June 12, 2025 12:17-13:27 - CSPAN
01:09:37
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
Source
Participants
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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Inflation Reduction Debate
00:07:50
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| The Honorable Speaker, House of Representatives, sir. | ||
| On June 11, 2025, pursuant to Section 3307 of Title 40, United States Code, the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure met in open session with a quorum present to consider 30 resolutions included in the General Services Administration's capital investment and leasing programs. | ||
| I have enclosed copies of the resolutions adopted by the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on June 11, 2025. | ||
| Signed sincerely, Sam Graves, Chairman. | ||
| This will be referred to the Committee on Appropriations. | ||
| Pursuant to Clause 12A of Rule 1, the Chair declares the House in recess subject to the call of the Chair. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The House will be back at 1:30 p.m. Eastern for debate on legislation to cut $9.1 in foreign aid and public broadcasting funding. | |
| A final vote on the rescissions package, along with final votes on repealing a D.C. sanctuary city law and a measure to permanently classify fentanyl with the highest penalties and controls, are also planned this afternoon. | ||
| Looking ahead to tomorrow, the chamber will not be in session to allow members to attend the funeral for former New York Congressman Charlie Wrangel in Harlem. | ||
| Watch live coverage of the House here on C-SPAN. | ||
| You also serve as chair of the National Energy Committee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We take you live now to a House hearing with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who's testifying on the department's budget, started earlier this morning. | |
| ...private sector investments in energy and focusing on innovation. | ||
| I assume you are aware that as of 2024, China has 887 gigawatts of solar energy capacity, more than six times what we have here in the United States, and 521 gigawatts of wind energy, more than three times what we have here. | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| Yes, I'm aware, and I'm also aware that they... | ||
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unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Those are yes or no questions. | ||
| Are you aware that wind and solar energy now account for 37 percent of the energy consumed by China? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| Yes, and that I'm reclaiming my time. | ||
| The Trump administration is, I believe, rightfully concerned about unfair trade policies by the CCP, which has heavily subsidized key strategic industries they see as areas of future growth and national security, including semiconductors and steel. | ||
| And I'm going to ask you some yes or no questions. | ||
| Please just refer to that. | ||
| Limit yourself to that. | ||
| Would it surprise you to know that China has invested heavily in the renewable energy sector, including massive subsidies for large-scale batteries, electric vehicles, wind power, and solar panels? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| Yes, I'm aware. | ||
| Would it surprise you to know that in 2024, China accounted for two-thirds of the $2.1 trillion spent globally in subsidies for clean energy innovation? | ||
| It would not surprise me. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It doesn't surprise me that they're also reclaiming my largest polluters. | ||
| Mr. Chair, thank you. | ||
| Do you think it's fair to say that China sees these as key sectors for future growth and for energy dominance? | ||
| Again, yes or no, please. | ||
| 63% of electricity comes from coal in China. | ||
| They added 94 gigawatts of coal. | ||
| I think it's fairly clear that China and the rest of the world see renewable energy innovation as growth industries for the future. | ||
| China sees all the time. | ||
| I'm going to ask you a question, Mr. Chair, reclaiming my time. | ||
| And that we're currently in a competition with China over who will lead the way in this area. | ||
| And as do many leading experts on national security, economics, and energy, who have described the battle over clean energy as critical for whether the United States or China will dominate the 21st century. | ||
| One leading publication recently described the situation in this way. | ||
| The United States and China are in a contest for leadership of the industries of the future, including with respect to clean energy. | ||
| However, while China is investing in renewables, the United States is poised to send up the white flag of surrender. | ||
| Unless amended, the House budget bill moving forward this week, which was then passed, would eviscerate the tax incentives for clean energy and EVs that were part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. | ||
| If the House and Senate accept this language, this would be akin to unilateral disarmament, and China will be poised to dominate the commanding heights of the world's 21st century economy without even firing a shot. | ||
| Again, a yes or no question. | ||
| Do you think it's consistent with national energy dominance for the United States to surrender the global clean energy market to China? | ||
| I disagree with the premise of all your arguments. | ||
| Do you support ending and eliminating the clean energy tax credits created and enhanced by the Inflation Reduction Act? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| Yeah, I support the ending of them. | ||
| Okay, I want to switch. | ||
| I would disagree with that, but I will switch up topics a little bit. | ||
| When we talk about subsidizing industries and sectors, something that IRA tried to do a little bit, do you think we should be subsidizing industries like horse farms? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| Wood-burning stoves? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| I missed the second one. | ||
| Wood-burning stoves, horse farms, should we be subsidizing them? | ||
| Would you agree that, as a general rule, we should be looking to nurture and foster innovation and future technologies and not technologies of the past? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| Well, innovation has always been the source of American greatness. | ||
| I agree with that. | ||
| And I represent a district that has a lot of innovation. | ||
| And yet, I would submit to you that you and the Trump administration are looking to heavily subsidize oil, gas, and coal production while surrendering energy dominance in clean energy markets to China. | ||
| And that is the opposite of investing in innovation. | ||
| It's investing in past technologies. | ||
| We can invest in horse and buggies. | ||
| We can invest in wood burning. | ||
| We could invest in coal and oil, but these are technologies of the past. | ||
| Now, I know you're going to disagree with that premise, but I think that's very clear. | ||
| China sees clean energy as being the markets of the future. | ||
| Europe sees that. | ||
| Most national security experts and energy experts agree with that. | ||
| And so with that, I'll switch over to a different topic that was addressed a little bit by some of my colleagues before. | ||
| But I also represent a district that is very vulnerable to wildfire. | ||
| And unlike the Congressmember that spoke before, when I talk to my federal employees, whether it's the National Park Service or U.S. Forest Service, they have consistently told me they don't have enough personnel. | ||
| And so I'm going to ask you again: are you aware of how many red card employees, employees that are tasked and licensed and trained to address wildfires have been let go during your time in the interior? | ||
| If anyone's gone, they took early retirement. | ||
| There's been no firings of wildland fires. | ||
| Do you know how many, what level red card employees we had when you started and how many we have today? | ||
| We're certainly going to get that information and happy to provide it to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| I yield back. | ||
| Gentlemen, as Tom thinks. | ||
| Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent to submit three articles into the record. | ||
| The first is titled Rollback of the Inflation Reduction Act with surrender economic primacy to China. | ||
| The second is called Job Creation Estimates Through Proposed Inflation Reduction Act. | ||
| And the third is Clean Investment Monitor, Tallying the Two-Year Impact of the Inflation Reduction Act. | ||
| Without objection, so ordered. | ||
| Mr. Hoffman, you're recognized. | ||
| Yeah, Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter this recent reporting from the energy journal Clean Technica showing that in 2024, just last year, 92.5% of all new power capacity on grids worldwide came from renewable energy sources. | ||
| Without objection? | ||
| So ordered. | ||
| Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Collins, for five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Thank you, Secretary. | ||
| I appreciate your service to our country. | ||
| I kind of want to take you on a little bit of a journey. | ||
| I'd like to tell people who I am, what I've been seeing, and then I've got a quick question for you. | ||
| But I grew up in rural Georgia. | ||
| I grew up up under a log truck. | ||
| My parents, we hauled logs for a living, so I've been in the woods for a long time. | ||
|
Why Coal Matters
00:06:26
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|
unidentified
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And I have seen what devastation has happened, especially at our national forest, you know, with the cutting off of the timber sales or not selling sizable enough timber lots that you can make money at it to go in and cut it. | |
| And as a matter of fact, I just got through cutting a tree on my property from the beetles that have infested our national forest and our country. | ||
| And not to mention the fire hazard where we don't maintain and manage our forests. | ||
| But what I've been seeing, and I've only been up here for two years, this is my second term. | ||
| And I sat on this committee during the 118th Congress. | ||
| And I went to Minnesota. | ||
| I saw some of the people that know how to mine better than anybody. | ||
| They set the standard for mining, but they have been fighting, fighting for 20 years to get a permit to mine. | ||
| You know, I've been offshore on the Gulf of America. | ||
| I've seen that we have oil companies and they're going to move those rigs. | ||
| We had witnesses sitting right there that said, no, we've not issued any leases, offshore leases. | ||
| We're not going to issue them this year. | ||
| And if Biden gets re-elected, we're not going to issue them anymore. | ||
| I visited with an LNG company that was trying to export LNG. | ||
| We got more than we could ever use. | ||
| Couldn't get a permit. | ||
| Indian Affairs, witnesses right there talking about how bad the buildings were dilapidated. | ||
| And we're trying to educate Indian children in them. | ||
| Weren't even fit for occupancy. | ||
| A Navajo tribe sitting right there in your seat saying how they wanted to mine. | ||
| They know how to mine. | ||
| It's the land that we pushed them on. | ||
| No, they couldn't get a permit to do that. | ||
| And the funny thing is, I just left a meeting. | ||
| I had a quick meeting. | ||
| And I swear this comes up more because I also serve as a chairman on the subcommittee for water resource and environment over at TNI. | ||
| U.S. Fish and Wildlife. | ||
| Now, this town has been waiting on a boat ramp permit for five years. | ||
| One permit is all they need from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife. | ||
| So, sir, you took on a job and you got a heck of a task in front of you. | ||
| That's not what I wanted to focus on. | ||
| About 20 minutes from my house is a plant called Plant Share. | ||
| It's coal-fired, electricity burning. | ||
| Unlike my colleague that just spoke, I happen to think that America is the best country in the world. | ||
| We are the best. | ||
| We ought to be first. | ||
| If he likes China, there's airlines that will get him over there. | ||
| But I want to talk to you about the big, beautiful coal, clean coal industry, especially because in my district, AI is huge. | ||
| And we need the electricity. | ||
| It's coming, and we want to make sure that we're prepared for it. | ||
| Can you explain the importance of the coal industry that we get domestically? | ||
| And can you help explain how working to cut these needless red tape that's been restricting the domestic coal industry for years and how we need to get rid of them? | ||
| Happy to do that, Representative. | ||
| But beautiful, clean American coal provides an essential component to our baseload today. | ||
| There's been a concentrated effort going past previous administrations to try to shut down that industry. | ||
| When you shut down that industry, multiple bad things happen. | ||
| One is we destabilize the grid because we don't have enough baseload to accommodate all the subsidies that we put towards the intermittent. | ||
| That creates instability in the grid, puts the whole country at risk. | ||
| There's two kinds of coal: there's thermal coal, which we burn for electricity, but there's also metallurgical coal. | ||
| And there is an effort to shut down metallurgical coal. | ||
| We want to bring, we know that we need to have things for our military, shipbuilding, steel, reshoring, manufacturing. | ||
| You can't build steel without coke. | ||
| Coke from metallurgical coal. | ||
| And then the third thing is critical minerals. | ||
| We've talked about today in this committee about how we're in a precarious position where we've allowed China to have a stranglehold in critical minerals. | ||
| In the coal we have in this country, whether it's in your state or out west, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, in that coal, there's massive amounts of these critical minerals that we can extract at the same time that we're going through the process to create electricity. | ||
| And so it's a triple win for the U.S. | ||
| And again, if people are concerned about emissions, if there's a coal plant running in this country, it's among the cleanest in the world. | ||
| They've taken care of all the admissions in North Dakota. | ||
| You can take the CO2 out, inject it. | ||
| And by the way, China built 94 gigawatts of coal last year, 30 nuclear plants, and a bunch of hydro. | ||
| They're not just doing renewables, they're doing all the above energy because they, and they, including coal, I mean, 94 gigawatts. | ||
| Denver's one gigawatt. | ||
| They built 94 Denvers worth of coal electricity last year, and it's not the clean plants we're building, but they did it because they want to win the AI arms race. | ||
| They know they need electricity to do that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Amen. | |
| And that plant that I was talking to you about, they've got four units. | ||
| Only three are running right now because a power company bent to the Green New Deal and shuttered that fourth one down. | ||
| And that'll mean that the cheapest form of electricity that they were making. | ||
| Gentleman's time has expired. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, I have an inquiry. | ||
| I want to give the gentleman from Georgia an opportunity to withdraw or clarify or apologize, but he very clearly characterized the state of mind of one of my colleagues from Southern California saying that he believes China is the greatest country, not the United States. | ||
| That really is over the line. | ||
| And I don't want to have to take down words. | ||
| I don't want to go there, but I want to give the gentleman a chance to withdraw what clearly was an impugning of character and an improper accusation about another member's state of mind. | ||
| And if he doesn't want to do that, I would ask that his words be taken down. | ||
| Is that a request? | ||
|
Great Lakes Protection
00:15:35
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| Well, I'm going to give the gentleman the opportunity, the courtesy, certainly. | ||
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unidentified
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I was making a statement. | |
| I wasn't accusing him, and I said that America was the best country. | ||
| You said what he thinks. | ||
| That is not okay. | ||
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unidentified
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Okay. | |
| Is that Chair recognizes the gentlelady from withdrawing? | ||
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unidentified
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Michigan. | |
| Ms. Dingle, you're recognized for five minutes. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Secretary Bergman, it's good to see you here. | ||
| Thank you for testifying before this committee today. | ||
| I know it's your favorite and best experience so far in Washington. | ||
| I have many concerns regarding the administration's proposed budget, to be really honest. | ||
| And that's what I want to discuss today. | ||
| As a representative from the state of Michigan, the Great Lakes are one of my top priorities. | ||
| I also co-chair the Great Lakes Task Force, and your agency plays an important role in protecting their well-being. | ||
| They're more than 20% of the freshwater in the world. | ||
| The United States Geological Survey Ecosystem Mission Area, which is an agency within DOI, plays a major role in supporting the Great Lakes region's environmental research. | ||
| It provides science and data that helps inform conservation, management, and restoration efforts across the entire region. | ||
| My district is home to the USGS Great Lakes Science Center. | ||
| Their work directly supports the Great Lakes fisheries that supports thousands of jobs and provides recreational, economic, and cultural benefits to millions of Americans every year. | ||
| And as you may know, the Great Lakes remain vulnerable to very vulnerable to invasive species. | ||
| USGS scientists are at the forefront of protecting the Great Lakes ecosystem from invasive species like the sea lamprey through cutting-edge research development and application of control technologies that are both environmentally effective and economically responsible. | ||
| We got to keep supporting this program. | ||
| And I'm deeply concerned about the devastating budget cuts that we have seen. | ||
| So first, I'd like to ask you: have you and your staff reviewed how you've eliminated funds or almost devastated them, honestly, for the USGS ecosystems mission area, which will impact $5.1 billion of Great Lakes the fishing industry? | ||
| In the short time that we've had, Representative, we've tried to dig in. | ||
| And as I shared earlier, there's a lot of programs that have a lot of merit that still fell under the action of trying to get within the budget guidelines that we were given. | ||
| So it is something we'll continue to review. | ||
| Obviously, the Great Lakes, as you say, are of utmost importance, and that clean water resource is a huge asset. | ||
| This is really important. | ||
| I mean, people don't understand it. | ||
| I'm not saying you don't. | ||
| I'm begging you, please dig into it. | ||
| Mr. Secretary, stakeholders in my district say that these cuts will close facilities extremely important to the Great Lakes Sea Lamprey Control Program, one of the ugliest creatures you've ever seen. | ||
| How do you expect the control program to move forward in the face of these cuts? | ||
| How do we make sure we don't see them coming back? | ||
| We get rid of them. | ||
| I'm going to ask our team to make sure we do a double-click down on the lamprey control because that's obviously something we don't want to do that. | ||
| And then, Mr. Secretary, Doge listed the USGS Lake Ontario Biological Station for a lease cancellation, even though its current location is best suited for its specialized mission. | ||
| The current location houses their specialized laboratory, provides access to their large research vessel, and can store small vessels without portaging them. | ||
| Have you or your staff, I suspect I know the answer, but I need you to do this, looked into this lease cancellation. | ||
| Have you put any, have you done anything to remove it from the Doge listing? | ||
| Can you work with me? | ||
| Can we get a commitment when we build this business case and you see you're right to prevent this lease cancellation given the importance of this station? | ||
| As we look for opportunities to save money on real estate, we're going to go through that whole list. | ||
| That was a suggested list, but when we have something like a laboratory where people actually come to work and do work, it's more likely to survive than if we've just got office space that nobody's using because they're working remotely. | ||
| And it was strategically located. | ||
| I mean, it's really critical to the work that it's doing. | ||
| And we want to do it before they cancel the lease. | ||
| So will you please, thank you, work with us. | ||
| I've only got 38 seconds, so I'm going to do more questions for the record. | ||
| But we obviously all care both sides about the National Wildlife Refuge System. | ||
| I welcome the fact that in your written testimony, you say that you want to expand public access to more than 870,000 anchors of refuge, and yet they've got serious cuts for both deferred maintenance and staffing. | ||
| So I'm going to ask you some questions about that as well. | ||
| The wildlife refuge system was very important to somebody you had met, and I know we got to make sure we're protecting them. | ||
| And with that, I will yield back. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Chair recognizes the gentleman from Michigan, the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, Mr. Wahlberg, you're recognized for five minutes. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate the wildlife refuge as well. | ||
|
unidentified
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And use it. | |
| You've had your time. | ||
| That's my last comments. | ||
| Mr. Secretary, it's good to see you. | ||
| Last time I saw you and your wife was in Jackson, Michigan on other issues, but I'm delighted you'll be involved with key issues that affect the Great Lakes big time. | ||
| I have both the southern portion of Lake Michigan and most of Lake Erie also in my district from Sea to Shining Sea. | ||
| Lots of fresh water, so it's very important to me. | ||
| We need to keep a healthy fishery that's there, tourism industry that goes on. | ||
| It's worth about $5.1 billion in economic benefit, plus it's just good stewardship. | ||
| The first issue I want to discuss with you is the importance of keeping invasive carp out of the Great Lakes. | ||
| Asian carp have been found just 47 miles away from Lake Michigan. | ||
| If they were to spread into the lakes, it would be devastating to the fishery as well as recreational experience because these big carp can cause serious injuries to boaters, to skiers, fishers as well in the lake. | ||
| As you know, President Trump recently signed a memorandum to prevent the migration of invasive carp into the Great Lakes, and I applaud the President's first swift action. | ||
| The order tasks the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to prioritize the research and management for the prevention, removal, and control of invasive carp and other aquatic species in the Great Lakes. | ||
| Question that I have: Do I have your commitment that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will work to carry out the President's directive? | ||
| Absolutely, sir. | ||
| Music to my ears. | ||
| And I fully expected that. | ||
| So thank you. | ||
| I often hear from anglers in my district about the imbalance that is impacting the fishery. | ||
| Cormorants, and I hope that name will resonate strongly. | ||
| Cormorants, a protected migratory bird whose numbers are increasing and populations are robust and healthy, so much so that they are negatively impacting stocking and natural reproduction of many of the species our harbor economies depend on. | ||
| I'll be fishing for walleye this coming Monday in Lake Erie, and it is robust. | ||
| We want to keep it that way. | ||
| Perch also in Lake Erie, the fishery is great. | ||
| But the cormorants, the tonnage literally of fish that they are taking without the ability to control their population. | ||
| Canada does. | ||
| They shoot them just across the line from the United States. | ||
| But we are prohibited from dealing with the cormorants. | ||
| And really, I think being good stewards, stewards of that population. | ||
| It not only affects the Great Lakes, but also threatens steelhead and salmon in the Columbia River basin. | ||
| While some progress has been made in hatcheries, there's still no effective solution for protecting free-swimming fish. | ||
| And because cormorants are protected under the MBTA, any solution must involve the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. | ||
| So, Mr. Secretary, can I get your commitment to direct your Fish and Wildlife Service to work cooperatively with state fish and wildlife agencies? | ||
| And if they find any problem with Michigan state wildlife entities, I'd like to know about that to develop the effective solution to address the Cormorant depredation on free-swimming fish, including lakes, ponds, and rivers. | ||
| Yes, absolutely. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Finally, I'd like to extend the invitation for you to visit Michigan's 5th District, which touches what's district year, the 6th now, all changes. | ||
| To see firsthand the challenges and opportunities that we're facing, and our staff would be delighted to try to work that out with your staff. | ||
|
unidentified
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Great. | |
| Thank you for the invitation. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| Gentleman yields back. | ||
| The chair recognizes Mr. Hernandez for five minutes. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| And hi, Mr. Secretary. | ||
| It's a pleasure to meet you and to have you here. | ||
| So, as Puerto Rico's representative, I value the unique and enduring relationship that Puerto Rico has with the United States. | ||
| The U.S., I believe, must follow through on its commitments and obligations, whether those commitments are grounded in law and mutual consent, as they are in Puerto Rico's Commonwealth relationship, or in treaty obligations, like they are in the freely associated states. | ||
| The Department of Interior manages the federal government's relationships with the free associated states and for U.S. territories. | ||
| Notably, it does not exercise the same authority over the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which has a greater extent of autonomy and self-government. | ||
| As we review the Department's budget and its allocations to the territories and freely associated states, I'm interested in what this tells us about how the federal government sees its responsibilities across these jurisdictions. | ||
| So, my first question would be: from the department's standpoint, are the freely associated states sovereign and independent nations? | ||
| Yes, that's why they're called freely associated states. | ||
| But, of course, we have a strong relationship and we have commitments to work with them. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Citizens born in the freely associated states are not U.S. citizens. | ||
| Would the Department be open to exploring under future compacts extending birthright U.S. citizenship to the people of the freely associated states as it currently exists in, for example, Puerto Rico? | ||
| I think this would be on a case-by-case basis. | ||
| I couldn't make a broad generalization, but certainly we have an interest in building as strong a relationship as we can with the freely associated states. | ||
| So, you wouldn't reject the possibility that in the future a freely associated state could have birthright U.S. citizenship? | ||
| I would not reject that personally, but I can't speak on behalf of the entire administration on that. | ||
| Is this something you've discussed in the context of Greenland? | ||
| I have not had any discussions about that birthright citizenship related to Greenland. | ||
| Have you had any discussions regarding the acquisition of Greenland and putting it under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior? | ||
| The discussions that have occurred in public about Greenland have suggested that one framework, if Greenland were to choose to be part of the United States, that the obvious step for them to become a territory at some point would be to start as a freely associated state. | ||
| And so, that is an existing framework that's been mentioned. | ||
| But I've not been a part of any high-level discussions about implementation of that idea. | ||
| And now, switching over to the four territories under the department's jurisdiction, the organic acts governing the relationship between the U.S. and these territories have not been revised in decades. | ||
| Would the department support a process with the territory's consent to update these organic acts? | ||
| I think there's an opportunity to learn from experience, and I think that the dialogue about how to improve those relationships Would be beneficial. | ||
| These territories and the freely associated states all represent an opportunity to help increase national security, particularly those partners in the Pacific, where of course we had American soldiers and sailors fought, died as part of that. | ||
| And now we're in a position, in some cases, it feels like that we've got encroachments from China around those territories and freely associated states. | ||
| And I think it's important that under this administration we pay more attention to those relationships. | ||
| And could future revisions of those organic acts or in the case of the Mariana Islands covenants, would you value the mutual consent of the territories and Congress in developing these new organic acts? | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| And beyond national security concerns, would you be open to exploring the possibility of expanding their self-government to the largest extent possible within the U.S. framework? | ||
| Again, I think that would be part of the dialogue. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I wouldn't, as I was as governor, I never agreed to a bill that I hadn't actually read. | ||
| So hypothetically, I think it's great to have that conversation. | ||
| And I think it's good to have this conversation because we've talked a lot about autonomy and sovereignty. | ||
| And let's focus on function, right? | ||
| If we can make these territories as functionally sovereign as possible while still remaining under U.S. jurisdiction, if that's their will, which I think it is, we should be open to exploring that. | ||
| Since I'm almost out of time, I'd just like to quickly state that DOI has previously supported climate change planning in Puerto Rico and other insular areas through funding provided by the IRA. | ||
|
Visitors First
00:06:26
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| Unfortunately, that funding has now been indefinitely paused. | ||
| So I hope that you and the department can help ensure that Puerto Rico and other insular areas are prepared for the next climate-driven disasters. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Gentlemen, as time has expired, the chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. McClintock, for five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Mr. Secretary, first I want to thank you for your responsiveness to my community's concerns over the situation at Yosemite. | ||
| Relaxing the reservation system was a good first step. | ||
| Ultimately, I think we need to restore full public access to the public lands. | ||
| As you know, Yosemite was originally set aside for, quote, public use, resort, and recreation. | ||
| But over the past several decades, that attitude has changed to what can best be described as look but don't touch. | ||
| The attitude of the last two superintendents was entirely dismissive, indeed, I would say contemptuous of the public and of the gateway communities. | ||
| Now that we've got a vacancy in the superintendent's office and in the NPS director's office and a new administration, I think we have a priceless opportunity to restore the original vision for the park and for the park system. | ||
| For example, Yosemite continues to have roughly only half the rooms, half the campsites, and half the parking spaces as it had prior to the 1997 flood. | ||
| Money was appropriated to restore these facilities, but they never were. | ||
| And about 10 years ago, the Merced River Plan was used as an excuse to remove additional amenities for visitors. | ||
| Overcrowding in the park can be solved either by further restrictions on access, which is the bureaucracy's preference, or by expanding capacity and expediting guest processing at the gates and encouraging visitation beyond the valley itself to other features within the park, which is the preference of the gateway communities and, dare I say it, of all the visitors. | ||
| On my first visit with the management 14 years ago, I noted a placard in the conference room that read, Is it the right thing for the park? | ||
| And I said that's exactly the wrong question. | ||
| The right question is: is it the right thing for the park's visitors? | ||
| And that's a central problem, as I see it, in the attitude of the NPS bureaucracy nationwide. | ||
| And I, for one, would like to see a new NPS director and a new Yosemite superintendent that are not wedded to the bureaucracy, but rather have hospitality experience in the national parks and who take the side of the visitors and not the bureaucrats. | ||
| So I wanted to get your thoughts on the record and put it bluntly, whose side are you on? | ||
| Well, I want to say, again, I appreciated the opportunity that we had to speak earlier and appreciate your comments that just made right now. | ||
| One takeaway from our earlier conversation: when I'm visiting a national park now, I've requested at each park that I have an opportunity to have a separate visit with Gateway community leaders to understand their perspective of how we, the Park Service, are operating as a neighbor, how we can work more collaboratively, how we can help the business opportunities there, and how decisions that we might make, reservation systems, lodging, et cetera, would have impacts on that. | ||
| By the way, I can say that my gateway community say that that's a breath of fresh air. | ||
| Thank you again. | ||
| And I look forward to visiting Yosemite with you and meeting with the Gateway community leaders there. | ||
| So looking forward to that. | ||
| With respect to the attitude of the Park Service, orienting back to hospitality as its principal function, what can we do in that regard? | ||
| Well, I think there's lots of things we can do to preserve these last best places, but as you say, but we can still do the things that we need to do to create a more positive visitor experience. | ||
| One of the things that we're looking closely at is the I think we're way undercharging as a nation for international visitors. | ||
| We've done a study of what gets charged when you, if you're going to go see the gorillas in Rwanda, if you're going to go to the Galakwos Islands, it's $500 a day or higher in some of these locations. | ||
| I'm not entirely sure we want to discourage international visitors from visiting our parks either, but we need to be sure that their capacity can accommodate those who want to come and that the park staff is oriented toward the visitor experience first and foremost. | ||
| Right. | ||
| There could be a billion-dollar revenue opportunity without discouraging visitors, just international visitors, particularly if they're coming here as part of a tour. | ||
| Yosemite is one of the places they want to see, and in some cases on these bus tours, we're charging them less than we're charging an American family. | ||
| And that revenue, if it could be redirected back towards deferred maintenance, staffing, a number of things that we can do, that would be fantastic. | ||
| Well, and contracting out of a lot of services, getting back to the discussion you had earlier about doing more efficiently, that's critically important. | ||
| You know, I looked at all the brouhaha over staff cuts at Yosemite. | ||
| It turns out it was 10 probationary positions out of more than 500, and you're actually increasing the summertime staff by 30 part-time positions. | ||
| They complained, well, you're getting rid of the locksmith. | ||
| So, well, wait a second. | ||
| The concessionaire has her own management department, and there's a locksmith within 20 minutes of every one of the gateways to the Yosemite National Park. | ||
| Why aren't you contracting that out? | ||
| Why are you hiring a park ranger, putting park rangers in a position where they have to be cleaning restrooms? | ||
| Why don't you get a contract with a local janitorial service? | ||
| They do a far better job at far lower costs. | ||
| So, anyway, thank you for those innovations. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Gentlemen, time has expired. | ||
| The chair recognizes the gentlelady from New York, Ms. Velasquez, you're recognized. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| And thank you for joining us today, Mr. Secretary. | ||
| I want to focus on renewable energy, the fastest growing sector in our energy economy, and a key solution for cleaner, more reliable power that doesn't poison our air or overheat the planet. | ||
|
Legitimate Offshore Wind?
00:05:27
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| That is why it's alarming that the fiscal year Budget 26 completely zeroes out funding for renewable energy programs at the Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. | ||
| The BLM Renewable Energy Management Program is the very office responsible for siting and permitting solar and wind projects on public lands. | ||
| No funding means no investment in a cleaner environment. | ||
| And the justification, the budget in Britain calls clean energy a green new scam and claims these technologies are too unreliable for Americans, despite the fact that wind and solar are affordable and the fastest growing sources of electricity in the U.S. | ||
| So my question to you is, is offshore wind considered a legitimate part of the American energy dominance agenda? | ||
| It is not. | ||
| It is not. | ||
| So is it being left behind in favor of fossil fuels? | ||
| It's not about any particular source. | ||
| It's about the fact that, and you talked about affordable, but the fact is that offshore wind is the most expensive all-in of any of the sources we have. | ||
| Thank you for confirming that it's not. | ||
| That there is no legitimate plan to support offshore wind projects, but rather undermine ongoing projects, which I can talk about further in a few minutes. | ||
| Moving on to my second question. | ||
| As energy czar, you should be able to talk about all forms of energy. | ||
| Can you provide an example of a currently operating offshore wind project and tell us about its impact in numbers, jobs created, homes powered? | ||
| The issue with offshore wind or onshore wind is that when the wind isn't blowing, we also need everything we had before. | ||
| We need all the baseload before. | ||
| So any estimate that says that wind is cheaper would only be true if we were willing to. | ||
| Reclaiming my time, I asked you about any specific project that is going on that you are aware of, but you're not mentioning any. | ||
| So let me tell you why offshore wind works, not in theory, but in practice. | ||
| South Fork Wind, New York's first offshore wind farm, generates 132 megawatts of clean energy, powering 70,000 homes on Long Island, created nearly 1,000 jobs, creating new businesses and supporting training programs. | ||
| My constituents are willing to pay $1 for clean electricity, job benefits, and protecting our climate, because climate change is an existential threat to my constituents and to our country and the world. | ||
| Mr. Secretary, while families in New York and across the country are dealing with extreme weather, flooding, rising seas, deadly hurricanes, your department issued a stopwork order on a fully permitted offshore wind project just off the coast of my home state, Empire Wind. | ||
| Just this week, I heard from a local small business that lost the contract due to offshore wind delays, real jobs and real livelihoods are on the line. | ||
| Let me be clear, my constituents do not want more offshore oil rigs and deep water horizon style disaster. | ||
| They want offshore wind and the good paying union jobs that come with it. | ||
| Sunset Park, which is part of that it was part of my district for three decades until recently, is home to the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, which will serve as a staging and assembly site for offshore wind. | ||
| The port will support 8,000 union construction jobs and 200 assembly jobs. | ||
| I do not understand why we cannot have it all. | ||
| The highest electric rates in the country outside of Hawaii are in New England, and it has to do with the policies. | ||
| And I think that energy, energy, freedom, we're heading towards energy poverty if we keep choosing things. | ||
| You mentioned 70,000 homes getting electricity. | ||
| The 70,000 homes only have that when the wind is blowing. | ||
| They also need all the fossil fuels, all of the baseload, all of everything else to power those homes when the wind's not blowing. | ||
| So we need two systems, not one. | ||
| That's why it's expensive. | ||
| In conclusion, we have an administration that doesn't care about the health of our time. | ||
|
China's Dominant Greenhouse Gas Emissions
00:03:53
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| As big companies pollute our land, air, and ocean. | ||
| Generalization has expired. | ||
| We do care about health. | ||
| Sorry, there's over 2 million people die a year in the world because they don't have access to electricity. | ||
| And any place where there's more electricity, humanity flourishes, and health increases. | ||
| The biggest increase in health lifespans we had in the United States was in the North Slope of Alaska after we had the economic development of being able to develop in that area. | ||
| So it's just incorrect to say we don't care about health. | ||
| I ask unanimous consent to submit to the record a study showing that in 2024, China began construction on 94.5 gigawatts of new coal-fired power plants. | ||
| That's the highest level since 2015. | ||
| Without objection, so ordered. | ||
| Also ask unanimous consent to enter into the record an article from April 20th, 2024 from Reuters reporting that once again China missed its air quality goals. | ||
| And to follow up with that, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record an article from E plus E leader titled, Air Quality Worsens Despite China's Renewable Energy Boom. | ||
| This article reveals that despite gains in clean energy, air pollution metrics indicate a troubling trend. | ||
| As of March 2025, 11 of 31 provincial capitals exceeded the national PM 2.5 annual standard, 35 milligrams per cubic meter, and I believe our standard in the United States is only 12 milligrams per cubic meter. | ||
| Ozone concentrations in 11 capitals also exceeded national thresholds of 160 micrograms per cubic meter, with some cities topping 190 milligrams per cubic meter. | ||
| So I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record an article from The Guardian titled China's Emissions of Two Potent Greenhouse Gases Rise 78% in One Decade. | ||
| This article reveals that China is the dominant driver of tetrafluoromethane and hexafluoroethane release into the atmosphere globally. | ||
| Also ask unanimous consent to enter into the record an article from MIT News, which states that China-based emissions of three potent climate warming greenhouse gases spiked in the past decade. | ||
| Two studies pinpoint their likely industrial sources and mitigation opportunities. | ||
| So I ask unanimous consent to submit into the record a chart published by the EPA showing emissions by country, showing that China is by far the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. | ||
| And also, I ask unanimous consent to submit into the record an article by BBC News highlighting that China emits more greenhouse gases than the entire developed world combined, emitting approximately 27 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. | ||
| I don't care to emulate anything that China is doing. | ||
| Without objection, so ordered. | ||
| And Mr. Chairman, I'll see your unanimous requests and raise three of my own if I could. | ||
| I'll ask unanimous consent to enter into the record this article from CNN highlighting that the Trump administration is forcing a coal plant to stay open, even though doing so will cost American consumers between $10 and $100 million with no benefit to grid reliability. | ||
| Also, a UC request to enter the record this EIA report demonstrating that coal is driving the climate crisis and an NIH public health study showing that coal-fired power plants are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths over the past 20 plus years. | ||
|
Rhode Island's Lease Sales Effort
00:11:27
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| And finally, this article from the Washington Post entitled, In Coal Country, Trump's Cuts to Health Programs Put Miners in Danger. | ||
| Cass, for clarification on the NIH report on the coal plant. | ||
| An NIH public health study, yeah. | ||
| Was that looking at the coal plants that are being closed in the U.S. or the ones that are being built in? | ||
| It's a backward look over the last 20-plus years at what has been done to public health. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Without objection? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| So ordered. | ||
| Chair recognizes the gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Rizal. | ||
| You're recognized for five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Mr. Secretary, first, I want to applaud you for the work that you've been doing since you've taken your position. | ||
| The President has a bold vision to unleash American energy, protect our national security, promote access to vast natural resources, and most importantly, put America first. | ||
| And I appreciate the crucial role that you're playing at this time. | ||
| A main source of income of our federal government comes from fees, interest, and sales of United States natural resources and the land that they sit on. | ||
| As we saw under the Biden administration, not allowing access to these resources costs the federal government millions of dollars. | ||
| Under President Trump's first administration, the Bureau of Land Management conducted 104 leases, bringing in $1.77 billion in revenue. | ||
| Under the Biden administration, only 32 lease sales were conducted, bringing in only $345 million of federal revenue. | ||
| Today, President Trump's 2026 budget requests $14.4 billion in current authority for DOI. | ||
| It's not hard to see which administration did it correctly. | ||
| My district is home in Mississippi on the Gulf Coast Natural Heritage Area, and they have not received any funding for fiscal year 2025 with no clear timeline of disbursement to the National Park Service. | ||
| These funds can boast six coastal counties and 45 coastal communities. | ||
| Can you please provide us with an update when these funds will be released? | ||
| I'll ask my team to look into that specifically. | ||
| This is part of an effort we were made to make sure that the funds were in line with the administrative priorities. | ||
| We also were reviewing 36,000 contracts and grants. | ||
| A record amount of grant dollars went out. | ||
| Enormous amount of grant dollars went out between November 5th and January 20th. | ||
| We're reviewing each of those as well. | ||
| But thanks for flagging this. | ||
| We'll take a look at it and get back to you, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much. | |
| Mr. Secretary, you recently launched the first step toward creating the 11th five-year program for offshore leasing, signaling a long-term vision for American energy. | ||
| How does a robust leasing schedule support predictability for investment, high-paying job, and our nation's goal of energy dominance? | ||
| Companies that bid on these leases have to be willing to make a long-term commitment, as you know, and they have to have capital planning sessions. | ||
| Part of what we have to do is have a predictable, dependable cycle of when we're going to do lease sales so they can make a decision on how they want to deploy their capital. | ||
| We want companies to deploy their capital, developing energy resources here versus other places in the world. | ||
| And the unpredictability or the illegal, illegally not even holding lease sales, like in states like in Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, where the Biden administration was the first administration since Harry Truman to not hold the lawfully required quarterly lease sales. | ||
| We need to get back doing this because the way we get capital flowing towards affordable, reliable energy is make sure that people can count on us as a partner to hold lease sales on a regular, predictable basis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I'm currently working on a bill text to codify President Trump's executive order titled Unleashing America's Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources to expedite prospecting and leasing for ocean minerals. | ||
| Mr. Secretary, why is the EO important for Congress to pass into law? | ||
| And how does expediting deep-sea mineral production help counter growing Chinese and Russian seabed activity in the Pacific? | ||
| Well, again, we've mentioned here earlier that we've got a, we're in a precarious position with China having a stranglehold on critical minerals. | ||
| And of course, the seabed and with the new innovation, new technology is rich in some of these minerals and not just here near the lower 48, but around American Samoa, one of our American territories where we control those territorial waters. | ||
| China is operating on three sides of American Samoa. | ||
| We've just recently begun the process to allow critical minerals work to occur around American Samoa. | ||
| So these are part of American territory. | ||
| We have to make sure that we're controlling these minerals and not China. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Second, you directed BOM to move forward with the lease sale 262 in the Gulf of America, a reversal from the previous administration to lays. | |
| Can you walk us through how this lease sale not only enhances American energy security, but also generates critical revenue for our coastal communities, specifically with public infrastructure and coastal protection in the Mississippi and across the Gulf states? | ||
| The largest funder of coastal restoration is the U.S. oil and gas industry that operates in the Gulf because the lease sale dollars, about 35% of those, I believe, goes back to coastal restoration. | ||
| We're planning on having the first lease sale in December of 2025, get back on track for development in the Gulf of America. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Mr. Chairman, I yield back. | ||
| Gentlemen, as time has expired, the chair recognizes the gentleman from Rhode Island, Mr. Magaziner, for five minutes. | ||
| Thank you to the Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Secretary. | ||
| I wasn't planning on this, but I just heard your exchange with Ms. Velasquez about offshore wind. | ||
| I believe she and I may be the only people in this room who come from states that actually have it and have real experience with it. | ||
| We know that when done properly, offshore wind can yield low costs for consumers, good American jobs. | ||
| It's American-made energy that we don't import. | ||
| And I just wanted to correct the record on a few things. | ||
| You brought up the intermittency issue when you were having your exchange with her. | ||
| Do you know what the capacity factor is of the South Fork wind farm that she responded to? | ||
| I'm not, I know that in the It's 56 percent, which is the same as the average capacity factor for natural gas plants nationally. | ||
| And in my state, Rhode Island, we have a development underway. | ||
| Let me just level set here. | ||
| The national retail rate for electricity is about 17 cents a kilowatt hour. | ||
| We have an offshore wind development in Rhode Island right now that is contracted to deliver at 9.8 cents per kilowatt hour. | ||
| So I would just caution everybody. | ||
| And do you understand why they can deliver at 9.6? | ||
| It's because of the subsidies. | ||
| No, it's because Rhode Island is the Saudi Arabia of wind. | ||
| What is right in North Dakota or West Virginia or anywhere else may not be the same as what is right in New York or Rhode Island? | ||
| This is a big country that is geologically diverse. | ||
| And so I just want to make that point because when I hear you say things like we don't need any more intermittent sources of energy, that may be true in North Dakota where you're already at 40% renewables. | ||
| But in a state like Rhode Island, where we've been less than 10%, that is clearly not the case. | ||
| So look, I just want to make sure that we're operating off of a level set of facts here, and that when the administration is making decisions with regard to energy policy, the administration is taking into account that different factors may be different in different states. | ||
| Well, let me get back to my prepared question. | ||
| So it has been said correctly, I think, that national parks were the best idea that we ever had. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| Hundreds of millions of people visit national parks every year. | ||
| So far, on your watch, 2,400 national park employees have been called from the workforce. | ||
| I heard you say earlier. | ||
| I've been called. | ||
| If there's 2,400 people, they've made it a free choice to take an early reduced power. | ||
| This was the accelerated retirement plan that Elon Musk, a allegedly drug-addicted billionaire, came up with for the entire federal government. | ||
| He clearly has no expertise in national park management, but I'll just take a step back here. | ||
| What I heard you say that I agree with is that we shouldn't be focused just on inputs, how much money we spend, how many people are employed, but on outputs. | ||
| I'm a former state treasurer. | ||
| I agree with that. | ||
| So I just want to ask about the outputs. | ||
| How many parks have had to reduce their hours this year as a result of the decreased staffing? | ||
| Do you have a figure on that? | ||
| Well, there's a secretary order out right now that none of them can return. | ||
| I'm not asking about the order. | ||
| I'm asking about what's actually happened. | ||
| Do you have data? | ||
| Because we've heard a number of examples. | ||
| Seguaro National Park had to cut visitor center hours. | ||
| Carlsbad Canyons had to cancel guided tours. | ||
| The fluorescent fossil beds posted earlier that they were going to close Mondays and Tuesdays. | ||
| So I understand that you don't want reduced hours, but have you been tracking the outcomes? | ||
| Can we get that data? | ||
| We can, and I think right now that all of them are operating at their actual data, the actual figures, so that we can judge. | ||
| And same on the number of hours to get into the parks. | ||
| We've heard about big delays at Yosemite and others. | ||
| So I understand what you're saying about outcomes, but show us the outcomes, please, I would ask. | ||
| Finally, the number one thing I hear from people is that the cost of living, including the cost of energy, is too high. | ||
| In Rhode Island, currently, we get about 15% of our energy from Canada, more in the summer months. | ||
| Does a 10% tax on Canadian energy make energy more affordable for consumers or less? | ||
| The answer is more, clearly. | ||
| I'm quizzical because my understanding is there's no tariffs on Canadian energy coming in. | ||
| So the full 25% may not have been applied, but the baseline 10% is still in effect. | ||
| Does cutting LIHEAP, as the president proposes in his budget, the low-income heat assistance program that helps millions of people keep their homes heated in the winter? | ||
| Does cutting LIHEAP make energy more affordable for consumers or less? | ||
| The biggest consumer of LIHEAP is the northeastern part of our country. | ||
| I'm aware, those are my constituents. | ||
| The reason why it's the biggest consumer is because of the blocking of natural gas pipelines. | ||
| 81% of the people in Maine. | ||
| By the way, taxing the energy that we import will not help with that. | ||
| But I would just say again, if our common goal is to lower the cost of energy for consumers, we should not be blocking renewable energy development. | ||
| We should not be cutting LIHEAP, and we should not be taxing Canadian energy imports. | ||
|
Concerns Over Hunting Funding
00:08:03
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| With that, I yield back. | ||
| Gentleman yields back. | ||
| Chair now recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. McDowell, for five minutes. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here. | ||
| I'm not going to sit here and say that I'm not going to ask you gotcha questions and then insist that I'm not asking you them when I am. | ||
| And I'm not going to put a monopoly man behind me for theatrics. | ||
| What I will do is talk to you about hunting and fishing, because that's what the people that I represent back home care about. | ||
| But one of the things that concerns me the most is that the people that have been in your department for the last four years have been making rules and creating regulations with no care for the opinion of hunters and fishermen. | ||
| Are you committed to, and the Department of the Interior, to making sure that the voices of sportsmen and women are included when these decisions are being made? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Many of the folks that I represent are concerned with future federal rules that may affect land use that could limit hunting. | ||
| How is the department making sure that hunting stays a central part of public land use now and for the next generations? | ||
| Our hunters are sportsmen. | ||
| Our anglers are among the most fervent, both not just users, but also financially supporting conservation groups. | ||
| Their voice matters, access matters, and our policies are to expand access on public lands for hunting and fishing. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| In your confirmation hearing, you spoke about the essential role that the National Wild Turkey Federation and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, and many other groups play in preserving the outdoors. | ||
| Can you describe specifically the work that the department is doing to partner with these groups that are so great for conservation? | ||
| Yeah, there are a number of those organizations and many more: Delta Waterfowl, you mentioned Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever. | ||
| All of these organizations are concerned about habitat and conservation, and it's one way to make a federal dollar go further is to partner with these private organizations who both know and care about that habitat. | ||
| Well, speaking of Delta Waterfowl, I served on the board of the state organization of North Carolina, and one of the things that they worked on was different things that different monitoring programs for waterfowl as they travel up and down the flyways. | ||
| Outside of just banding, which is common, what are other innovative ways that the department supports to track and monitor the number of different species of waterfowl that are making their way north and south? | ||
| Well, I think this is an important thing, and again, partnerships going on with partners like Delta. | ||
| There's a lot of work that goes on every year on the spring breeding surveys in the flyway to make sure that we've got healthy populations. | ||
| I think there's new advances in technology that are coming, but this is an important part of making sure that we've got the data to back up decisions. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| Switching gears a little bit, there's one of the premier fishing tournaments in the world happening right now in North Carolina, and it's a blue marlin tournament called the Big Rock. | ||
| And I've heard a lot from boat captains, guides, folks that are sport fishers that they're having a massive problem off the coast of North Carolina with sharks. | ||
| There's been historic success in fishing for tuna off the coast of North Carolina, and they now have a significant issue with not being able to sit and fish for tuna because they can't reel them in due to the sharks. | ||
| Would you be committed to working with the boat captains in North Carolina to make sure that they're able to continue to fish for tuna? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Great. | ||
| I've got one last question for you, and it's on energy. | ||
| We've heard a lot, and I just want to ask about how the price of energy goes up and down. | ||
| Would overburdensome regulation that appeases a specific group of people that may or may not be based in reality? | ||
| Would that make the price of energy go up or down? | ||
| Well, burgers' regulations go price go up, but broken markets where highly subsidized industries can price lower than their actual system cost artificially lowers the price, but it doesn't lower the cost on consumers because taxpayers are still paying for the high cost of those renewable forms of electricity. | ||
| Because if they're intermittent, meaning they don't run when the wind blows, they don't run when the sun shines, then we need the entire other system, which we've been trying to shut down to actually power the country. | ||
| So we end up with a duplicative system. | ||
| Imagine that. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, I yield back. | ||
| Gentlemen, yields back. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, request unanimous consent to enter a few pages from the Interior Department's budget in brief. | ||
| This is from President Trump's skinny budget proposal. | ||
| Great to hear the stated commitment to hunters and anglers, but this budget document tells a very different story, proposes $276 million slash from LWCF, repurposed to deferred maintenance, and then taking the NACA, the North American Wetlands Conservation Act budget down from $49 million to zero. | ||
| Request unanimous consent. | ||
| Without objection, ask unanimous consent to submit into the record an article from Forbes. | ||
| There seems to be some debate about the cost of renewable energy and the subsidies that go along with that. | ||
| I think this article helps explain that. | ||
| You know, the consumer sees their electric bill and it's not broken down by the source of fuel to put those electrons into their home or their business. | ||
| But this study, which includes data from the Energy Information Administration, shows that, and this is pre-IRA, between 2010 and 2016, subsidies for solar were between 10 cents and 88 cents per kilowatt hour, and subsidies for wind were between 1.3 and 5.7 cents per kilowatt hour. | ||
| Subsidies for coal, natural gas, and nuclear are all between 0.05 cents and 0.2 cents per kilowatt hour. | ||
| And this was just subsidies from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. | ||
| The author goes on to say here that solar gets the most state-funded subsidies, some which greatly exceed the federal subsidies. | ||
| He says, in my own state of Washington, where electricity prices are 8 cents per kilowatt hour, the state pays me 54 cents for every kilowatt hour generated by my rooftop solar array, whether I use it or not. | ||
| This has made my total electricity cost minus 7 cents per kilowatt hour over the past two years and will be for the foreseeable future. | ||
|
Protecting Florida's Rare Earth Minerals
00:06:08
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| So I think that gives some insight on what these renewable subsidies do for the real cost of electricity that gets blended in with all the electricity that gets put on the grid. | ||
| Without objection? | ||
| So ordered. | ||
| Now I recognize the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Soto, for five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here. | |
| I want to start out with talking about the Everglades. | ||
| It's been a bipartisan project for many years. | ||
| We saw both in President Biden's budget $444 million. | ||
| Now in President Trump's budget, $446 million. | ||
| So we're grateful for that request. | ||
| I wanted to also point out the Northern Everglades, which flows through my area, as well as Representative Franklin, bipartisan areas of Florida, where the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes, Kissimmee River, and Shingo Creek form the headwaters of the Everglades. | ||
| There are new U.S. Army Corps of Engineers projects that have already been approved and are starting to move through that help water supply, ag, represent recreation. | ||
| And so I'm hoping we can continue to get your support to both help the northern and southern Everglades in Florida, which is such an important part of our state. | ||
| Yeah, you have my commitment. | ||
| I had an opportunity to keynote at the Everglades Trust dinner the other night. | ||
| And of course, they were celebrating the $446 million in President Trump's budget to help complete important water projects for the Everglades. | ||
| And of course, with four national parks in southern Florida, this is a key partners in helping restore that ecosystem. | ||
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Another bipartisan tradition is a ban on oil drilling in Florida's Gulf Coast. | |
| We've seen major bipartisan support and bills. | ||
| We've also seen both Biden and Trump historically protect the Florida Gulf Coast military training, tourism, recreation, wildlife. | ||
| Should that continue to be the policy, can we count on your support to implement it to protect the Gulf Coast? | ||
| Yes, and we can protect the Gulf Coast, but I also want to be transparent that I think that on the earlier decisions by the Biden administration, that line was set 110 miles away from the Gulf Coast of Florida. | ||
| And so I think that there's a way to protect the Gulf Coast completely, but I think that there's some review of where the line was drawn because it's excluding potential opportunity for multiple use beyond that. | ||
| But as you noted, that takes discussion with the military and others. | ||
| But I just wanted to be clear that I wasn't making promises that were not in line with where the administration may be considering opportunities. | ||
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I understand. | |
| I'm glad you mentioned the military. | ||
| That is one of the big parts of it, along with protecting our wildlife and then tourism. | ||
| I hear folks on this committee constantly talk about after hours that they're going to Florida, that they're enjoying the beaches there. | ||
| We want to protect them for all Americans. | ||
| I also want to talk about rare earth metals. | ||
| You've started your career in technology. | ||
| We see both in artificial intelligence and chips and electric vehicles that rare earth metals are very important. | ||
| This last year, 20% of new cars were either hybrids or electric vehicles. | ||
| And Florida, surprisingly for a lot of people, has the second most EVs, but also for AI, data storage, batteries. | ||
| And there's only one large-scale rare earth mining project, Mountain Pass Mine in California. | ||
| Mr. Secretary, what are you able to do to help domestically source more rare earth metals and secure these supply chains for the future? | ||
| Well, what you've brought up is critical to our country. | ||
| I think we're going to see in the days, weeks, and months ahead that this is going to take a national priority because with China sort of flexing its muscle around the stranglehold it had on the rest of the world around rare earth minerals, it's a wake-up call to the rest of the allied nations that we have to develop secure supply chains. | ||
| And Mountain Pass is the only one that's operating right now. | ||
| And it's not just mining, but it's also the refining that we need to do in this country. | ||
| So this is going to become an important effort of this administration to make sure that we protect our military, protect our industry, and protect our peace and security with our allies by making sure that we're not all dependent on an adversary. | ||
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And what areas are you looking at? | |
| Is there any particular projects that you're starting to work on that you're excited about that might be able to expand our rare earth metal capacity? | ||
| Well, we have lots. | ||
| Rare earth minerals aren't rare in the sense that they're not available in the U.S. What became rare was actually mining, and even more rare was the refining of those materials. | ||
| Even when we've got recycled things that are going on, like an MRI or other things, we're sending our recycled batteries to China to do the recycling. | ||
| We're giving up what could be a source of supply for us. | ||
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And we'll talk with the EPA about that. | |
| I'm also on that committee. | ||
| But is there any places you think have a lot of potential or areas that you're looking at? | ||
| Any place that we find other minerals, gold, uranium, graphite, many of these other base minerals that are not rare, in conjunction with many of those, those represent great potential. | ||
| But we have a lot of, and as I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of rare earth minerals that exist in coal, gallium, germanium exist in very high quantities and our lignite coal in this country. | ||
| So we've got plenty of it here. | ||
| We just have to have the will and the policy to actually go get the mining and the processing done here versus having other countries do that. | ||
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unidentified
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Thanks, Neil. | |
| Yield back. | ||
| Gentlemen, time has expired. | ||
| The chair recognizes the gentleman from Alaska, Mr. Begich, for five minutes. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, I'm really looking forward to this last conversation. | ||
| Could I request like a three-minute recess right now and then I'll come back ready to go and dive in? | ||
| I understand. | ||
Chapters
- 00:00:02 Inflation Reduction Debate
- 00:07:38 Why Coal Matters
- 00:13:49 Great Lakes Protection
- 00:29:10 Visitors First
- 00:35:36 Legitimate Offshore Wind?
- 00:40:49 China's Dominant Greenhouse Gas Emissions
- 00:44:27 Rhode Island's Lease Sales Effort
- 00:55:40 Concerns Over Hunting Funding
- 01:03:29 Protecting Florida's Rare Earth Minerals
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