:42:50] Thank you. [1:42:51] Thank you, Mr. Cloud. [1:42:52] Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here. [1:42:57] Thank you, Chairman, for having this hearing. [1:42:59] I want to, first of all, just thank you for the hard work that you're doing. [1:43:03] I find it kind of ironically humorous that some on this committee would accuse you or this administration of being asleep at the wheel, [1:43:13] especially after four years of defending an auto-pin presidency. [1:43:18] It's very obvious that you're knowledgeable in what you're managing, that you and this administration are active and proactive. [1:43:28] While they may disagree with what you're doing, you are certainly engaged, and I want to thank you for that. [1:43:33] A couple issues that were brought up that I wanted to talk about. [1:43:37] One talked about the park maintenance and how there's a backlog, and then also the number of employees that we have. [1:43:46] There seems to be kind of a tendency to measure our success or our productivity based on how many employees are on the payroll, [1:43:59] as opposed to whether the work's being done. [1:44:01] And then we can look at the previous administration when it came to maintenance backlog, [1:44:07] and we saw more dollars in your agency and your department. [1:44:13] Meanwhile, the backlog increased dramatically. [1:44:16] So they're not necessarily related that more dollars equals backlog or more employees equals work done. [1:44:23] So I wanted to ask you what is being done when it comes to the backlog. [1:44:28] And then on the employee issue, I don't know if you've been made aware of this, [1:44:32] but after President Trump was sworn into office the first time, there was stood up an alt National Parks Service [1:44:41] that initially launched itself as the internal resistance movement of the National Park Service, i.e., the Trump administration. [1:44:51] Now, they've since been very careful about digitally scrubbing their footprint where it doesn't say internal anymore, [1:44:57] but we've talked to those within the National Park Service who says this is very much alive. [1:45:01] It's being done on work time and it goes pretty high in the organization, at least as of some months ago. [1:45:06] So I wanted to see, I think you agree that anyone serving in the executive branch should be serving at the pleasure of the President [1:45:14] and under the authority designated by the President of the United States or the people to the President of the United States. [1:45:23] What's being done to clean that up and then what's being done on the maintenance backlog? [1:45:28] Let me take the maintenance backlog first, and I appreciate, Representative Cloud, your understanding [1:45:37] sort of the difference between the operating line and the capital expenditure line, [1:45:41] because one of the things that when we talk about budgets, you know, going up and down, [1:45:46] just in overall coming into this thing, last year it was clear that based on all the hiring that had occurred, [1:45:55] but all the hiring that had occurred where people were working remotely and weren't actually working in our parks, [1:45:59] our refuges, that we had a, it increased the people cost of the line, [1:46:04] but we were decreasing the expenditures relative to CapEx. [1:46:08] So trying to get those things, get the business model back in line so that it would actually be working, [1:46:15] is what we've been trying to do, and I think we're making some good progress there. [1:46:19] But again, the reauthorization of under GOA, the, you know, the LRF would be fantastic, [1:46:27] because I think the estimate for backlog now has grown to $35 billion across interior, across, you know, the assets. [1:46:35] This is a decades-old issue. It's not like it appeared last year. [1:46:38] And we need, we need to, we need, we need to absolutely get after it. [1:46:42] It does, this is, you know, everybody that's worked in these problems knows that that number doesn't get smaller, [1:46:47] because 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, [1:46:51] 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. [1:46:58] So again, appreciate that. We are working hard to make sure that we've, you know, both got the resources, [1:47:07] but also the procurement, because sometimes when we've got deferred maintenance, [1:47:10] we run into these issues where the federal procurement is so complex that, you know, I was out at the Presidio, [1:47:18] and they had, they had vandalism on 12 windows, and a year later, he had 12 broken windows, [1:47:23] and he was still going through the procurement process to replace 12 windows. [1:47:27] And if it had been, if the National Park Foundation, the Presidio Foundation, you know, [1:47:32] could have been able to take over that project, you know, they would have replaced them the next day. [1:47:37] And so again, working with these partner organizations, Friends Group, National Park Foundation, other foundations, [1:47:42] if we can get more dollars and more authorities to them, then sometimes we can actually take care of these things when they cost a lot less. [1:47:51] As far as the, the sort of the, the underground as you're, as you're describing it, that's there. [1:47:58] Yeah, this has been a, it's a known, a known problem, and we're trying, trying to adjust, address it, [1:48:07] but also trying to address it with education. There's a lot of fear based, fear based organizations. [1:48:13] One of the, one of those is a group called the National Parks Conservation Association, which uses the National Parks name, [1:48:20] but they, you know, they hire lawyers and they fund candidates that are, you know, opposed to this agenda, [1:48:28] and it's not, they're not spending any of the money they raise to actually do conservation. [1:48:33] Wow. [1:48:34] And so it is a, you know, there's plenty of, plenty of folks that are out there that are benefiting from the be afraid, [1:48:39] be afraid, this is what's happening to your parks, but they don't say send the money to the parks, [1:48:43] send the money to the National Park Foundation, send the money to us, so that, you know, [1:48:48] and we'll, we'll solve the problem, but they're, they're not investing in, in actual conservation. [1:48:53] So it is, it is a, you know, challenging environment to work in because there's real, there's, there's large business models. [1:49:00] It's also almost become like an industry of attack, you know, spread misinformation, generate, you know, [1:49:07] generate fear and then generate revenue, but not actually work to solve the problem that they profess to be concerned about. [1:49:14] Wow. [1:49:15] Thank you for that insight. [1:49:17] That's, yeah. [1:49:21] Touching on American energy dominance, you've done a lot on that. [1:49:25] And certainly this administration has kind of bringing us back specifically to baseload energy, [1:49:30] to cheap energy, affordable energy. [1:49:34] Obviously we have a conflict in Iran that's creating a temporary issue, but we were on the right path, [1:49:38] and I'm sure soon we'll be again. [1:49:41] And even then we're right at about what Biden era prices were, even given the conflict going on. [1:49:49] We're a dollar below. [1:49:50] A dollar below. [1:49:51] The high was during the Biden administration, so it's. [1:49:54] So that's pretty extraordinary, actually. [1:49:56] Currently I think we bring in about $10 billion in our land. [1:50:00] It's an amazing resource of our country. [1:50:04] Some estimates say we could bring in hundreds of billions of dollars if we were able to use it all properly, [1:50:09] which would be an amazing benefit to the taxpayer. [1:50:12] Some, some states though, in some states, you're actually managing over 50% of that state's territory as well. [1:50:20] And so maybe there's an issue of whether we're, especially with the maintenance backlog, owning too much. [1:50:26] One issue you mentioned as well was wind. [1:50:30] I appreciate what you're doing with wind. [1:50:32] I'm sitting to a guy who knows a whole lot more about radar than I do, for sure. [1:50:37] But my understanding is that turbines cause beam blockage, shadowing, attenuating of signals that they can create blind spots. [1:50:45] They produce false targets, reduce detection sensitivity, they complicate tracking of aircraft. [1:50:51] You could also say missiles as well. [1:50:53] And this seems to me like this would be a national security issue to have along our coast. [1:50:59] So I think the decisions you're making there are very, very important. [1:51:05] Could you speak to what you're doing? [1:51:07] We're in a race against China for AI, among other things. [1:51:12] That is really an energy race and the importance for us to do what we can to ramp up energy production very speedily. [1:51:21] And again, base load energy. [1:51:23] Could you talk to what you've been doing on the side of permitting to help us ramp up energy permitting quickly? [1:51:29] Thank you. [1:51:30] It is, we are in an AI arms race with China. [1:51:33] And this is interesting because it's the first time in history that we've been able, [1:51:37] it's a miracle that we can turn electricity into light or heat. [1:51:42] I mean, we take that for granted. [1:51:43] But we've never been able to turn electricity into intelligence before. [1:51:47] So the demand for electricity is going to go up. [1:51:49] The value of electricity is skyrocketing. [1:51:52] And under the framework of what was always called an energy transition, [1:51:59] if you took a look at the actual gigawatts being generated, [1:52:04] we weren't transitioning under those policies. [1:52:07] We were actually doing energy subtraction. [1:52:09] We were prematurely shutting down base load from hydrocarbons, [1:52:12] shutting down base load from nuclear, and then adding intermittent. [1:52:16] And then at a time when you needed it most, if the sun wasn't shining, the wind wasn't blowing, [1:52:22] then it was, you know, we were having a shortage of electricity. [1:52:26] So part of what we, and in the AI arms race with China, [1:52:30] China last year added 93 gigawatts of coal last year. [1:52:33] One gigawatt would run all of the Denver Metro or all of Utah. [1:52:38] I mean, it's a lot of power, but they did 93, [1:52:42] they're opening up a gigawatt coal plant every four days. [1:52:45] So they're racing ahead on electric generation. [1:52:49] And people make comments about China doing renewables, [1:52:52] but they're doing a base load at a level that allowed them to also do, [1:52:56] you know, do the solar that they were investing in as well. [1:53:00] The, the, in terms of the permitting, [1:53:05] part of what we had to drive through is, [1:53:07] is how do you generate the power and then how do you, you know, [1:53:10] and how do you get it connected to the grid? [1:53:13] The good news is we didn't have to come up with an appropriation [1:53:16] because the, the five hyperscalers, [1:53:18] the largest, you know, [1:53:20] tech companies in the country that are all driving towards AI, [1:53:23] their capital budgets for this year, [1:53:26] for this year right now is over $400 million. [1:53:29] I mean, this is the, I mean, [1:53:31] there's never been an appropriation to say, [1:53:33] Oh, we got appropriate federal dollars to go build electricity. [1:53:36] But the nation's been, you know, crawling along at sort of a, [1:53:39] in the tech industry, you know, [1:53:41] using about 1% of the nation's electricity over a period of time. [1:53:45] And then now that's the area that's really causing the huge demand push. [1:53:50] It relates to the manufacturing of AI. [1:53:54] So to, to do two things. [1:53:56] One is we said, we've got to stop shutting down base load. [1:53:58] If you want to protect any of these intermittent sources we have now [1:54:02] and make sure that the grid doesn't collapse. [1:54:05] So we literally through the authorities that Chris Wright has as the Secretary of Energy, [1:54:11] worked with the power companies to get people to stop prematurely shutting things down [1:54:15] or ordering them to not shut down. [1:54:17] That kept 17 gigawatts on the grid. [1:54:20] Without that, during the storm fern, [1:54:22] we would have had tens of millions of Americans without power just two months ago. [1:54:26] I mean, we were, we were at it, we were at a crisis level and people like why, [1:54:29] you know, why did they declare an energy emergency? [1:54:31] It was, you know, that was the big thing last year. [1:54:34] Well, we declared it on day one because we knew that our grid was at risk because of the over rotation towards, [1:54:39] towards, you know, intermittent and weather dependent sources versus the, the base load. [1:54:45] The, on the permitting side, part of that is getting through the FERC queue, [1:54:48] but because the incentives were so high for, for the winds, wind and solar projects [1:54:54] and then battery to accompany those, 95% of the FERC queue was, was related to the, [1:55:02] the, these highly subsidized taxpayer subsidized sources. [1:55:05] So working with FERC, working with local grid operators like PGM, [1:55:10] working with others around the country to say, [1:55:12] we've got to get the interconnects done faster. [1:55:15] We've got to get siting done faster. [1:55:17] We've got to allow that capital flow to actually do it. [1:55:20] It's not federal dollars. [1:55:21] I mean, the market wants to build more power and they're willing to build it behind the meter. [1:55:25] They're willing to build it off the grid with the new taxpayer or the rate payer protection plan, [1:55:30] which the white house drove with the PGM grid agreement, [1:55:34] which eight Democrat governors and five Republican governors all signed, [1:55:38] all agreeing that, that, you know, to figure out a way to be able to add, add power, add AI, [1:55:45] and not have your rates go up. [1:55:47] Because that, because the idea that you're going to have a, you have a fixed cost thing called the grid. [1:55:53] And if you have somebody that comes in, that's willing to pay for power, [1:55:56] that doesn't mean rates are going up. [1:55:59] That could mean that another person is willing to cover the cost of the existing grid that's there. [1:56:03] In North Dakota, we built a $1.2 billion AI factory and the rates went down for everyone around there. [1:56:09] But now I see everybody's campaigning for office. [1:56:11] I'm going to be against AI manufacturing because rates are going to go up. [1:56:15] Those two things don't necessarily go together. [1:56:18] 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 wind and solar. [1:56:25] And people may get offended when I say that, but when the wind and solar was, that's the thing. [1:56:30] You still needed everything else. [1:56:32] For when the wind's not blowing, you still needed all the other power. [1:56:35] You can't like shut down the other stuff. [1:56:37] And then what do you do when the wind's not blowing? [1:56:39] The Germans actually came up with a new word for it. [1:56:41] It's like this long and it's got, you know, all consonants and no syllables. [1:56:45] But it means dark doldrums and 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. [1:56:57] It doesn't have to be like nighttime. [1:56:58] If it's cloudy during the day, you generate less electricity. [1:57:01] So Germany spent a half a trillion dollars on their green dream and they produced 20% of less electricity and their rates are three times as high. [1:57:11] It's not about, you know, and that all happened before the any conflict in the Middle East. [1:57:15] It has nothing to do with that. [1:57:16] It has to do with you can't build out an electrical grid on something that's weather dependent. [1:57:21] And then you still and you've got complete redundancy. [1:57:23] You still need the base load. [1:57:25] You still need everything else. [1:57:26] And you've added this new thing and then you've subsidized this thing that costs more. [1:57:30] And but people just weren't honest about what the green premium was. [1:57:34] It was like the transition was going to have something that's better, but it's going to cost the same. [1:57:38] No, there was that second part was never said because it was never true. [1:57:41] It was always going to cost in some cases double. [1:57:43] And now you've got capital flowing and capital is going to flow to the parts of the country that have low electric prices. [1:57:49] That's where all the capital is going. [1:57:51] And it is very uneven, just like we have a difference in gas prices. [1:57:54] We have, you know, it's a spread of three or four. [1:57:57] Some parts of our country electricity cost three or four times more than other. [1:58:00] And those places are not seeing the capital flows because advanced manufacturing and distribution, [1:58:06] everything that's going to use robotics, whatever is going to require more electricity. [1:58:09] And so we're going to we're going to see some parts of our country look more like Europe, [1:58:14] where there's a lack of investment and other parts are going to be booming and it'll be on it'll be uneven. [1:58:19] And it's all it's all driven by policy. [1:58:21] And it's not it's not ideological. [1:58:23] It's it's economics. [1:58:24] It's physics. [1:58:25] It's it's just what it is. [1:58:26] It's not it's not like, oh, somebody's right or somebody's wrong. [1:58:29] It's just it's it's it's things that are immutable in terms of the cost side of these things. [1:58:35] But and then and then we have a so what we're trying to do is make sure that capital can get deployed faster. [1:58:41] And that's easy in some parts of our country, you know, because it gets down to a lot of times state level policy. [1:58:47] So we're working hard to bring on more power and more A.I. [1:58:51] because you can't we can't lose the A.I. arms race is non optional. [1:58:55] I mean, that is that is completely national national security. [1:58:59] But you don't have to go through a briefing. [1:59:01] I mean, if if you got Iran launching 500 projectiles at Israel last year, all time to arrive at the same time without without A.I., [1:59:10] you know, Israel, you know, Israel shot down one of those attacks last year. [1:59:14] There was 400 things that were coming at low level. [1:59:16] There was either going to arrive in eight hours that, you know, the autonomous slow moving drones that are flying at the height of a wind tower. [1:59:23] Then you had, you know, another 90 things that were coming that were going to arrive in three hours. [1:59:27] And then you had 10 hypersonics that were going to be there in 10 minutes, all time to arrive, say, like at 5 p.m. [1:59:33] And they shot down, you know, like 96 percent of them because you didn't have everything targeting. [1:59:39] Oh, we're all going to shoot at the first one. And then we missed the next 499. [1:59:42] Well, that happened last year. And then Americans were like, OK, what's what was the score of the ball game? [1:59:47] I mean, like it wasn't even like it wasn't like page three here. [1:59:51] What what an ally of ours has had 500 projectiles launch time to come the same thing. [1:59:56] And they shot them all down. And somebody didn't say, how did they do that? [1:59:58] It wasn't because you had some guy with a, you know, with a machine gun, you know, like World War Two movie. [2:00:04] You know, this is this is this is A.I. A.I. [2:00:07] You know, Golden Dome, Iron Dome is A.I. [2:00:09] And if you don't if you if somebody's A.I. is better, you lose that battle. [2:00:13] So there is no national security today without A.I. [2:00:16] And China's winning winning the electricity race right now. [2:00:19] We're ahead of them on chips. We're ahead of them on software. [2:00:22] They're ahead on electricity. We've got to catch up. [2:00:24] Well, thank you for your work on that. Yep. Thank you, Chairman. [2:00:28] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here. [2:00:32] I want to talk to you about two things in the time that we have left. [2:00:35] Number one is travel and law enforcement. The other one's battlefield and national parks. [2:00:39] Each year, Chairman Simpson and Ranking Member Pingree hope a travel with hold a tribal witness roundtable event spanning over multiple days where tribes across the nation come to share their testimonies with Congress. [2:00:49] Conversations are extremely valuable and always moving and especially on the treaty violation issue. [2:00:55] But last year conversation, I highlighted my concern with the lack of law enforcement available in Indian country. [2:01:00] FBI has recommended 2.4 officers per 1,000 people in a high crime area. [2:01:05] I'd say that's probably inadequate. Some tribes have less than 0.6 officers per 1,000 people. [2:01:10] This gap has allowed organized crime to take major advantage of our tribal lands, whether it's human trafficking or the trafficking of narcotics. [2:01:18] I understand you're familiar with this issue from your time as servant of Governor of North Dakota. [2:01:23] Now you know you're working on it, but murdered and mission missing indigenous people and their relatives for me and for this entire committee is an extremely important issue. [2:01:33] And under your watch, I think this can be solved, but it needs absolute involvement from your personal office to help deal with this. [2:01:44] The other one is Battlefield National Parks. [2:01:48] And when my son Jack comes up to visit me in Washington, we take time to visit one of the nearby parks. [2:01:54] Gettysburg is in an outstanding shape. [2:01:56] Antietam not so much, needs some help. [2:01:58] He's a major history buff, but his new favorite place is Fort Washington. [2:02:04] And it's an incredible value to have had this park in the local area. [2:02:09] It's only 25 minutes south of here. [2:02:11] But I'd like to show you some pictures of Fort Washington. [2:02:14] And I'm not doing this to put you on the spot. [2:02:16] Only because Steny Hoyer, it's in his district and he and I are going to go visit it together. [2:02:20] It's a beautiful place, but it needs some serious work and not in the matter of tens of millions of dollars. [2:02:25] But if you utilize John now or David Rubenstein, American Battlefield Trust or something like that, partner with some of these lesser visited parks, I think it would go a long way. [2:02:35] What we have here is the batteries down at Fort Washington. [2:02:40] And you go down some steps. [2:02:42] Anybody can go down here and have access to these. [2:02:44] These doors right here are gigantic. [2:02:46] They're about 15 feet high. [2:02:48] I should have taken a picture with somebody there. [2:02:50] But they're hanging off their hinges and they're a safety issue. [2:02:53] They can be taken off or replaced for a few thousand dollars. [2:02:56] Let's see the next one, Grace. [2:03:00] This is the watch house at the gate. [2:03:01] The main gate is right here. [2:03:03] It's a beautiful facility. [2:03:04] It's absolutely built like a Mack truck. [2:03:08] There's another term that I would normally use, but Mack trucks are going to have to do. [2:03:13] So there's some drainage coming off of here. [2:03:15] And it's coming in. [2:03:16] Here's the main gate to the fort right here. [2:03:19] You can see some of this has gone away. [2:03:22] Some leakage right here. [2:03:23] And then we'll show the next picture. [2:03:25] This is inside the gate house where it's just literally falling down. [2:03:29] People have access to all of this stuff. [2:03:31] And there's some bricks that are falling down. [2:03:34] It wouldn't take too much money to fix something like that up. [2:03:37] But for safety reasons, if you haven't been to Fort Washington, I encourage everybody to go to it. [2:03:41] But anyway, it's just something that's a high priority. [2:03:44] 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. [2:03:50] The priority that I had today was in the short time that we had left, I want to be respectful of your time, is the MMIPR issue, if you could engage me on what you've been doing on that. [2:04:03] Let me first say thanks for bringing the photos. [2:04:07] And one of the things that of course is in the budget that came from the White House was a $10 billion capital expenditure fund for deferred maintenance for the capital region, which would include Fort Washington, because we've got a lot of examples like that that are out there. [2:04:22] So thank you for bringing those to light. [2:04:24] Oh, by the way, thank you. [2:04:26] There were three FTEs until last year. [2:04:29] The elderly park ranger who knew everything about that place, she retired and they didn't fix it. [2:04:35] There's hundreds of acres out there and only two park rangers. [2:04:37] So that's a big deal, too. [2:04:38] But thank you for that. [2:04:39] Thank you. [2:04:40] Yes, as you noted, I have sadly direct experience in this as governor where we had multiple cases of missing and murdered indigenous, in this case women, in North Dakota. [2:04:53] It's where I first became aware of the fact that there was a, you know, caseload of of over 6000 cases that the FBI has with very little resource against it. [2:05:07] And and I was always shocked by that, as as I think anyone is, because it's a I mean, our nation has the ability if we lose a coed on spring break, there's going to be a 10 part Netflix series about it. [2:05:21] And then someone goes missing and, you know, from one of our tribal reservations that it barely makes a local paper. [2:05:27] And we we last year we had one of our advisory boards. [2:05:31] I had 12 regions to each 24 tribal leaders there. [2:05:36] We as part of that, we had the FBI attend for the first time over at interior invited them over to hear firsthand. [2:05:43] We had families that were there that had lost lost family members. [2:05:48] Everybody everybody around that table is familiar with it. [2:05:51] So trying to raise raise awareness. [2:05:53] The FBI last year agreed for the first time to commit to have a task force to work on it. [2:06:00] But as you know, there's a lot of these things are cold cases, which is again, which then goes back to the lack of local law enforcement. [2:06:07] And in some cases, the reporting timeframe in North Dakota on cases that we thought we might have been able to solve. [2:06:13] You know, nobody reported it till five days. [2:06:16] You know, well, we thought she was here. [2:06:18] We thought she was there. [2:06:19] She thought she was, you know, doing this. [2:06:20] And then and then all of a sudden, no, then they're gone. [2:06:22] Then we can kind of leap into leap into action. [2:06:25] Fortunately, in North Dakota, we had worked hard to develop MOUs between the our own state BCI and our state highway patrol, where we actually had the ability to get in because some parts of our state. [2:06:35] There are no MOUs and so local law enforcement. [2:06:38] So it goes straight from the tribe to the feds. [2:06:40] And then you're basically calling, you know, a regional or Washington, D.C. office, and it hasn't been a hasn't been a priority. [2:06:47] So in terms of law enforcement in general, we're understaffed. [2:06:52] We got capital, capital maintenance and equipment needs relative to both, you know, detention centers that we have around the country and detention centers aren't like, oh, it's just like a building that, you know, that we've been able to get in. [2:07:04] So that we in eastern Montana, we had a case there on the Crow Reservation, which is huge, where there was not a detention center. [2:07:12] The one that was there is closed down, looked probably like the one like the photos you had. [2:07:16] So there's a someone who commits a minor crime, knows he's going to get hauled off by the one person who's on patrol at night, got to drive them over to Lame Deer while he's over there. [2:07:28] Then the drug deal is going on over here, you know, or in an organized way, this person is going to get released. [2:07:34] And, you know, they do that. [2:07:35] And then in the crossfire, a 10 year old kid is killed. [2:07:38] You know, I mean, this is I mean, these are the nasty side effects if we don't have the if we don't have the right kind of staffing and the right kind of resources to do it. [2:07:47] And as you noted, there is organized crime. [2:07:50] I've had some people have said, oh, that's not true in North Dakota. [2:07:54] We did an organized event with the back in when I was governor that involved state, federal, local and tribal. [2:08:03] And we arrested 55 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. [2:08:13] And they were coming into North Dakota on Amtrak where there's no TSA. [2:08:18] So get on get on Amtrak with a bag of guns, a bag of pills and a bag of cash and get off at Devil's Lake to go to Spirit Lake. [2:08:26] They would get off at Rugby to go to Turtle Mountain and they would get off in Minot to go to MHA. [2:08:31] And they were, you know, organized recruiting, selling, you know, all of the things that they're doing. [2:08:36] And so it's a it's a it's a real it's a real issue. [2:08:40] If there's other ideas that you have about how this committee and how we can get more resources specifically against this, be be be interested to collaborate with any or all of you on that front. [2:08:53] Well, I think popular culture, it's starting to become a big deal. [2:08:56] We're seeing a lot of TV shows and I'm sorry that it's it's taken this much, but it is in popular culture. [2:09:02] It's become an issue. [2:09:03] And I'm I'm glad to see that it's become an issue that people are talking about. [2:09:09] I'll just close with this because we're out of time. [2:09:12] Thank you for indulging me is that American Indian and Alaska Native women experience a murder rate 10 times higher than the national average. [2:09:18] I'd like to close with that. [2:09:20] It's tragic. [2:09:21] Thank you. [2:09:22] Thank you, Mr. Secretary. [2:09:23] Thank you. [2:09:24] I think Miss Pinkery has a few other questions. [2:09:27] Mr. McCollum, you have I have a I have a few things I want to mention one as you mentioned wild horses and burrows. [2:09:36] We spent $144 million on wild horses and burrows last year. [2:09:41] If you can solve that problem, I don't care what happens to the rest of the damn budget. [2:09:46] We've been trying to deal with that for so long that it that it's crazy. [2:09:50] I'm glad that Mr. Elsie brought up the murder and missing indigenous people. [2:09:54] I know that and I appreciate the increase in the budget request to deal with that. [2:10:00] You're absolutely right. [2:10:01] Nobody's focused on it because they're Indians and they're out oftentimes in the middle of nowhere. [2:10:07] And I've I've been on this committee for 24 years. [2:10:10] And I like to think that I have delved greatly into Indian issues because southern border of my hometown was Fort Hall Indian reservations. [2:10:19] So I've dealt with them for a long time, worked on the reservation, all that kind of stuff. [2:10:23] And about it was about five years ago, first time I ever heard this issue. [2:10:29] After all the time I had served on this on this committee, I was watching a PBS TV program. [2:10:35] And they were talking about it, that we lose 6000 murdered and missing indigenous people every single year. [2:10:42] That's twice as many as died on September 11th. [2:10:46] General public doesn't know that. [2:10:47] I bring that up in a speech and they all go, you're kidding me. [2:10:50] Why haven't I heard that? [2:10:54] I think one of the biggest problems after we held a hearing on it is jurisdictional issues. [2:10:59] We need to be working with the FBI, with the Justice Department, with the Department of Interior and stuff. [2:11:05] Because when I talk to them, it is I can understand most Indian issues. [2:11:11] But when I get to law enforcement, it gets very confusing for a variety of reasons. [2:11:17] But if you're a tribal member that commits a crime on a reservation, you're treated one way. [2:11:22] If you're from another tribe, you're treated another way. [2:11:25] If you're a white person that gets treated on that commits a crime on a reservation. [2:11:29] Or if you're an Indian that commits a crime off a reservation. [2:11:32] It is a joke. [2:11:33] And until we start recognizing that these tribes can control their own lands and have jurisdiction [2:11:40] on their own lands and prosecute crimes on their own lands and so forth, I think we're [2:11:46] losing our track. [2:11:47] So we need to sit down with you, with the department, with your department, with the Justice Department [2:11:53] and others and obviously with the tribes and see if we can work through the jurisdictional [2:11:59] on this issue. [2:12:00] But it is, to me, one of the most devastating issues that we deal with. [2:12:04] And we've got to solve this problem. [2:12:06] So I was just going to say that. [2:12:08] A couple other things I just want to mention that are important issues. [2:12:11] The fire funding fix. [2:12:13] As you know, a few years ago, it took me years to get this passed, that we decided to treat [2:12:19] wildfires like we treat every other natural disaster so that we would end the fire borrowing [2:12:24] out of other accounts and everything to fight wildfires. [2:12:28] This budget authority increased by $100 million each year in fiscal year 2027 is the final year [2:12:35] of its authorization. [2:12:36] So it doesn't need to be authorized this year, but it does next year to be reauthorized. [2:12:42] I like to get a head start on things. [2:12:44] I'd like to do it this year. [2:12:46] And what I'd say, if there are any changes that you or your department would recommend [2:12:52] for fixing this or for reauthorization of this, ways to improve it, let us know. [2:12:58] I've talked with the Chairman of the Resources Committee and would like to go through the Resources Committee [2:13:02] to get it reauthorized. [2:13:04] And I think I'm going to try to get that done this year. [2:13:08] But I would certainly appreciate your input on it. [2:13:11] Uh, sage-grouse management. [2:13:14] I've included a provision in our bill since I think 2015, except for like one year. [2:13:25] I'm sorry. [2:13:27] It was, anybody who thinks this is a partisan issue, it's not. [2:13:31] It was actually Secretary Salazar when they were talking about listing sage-grouse, that [2:13:35] went to the states and said, develop sage-grouse management plans in your state. [2:13:39] And states got together and worked on that and did it. [2:13:42] We have a plan that has been approved as equal with Fish and Wildlife Services [2:13:46] as, as the state of Idaho's and stuff. [2:13:48] And so they've, they've been working on this for a number of years [2:13:51] because they got local landowners involved in it, in the sage-grouse committees and stuff. [2:13:58] So they have a part in it. [2:13:59] Now all of a sudden the federal government comes back in and says, no, [2:14:02] we're going to take over all this. [2:14:04] Local landowners going, why the hell am I devoting all my time to this and stuff? [2:14:08] And you lose their support. [2:14:09] So I've put provisions in our law area, in our bill all the time that prevent them from listing sage-grouse [2:14:17] while these plans are being worked on. [2:14:19] And so I suspect, I don't know for sure, but I suspect somebody will probably add it to the bill again this year. [2:14:26] So, but it's not, it's not that we're not trying to protect sage-grouse. [2:14:30] It's that there's a way to do it that doesn't involve the federal government and stuff. [2:14:35] That involves the states and letting the states do that. [2:14:37] And of course that affects North Dakota also because you're a sage-grouse state also, aren't you? [2:14:41] Yeah. [2:14:42] Uh, this is a question though. [2:14:44] In November, the administration published four proposed rules that would restore Endangered Species Act regulations [2:14:49] to their proven 2019 and 2020 frameworks. [2:14:53] The feedback I heard on these proposals was positive, [2:14:57] that these revisions really would allow the agency to take a balanced common sense approach to species listing, [2:15:04] delisting and critical habitat determinations. [2:15:06] Any time we try to make a change to the ESA, [2:15:08] somebody's going to accuse us of not caring about species and letting them die off and all that kind of stuff. [2:15:14] Could you walk us through the changes and how they would improve the department's implementation of the Endangered Species Act? [2:15:20] Uh, I can at a high level. [2:15:23] Uh, the, but the, roughly across the four, take the four different things are again just all, [2:15:29] uh, I would call them common sense and efficiency, uh, gains going back to, uh, [2:15:35] making sure that we're, focuses on protecting wildlife versus using it, uh, as a weapon to, to stop development. [2:15:42] I mean, there's, there are, it's also an industry that's been created around, uh, [2:15:48] using that to stop just about anything that wants to get built in America and where, [2:15:54] where it may or may not have any impact on, on wildlife. [2:15:57] So the, the, uh, so I, I mean, I commend you and others that worked on those originally and putting them in there, [2:16:04] because I think it's a good, it's a good grounding base point to, uh, for, you know, [2:16:09] for build policy that's based on the law and based on common sense, based on the science. [2:16:13] Well, it is, I've said for a long time, the Endangered Species Act really wasn't about preserving species. [2:16:18] It was about protecting, it was about, uh, uh, controlling land and water. [2:16:23] And that's the problem. [2:16:25] Uh, and one of the real problems is trying to, uh, delist species once they're listed and stuff. [2:16:31] So, well, it is, I mean, to the point that, that the, uh, 97% of the things that have ever gone on that list have never come off. [2:16:38] And so I think if the idea of creating the list would be to celebrate, Hey, we saved something. [2:16:44] It's coming off the list. [2:16:45] I mean, Shelby, that's what, that would be the whole point. [2:16:47] If we were all like, we want to save something. [2:16:48] But instead the culture right now is people celebrate when something gets on the list. [2:16:52] We got, we got something on the list. [2:16:54] We got it on the list. [2:16:55] It's like, great. [2:16:56] When are we celebrating stuff coming off? [2:16:57] Nothing ever comes off. [2:16:58] It's, it's like the hotel, California. [2:17:00] You can't, you check, you can't check out, but you can't check. [2:17:03] So it's like, I mean, cause if we, if anybody had a program that was designed 50 years ago and you said the goal was to save species and 97% of the time you concluded you hadn't. [2:17:13] I think Congress might take a look at that and go, this isn't working. [2:17:16] Yeah. [2:17:17] It's not working the way it is. [2:17:18] And then when we try to change it, everyone's like, oh, you don't care about species. [2:17:21] No, we care about species. [2:17:22] We care about saving them. [2:17:23] Can we work on something that would actually work? [2:17:25] Yeah. [2:17:26] I mean, even if it was 50, 50, you'd be like, great. [2:17:29] Half the time we saved them or let's keep up the good work. [2:17:31] But if 97% of the time they're, they're still on there and they're like no site, no line of sight of them coming off. [2:17:38] Uh, cause like I said, then you run out of places where you can actually build something in America. [2:17:42] And let's say we, we, we, we, we, we have to be able to do, do both protect species and, and, uh, build things. [2:17:51] We had, uh, maybe you heard about a bird hearing, uh, last Thursday in our committee in our full room. [2:17:57] We had, uh, uh, an organization that brought in a lot of endangered birds from around the world and stuff. [2:18:03] It was very interesting, but we had the Peregrine Fund there, which is located in Boise. [2:18:07] And they, they, uh, help save raptors all around the world. [2:18:14] Yeah. [2:18:16] They've been in existence for 30 or 40 years, something like that. [2:18:19] They've never filed a lawsuit. [2:18:20] They find that they get better results by going out and working with ranchers and other people to preserve these species [2:18:29] and educate them to that, that it is better to work with them. [2:18:34] And it's, it, it's more valuable to have them on their land because the Alpamato Falcon needs the same grasslands as cattle do. [2:18:42] And they can work together. [2:18:43] And that's how they say the Alpamato, Alpamato Falcon by, uh, talking with, uh, Texas ranchers. [2:18:49] Uh, and that's why it's down there. [2:18:51] That's how they did the condor and stuff, but they've never filed a lawsuit. [2:18:54] And I find that very interesting. [2:18:56] Uh, and it's a different way to work to preserve species. [2:18:59] We don't always have to use lawsuits to do it. [2:19:01] But anyway, Ms. Pingree. [2:19:06] Thank you, Mr. Chair. [2:19:07] Um, we did get rid of DDT and we got the bald eagle back. [2:19:10] So we have made some progress in some places and sometimes there is just something else we have to do. [2:19:15] And I, I do want to just, uh, reinforce what Mr. Elsie and the chair have said many times about murdered, missing indigenous women. [2:19:22] It's been really important that this committee has put such a focus on it. [2:19:26] So I appreciate the stories that you shared, Mr. Secretary. [2:19:29] And do think that when we, uh, when we hold our hearings, we often hear that we meet about 15% of the need for law enforcement in an Indian country. [2:19:37] And that certainly has a huge impact. [2:19:39] 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. [2:19:47] So, um, I've come to the conclusion that you and I could argue all day, um, or maybe into the evening. [2:19:53] And I don't want to do that with all of your time. [2:19:55] Um, but I will say I'm, I'm, I'm disappointed about a couple of things I want to be clear about. [2:20:00] I, um, you know, we had a chance to meet you last year. [2:20:03] I looked over the role that you had played as governor of North Dakota. [2:20:06] Um, I always think it's good to have governors in these jobs because you have to take such a comprehensive view of what goes on in your state. [2:20:12] I looked up, um, your proclamation in 23 for Clean Energy Week and you, you extolled the virtues of all sources of energy, hydropower, solar power, wind power. [2:20:22] 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. [2:20:31] Texas is one of those states. [2:20:32] Iowa is one of those states. [2:20:33] And we've really proven that renewable energy can make a difference. [2:20:36] So I disagree with your argument that we shouldn't be investing. [2:20:40] And I think what Mr. Harder said is it just starting to feel like there's a double standard. [2:20:44] Maybe you felt like the other administration had gone too far in the other direction, but by, you know, many accounts, we subsidize oil and gas to huge levels. [2:20:53] It's about $35 trillion at the federal level, $35 billion at the federal level. [2:20:58] 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. [2:21:10] And certainly at the federal level, when I talk about $35 billion, I'm talking about tax breaks for drilling. [2:21:15] 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. [2:21:24] 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 upfront to make sure we built our own industry. [2:21:36] We're about to see that happen with electric cars because of what this administration has done to discourage people using electric cars. [2:21:43] And believe me, they're going to buy them with gas prices staying this high, but they're all going to just pour in from Canada now because electric cars are going to come from China via Canada. [2:21:51] 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. [2:22:03] You talk about having, you know, base load. I'm not arguing with you about that. [2:22:07] I'm arguing with cutting out the opportunities for solar and wind. Um, and that's critically important. [2:22:14] 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. [2:22:23] And when they saw those five projects were canceled, they said these projects are particularly important to system reliability in the winter when offshore wind output is highest [2:22:34] 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. [2:22:42] I'm lucky enough to live in an offshore community myself. We're served by wind power. The wind blows all night long. [2:22:49] 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. [2:22:55] 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. [2:23:02] 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 going to be putting up more AI. [2:23:12] The demand is going to be increasing, um, and we're just going to need more electricity. [2:23:18] And the last was, um, about regulation. I just want to be clear. I don't want to, I don't want you to think I'm trying to use any misstatements or political vitriol to argue back at you. [2:23:29] 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. [2:23:40] Um, there are adjustments being made to the blowout preventer regulations. [2:23:44] It was the blowout preventer that was a deep cause of what happened in the deep water horizon and in decommissioning requirements. [2:23:51] So I double checked. There are changes that you're making, and I'm worried that it will lessen the standards. [2:23:56] I'm very worried about this combining of administrations will put us back to where we were before. [2:24:01] 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. [2:24:08] So just had to say it. And I'm trying to use facts. [2:24:15] If I can be clear on one thing that we're, uh, in this administration, we support hydro, great form of base load. [2:24:22] We support nuclear, which has been under attack, uh, in parts of our country. [2:24:26] And we're doing great things to try to bring nuclear back. [2:24:29] Geothermal, uh, represents a huge opportunity for this country. [2:24:33] And the, and where the advancements in geothermal is going to come from is getting to, uh, you know, advances in, [2:24:40] advances in material science, which are going to be driven in large part by AI, [2:24:44] but it's also going to be driven by all the knowledge we've gained, uh, [2:24:47] through the entire, uh, the, um, the shale revolution, [2:24:53] because the shale revolution really is where precision drilling has come from. [2:24:56] I mean, the ability to go deep and go very precisely, uh, [2:25:00] uh, which is what it took to develop things like the Marcellus, the Permian and the, and the Bakken, [2:25:05] uh, enormous precision, enormous technology going into that is going to really help on geothermal. [2:25:10] So I'm, I'm very optimistic that we're going to have, uh, uh, what, you know, [2:25:15] would be considered, uh, base load. [2:25:18] And in many ways more better for the environment than, than what it takes. [2:25:24] Uh, cause you know, with, with electric, uh, you talk about electric cars cause the high gas prices, [2:25:30] the electricity, uh, prices, you know, under, under the intermittent sources, it's going to be very high. [2:25:39] So, I mean, it's not like it's a big savings. [2:25:41] You know, you're, you seem to have a lot of facts that you know that you have to drive a, a, a car, [2:25:46] uh, an EV about 70,000 miles just to get break even on a CO2 basis. [2:25:51] It's not some immediate thing where I start consuming more electricity that I, that I've, you know, [2:25:56] had this instant gain because there's no, uh, no emissions. [2:26:00] And, and then all of the, the comparisons that people would use around comparing, [2:26:06] You know, fuel is cheaper. [2:26:11] Which fuel is cheaper? [2:26:15] It's currently cheaper to drive an electric car than a gas park for just the fuel. [2:26:22] Interesting. [2:26:24] Um, okay. [2:26:25] Well, I, the, the, I guess it depends on just like what part of the country you're in [2:26:30] because electricity costs different prices in different places. [2:26:33] But I mean, we saw the big drop off in purchases in electric cars as soon as the subsidies went away. [2:26:39] People were buying cars because of the subsidy and the concentration of electric cars, [2:26:43] uh, in terms of where purchases occurred, uh, was, was very confined to certain areas. [2:26:49] And as it should, because if you're driving an electric car in North Dakota in cold weather, [2:26:53] you don't get the mileage that you do in someplace warm. [2:26:56] Uh, and, and then we had, uh, in, and so we would have these things where the subsidy was the same, [2:27:02] whether you were living, uh, in Alaska or North Dakota as if you were living in Arizona. [2:27:07] And we have the same subsidies for solar if you're in, uh, a northern climate versus if you're in southern Utah. [2:27:14] Uh, and, and so if, if you're, if you, if you're ever going to get back to, hey, we got to subsidize these things, [2:27:19] uh, to make them work and we got to use taxpayer dollars to do it, uh, then latitude needs to be come into the thinking [2:27:27] because the, the, these things vary a lot in both the production of electricity and the consumption of electricity based on temperature. [2:27:35] Again, that's just physics. [2:27:37] 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, [2:27:44] which also led to really uneven, uh, you know, uneven and maybe unexpected things. [2:27:49] But I'm just saying again, it to, to suggest that we're not for, uh, clean and base load power when, [2:27:59] when this administration has done more for nuclear with the four executive orders that came out last year, [2:28:06] there's billions of dollars capital flowing back into small modular nuclear. [2:28:10] Uh, the example that representative McCollum used on the Wind River, uh, example is a great one [2:28:17] because there are places where, where you can't get transmission to rural areas. [2:28:21] We're having solar on top of a household to be an adjunct to, uh, some sort of higher carbon like, uh, [2:28:28] I'm just going to freeze that in time. [2:28:30] So you did say something positive about solar on top of a household. [2:28:33] Just want to, just want to remember that as long as it's very good. [2:28:36] So we don't need, everybody does need to be on the grid. [2:28:38] Just, just to be clear. [2:28:39] My house has solar power on the top roof of my household. [2:28:41] And so I just plug in my car and I make my own electricity and it all works well. [2:28:45] And it's in the taxpayer more often. [2:28:47] And I'm guessing a taxpayer subsidy helped pay for the panel. [2:28:50] And then you do it before we had the taxpayer subsidy, but I did appreciate that we did that. [2:28:54] But if you're going to spend $35 billion a year subsidizing oil and gas, [2:28:57] it's not a bad idea to subsidize those houses that could benefit from it. [2:29:01] I won't get into a debate about the number that was in, [2:29:05] and who produced that number and what that means. [2:29:07] Cause that's, that's accumulated set of projected costs as opposed to an actual, [2:29:12] an actual thing where we were sending federal money out to companies doing these projects. [2:29:17] So, I mean, you know, and we, we started off the conversation talking about offshore wind, [2:29:22] uh, the, we, we get, you could, you could have a hearing of offshore wind people and they, [2:29:28] from Europe or front and they would all come in the room and say, [2:29:30] do we weren't, we knew we weren't really producing, uh, electrons. [2:29:34] We were just harvesting tax credits. [2:29:36] I mean, they'll tell you that. [2:29:37] I mean, that that's why they, that's why they were pursuing those things. [2:29:41] It made economic sense. [2:29:43] They're, these are shareholder driven global companies. [2:29:46] They were pursuing and coming to do projects here, [2:29:48] not because it was the cheapest form of electricity or because it was, [2:29:51] it was because it was the subsidies were so massive. [2:29:54] I mean, the project value was really, really high. [2:29:57] But you see them throughout Europe. [2:29:59] Most European countries now depend on some form of offshore wind, [2:30:02] certainly Norway, Denmark. [2:30:04] Yeah. [2:30:05] And they are, they are, their electricity costs are through the roof and, [2:30:08] and their economies like Germany are, are, uh, uh, are, you know, [2:30:12] are collapsing because they don't have reliable electricity in an era where, [2:30:15] everybody needs electricity. [2:30:16] I don't think Norway's in any kind of collapse. [2:30:18] No, because they have a trillion dollar sovereign wealth fund built by [2:30:21] selling North Sea oil. [2:30:23] That's why, that's why they have it. [2:30:24] They've invested it in renewables. [2:30:26] I really, I, I should not keep doing this. [2:30:28] I apologize, Mr. Chair. [2:30:29] I thank you for your time. [2:30:30] As I said, I have a feeling you and I could do this for quite a long time. [2:30:33] We could, but I, I want you to know that there is a broad set of things [2:30:37] and it's not like everyone's, everyone says all of the above. [2:30:40] Why can't you do all of the above? [2:30:41] The last administration said all of the above. [2:30:44] And then there was a set of rules that were completely punitive against the [2:30:48] stuff that we needed to actually, you know, have base load power in this country. [2:30:52] It was just too early. [2:30:53] It was too premature to say, we're going to shut all that down and we're going to transition. [2:30:57] It was, again, there was no transition happening. [2:31:00] It was subtraction at a time when we need addition. [2:31:03] So that the, with, with the, with the support for hydro, geothermal, nuclear, [2:31:08] and hydrocarbons, that's what, that's what we need right now. [2:31:14] Because we, we have, in some places we have a lot of renewables. [2:31:17] My home state, which you mentioned, that worked in North Dakota because we grew our base load. [2:31:22] We weren't shutting down our base load and transitioning. [2:31:24] We knew that we needed more. [2:31:26] And when we were doing both, you know, guess what state, DOE did a report, [2:31:29] guess what state had the lowest electric prices in the country? [2:31:31] North Dakota had the lowest electric prices. [2:31:34] Guess who had the highest increase in demand for electricity? [2:31:37] North Dakota. [2:31:38] When people say, oh, the demand for electricity is up because of a data center [2:31:41] and our prices are high, that's a false correlation. [2:31:44] And, and, and it's, and I worry about the Northeast. [2:31:46] The Northeast has got 20% of our population and it's on track to get about 2% [2:31:51] of the next wave of capex spending in the country because people aren't going to invest someplace where, [2:31:56] you wouldn't put a wheat mill where wheat costs three times as much. [2:31:59] No one's going to come in and, and put in the next generation capital expenses [2:32:03] in a place where the electricity prices are high. [2:32:06] And that's, you know, why I've enjoyed working with Ned Lamont. [2:32:08] He gets it. [2:32:09] He gets that, that there has to be natural gas from Pennsylvania. [2:32:12] We have $3 gas in Pennsylvania and during this winter it was 15 bucks in Maine. [2:32:17] Why are we subjecting North, why are we, why are, why are we subjecting Americans [2:32:21] to having to pay more to heat their home and more for the electricity? [2:32:24] Because we can't build horizontal infrastructure in this thing. [2:32:28] It was cheaper to buy Pennsylvania gas in Europe this winter than it was in New England. [2:32:32] And so, and so anyway, we're, we, if we, if people want affordability in this country, [2:32:39] then part of it is the equivalent of $3 gas is like 50 cent diesel. [2:32:45] I mean, when you take the energy component, I mean, we, we've been blessed with this amazing abundance [2:32:50] of, of natural gas in this country and, and it's, it breaks my heart to think that it's not being utilized. [2:32:56] I mean, Maine, 80% of their homes is, are heated by, by heating oil, dirty. [2:33:01] It's a dirty fuel. [2:33:02] At the time of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, that heating oil was coming from Russia. [2:33:06] We're importing into New England, just like we import into California, [2:33:09] foreign sources of dirty product when we got clean American natural gas right here, [2:33:14] which has did, done more to lower CO2 emissions, which was always the stated goal. [2:33:19] of the movement was to lower CO2. [2:33:22] So against the thing that was against the thing that was doing the most to reduce CO2 emissions. [2:33:28] We have dropped that number from 80% down to closer to 65, [2:33:32] because we've increased the amount of heat pumps. [2:33:33] We've had a huge effort in our state to have rooftop solar. [2:33:36] So we have been actively trying to change that. [2:33:38] And we do have more natural gas utilization than we used to, [2:33:41] but we've had real investment in heat pumps, which is great. [2:33:44] And it'd be, and we're working with all the New England governors. [2:33:48] We've had, you know, multiple calls with all of them together and saying, [2:33:51] how can we do that? [2:33:52] And we did get the, and I misspoke when I said Ned, because that's Connecticut. [2:33:57] But I, when I, when I. [2:33:59] But I like Ned Lamont too. [2:34:01] But I'm saying, but again, with the, with the working to make sure that we can get, you know, low cost, affordable, reliable, secure energy to every state as part of what we're working on. [2:34:14] And we appreciate those governors that have been collaborating with us to try to make that happen. [2:34:19] Because the, and it was nice to celebrate the Nessie pipeline, because that's going to, that's going to bring, you know, help bring natural gas to 2.1 million homes in the New York Long Island area, [2:34:32] which will then have benefit benefit to Connecticut and others. [2:34:35] But it's, you know, that's going to save more than $1,000 a year on home heating costs. [2:34:40] I mean, that's billions of dollars a year for one little 30 mile pipeline. [2:34:44] You know, I mean, and we could repeat that and we would have, if we, and if we had support to get that done. [2:34:50] I mean, the estimates are that we could save people in New England, you know, $8 billion a year just with, by getting, by having more, more natural gas. [2:34:59] And then, then you'd start to see along those corridors, those energy corridors, you'd start to see economic development occur. [2:35:05] Because people would say, hey, I can afford to build in, you know, in New York and New England, [2:35:09] if I know I can get the same price for, for gas here that I can in Pennsylvania. [2:35:14] Thank you. [2:35:16] Thank you. [2:35:17] Got a feeling this could go on for some time. [2:35:18] That's what I mean. [2:35:19] You're here all day. [2:35:20] Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for, or Mr. Secretary, for being here today. [2:35:25] We appreciate your thoughts and responses on these important issues and look forward to working with you as we put together the 2027 budget. [2:35:31] Thank you. [2:35:32] Well, thank you. [2:35:33] Thank you. [2:35:34] And, and there were a number of questions. [2:35:35] My staff has been here writing them down and we'll, we'll follow up. [2:35:39] And we, we know that there's been questions, but also concerns. [2:35:43] We want to address your concerns and we want to answer your questions. [2:35:46] So thank you for. [2:35:47] I appreciate that. [2:35:48] There is one thing I will bring up. [2:35:49] I agree with Ms. McCollum in that Indian education has been very important to this committee too. [2:35:54] And when you saw the pictures of Fort Washington, I could show you some pictures of Indian schools that look just like that. [2:36:01] And I know that they didn't put any request in for building for Indian schools. [2:36:06] That's something that we will do when we write our bill. [2:36:09] But it is very important that we address Indian education because frankly, just like we think that's the future of the American people, [2:36:16] that's, that's the future of Indian tribes also is the education system. [2:36:20] So appreciate it. [2:36:21] Thank you. [2:36:22] Thank you. [2:36:23] The meeting is closed, is adjourned. [2:36:26] Closed, adjourned, whatever. [2:36:28] . [2:36:29] Thank you. [2:36:30] . [2:36:31] . [2:36:32] . [2:36:33] . [2:36:34] . [2:36:36] . [2:36:37] . [2:36:38] . [2:36:39] . [2:36:41] . [2:36:43] . [2:36:44] .