The U.S. House debates H.R. 845, removing gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act, with Bruce Westerman citing 4 administrations’ support and 6,700+ wolves across the U.S., while opponents warn of ecological collapse and judicial overreach. Jared Huffman clashes over NEPA reforms like the SPEED Act, accusing Republicans of greenlighting harmful projects—e.g., Micron’s wetlands facility—while blocking public input, despite only 0.23% of cases being litigated. Meanwhile, H.R. 1366 sparks outrage over foreign mining access, with Huffman calling it a $100B land giveaway, while Westerman defends it as countering China’s critical mineral dominance. On healthcare, Mike Kennedy flags puberty blockers’ risks, but Frank Pallone counters with studies showing life-saving benefits for trans youth, framing GOP bills like Crenshaw’s as politically weaponized attacks. The episode reveals deep divides over science, federalism, and children’s rights amid partisan urgency. [Automatically generated summary]
All right, John, and we are out of time, but we wanted to make sure that you knew the CPI report.
This is CBS News.
It shows inflation rose at a 2.7% annual pace in November, cooler than expected.
That's at CBS News.
If you'd like to see that also for your schedule, starting shortly over on C-SPAN 2, House Democrats and immigrant advocates will be introducing a new bill.
Here is the House.
Thanks for watching, everybody.
unidentified
The house will be in order.
The Chair lays before the House a communication from the Speaker.
Lord our God, in this time of year when many faith traditions celebrate the gift of divine light in a world of darkness, may we each come to acknowledge that you alone are the source of all light.
At creation, when the world was without form and empty of life, when darkness had dominion over the deep, your spirit hovered over the waters and you allowed your light to break through the darkness and give us life.
Try as we may to shed our own light on the issues that trouble us or to dispel the darkness of our disagreements.
It is only your truth that can illuminate our lives and enlighten the way ahead.
When we imagine it is our power that shapes the future or our knowledge that grants us direction, remind us that it is only by your blessing that anything we attempt will endure.
Enter our lives this day and bring the light of your salvation into our world in this season.
Grant us a renewed awareness that you are the one true light who comes from above and is above all.
Humble us that you would increase and we would decrease so that your light would shine unheeded and we might receive your hope and guidance this day and always.
The chair has examined the journal of the last day's proceedings and announces to the house the approval thereof.
Pursuant to clause one of rule one, the journal stands approved.
The Pledge of Allegiance will be led by the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania, Miss Dean.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
The chair will entertain up to 15 requests for one-minute speeches on each side of the aisle.
For what purpose does the gentleman from Pennsylvania seek recognition?
Madam Speaker, request unanimous consent to address the House for one minute and revise and extend my remarks.
Without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute.
Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Union County West End Fire Company for 75 years of dedicated service to the community.
Founded in 1950, the Union County West End Fire Company has been answering the call to serve the community and protect their neighbors in times of need.
Our volunteer firefighters provide fire, rescue, and EMS services, often balancing it with day jobs and family commitments.
These professionally trained volunteers are the backbone of fire protection and emergency response, especially in our rural communities.
They are there in emergency situations like fires, car accidents, medical calls, and disaster response.
Their commitment to service and teamwork is second to none.
The Union County West End Fire Company gives back throughout the year, whether it's delivering turkeys to families during the holidays or escorting local sports teams to the final round of playoff games or celebrating championship wins.
I rise today to honor Carl Rosen, one of the legendary architects of working-class power in Chicago.
As President of the United Electrical Workers, Carl has always understood that power is never given.
It is organized, disciplined, and won.
From the shop floor to the ballot box, he has been instrumental in building real power for working-class communities.
A master tactician and negotiator, he knows when to apply pressure, when to build alliances, and when to move decisively.
From the Republic windows fight to other moments reached that shape Chicago's political order, Carl has been a steady presence, helping working people secure monumental victories.
I'm proud to call Carl a friend and one of my closest and most trusted advisors.
To some, he's a strategist, to some, an organizer.
I think he's a faithful interpreter of working-class power and a whisperer of the proletariat.
Thank you, Carl.
Here is to our legacy years I yield back.
unidentified
The gentleman yields.
For what purpose does the gentlewoman from Iowa seek recognition?
Madam Speaker, congratulations for the one minute question.
Without objection, the gentlewoman is recognized for one minute.
Sergeant William Nathaniel Howard of Marshalltown and Sergeant Edgar Brian Torres-Tobar of Des Moines were killed in action by ISIS terrorists while serving on a counterterrorism mission in Syria.
Yesterday, I had the solemn honor of attending the dignified transfer of these fallen heroes.
unidentified
No words can fully capture the weight of that moment or the depth of gratitude that we owe these families, these heroes.
Mothers and fathers should never have to bury their children.
Our hearts are broken for these Gold Star families.
My husband Matt and I are mourning alongside you, and we join Americans across the country asking our Lord to hold close the families of the fallen, watch over our troops, and bless our military families.
Madam Speaker, it is with a heavy heart that I rise to pay tribute to my dear friend and South Florida icon, the legendary John Footy Cross, who we lost on December 13th, 2025.
Footy helped wake up South Florida for more than 30 years on the Y100 Morning Show, and his commitment to community was second to none.
He was a mainstay in the South Florida community, a passionate anti-drug crusader and an incurable chicken wing junkie.
Originally, he created Footy's Wingding, a chicken wing eating competition, as a fundraiser to aid Here's Help, a not-for-profit organization that assists adults and children with substance abuse addictions.
Although the event began mainly as a competition to crown the maker of South Florida's best chicken wings, it evolved over the years into a popular spot for pop music's hottest stars.
Each year, Footy's Wingding brought a host of celebrities to South Florida to raise thousands of dollars for charity from Here's Help to the Sun Sentinel, WB Television Channel 39 Children's Fund, and many others.
It is my privilege to honor his life and service to our community.
There was no one with a better humor or good nature than Footy.
I know I speak for countless South Floridians when I say I will miss his friendship, voice, and advocacy.
May his memory be for a blessing.
Madam Speaker, I yield back.
unidentified
The gentlewoman yields.
The gentleman from Florida is.
For what purpose does the gentleman from Florida seek recognition?
Madam Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to address this body for one minute and to revise and extend my remarks.
Without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute.
Madam Speaker, throughout history, Vikings were known as fearless explorers and warriors who never back down from a challenge.
That same spirit lives on in Jacksonville, Florida, where Reigns High School Vikings have written their own chapter of triumph by capturing Florida's Class IIIA state football championship in dramatic fashion in a thrilling 23-22 comeback victory over Miami Northwestern.
The Vikings showed resilience, sealing the win.
Get this, Madam Speaker, with a touchdown pass with just 10 seconds to spare.
This remarkable finish marks the fourth state football title program in the proud history of Reigns football high school history.
For what purpose does the gentleman from California seek recognition?
Madam Speaker, I request the unanimous consent to address the House and to revise and extend my remarks.
Without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute.
Madam Speaker, I rise today to warn my colleagues of the pending health care crisis that Congress is allowing to happen.
And as Sergeant Friday used to say, just the facts, ma'am.
Well, I'm speaking on behalf of the facts that are impacting the people of the San Joaquin Valley in California, the breadbasket that puts food on America's dinner table every night.
Yesterday, my colleagues on the other side passed a partisan bill that fails to renew the Affordable Care Act's enhanced premium tax credits that help over 24 million American families afford coverage.
In my district, over 65,000 families risk losing Medicaid, and another 22,000 families face higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
This also impacts the hospitals and health care clinics which provide that important care, especially in rural areas.
And by the way, that's also jobs.
Congress has a responsibility to prevent families from being priced out of the health care market.
That's the bottom line.
There's a bipartisan solution ready to go, and instead we're going home for the holidays.
We're not addressing the issue.
Madam Speaker, I would not be leaving town until we bring this measure to the floor.
Every American deserves reliable, affordable health care.
I yield back the balance of my time.
The gentleman yields back.
For what purpose does the gentleman from Texas seek recognition?
Madam Speaker, get the unanimous consent to address the House and revise and extend my remarks.
Without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute.
Madam Speaker, today we remember Coach Dan Hooks, a legend in Texas high school football and a man who just meant so much more to his community than just wins and trophies.
For nearly 30 years at West Orange Stark High School, Coach Hooks showed up every single day for his players.
He pushed them.
He believed in them, held them to a higher standard.
Yes, there were championships and unforgettable Friday night lights, but what really mattered happened beyond the scoreboard, the lessons about teamwork, discipline, and doing things the right way.
Coach Hooks wasn't just preparing young men for football games.
He was preparing them for life.
Long after the cheers faded and the stadium lights went dark, those lessons stayed with them and carried on to generations to come.
His influence, Madam Speaker, reached far beyond the field and why this community will always carry his name with pride.
Coach Dan Hooks built men, built a program, and built a legacy that will live on in West Orange for generations.
And Madam Speaker, I yield back.
The gentleman yields.
For what purpose does the gentlewoman from North Carolina seek recognition?
Madam Speaker, I seek to address the House for one minute and revise and extend my remarks.
Without objection, the gentlewoman is recognized for one minute.
Madam Speaker, this week I introduced the FEMA Administrative Reform Act to accelerate the delivery of federal disaster recovery aid to Western North Carolina.
All year, President Trump and his administration have continued to withhold aid and politicize disaster relief.
In June, DHS Secretary Christy Noam implemented a policy requiring her personal approval of any contract above $100,000, including FEMA disaster aid reimbursement.
This result has been delay after delay and local communities waiting endlessly for the aid they desperately need.
My bill would reverse this disastrous policy and speed up the flow of federal dollars to Western North Carolina and communities across the country.
It is clear that Congress needs to take action.
Our people need the relief that Congress approved over a year ago.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Madam Speaker, and I yield back.
For what purpose does the gentleman from New York seek recognition?
Madam Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to address the House for one minute and revise and extend my remarks.
Without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize a truly special public servant from New York's southern tier, Sharon Murphy of Horseheads, New York.
unidentified
For more than 15 years, Sharon served the people of New York's 23rd Congressional District with professionalism, compassion, and a genuine heart for service.
She was a steady presence in our community, serving three consecutive members of Congress and always putting the people first.
Known for her kindness and reliability, Sharon often worked behind the scenes to help families through their most difficult moments.
She took great pride in managing our Service Academy nominations, helping young men and women take their first steps towards a career serving this nation.
unidentified
As Sharon Murphy enters her retirement, I will miss having her on my staff.
I will miss her.
My staff will miss her, and our community will miss her.
Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in thanking Sharon Murphy for her outstanding service in wishing her every happiness in this next chapter of her life.
And Mr. Speaker, I yield back.
The gentleman yields.
For what purpose does the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania seek recognition?
I try to slow down at this time of the year, a season of giving thanks, coming together and counting blessings.
A season regardless of one's faith, maybe really because of all of our faith traditions, to celebrate light, light over darkness.
For 75 years, my community of Abington, Pennsylvania has hosted an interfaith Thanksgiving service.
This year, hundreds gathered at Temple Betham, warmly welcomed by Rabbi Robert Lieb.
Pastors and priests, rabbis and imams, we were young and old, faith leaders, civic leaders.
And what was clear from the readings and beautiful song is our different faiths have so much more in common.
A common call to lift one another, welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, mourn with those who mourn, to love one another, to prize peace over conflict, to kunalam, repair the world, and to recognize our common humanity.
So this season, as we've come by a way we did not know to the end of another year, I'm counting blessings and focusing on the light.
Thank you.
Madam Speaker, I yield back.
unidentified
For what purpose does the gentleman from Arizona seek recognition?
I ask unanimous consent to address the House for one minute and extending the fight remarks.
I rise today to honor a member of the Grijalva team that has served this great institution since 2003.
Glenn Miller was a trusted source of wisdom, institutional knowledge, and a sounding board to my father, Congressman Raoul Grijalva.
Throughout his more than two decades of public service in Washington, Glenn brought a mix that's hard to find, brutal honesty, and unrelenting compassion.
His frank insight was instrumental for the House Natural Resources Committee, including flagship efforts such as the Donald McKeachin Environmental Justice for All Act and the Baj Nawe Jo Etakukvene, ancestral footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument.
During complex negotiations, Glenn was the reason every voice was heard.
His leadership produced enduring reforms that will impact generations and continue to inspire federal policies that promise a cleaner, fairer future where every community enjoys clean air, clean water, open space, and economic opportunity.
Thank you, Glenn, for standing by my dad's side for 37 years and for all you've done for me and my entire family.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H.R. 4776.
unidentified
Without objection, so ordered.
Pursuant to House Resolution 951 and Rule 18, the Chair declares the House and the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of H.R. 4776.
The chair appoints the gentlelady from West Virginia, Ms. Miller, to preside over the committee of the whole.
This is in the committee of the whole house on the state of the union for the consideration of H.R. 4776, which the clerk will report by title.
A bill to amend the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 to clarify ambiguous provisions and facilitate a more efficient, effective, and timely environmental review process.
unidentified
Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered read the first time.
General debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the committee on natural resources or their respective designees.
The gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Westerman, and the gentleman from California, Mr. Huffman, each will control 30 minutes.
I rise today in support of H.R. 4776, the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act.
The SPEAD Act is a focused, bipartisan effort to restore common sense and accountability to federal permitting by reforming the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.
When Congress passed NEPA in 1969, it did so with the best of intentions.
It directed federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of major federal actions.
Unfortunately, what was meant to facilitate responsible development has been twisted into a bureaucratic bottleneck that delays investments in the infrastructure and technologies that make our country run.
The first Trump administration found that the average NEPA environmental impact statement between 2013 and 2018 totaled 575 pages and took 4.7 years to complete.
A quarter of them took six years or more, a glacial pace that cost the economy more than $100 billion a year.
unidentified
And what reward do project sponsors get for preserving through this slog?
Too often, a gauntlet of premeditated predatory lawsuits.
Nationally, NEPA is the most litigated environmental statute.
And according to the Breakthrough Institute, just 10 environmental organizations are responsible for 35% of all NEPA lawsuits.
On average, it takes over four years to resolve NEPA-related litigation on EISs.
I doubt if there is a single member of the House who has not heard of a NEPA horror story from a family construction company or a local official back home.
Today, the word NEPA is more synonymous with red tape and waste than genuine environmental protection.
The SPEAD Act would restore NEPA to its original aim of intentional, sustainable economic development.
The legislation fixes three major problems that over the decades have turned NEPA into a bureaucratic black hole.
First, it restricts NEPA lawsuits to parties that are actually impacted by a project, aligning judicial remedies with the procedural nature of NEPA while establishing reasonable filing deadlines to prevent litigation from being used as an indefinite delay tactic.
Second, it clarifies what projects must go through NEPA, ensuring that only projects with significant federal involvement trigger review.
And third, it codifies and strengthens key aspects of the Supreme Court's seven-county decision from this past May, clarifying the scope of environmental review under NEPA.
The SPEEDE Act is project neutral.
Its reforms will ensure a fair, predictable process and a level playing field for federal projects across all agencies and industries.
It's also timely.
U.S. energy demand is projected to rise by 35 to 50 percent by 2040.
Data centers alone could see their energy consumption triple in the next five years.
The electricity we will need to power AI computing for civilian and military use is a national imperative.
Every day, NEPA red tape is becoming more and more of an obstacle to American security and prosperity.
By restoring NEPA to its original intent, the SPEEDE Act will expedite infrastructure projects, bring down prices, and help Americans realize the energy dominance and mineral abundance our natural resources promise.
That's why a coalition of more than 300 industry associations, businesses, and trade groups from all 50 states in Puerto Rico support this legislation.
They know the SPEED Act means jobs, fairness, growth, and a safer, more affordable future.
I want to thank the gentleman from Maine, Mr. Golden, for his partnership in this effort.
I would also like to thank the many members from across the aisle who have engaged in a productive manner to develop and improve this legislation.
Madam Chair, the SPEEDE Act will deliver the energy and infrastructure Americans need.
unidentified
I urge my colleagues to support the bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.
The gentleman from Arkansas Reserves, the gentleman from California, is recognized.
This is our last day in session before Republicans close up shop and send everyone home for a couple of weeks.
The majority could be using this time to do something, provide actual solutions to the health care cliff the country is about to go off, address the affordable cost of all manner of goods and utilities that have been set in motion by their wrong-headed policies.
But no, instead of doing anything to help Americans make ends meet, we are here on the floor giving more gifts to big oil, multi-billion dollar foreign mining corporations and special interests like the NRA.
So I guess Merry Christmas to all of them and a big lump of coal for everyone else.
To no one's surprise, Republicans have been working all year on handouts to big oil that were written for and by the oil and gas industry.
The first bill up on our Christmas list is for polluters that has been at the top of their wish list for as long as I've been in this Congress.
It is the SPEEED Act, which is being sold to us as permitting reform.
And a spoiler alert, it is not permitting reform.
The bill takes a sledgehammer to the National Environmental Policy Act, one of our foundational environmental laws.
NEPA was enacted in 1970 on a bipartisan basis to require federal agencies to do something that seems very basic, to understand the consequences of their actions and to listen to the affected American communities before approving major proposed projects.
It's often described as telling agencies that they need to look before they leap.
Now, I'm not opposed to reforms to make NEPA and other laws work better, make them more efficient, especially for the build out of the stuff we need, clean energy and essential infrastructure.
But we can do that while maintaining appropriate environmental protections, respecting tribal consultation, and protecting community input.
The Speed Act does great damage to all of those things.
Instead, it abandons transparency and accountability while ignoring the single biggest permitting problem facing the energy sector right now, the Trump administration's all-out war against wind and solar, which includes a total refusal to permit these projects.
Now, from the beginning, Democrats across Capitol Hill have expressed a willingness to negotiate on permitting reform, including changes to NEPA.
But the first thing we needed to see was an end to the crazy, arbitrary war on clean energy that is needlessly driving up energy costs for millions of Americans.
And I hope you'll just take a look at this spaghetti mess behind me, because this is what Republicans have done to the permitting process for wind and solar projects.
On July 15th, Secretary of Interior Doug Bergham signed a memo listing 69 individual actions that require his personal sign-off.
Of course, this requirement only applies to wind and solar projects, not to fossil fuels.
But I'll name just a few of the things that now require Secretary Bergham to pause his global tour promoting fossil fuels all over the world and give personal sign-off.
If you need a temporary use permit for anything, if you need a national trail system impact evaluation, if you need visual impact analysis, the Secretary of Interior himself has to take a look at what you're proposing and sign off 69 times if you want to actually get a permit for a wind and solar project.
This is madness.
And since the memo's enactment, there has been only one single solar project all year long that has been approved.
It was just yesterday.
And it happened only after heavy lobbying from the Republican governor of Nevada, who told the Interior Department that it wasn't just that project.
There are actually 33 gigawatts of solar and storage projects that are in limbo right now because of this log jam that they have created.
And they're going to be key to supplying affordable, reliable energy to meet increased load growth.
So to be clear, this is just one project that has made it through the gauntlet.
And it was fully approved, by the way, under the Biden administration, but then the Trump folks came along and put the brakes on that project.
That's where we are.
That is the context for this conversation where my friends across the aisle claim to care so much about an efficient permitting process.
I think most Republicans would agree that, at least privately, I think they would agree, that wind and solar are essential parts of the energy mix, despite the President's war against them.
And that is why at Markup, Chair Westerman did incorporate a few Democratic ideas that at least attempted to provide some permitting certainty for projects of all kinds.
Now, those amendments didn't come anywhere close to actually providing certainty for wind and solar projects in the face of the administration's crazy war on clean energy.
The amendment would not get clean energy permits moving again, and it did nothing to help projects that the administration had already pulled the plug on.
But even that largely cosmetic step was too much for the Freedom Caucus, and so they struck again.
They demanded that the Rules Committee attach language to further stall clean energy permitting and to make it even easier for the Trump administration to continue blocking wind and solar projects in order to bring the Speed Act to the floor today.
That was the condition for our being here debating this bill on the floor right now.
So bad that the American Clean Power Association pulled its support, joining the Solar Energy Industries Association in opposing the bill.
And for months, we heard from Chair Westerman exhibit A for why Democrats should feel comfortable supporting this bill.
The American Clean Power Association supports it.
Well, that support has now curdled into opposition.
But you know who still supports it?
The American Petroleum Institute and the coke-backed Americans for Prosperity, who put out a statement immediately after the Freedom Caucus made the bill worse to announce their great affection and support for this bill.
The bill has lost any claim for advancing tech-neutral energy policy if it ever had one.
And trust me when I say that even if the House passes this bill today, it is going nowhere in the Senate.
What a missed opportunity to tackle a serious issue that Democrats were very interested in working in good faith to find some solutions on.
I strongly oppose this bill and reserve the balance of my time.
unidentified
The gentleman of reserves, the gentleman from Arkansas is recognized.
I'm glad my colleague across the aisle is so good at reading the mind of the Senate, but I know this legislation has bipartisan support in the House and the Senate, and we've got over 375 organizations from all industries and all 50 states that support this legislation.
And also, I think my friend made the case for why we need the Speed Act.
If we want to stop administrative ping-pong, then Congress has to act.
And the SPEED Act is the bill to give us permit certainty so that we can build all across our countries in all different segments.
One area of the country that's been adversely affected by bad permitting is my friend from northern Minnesota, the gentleman, Mr. Stauber, whose district has a lot of mining resources that can't be tapped because of permitting restraints and administrative ping-pong.
I yield the gentleman who is the chair of the Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals, three minutes.
unidentified
The gentleman is recognized.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4776, which I am proud to co-sponsor.
I want to begin by commending two of my good friends, Republican Chairman Bruce Westerman of the Natural Resources Committee and Democrat Representative Jared Golden, for their work in developing a sensible, bipartisan, and balanced permitting reform package that will allow us to build all kinds of important projects around this great country.
Our permitting system is broken and has been broken for a long while.
It's almost as if our current permitting system is designed to block projects rather than build them.
This is something that all of us on both sides of the aisle should be able to agree on.
The bill before us today is not designed to cut corners or weaken our permitting system.
It doesn't weaken environmental standards like the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, or Endangered Species Act, which are the basis of our environmental protection here in the United States.
This legislation is simply meant to address NEPA, which I would like to remind my colleagues is a process statute.
NEPA has been weaponized for over a half a century, virtually from day one.
In fact, the first lawsuit utilized to block a project under NEPA was filed a mere weeks after the statute was signed into law.
And since then, NEPA has created a cottage industry for attorneys who have made a living suing to block good projects.
The bill before us today is meant to streamline the NEPA process and close the loopholes that are constantly used to block good projects.
Projects that we need to modernize our infrastructure, ensure we have clean water, generate the energy that drives our economy, access to critical minerals we need to compete on the world stage, and so much more.
Thanks to NEPA, our broken permitting system, it takes 29 years on average to permit and build a new mine in the United States.
That's not okay.
I don't think a day goes by where I don't hear from a constituent about their permitting woes.
And I figure that's the case for most of my colleagues in this chamber on both sides of the aisle.
In northern Minnesota, the issue of permitting is particularly acute.
Not only is our broken permitting system used to block important critical mining projects like Twin Metals, New Range, and Talon, but it's used to block simple core infrastructure projects that we can all agree on, like water infrastructure or roads or bridges.
In northern Minnesota, our cold winters lead us to having a short construction window, much shorter than the rest of the country.
When a water infrastructure project or road or bridge project gets delayed and they miss that construction window, it delays the projects months and adds hundreds of thousands of dollars to the project.
And you know what, Mr. Speaker?
You know who pays for those costs?
The local taxpayer, not those who are weaponizing loopholes in our permitting system to block these necessary projects.
Our constituents have to deal with the shortfalls of our broken permitting system far too long, and it's about time we address it.
I urge my colleagues to support this bill and I yield back.
The gentleman in reserves, the gentleman from California, is recognized.
Mr. Chairman, I need to provide some translation services for those who may not be fluent in Orwellian distortion.
When my colleague says that this legislation only deals with NEPA, that it doesn't touch the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, or Endangered Species Act, what that really means is that within the four corners of this particular bill, they're not gutting those other laws.
But rest assured, they're working separately to gut those other laws.
In fact, just last week, Republicans attacked long-standing Clean Water Act protections.
And just yesterday, the Natural Resources Committee had a markup that advanced their legislation to gut the Endangered Species Act.
So for those who want to see a complete annihilation of environmental protections across the board, rest assured our Republican friends are doing that, just not all of it within the four corners of this bill.
There's another translation I think that's needed.
You heard from my friend from Arkansas that they want to end the administrative ping-pong process.
What they really mean by that, if you actually read this bill, is that they want the 69 individual steps that Secretary Bergham has imposed on all solar and wind projects to remain in place.
I guess that's not administrative ping-pong, but I think it's an important part of the translation.
And then finally, we heard that this legislation is about restoring NEPA's original intent to just be a procedure bill.
It's important to understand that NEPA does require procedure, but it requires meaningful procedure for a very important purpose, making sure that government actions consider the impacts of what they're doing and include communities with transparency and accountability so we can protect the environment and so we can actually protect human health and other values.
When you strip all of that out and leave NEPA as a box-checking exercise, which is what this bill does, that is not preserving the original intent of NEPA.
With that, I'd like to yield two minutes to the gentlelady from Washington, Ms. Randall.
Because of the Trump administration's policies, families in my district and districts across the country are struggling to afford their heating and electricity bills.
Yes, we need more transmission and clean energy projects, and it's true that the permitting process is making that more difficult.
But how can anyone think that this administration, the Trump administration, is a good faith partner in permitting reform?
They've fired federal workers and illegally canceled funding Congress already approved, including over $1 billion for clean energy projects in Washington State that had strong community support, a long-anticipated hydrogen hub in the South Sound, solar projects across the state and the country, and freight and drainage improvements in the trucking industry that would lower the cost of goods and decrease our environmental impact.
We could have been lowering costs, and we could have done it in partnership with environmental leaders, community leaders, and the leaders of tribal nations.
Tribes deserve to be meaningfully consulted on projects that affect their lands, water, and resources.
No exception.
That's why I offered two amendments.
One, to give tribes sufficient time to engage in the permitting process, and another to ensure the offshore oil and gas drilling projects, rubber-stamped by H.R.1, July's big ugly law, still have to consider community feedback.
But Republicans blocked my amendments, which is why I'm voting no on the Speed Act, a bill that doesn't address the challenges my neighbors are experiencing.
Mr. Chair, I yield one minute to the gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Bennett.
unidentified
The gentleman from Oregon is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The purpose of process is to create a predictable sequence of steps to achieve an outcome consistent with substantive law.
When process is allowed to intrude, the purpose of the law itself is perverted.
As philosopher Franz Kafka described it, the process becomes punishment.
You aren't guilty or innocent yet.
You are simply processed until you run out of money, time, or sanity.
Procedure exists to serve substantive rights, not to supplant them.
As the Supreme Court stated in the Seven County case, NEPA is a purely procedural statute, not a mandate for a particular result.
This bill, H.R. 4776, is designed to create sideboards on process so that rote compliance is no longer the purpose of what we're about, but instead we focus on progress for this nation.
I rise today in opposition to H.R. 4776, the Speed Act.
For more than 50 years, the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, as it's called, has been the bedrock of conservation law and preserves the environment, human health, and the people's voice, the people's voice in policy decisions.
The SPEADE Act would limit the public review process and, quite frankly, would undermine the original intent of NEPA.
I do understand the need to complete permitting and federal decision-making process more quickly than is happening.
But we cannot do so at the cost of public input and transparency.
I happen to know, I happen to have lived with the original author of NEPA.
And what he did when this was passed, and this is called the Magna Carta of environmental laws around the world, is make sure that when something is going into someone's community, the public has a right to input.
Now, I said yesterday, I told my chair, this isn't the Ten Commandments.
We should work together and try to help make it better, but not at the expense of the public.
One of the most significant causes of permitting delays is limited capacity at the agencies that handle NEPA reviews.
The SPEADE Act does nothing to address recent cuts to staffing and funding at these agencies, which is going to further slow down project permitting.
I remain open to working on a bipartisan permitting reform, but it must be done to protect the original intent of NEPA.
I strongly urge my colleagues to vote no on H.R. 476.
And Mr. Speaker, I yield back.
unidentified
The gentleman in reserves, the gentleman from Arkansas is recognized.
I rise in strong support of the Speed Act and the work that Chairman Westerman and a bipartisan coalition of members of Congress have done to bring a bill to the floor that actually focuses on letting us build things in America again.
And by the way, to lower the cost of those projects that we want to bring.
unidentified
So, you know, in the past, you would see years recently, it takes 10 years or longer to build things that used to take only two years.
Why?
Not because of trying to push things to the side.
This bill still requires, by the way, Mr. Speaker, that we comply with all the state and local laws that are in place.
We still would have to comply with federal laws that are in place.
In some cases, just makes it economically unfeasible to do projects, to build roads, to build bridges, to build pipelines, to move energy to lower costs for families, to build housing.
unidentified
This bill will allow us to bring more affordable housing to the marketplace in an environmentally protected way, by the way.
Some people say, why can some of these other countries build a road or a bridge in 16 months and it takes us 10 years to do it in America?
unidentified
It's because we have allowed these laws like NEPA to become so heavily abused where people that have no relation to the project can file lawsuit after lawsuit that have nothing to do with the project.
How about we bring common sense back into permitting?
unidentified
That's what the SPEED Act does.
Again, do these people not trust the states that still have to permit at the local and state level, along with all the other federal permits that need to take place?
They get built in other countries because our laws haven't been updated the way they need to to allow us to build things again in an economical way, lower the cost of building houses in America, lower the cost of building roads and bridges in America, lower the cost of building energy projects in America, while still respecting environmental laws, but just removing the red tape that are killing our ability to innovate.
This is a great bill that needs to happen.
I'm so glad Chairman Westerman did the work to build a bipartisan coalition to get things done in America again.
Mr. Chairman, I'd like to yield three minutes to the gentleman from San Diego, Mr. Peters.
unidentified
The gentleman from California is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
For nearly 20 years, electricity demand in the U.S. has barely moved, but that era is over.
Today, we're facing the potential for electricity demand to grow up to five-fold.
Meeting this energy demand will be a challenge, and the environmental laws of the 1970s were built for defense.
But the environmental imperative of today is to build, and that's why we need permitting reform.
But that doesn't just mean building pipelines and gas plants, but also wind, utility-scale solar, and interregional high-voltage electric transmission.
All of the above, like President Obama used to say, all of the above, like my Republican colleagues used to openly say, at least before November of last year.
I was glad to see Chair Westerman introduce and advance the Speed Act, because reforming NEPA, the most litigated environmental law in the books, is necessary if we're going to make America competitive and if we're going to protect our environment.
And there are many important reforms in this bill, and I want to note that.
That's why earlier this month I led a letter with 30 of my Democratic colleagues, outnumbering the members of the Freedom Caucus we saw on the floor this week, but explaining our support for reform and exactly what we needed to get more Democrats to yes on speed.
At the top of that list is permit certainty, which the ranking member has already mentioned.
If you apply for a permit for a project that complies with the law, you should be able to get that permit and you should be able to rely on it.
Thoughtful permitting reforms, many of which are in the Speed Act, are meaningless if the executive branch is allowed to revoke issued permits for no good reason or if the permitting process can be subjected to political gamesmanship.
The language added to the Speed Act at markup would have restricted some of the political interference with issued permits, and that was a great start to solving the problem.
It wasn't everything we needed, but it was a lot, and I was confident that a bipartisan bill was well within reach.
And I was really disappointed this week that some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, after seeing that good bipartisan progress, decided to force this bill in the other direction this week to satisfy grievances and score political points instead of what's best for the country.
And all of the above energy strategy is what we were after.
That took a big hit this week.
Giving Donald Trump or any president the ability to decide what gets permitting reform, which would be the effect of the partisan amendment added to the Speed Act behind closed doors, significantly reduces certainty for investment in America.
That provision codifies a broken permitting status quo instead of setting a level playing field for everyone.
Energy producers, investors, and communities want to know that investment in America, regardless of the electrons powering that investment, is safe from the swing of the political pendulum.
And unfortunately, that goal has not yet been achieved.
We need to get permitting reform done in this Congress.
I look forward to working with my colleagues across the aisle in the Senate to craft a bipartisan product that can become law.
Mr. Chair, I recognize the gentleman from Michigan who's on the Natural Resources Committee and also the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, Mr. Wahlberg, for two minutes.
unidentified
The gentleman from Michigan is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, Chairman.
As the member who represents half of NEPA's original authors district, I rise in strong support of the Speed Act.
This bipartisan common sense legislation will streamline our permitting process, making it faster, more predictable, and more accountable.
Currently, our broken permitting process delays critical energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing projects for years.
This not only hurts workers, but raises costs for hardworking families and makes us more dependent on foreign countries, including our adversaries.
In Michigan, we need access to reliable energy to meet our growing demands, increase affordability, and help us compete.
However, these essential projects can't move forward if our permitting process is holding us back.
The Speed Act addresses these issues by streamlining reviews, setting clear timelines, and improving coordination across agencies.
Mr. Speaker, this legislation helps us build again in this country, from energy projects to manufacturing facilities.
America is entering a golden age of energy dominance thanks to President Trump's policies and the working families' tax cuts that Republicans passed earlier this year.
The Speed Act builds on this progress by cutting bureaucratic red tape, bringing back good-paying jobs, and revitalizing our infrastructure and our energy sectors.
unidentified
We must restore common sense to our permitting process so we can unleash American energy and lower costs for hardworking Michiganders.
For all those reasons, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote yes.
I yield two minutes to the gentlelady from Colorado, Ms. DeGett.
unidentified
The gentlelady from Colorado is recognized.
Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I'm a strong proponent of elimination of unnecessary regulations and a permitting reform.
But this bill doesn't streamline permitting.
It blindfolds the agencies meant to protect us and our natural resources.
Under this legislation, the agencies could not consider new science, even for the project applicant, conduct new environmental reviews, or assess indirect, let alone cumulative impacts.
This anti-fact, anti-science administration would rather live in denial than understand the full impact that these projects could have on our health.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled on a case in my home state of Colorado.
A 100-mile crude oil train route along the Colorado River was approved despite local objections and federal estimates that spills would occur once every five years.
The court said agencies did not need to consider these downstream impacts.
The ruling alone is alarming.
But the bill goes farther by outright preventing agencies from considering those factors.
This law says ignorance is bliss.
That's why I offered an amendment to widen the scope of review to ensure that agencies weigh all relevant facts and subsequent consequences.
If we have information, we should use it.
Republicans refuse to accept that amendment in the Rules Committee.
Rather than supporting agencies with the funding and staffing they need to process applications faster, Republicans just want them to look the other way.
Most Americans believe any job worth doing is worth doing right, even if it takes a little more time.
But cutting corners today means we're going to have to clean up disasters tomorrow.
And those costs won't fall on us, Mr. Chairman.
They'll fall on the communities we're supposed to protect.
I urge my colleagues to vote no, and I yield back.
The committee will rise informally to receive a message.
The House will be in order.
The Chair will receive a message.
Mr. Speaker, messages from the Senate.
Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Secretary.
I've been directed by the Senate to inform the House that the Senate has agreed to the House amendment to the Bill S1071, an act to require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to disinter the remains of Fernando V. Cotta from Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, Texas, and for other purposes.
Mr. Chair, I yield two minutes to the gentlewoman from Utah, Ms. Malloy.
unidentified
The gentlelady from Utah is recognized.
Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 4776, the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act, known as the SPEEED Act, introduced by my colleague from Arkansas, Chairman Westerman.
Federal permitting under NEPA has strangled economic development and delayed critical projects.
What should take months takes years.
What should be straightforward becomes a bureaucratic maze.
The core purposes of this bill are to restore NEPA to its original purpose as a procedural statute intended to ensure agencies look at alternatives, focus on real, proximate environmental effects rather than speculative, politically motivated hypotheticals.
And the key reforms that help bring that about are that it prevents completed environmental reports from being undone without a court order, it creates litigation timelines, and requires substantive public comment in order to establish standing for litigation.
The way NEPA is being implemented now and has been implemented for the last several years wastes taxpayer time and money.
What was intended to make sure federal agencies are being thoughtful and looking at multiple alternatives before they make important decisions on behalf of the American people has turned into a bureaucratic boondoggle that isn't serving the American people.
These reforms are especially critical for rural states with a large federal footprint like Utah.
It rebalances the scales in favor of local voices, working families, and economic opportunities.
These changes help all Americans.
All Americans are going to be benefited by upgraded infrastructure, increased energy production, and less wasted time and money.
This isn't about lowering environmental standards, but it is about eliminating redundancy and bureaucratic paralysis.
It represents reforms Americans have been demanding: practical solutions that cut red tape while maintaining environmental protections that we all appreciate.
It's time for some predictability, consistency, and efficiency in government decisions.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for meeting the need of our time, which is a need for speed.
I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.
The time for action is now, and we must give the American people the effective government that we all deserve.
Mr. Chair, I yield one minute to the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Hurd.
unidentified
The gentleman from Colorado is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I support the Speed Act because it fixes something that people back home understand instinctively.
It takes too long to build anything in this country.
Water infrastructure, roads, power lines, housing, energy projects.
When it takes just a decade to get a permit, families pay more and America falls behind.
NEPA was meant to ensure that agencies look before they act, not to function as a litigation strategy to stop reasonable projects.
But today, it too often stalls projects and advantages competitors like China.
The Speed Act restores common sense.
It focuses on real impacts, ends endless delays, and brings predictability back to permitting.
Just as important for me as chairman of the Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs, it respects tribal reviews and was developed with tribal consultation to ensure that NEPA does not block tribal economic development.
This isn't about weakening environmental protections.
It's about ending unreasonable delays so America can build again.
We can lower energy costs, build reliable infrastructure, and compete globally.
The Speed Act is balanced reform, and it's long overdue.
I urge my colleagues to support it.
I yield back.
The gentleman in reserves, the gentleman from California is recognized.
So we have heard over and over again in this debate that this is not about, this bill is not about lowering environmental standards.
And this is another one of those rather remarkable inversions when you actually look at what the bill does.
Entire classes of projects are simply eliminated from environmental review.
Entire classes of impacts no longer count in an environmental review under this proposed legislation.
Certain types of comments that allow people to take part in the public review process and potentially challenge a project are no longer qualifying for them to be part of the public review and legal challenge process.
If that is not lowering environmental standards, I don't know what is.
But another aspect of this bill should be considered specifically, allowing broad exemptions for grants, loans, and other financial assistance, which this bill does, means that large federally backed projects could avoid triggering a NEPA review, even when those impacts could be very significant.
And this includes projects like many federal highways, which were one of the reasons, the original reasons, that NEPA was passed, because they often ran right through disadvantaged communities, and those communities didn't even know about the proposed projects, let alone have an ability to require consideration of environmental impacts.
So if you just take a look at this image here, this is what happens to transportation projects without NEPA.
And so when we hear that this is not about lowering environmental standards, I think it's important to bring it back to the reality of what this bill would do.
This is what this bill would do.
No environmental review process at all for many of these projects.
I reserve.
unidentified
Gentleman in Reserves, the gentleman from Arkansas.
Mr. Chair, I yield three minutes to the gentlelady from Wyoming, Ms. Hagerman.
unidentified
The gentlelady from Wyoming is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I rise today in strong support of modernizing our permitting system through the Speed Act.
While other nations are rushing to win the AI race, build out energy generation, and modernize infrastructure, America is stuck in the 20th century.
Our nation's permitting process has been corrupted, morphing from what NEPA was crafted to do into a leviathan designed to do what activists and courts want it to do, transforming from a procedural statute into a hammer to block development and innovation.
The resulting lawlessness in the permitting system finally culminated in the seven counties Supreme Court decision, which provided much-needed relief.
Simply stated, and as the court found, there is no reason a rail project should fail because project opponents don't like the commodity that will be shipped on that rail line.
An examination of other lawsuits filed under NEPA confirms the frivolous nature of many of them.
In the last decade, circuit courts witnessed a 56% increase in NEPA appeals.
NGOs instigated over 70% of these challenges, with just 10 organizations filing many of those cases.
In these cases, agencies won roughly 80 percent of the challenges to both environmental assessments and EISs.
In other words, agencies are seldom faulted for inadequate environmental review, yet NGOs capitalize on the six-year statute limitations to file a lawsuit to slow projects down, increase costs, and finance their organizations through EAJA funds.
In recognition of this reality and in line with the seven counties' decision, this bill clarifies the role of the court over this purely procedural statute and places shot clocks on when lawsuits must be filed and decided.
The Speed Act is project agnostic, which I believe is well reflected in its bipartisan nature, and I am proud to be one of its co-sponsors.
Permitting impacts every aspect of our economy.
When the system is broken, it is broken for everyone.
The Speed Act will provide the certainty that the system currently lacks and which American industries need.
Thank you, Chairman Westerman, for your strong leadership on this crucial piece of legislation.
I urge all my colleagues to support it, and I yield back.
The gentleman in reserves, the gentleman from California.
Well, a lot of really important things are procedural.
MRIs, x-rays, any number of things.
Those are procedures, but you don't turn the power off and reduce that very important procedure to a meaningless exercise.
That's what this legislation would do.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to yield three minutes to the gentlelady from Nevada, Ms. Lee.
unidentified
The gentlelady from Nevada is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In Nevada, the sun shines more than 300 days a year, and solar is among the cheapest and most abundant sources of energy, not only in my state, but around the country.
That's why I'm leading 30 of my colleagues in championing the most supported amendment to the Speed Act by far to save solar and wind from this administration's war on clean energy.
On July 15th, President Trump's Interior Department actively chose to wrap the biggest piece of permitting red tape around the neck of the renewable energy sector that we've ever seen, directing the Interior Secretary to personally sign off on every permit to solar and wind energy.
In just one example from my state, what would have been the largest solar facility in North America, the administration is making that project jump through 69 hoops seven times.
That's the opposite of efficient.
Even my state's Republican government has said that, Republican governor has said that these actions, quote, have not only stopped solar development on federal lands in Nevada, but also on private land where federal approvals are required.
More broadly, the administration's attack on solar energy and storage industry are threatening over 500 projects that could be powering 16 million homes.
Together, these projects represent half of all new planned capacity in the United States.
And for this reason, at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to the committee.
If the House rules permitted, I would have offered the motion with my important amendment to this bill.
Quite simply, my amendment to the Speed Act would put an end to this nonsensical political tit-for-tat and ensure equal treatment for all energy sources as part of the DOI permitting process moving forward.
If we're going to bring down energy bills for everyone, the path forward is obvious.
Solar and wind are the clear, cheapest choice.
Republicans in Congress are more interested in getting retribution for their corporate donors than bringing down the costs for American families.
And let's be clear, they know this isn't right.
Even my colleagues who represent states like Texas and Arizona, where energy projects are being held up, are refusing to speak up.
They would rather let this reckless administration put its finger on the scale, jack up prices for their constituents, than stand up to this president.
Already, families across the country are seeing their electric bills increase by an average of 13 percent.
In states like Florida, that's an average annual increase of about $400.
Every day, more Americans are concerned.
Every day, more Americans are concerned about huge data centers causing their electric prices to spiral even further out of control.
And it doesn't have to be this way.
We need to provide real permitting certainty and permitting fairness and let investors, not Washington, pick winners and losers.
Because under this approach, Americans will be paying their electric bills each month and they'll be the ones who are really losing.
At the end of the debate, I will insert into the record the text of my amendment.
I hope my colleagues will join me in voting for the motion to recommit.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Speed Act.
America's permitting system is broken.
And today, an estimated $1.5 trillion in economic value is tied up in projects waiting for approval, costing our economy roughly $140 billion every year in lost growth.
Instead of encouraging responsible development, our system too often rewards bad actors driven by ideology rather than legitimate concerns.
Endless litigations become the single biggest obstacle to building energy, infrastructure, and critical projects in this country.
unidentified
At the same time, energy demands is projected to grow by 50 percent by 2050.
The bill allows America to build again, produce energy again, and stop being held hostage by litigious groups content to see jobs and investment move overseas.
unidentified
Permitting reform unleashes American energy and the American economy.
I urge my colleagues to support the SPEAD Act, and I yield back.
I am glad to hear the gentleman's concern for projects that are awaiting approval.
But for the past year, we have seen huge projects that were already approved, that were under construction.
In one case, the Revolution Wind project in Rhode Island that was 80 percent complete, thousands of jobs, some of the cheapest electricity that New England would see to bring down these soaring utility bills.
And President Trump stepped in and stopped it.
They had to go to court to get a court to release the hostage, to allow this already approved project to simply move forward.
So I'm always grateful to hear concern for projects awaiting approval.
What this bill does, though, unfortunately, is nothing at all to end the crazy war on clean energy that's killing off projects that have already been approved.
Our colleagues really should care about that too.
And with that, I reserve.
unidentified
The gentleman reserves, the gentleman from Arkansas.
Mr. Chair, if we want to talk about projects that have been killed by an administration, let's go back to the Biden administration, go back to the Obama administration.
Let's look at projects like the Resolution Copper Mine in Superior, Arizona, where they got a permit.
They spent $2 billion and they've yet to mine an ounce of copper because of NEPA holdups.
Let's look at the Twin Metals project in northern Minnesota, where we have one of the largest deposits of copper, nickel, cobalt, platinum, and palladium, all things that we need that has been going back and forth from one administration to the next.
Let's look at the Keystone XL pipeline that was stopped after billions of dollars were spent and not one drop of oil went through it.
My colleagues are making the case for permitting reform.
It just happens to be that we're in a Republican administration now, and they turned a blind eye to what was happening during a Democrat administration.
This is why we need permitting reform.
And I'm glad to yield one minute to my friend from Georgia, Mr. Carter.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 4776, the Speed Act.
Mr. Speaker, regardless of what sector our economy you're talking about, whether it be health care, technology, energy, it's always the same when groups come into my office, permitting regulations, crushing us, crushing us.
The Speed Act is a critical step towards unleashing America energy dominance, bringing supply chains home, and much more.
The National Environmental Policy Act is a well-intentioned piece of legislation, but it's created a costly, cumbersome process that has crippled our permitting system.
The SPEEDE Act will modernize NEPA and it will help permitting in the U.S. return to what it was originally intended to be.
The Speed Act will establish permitting timelines and it will cut down on frivolous litigation that is simply meant to delay projects.
Under SPEED, American development will no longer be held hostage by activist environmental groups simply seeking to profit off of lawsuits.
America needs to update its infrastructure, create new sources of energy, and deploy more broadband and transmissions lines.
The SPEAD Act will help power a new generation of growth in our nation.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I urge the passage of this legislation, and I yield back.
We just heard a list of projects that were allegedly halted by frivolous litigation, a case study for the SPEED Act.
Well, in fact, many of these are really bad projects, and the examples are often examples of the environmental review process working to protect the environment and protect people.
The Dakota Access Pipeline decision was challenged by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, who won in court because the Army Corps of Engineers had failed to consider the impact of catastrophic oil spills on the tribe's water supply and culturally sacred sites.
The Resolution Copper Mine was delayed because the proposed mine would, in fact, destroy Oak Flat, the most sacred site for the San Carlos Apache tribe.
Micron chose to build its semiconductor manufacturing facility near federally regulated wetlands and endangered bad habitats.
So I think what we're hearing, unfortunately, is that permitting reform to my friends across the aisle means a green light even for bad and destructive projects.
That's not something the American people want to see.
I reserve.
unidentified
The gentleman reserves, the gentleman from Arkansas.
Mr. Chairman, how about the last runway that was built at the Atlanta airport?
It only took 11 years to build it.
Actually, it only took 18 months.
It took nine and a half years to go through the NEPA permitting process.
These are the kinds of projects we're talking about all across the country.
They're being adversely affected by a cumbersome permitting process.
It's not doing anything extra to help the environment or protect our resources.
It's just simply a way to stop progress and stop projects from happening.
I'm glad to yield one minute to the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Evans.
unidentified
The gentleman from Colorado is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I'm proud to support the bipartisan Speed Act today, of which I'm a co-sponsor, because in part, my home state of Colorado is the sixth most heavily regulated state in the country.
From affordable housing to affordable energy, it has become virtually impossible to build anything.
And the overburdensome federal permitting process, layered with state regulations, passes on extraordinary costs to Coloradans by adding years of unnecessary delays and millions of dollars to new projects that communities need.
In fact, many of the projects require more money to navigate the bureaucratic permitting process than they do for actual construction.
Today, the House will change that and take a significant step toward comprehensive permitting reform by passing this bill.
Americans who are worried about the high cost of living should pay attention.
And if my colleagues are serious about lowering the cost for their constituents, they should support the Speed Act.
Thank you.
Yield back.
The Gentleman Reserves, the gentleman from California.
Look at how long it takes to build interstate highways and bridges and the safety effects that happen because those projects are drug out for so long and they cost so much more money and it creates congestion.
It creates all kinds of problems that if we could just move the permitting process more quickly, we could benefit not only the cost of energy, the cost of transmission, the cost of raw materials that we can be mining, but we could also improve the safety of our country.
unidentified
We spent 12 or we've allocated $12 billion to upgrade the air traffic control system.
The Department of Transportation tells me the problem is they can't get a NEPA permit to put fiber optics cables in air traffic control towers.
That's insane when something like an outdated air traffic control system that has funding can't be implemented because we can't get through the NEPA process to run a fiber optics cable.
Mr. Chairman, I'm prepared to close and reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, a lot of numbers have been thrown around on how NEPA takes so very, very long.
Much of this is looking deep into the past and extrapolating from that.
I want to correct the record because as of January 2025, $1 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act for permitting was actually doing its job quite well.
It had helped reduce the median time it takes to complete an environmental impact statement, the most complex environmental review by 28 percent, and that's compared to times under the first Trump administration.
The time was down to a little over two years in 2024 compared to over three and a half in 2019.
That is a year and a half of improvement, and unfortunately these steps forward have been taken away by our friends across the aisle.
We are going in the wrong direction.
So Mr. Chairman, in closing, the majority had a great opportunity here.
Democrats were ready to work with them on meaningful bipartisan permitting reform and they chose to reject our efforts to engage in good faith and instead what we have here is another Christmas giveaway to the wealthiest most powerful people and companies in the country.
These are, I guess this is the golden age.
These are wonderful times.
You can throw great Gatsby parties if you're a billionaire, if you're one of these very, very rich interest groups.
But we should be thinking about everyday Americans right now.
Many overburdened communities that are saddled with significant pollution.
We should be thinking about helping them instead of making it harder for them to challenge projects that threaten their health and environmental damage visited upon their community.
We should also be thinking about rising utility bills, something we're hearing more and more about in this affordability crisis driven by Republican policies.
And yet our friends across the aisle look the other way as President Trump's crazy war on clean energy drives utility bills higher and higher.
We should be working towards a level playing field for clean energy instead of another handout for big oil.
Now, the American Clean Power Association has pulled its support for this legislation.
The bill is opposed by the Solar Industry Association and, of course, countless environmental and environmental justice organizations who know that this bill will take a wrecking ball to government transparency, to community engagement, and to health and environmental protections.
It didn't have to be this way.
This was a terrible missed opportunity, but a bad bill has actually gotten worse through the process, not better.
I strongly oppose the SPEAD Act, and I urge all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, regardless of whether you may have supported this in the past.
Mr. Chairman, permitting reform in the Speed Act will help every American by lowering costs and increasing affordability.
That's a word that's talked about a lot today, but I think we sometimes forget the question: why are things not affordable?
You know, when we have to import all of our products, when we can't build new energy plants, when we can't build public infrastructure projects on budget and on time, things become unaffordable.
Now is the time for Congress not just to talk about how we need permitting reform, but to actually walk the walk when it comes to helping the families in their districts keep the lights on.
An analysis by Common Good showed that a six-year delay in construction on public projects like building roads, something I think we all can agree on, cost the U.S. economy $3.7 trillion.
The Speed Act has supported over 375 industry leaders ranging from utility companies and energy producers to homebuilders and domestic manufacturers.
These are the industries that will lower everyday costs if we simply allow them to build here in America again.
A vote for the Speed Act is a vote for affordability.
As we close, I want to return to the core principle at the heart of this debate and this legislation.
The federal permitting process should serve our natural interest, not obstruct them.
Let me say that again.
Permitting should serve our natural interest, not obstruct our national interest.
NEPA no longer passes the test.
It is currently a source of waste, abuse, and predatory litigation.
Its unpredictability is fundamentally unfair to the local communities, to working families, and to taxpayers who depend on the infrastructure projects that NEPA obstructs.
This has never been more true than today when demand for energy is dramatically spiking.
America is blessed with resources we need for a future of energy dominance and critical mineral abundance.
God has blessed America with minerals and with energy.
unidentified
We're just refusing to use them.
Mr. Chairman, we are dependent on China for 90 percent of our rare earths and critical minerals.
They mine 70 percent of those around the world and process and control 90 percent of them.
We have all of them here in America, but we refuse to do the permitting, not just to build mines, but to build refineries that will create jobs for Americans.
When we take mined materials out of the ground and we process them and put them into manufactured goods, there's a multiplier effect by 28 is what USDS and the Department of Commerce says that we multiply that value by 28.
Think of the jobs Americans could have, good paying jobs, if we not only mined here in America, but if we refined and manufactured products from those things that we mine.
The SPEED Act is a targeted bipartisan solution that will restore balance and accountability to the federal permitting process.
It will streamline administrative review and curtail open-ended dilatory litigation.
These are practical, common sense reforms that, again, I will say have garnered the support of more than 375 business, labor, and nonprofit groups from across the country, from all 50 states in Puerto Rico.
unidentified
Mr. Speaker, we're at a critical point in our country.
I urge my colleagues to support the Speed Act, to get ourselves building again, and I yield back the balance of my time.
unidentified
The gentleman yields back.
All time for general debate has expired.
Pursuant to the rule, the bill shall be considered for amendment under the five-minute rule.
The amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Natural Resources printed in the bill and the further amendment specified in Section 5 of House Resolution 953 shall be considered as adopted.
The bill as amended shall be considered as the original bill for the purpose for the purpose of further amendment and shall be considered as read.
No further amendment to the bill as amended shall be in order except those printed in House Report 119-410.
Each such further amendment may be offered only in the order printed in the report, may be offered only by a member designated in the report, shall be considered as red, shall be debatable for the time specified in the report, equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, shall not be subject to amendment and shall not be subject to demand for division of the question.
It is now in order to consider amendment number one printed in House Report 119-410.
For what purpose does the gentleman from Georgia seek recognition?
Amendment number one, printed in House Report number 119-410, offered by Mr. Clyde of Georgia.
unidentified
Pursuant to House Resolution 951, the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Clyde, and a member opposed each will control five minutes.
The chair recognizes the gentleman from Georgia.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I yield myself as much time as I may consume.
The gentleman is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I rise in support of my amendment to H.R. 4776, the SPEAD Act, which will improve the bill's judicial standing provision to limit frivolous lawsuits and ensure projects are not delayed by radical activist groups without actual material harm to themselves.
This amendment makes a simple but important clarification.
It ensures that only material, physical, or property harm, not purely aesthetic, recreational, or emotional interests, qualifies someone to challenge a federal agency action under NEPA.
As established by the bill we are considering today, NEPA is a procedural statute.
Its purpose is to require federal agencies to disclose and consider environmental effects before taking major actions, not to confer substantive environmental rights or to serve as a tool for endless litigation.
The amendment aligns NEPA's judicial review provisions with that core purpose by anchoring standing in concrete, legally cognizant harms rather than subjective or generalized interests.
By focusing standing on tangible harms, this amendment helps prevent NEPA from being used as a delay tactic in every dispute over administrative decisions, a tactic that too often slows necessary infrastructure and energy projects without materially improving environmental protection.
It ensures that courts remain a venue for adjudicating real disputes where plaintiffs have demonstrable stakes while preserving agency and judicial resources for the most serious and legally grounded claims.
At the same time, this amendment does not eliminate judicial review or impede legitimate challenges where there are real impacts.
Stakeholders with substantive claims under existing environmental and land management statutes will continue to have full recourse to the courts under those laws.
What this amendment does is reinforce NEPA's role as the procedural check that it was intended to be.
For these reasons, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment to bring greater clarity and balance to NEPA standing and to promote a more efficient and predictable permitting process consistent with both environmental disclosure and responsible development.
Thank you, and I reserve the balance of my time.
The gentleman reserves.
For what purpose does the gentleman from California seek recognition?
So as I was saying, this is a perfect example of how even when Team Extreme puts together the most dramatic rollback of America's most important bedrock environmental law, it's not enough for some factions within the Republican Conference.
Now, I do oppose this amendment because at its core, it is built on a tired trope.
The trope that NEPA litigation is some huge driver of frivolous litigation and an argument that we hear all too often to justify more and more limits on judicial review to make it harder and harder for the public to participate in the review process and to help oil and gas and other polluting projects.
But the facts do not back up this story that we keep hearing.
One recent study from the University of Utah found only one out of every 450 actions subject to NEPA are ever even litigated.
That amounts to 0.23%.
And according to a recent Congressional Research Service report, and I quote, historically fewer than 1% of federal actions subject to NEPA have been litigated.
So that's important context.
The idea behind this amendment that we need to keep layering on more and more restrictions to shut out the public, to eliminate legal challenges, to stop frivolous litigation, is overblown, especially in the context of an underlying bill, which already imposes dramatic new barriers that make it almost impossible to bring a case to court.
Among other hurdles, the underlying bill says you have to have commented during a comment period, even as the Trump administration is restricting the opportunity to comment.
It also requires that your comment has to be unique.
Now, this is a new term of art.
It doesn't exist in current law.
We don't even know what it really means.
But presumably, if anyone else has submitted the same comment, has flagged the same problem with a federal action, you're out because your comment is no longer unique.
And to add a cherry on top of all of that, even if you get into court, the Speed Act would bind judges, forcing them to allow even dangerous and illegal projects to proceed, making the judicial review process extremely hollow.
So judicial review is a cornerstone of democracy, Mr. Chairman.
When the government makes a bad decision or an illegal decision, I would hope we could all agree there are times because the government doesn't get everything just right, that citizens need to be able to challenge that action and hold the government accountable to make sure the law is followed.
Access to the courts is a backstop for communities who are left out of the NEPA process to make their concerns heard and to ensure that federal government actions properly consider environmental impacts.
And though we've heard a lot of fearmongering about frivolous lawsuits, there are already effective safeguards in place.
All plaintiffs have to demonstrate they've actually been harmed by a project to have standing.
And NEPA will be meaningless unless there is a way to enforce it when the government does something harmful or illegal.
That's what this is all about.
I urge a no on this amendment, and I reserve.
unidentified
The gentleman reserves.
The gentleman from Georgia is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, any frivolous lawsuits is one frivolous lawsuit too many.
It's just not appropriate when we have legitimate actions to improve our economy and to make sure that America moves forward.
You know, Chairman Westerman mentioned the 11 years that it took to build the Atlanta airport in my home state.
You know, really 18 months to actually break ground and build the airfield, but nine and a half years for permitting.
You know, that's just not acceptable.
The Pentagon was built in just a little over a year.
All right.
That could never happen today simply because of the permitting process.
I hear that any frivolous lawsuit is one too many.
So I just want to remind the gentleman that maybe one of the most prolific frivolous litigators in history is in the White House right now.
I want to remind him about the raft of frivolous lawsuits challenging the 2020 election results, resulting in many cases, not just in losses in court, but in the disbarment of some of the Republican luminary lawyers like Rudy Giuliani.
So if we pretend to care about frivolous lawsuits, I know consistency is out of fashion these days, but we should really mean it.
I reserve.
unidentified
The gentleman reserves.
The gentleman from Georgia is recognized.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, I think the Keystone XL pipeline is another example of frivolous lawsuits and the years upon and years it took, and yet that pipeline still is not functional in its entirety.
And I simply want to read what my amendment says, page 26, line 8, insert, which shall not include aesthetic, recreational, or emotional interests unaccompanied by material physical or property harm after final agency action.
That's concrete, and that's what, and therefore I encourage all my colleagues to vote for my amendment, and I yield.
We should be against all truly frivolous things, not just frivolous lawsuits, frivolous legislation masquerading as permitting reform, frivolous amendments, frivolous distractions at the end of probably the most unproductive Congress in American history this year at a time when American people, the American people are struggling.
That's what's truly frivolous.
I oppose this amendment, urge a no vote, and yield back.
unidentified
The gentleman yields.
The question is on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Georgia.
Those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Those opposed?
In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it, and the amendment is agreed to.
Request a recorded vote.
Pursuant to Clause 6 of Rule 18, further proceedings on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Georgia will be postponed.
The Chair understands that Amendments 2, 3, and 4, printed in House Report 119-410, will not be offered.
It is now in order to consider amendment number 5, printed in House Report 119-410.
For what purpose does the gentleman from Texas seek recognition?
I rise to the designee for the gentleman from Pennsylvania who has an amendment at the desk.
This amendment revises the scope of review clause within the bill and strengthens the codification of the Supreme Court's seven counties decision issued earlier this year.
Now, my friend from Pennsylvania, Mr. Perry, is the author of this amendment, and I'm offering it for him because he is in committee business.
And he was offering this amendment to further improve the bill and limit agencies from taking into consideration factors which are not within their authority to regulate.
unidentified
This is the core issue at the heart of what was going on in the seven counties decision.
Congress should continue to build upon that unanimous decision.
Let me be very clear that the seven-county decision was unanimous and further improve NEPA, which this bill that the chairman has brought here to the floor takes significant strides in improving NEPA and that improve upon it by limiting what agencies can regulate to what they already can by law.
By ensuring that the scope of review is conducted within the sole legal purview of each federal agency, we can drastically improve the current landscape of drawn-out, ineffective permitting.
With that, I'll reserve.
unidentified
Gentleman from Texas Reserves, the gentleman from the chairman, I rise to claim time in opposition to the amendment.
The majority has suggested that the underlying bill's changes to NEPA on the scope of review simply codify the Supreme Court's seven-county decision.
But the Speed Act actually goes much further than that court decision.
The Court left broad discretion for agencies to determine what impacts are relevant and how far the environmental analysis should go.
Seven Counties allows agencies to analyze environmental impacts when those impacts are reasonably foreseeable, although the Court did limit what agencies are required to review.
But the underlying bill and this amendment do something entirely different.
They strip agencies of their discretion to consider a broad range of environmental impacts.
This could have far-reaching consequences for communities, the environment, and public health, even when the science is clear and the consequences are very real.
So the bill would prevent agencies from examining the harms that communities across the country are living with right now.
A perfect example is Louisiana's Cancer Alley, where predominantly black neighborhoods face some of the highest pollution-related cancer risks in the nation.
And those risks come from cumulative emissions, from many facilities that have been built over decades, and impacts that are well documented and directly tied to federal permitting decisions.
Under this bill, agencies would largely be prohibited from considering any cumulative effects, anything that worsens that pre-existing problem.
That's not streamlining.
That is telling federal agencies to look the other way in the face of obvious foreseeable harm.
NEPA's strength has always been its requirement that agencies take a hard look at the real-world consequences of their actions.
That is how agencies avoid unintended harm.
It's how the public stays informed, and it's how federal decisions remain accountable and transparent.
The language in this bill dismantles that approach.
And this amendment takes it even further by continuing to strip away what courts have left in terms of discretion for agencies to consider.
This will result in more harm to many American communities, including some of our most vulnerable communities that are already overburdened with pollution.
I oppose the amendment and reserve the balance of my time.
unidentified
The gentleman reserves.
The gentleman from Texas is recognized.
I thank the chair.
This amendment would insert federal agencies may consider only those effects over which the lead agency or cooperating federal agencies have jurisdiction by law and share a reasonably close causal relationship to and are approximately caused by the immediate project or action under consideration.
There shouldn't be anything objectionable in that common sense application, that common sense phrasing.
It is a common sense change that strengthens the bill by narrowing the scope of NEPA by impacts that federal agencies have the legal authority to regulate.
It's pretty simple.
It avoids time-consuming review of impacts from paleontology to traffic patterns that agencies cannot even control.
By ensuring that the scope of review is conducted within the sole legal purview of each federal agency, we can drastically improve the current landscape of drawn-out ineffective permitting.
I think common sense is that if an agency is proposing or is considering a project that would be the tipping point for a community that's already overburdened by pollution that would dramatically increase a problem like Cancer Alley in Louisiana, they ought to be able to consider those cumulative impacts.
I would call that common sense, and with that, I reserve.
unidentified
The gentleman reserves, the gentleman from Texas is recognized.
The goal of this amendment is in keeping with the unanimous Supreme Court decision in which the court jumped in and reversed the DC circuit, and the D.C. circuit had said, well, we're not going to allow this to proceed despite, you know, you have this 3,600-page report, environmental impact statement, gone through public comment, et cetera.
Everything had been approved.
And then the D.C.'s Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated that approval, finding that the environmental review overlooked a various number of impacts.
And the Supreme Court came in and said, no, let's reverse that.
You've gone through the process, and what we're trying to do is codify that which would enable us to avoid the kinds of delays that have been hampering our ability to have energy projects.
There's a reason everybody's utility bills are up, energy costs are high.
It's because we constrained the ability of our states, our communities, businesses to be able to create and provide the ability for us to have power without getting hamstrung into decades-long disputes and fights going through all of the back channels of a maze of bureaucracy.
This is a simple common sense amendment to try to streamline that.
Mr. Chairman, if this amendment is simply about codifying the Supreme Court's decision, why doesn't it say what the Supreme Court said?
The Supreme Court said that agencies would be able to have discretion to consider cumulative impacts, traffic patterns, and other things in circumstances where those were very compelling factors.
And this amendment says, no, you can't consider any of that.
So let's not kid ourselves.
This is not codifying the Supreme Court's decision.
This is taking it much, much further.
I reserve.
unidentified
The gentleman reserves, the gentleman from Texas is recognized.
Of course they maintain discretion.
Agencies will have full discretion if we adopt this language, but discretion to consider the effects over which that agency or the cooperating federal agencies have jurisdiction.
That's it.
What we're saying is we shouldn't have courts making stuff up and we shouldn't have agencies making stuff up.
That's all we're trying to say.
Let's get everybody in their lanes.
Let's get the agencies in their lanes and then let's allow the American people to do what they do best.
Amendment number six, printed in House Report number 119-410.
unidentified
Offered by Mr. Roy of Texas.
Pursuant to House Resolution 951, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Roy, and the member opposed will each control five minutes.
The chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas.
Thank you, Chair.
My amendment shores up and strengthens the definition of what triggers an environmental impact statement.
I offer this amendment to further improve the bill and prevent agencies from keeping projects in permitting limbo.
I mean, again, the driving force here is to try to free up the American people and free up free enterprise to be able to produce adequate and abundant energy for the American people, to be able to produce and create and develop projects that create and provide jobs, and to be able to make sure the American people can prosper without being hamstrung by the bureaucracy of a federal government that has been limiting our ability to keep up and produce.
While the base text of the bill makes a great effort to reduce the length of NEPA review by placing caps on all parts of the process, further defining what constitutes a significant effect that triggers an environmental impact statement will make the bill stronger.
Performing an environmental impact statement is the lengthiest and most expensive part of the permitting process.
The Government Accountability Office estimates the lengthy EIS process costs between $250,000 and $2 million every time there's a project.
My amendment inserts common sense language that requires at least one significant effect be triggered before an agency subjects a project to the lengthy EIS process.
Specifically, my amendment defines a significant effect as having, quote, a proximate and concrete harm that is directly caused by the proposed agency action and that materially impairs human health or property.
End quote.
By adopting this amendment, House Republicans can actually demonstrate their promise to get Washington's bureaucracies out of the way of progress and fulfill, I think, the great intent of this legislation that the chairman has put together and my colleagues on the committee have brought to the floor.
And with that, I reserve.
The gentleman from Texas reserves.
For what purpose does the gentleman from California seek recognition?
It is one more attempt to restrict what the government can consider in an environmental review and to turn NEPA into nothing more than a box-checking exercise.
You get all of the bureaucracy, but none of the benefits under this approach.
The amendment would add a narrow definition of significant effects on the human environment in order to limit which projects get a closer look under NEPA.
And it's important to recognize that we already have a high standard for which projects get that closer look.
Only proposed actions that are anticipated to have a significant effect on the environment undergo an environmental impact statement or EIS, which is the most thorough form of NEPA review.
Agencies don't do EISs willy-nilly.
Only about 1% of all projects go through this project, this process.
And these are the types of large-scale, complex projects that can have serious, long-lasting impacts on the environment.
Things like mines that remove entire mountaintops, things like the construction of a new nuclear power plant, exactly the type of things that should get close scrutiny and that the public deserves to have a chance to weigh in on.
This amendment redefines significant effect on the environment to mean only concrete harms that are directly caused by the proposed agency action and materially impair human health or property.
That is a drastic narrowing of how we think about the impacts of federal actions.
And to use a public lands example, I will just quote from the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976.
It says, quote, the policy of the United States is to manage public lands in a manner that will protect the quality of scientific, scenic, historic, ecological, environmental, air, and atmospheric water resources and archaeological values.
Now, the courts have backed up this spectrum of values for decades.
The Supreme Court has held that NEPA should analyze a broad range of harms, including recreational and aesthetic enjoyment of the environment.
Who here really thinks that there's no significant effect on the environment of a proposed refinery that would only light up a protected dark sky all night, every night, next to a neighborhood?
Or is there really no significant effect on the environment if a pipeline would disrupt big game migrations that hunters depend on to feed their families?
And of course, this definition means no amount of climate-changing emissions that could be considered to have a significant effect on the environment would ever be considered.
The American people deserve the full picture of a proposed action and its significant effects on the environment.
This amendment puts the blinders on, even more than the underlying bill, which already goes too far in that direction.
I urge a no on the amendment and reserve.
unidentified
The gentleman from California Reserves, the gentleman from Texas is recognized.
I thank the Chair.
And the reason we're here, the reason that we have this legislation on the floor is that NEPA is egregiously broken.
Speed, which has been brought to the floor by the Chairman, places common sense caps on how long an EIS can take.
And this amendment goes further to restrict what triggers this lengthy, onerous process.
Under the current runaway practice, NEPA reviews delay reliable energy projects by 3.9 years.
Think about that.
You want to know why we have a difficulty in getting affordable energy?
All of these reviews, all of this cumbersome process has delayed the ability for people to come together and produce energy for themselves.
The energy that allows us to be in a heated facility and lit and living and have the benefits of modern life and have hospitals powered and have cars that function and homes that are heated and cooled.
And you add this four-year lengthy edition with an EIS and environmental impact statement, and you make it more difficult.
America must be able to get energy projects up and running and on the grid if we're going to compete on the global stage and be able to continue to live the benefits of modern life.
This amendment addresses the most onerous part of the currently bloated NEPA process.
I reserve.
The gentleman from Texas Reserves, the gentleman from California is recognized.
Mr. Chairman, we have a major disagreement on what common sense means in this Congress.
To me, and I think really to most Americans, it's just common sense that you have a project that would destroy hunting access to some vital part of our public lands that generations have depended on.
If you have a project that would cause a sacred tribal site to no longer be enjoyed by folks who've depended on it for millennia, that that should undergo an environmental review.
That seems like common sense to most people, but in this strange Congress, I guess common sense means just do those projects anyway and don't even consider alternatives, don't even consider the impacts.
That's why I oppose this amendment and reserve.
unidentified
The gentleman reserves, the gentleman from Texas is recognized.
Well, I'll remind my colleagues that what this amendment does is defines a significant effect as having, quote, a proximate and concrete harm that is directly caused by the proposed agency action and that materially impairs human health or property.
I'm going to take 30 seconds, a point of personal privilege here, to respond to something that the gentleman alluded to earlier in another exchange with another member talking about so-called frivolous litigation by our current president.
I find it absolutely extraordinary that in the same week that we found out that the FBI literally told higher-ups at the Department of Justice and the White House that there was not probable cause to engage in a raid at Mar-a-Lago on the former President of the United States,
that we are somehow going to enter that fray and not acknowledge the extent to which the abuse of power, the abuse of authority by the Biden administration and by his Department of Justice was extraordinary, historic, corrupt, and worthy of note.
And that if my colleagues want to venture into a debate about lawfare, we will be happy to talk about the Manhattan DA.
We will be happy to talk about Arctic frosts, not because we're happy that they occurred, because the American people are offended at the assault on President Trump, on the members of this body, and on the people of the United States.
I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back.
The question is on the motion that the committee rise.
All those in favor say aye.
All those opposed say no.
The ayes have it, and the motion is adopted.
Accordingly, the committee rises.
Thanks.
Mr. Chairman, read the statement.
Read the card.
Mr. Chairman.
Sorry, Reggie.
Mr. Speaker, the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union, having had under consideration H.R. 4776, directs me to report that it has come to no resolution thereon.
The Chair of the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union reports that the Committee has had under consideration H.R. 4776 and has come to no resolution thereon.
What purpose does the gentleman from Arkansas seek recognition?
Union calendar number 336, H.R. 1366, a bill to provide for the location of multiple hard rock mining mill sites to establish the abandoned hard rock mine fund and for other purposes.
unidentified
Pursuant to House Resolution 951, the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Natural Resources, printed in the bill, is adopted and the bill, as amended, is considered red.
The bill, as amended, shall be debatable for one hour, equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Natural Resources or their respective designees.
The gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Westerman, and the gentleman from California, Mr. Huffman, each will control 30 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all members be given five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 1366.
I rise today in support of H.R. 1366 to restore clarity and stability to mining operations and support reclamation of abandoned hard rock mine lands.
First, I would like to thank my colleague from Nevada, Representative Amade, for his work on this bipartisan legislation.
In 2022, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals revoked an approved mine plan of operation for the Rosemont Copper Mine in Arizona.
The ruling, known as the Rosemont Decision, limited the Forest Service's ability to approve support activities necessary for conducting mining operations on Federal land.
This decision upended over 40 years of regulatory and legal precedent.
Before developing a mine on Federal lands, an operator must obtain a mine plan of operations from the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management.
This plan must detail the intended uses of the surface of the mining claim, including waste rock placement, mills, offices, and roads.
Under the Rosemont decision, however, operators must prove the existence of a commercially developable deposit on a claim before a plan of operations can be approved.
This obvious problem is that the economic viability of a site cannot be determined until after the mine plan of operations is approved by the Federal Government.
The ramifications of the Ninth Circuit's decision are substantial.
Although the Rosemont decision involved Forest Service lands, it has prompted multiple lawsuits targeting projects on BLM lands based on similar regulations.
If allowed to stand, the Rosemont decision will thwart hard rock mining projects across Federal lands, further jeopardizing domestic mineral supply chains, energy security, and national security.
Mr. Amadei's bill provides needed regulatory clarity by creating a new category of mill sites for activities ancillary to mining that operators can include within the boundaries of an approved plan of operations.
The legislation also creates an abandoned hard rock mine fund to support the reclamation program by using claim maintenance fees to inventory, assess, and remediate abandoned hard rock mines.
Simply put, our reliance on foreign critical minerals is one of the greatest strategic vulnerabilities facing our nation today.
America has been truly blessed with vast natural resources.
This bill will create the regulatory clarity and stability that companies need to attract investment and responsibly develop these resources.
With mineral demand expected to grow exponentially in the coming decades, Congress must safeguard and defend the country's ability to access its own resources.
Again, I applaud my colleague Mr. Amade for this common sense but urgently needed bill.
I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.
unidentified
The Gentleman Reserves, the gentleman from California is recognized.
So I want to remind everyone that we are at the end of this year.
We are running out of time to fix the health care crisis that Republicans have created.
Christmas break is right around the corner, and hardworking Americans are struggling.
They are being crushed under the weight of rising costs.
And what do our Republican friends have us voting on?
Well, the next bill that we have up today, H.R. 1366, the so-called Mining Regulatory Clarity Act, is just a gift for folks who really ought to be on the naughty list this time of year, foreign mining companies.
I strongly oppose this bill.
According to its sponsors, it is a legislative fix to the Rosemont Court decision, a court case that determined that a mining company was not allowed to dump its toxic mine waste on public lands based on an invalid mining claim.
You see, for years, mining companies were allowed to dump their waste wherever they wanted without paying fair market value for that land, without public land managers having any real option to say no, regardless of which precious public lands might be destroyed forever.
But in the Rosemont decision, the court held that under current law, a mining claim is only valid when it actually contains valuable minerals.
That makes sense.
That's common sense if we want some common sense.
But the mining industry didn't like that.
They were not happy that they could no longer dump their toxic waste on phony, invalid claims anymore.
And so here we are today passing a so-called fix for the industry.
Now let's remember that enormous benefit is stacked on another one.
Mining companies don't pay back the American people a cent in royalties for the minerals that belong to the people of the United States.
The Antiquated Mining Act of 1872 essentially gives away America's valuable mineral resources for free, often to foreign-owned mining companies, even companies controlled by our adversaries.
Even so, the industry calls the Rosemont decision an existential threat.
Give me a break.
You know what happened to the Rosemont mine after that court decision came down?
The next day, the company paid for private lands for its waste disposal.
Zero problem.
The mine wasn't stopped.
It's just the industry would prefer to use the public lands, your lands, and to be able to dump for free.
Industry argues that this bill would provide certainty and clarity for mining and exploration.
In practice, this fix would just allow mining companies to use a different type of claim called a mill site for unlimited mine waste dumping.
They could use it for pipelines and processing whatever else they would like again at cut rate prices.
And for the record, I have found no evidence that any mines are currently being held up because of the Rosemont decision.
Anywhere in America, this is a solution in search of a problem.
Time and time again, Democrats have raised legitimate concerns with this legislation, and we've offered good faith amendments to address those concerns.
I offered an amendment to strike the broad definition of operations in the bill, which effectively means that mining operations don't need a mining claim at all.
Representative Susie Lee of Nevada offered an amendment to clarify that mining companies should only use the public lands that are actually necessary for their operations, and that to make clear that nothing in the bill limits the rights to regulate mining and related activities on federal lands.
Representative Ledger Fernandez offered an amendment to exempt companies that are owned and controlled by our adversaries from these incredible benefits under this bill.
All of these amendments were very straightforward.
None of the issues raised should be a surprise to the majority.
They have had time to work with us, but they chose not to.
They rejected all of these amendments.
I guess they would rather let foreign mining companies, controlled by our adversaries, pillage our public lands for cheap or even for free.
Noted.
Again, I strongly oppose this legislation and reserve the balance of time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield five minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota, the Subcommittee Chair on Energy and Mineral Resources of the Natural Resources Committee, Mr. Stauber.
unidentified
The gentleman is recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1366, the bipartisan bicameral Mining Regulatory Clarity Act offered by my good friend from Nevada, Representative Amade.
The bill before us is simple.
It restores long-standing interpretation of agency regulations governing hard rock mining policy on federal lands that were upended by the courts in May of 2022 in what is known as the Rosemont decision.
At the time, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a decision that upended decades of settle law when it affirmed a lower court's decision revoking an approved mine plan for the Rosemont copper mining project.
The decision limited the ability of the Forest Service to approve necessary mining support facilities and activity known as ancillary uses, which are necessary to conduct mining operations.
This decision from the Ninth Circuit puts virtually every new domestic mining project on federal lands in jeopardy.
This decision from the Ninth Circuit puts us at odds with what we need to succeed in a 21st century economy, based on anticipated increases in demand for metals and minerals for everything from energy and infrastructure to manufacturing and national security needs.
We require new domestic mining operations to provide essential mineral supply chains.
During the previous administration, the Department of the Interior issued an opinion that provided a temporary fix, known as the Rosemont fix.
This provides a path forward for mining projects, but it can be reversed with the stroke of a pen.
Domestic mining projects are multi-decade investments.
Mining companies that invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a project require regulatory certainty and clarity.
Mr. Speaker, considering this, why would a mining company invest here in the United States without this certainty?
They will actually be able to develop a project.
That's why the bicameral, bipartisan Mining Regulatory Clarity Act is necessary.
The only way to fix the 2022 court decision is to codify the fix in law.
This legislation, contrary to what some of my colleagues argue, doesn't create new domestic mining policy.
It simply builds regulatory certainty and reinstates the long-standing interpretation of the mining law and the agency regulations that will allow the land before being misinterpreted by the courts.
Mr. Speaker, if we can't mine these minerals domestically, thanks in part to the Rosemont decision blocking new domestic mines, where do the opponents of this bipartisan bill expect needed minerals to come from?
The only answer I can think of is from China.
Continued lack of clarity resulting from the court's decision is not a benefit to the American people, but a benefit to the Chinese Communist Party.
The answer is clear.
You can either support domestic mining with the strictest environmental and labor standards here in the United States of America, or you can continue to export your environmental guilt and support importing minerals from countries that have zero environmental standards and utilize child and forced labor, forced slave labor, to mine these minerals.
I urge my colleague to support the bill.
And, you know, when we talk about domestic mining, we are richly blessed, Mr. Speaker.
The good Lord has blessed this country with the natural resources that we need for our everyday lives.
I want the American industry, the American workers, the American communities to be able to mine these minerals that we are richly blessed with.
I do not want another Biden administration supporting memorandums of understanding with third world countries to get these minerals and then import them to the United States so we can put them in our technology, our vehicles, our phones, our cell phones, our computers, our medical instrument that we manufacture.
I would much rather mine these critical minerals here under our environmental and our labor standards.
We can lead the world.
And by the way, Mr. Speaker, we also need to process these here in the United States.
And that's why our permitting reform is so important.
This can be a win-win.
And my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, as long as we don't mine here, as long as we put up every single roadblock, they're happy.
They'll sit in this House of Representatives and say we support mining so long as it never happens, so long as the bureaucratic nightmare, the blue tape continues where we can't mine here.
Enough is enough.
The American people have seen enough.
And we're going to mine not only in Minnesota, we're going to mine in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyami, Nevada, California, Arizona, Washington.
I thank my friend from Minnesota for listing all of those states and places because it is important for the American people to know that if this becomes law, a free toxic dump site on your public lands is on its way in all of those places.
That's what this is about.
One of the cynical euphemisms we keep hearing is regulatory certainty.
So let's talk about what that really means.
Mining permitting has continued after the Rosemont decision.
The Rosemont mine itself proceeded.
It wasn't impacted.
There is no legislative fix needed to this fake problem.
This bill would codify only the most industry-friendly interpretations of the mining law and introduce additional uncertainty around the government's ability to enact basic common sense regulations on mining on public lands.
To expand on that, the bill's current definition says that mining operations include, and I quote, all functions, work, facilities, and activities in connection with the prospecting, development, extraction,
and processing of mineral deposits and all uses reasonably incident to, including the construction and maintenance of means of access, whether the operations take place on or off the claim.
This is sweeping.
Effectively, this means that mining operations don't need a mining claim at all to conduct operations on your public lands.
And while this definition is currently in regulation, the Interior Department and the leading public land law treatis have found that off-site mining activities do not currently get the same rights and priority use as mining claims.
So that is what is at stake in this legislation.
Permanently codifying this into law would further put mining over other uses of our public lands, doing an end run around the multiple use balancing requirements that are foundational to public land management.
While our land managers have limited discretion right now to deny a mine on public lands, they do at least have some authority over their roads, pipelines, and toxic waste dumping.
That would all be taken away by this legislation.
This is not regulatory clarity.
It is regulatory charity to an industry that has already gotten 150 years of giveaway.
I urge my colleagues to vote no and reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to enter a letter of opposition into the record from 189 organizations, tribes, companies, and local elected officials.
The signers of this letter express their strong opposition to this bill.
Specifically, they argue that it would weaken the already outdated 1872 mining law and give the mining industry even more control over our public lands.
They note that mining in the United States is already governed under a law that is 150 years old, enacted under President Ulysses S. Grant.
These organizations, tribes, and leaders remind us that the 1872 law has no environmental guardrails, that the mining industry is already the only industry that doesn't have to pay any royalty when it extracts our minerals on public lands, and that 40 percent of headwaters and 50 percent of lakes have been polluted by mining activity.
They also raise specific concerns within the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act.
First, the bill would allow multinational companies to claim an indefinite number of mill sites to permanently dump toxic waste on our public lands for free.
Second, it could block renewable energy development, recreation, other uses of our public lands by allowing mining companies to build roads, pipelines, and other infrastructure by right and without any permits as long as they are connected to a plan of operations.
And finally, the bill could be read to eliminate the requirement that mining companies prove that there are even some valuable minerals to validate their claims on the vast majority of our public lands.
The letter urges us to enact real reforms to the 1872 mining law that would improve environmental safeguards for communities, ecosystems impacted by mining, give federal land managers a say in deciding where mining is and is not appropriate, and close loopholes that allow foreign companies to exploit our public lands.
And on that latter point, I would like to yield three minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico who has shown great leadership on this seemingly common sense need to put some guardrails in place to make sure that foreign-owned mining companies, including those owned and controlled by our adversaries, don't have the benefit of all these lavish giveaways.
I yield the gentlelady three minutes.
unidentified
The gentlelady from New Mexico is recognized for three minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you.
Mr. Speaker, mining corporations, including foreign-owned, pay nothing in royalties when they take our publicly owned minerals on our federal lands.
The American people get not zero for our copper or gold or critical minerals.
H.R. 1366, the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act, is yet another giveaway to big mining companies by making it easier for them to dump their waste on more of our public lands.
At the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to committee.
If the House rules permitted, I would have offered the motion with an amendment to prevent mining projects from qualifying for the expanded public lands access if the project is owned or operated by a foreign entity of concern like China or one of its subsidiaries.
unidentified
Why should we let the Chinese Communist Party take advantage of the copper, gold, and critical minerals on our federal land?
Chairman Mullinar of the Select Committee on the Communist Chinese Party offered a similar amendment to the Rules Committee last Congress on the same bill.
Republicans refused to make it an order.
I don't know why Republicans are afraid to limit China's access to America's critical minerals.
unidentified
If we're not going to make international mining companies pay for our precious minerals they take from us, the least we could do is to stop foreign adversaries like China from dumping mine waste on our public land.
We should not treat our public land like a big trash pile available to international mining corporations.
Republicans should focus on making life more affordable for Americans, not giving away more land, not making those big international companies even richer.
Focus on bringing down the cost for Americans, not giving the big giveaway to the big corporations.
I asked unanimous consent to insert into the record the text of this amendment.
Without objection, I hope my colleagues will join me in voting for the motion to recommit and to stop letting China and its adversaries use our public lands like their big trash dump.
This bill is another unnecessary giveaway to the mining industry.
It lets literally anyone, including foreign mining companies controlled by our adversaries, claim as much of our nation's public land as they want for next to nothing and then extract our publicly owned minerals without paying a cent in royalties back to the American people and then permanently bury public lands in toxic mining waste.
Our mining laws need reform.
They don't need this.
With bipartisan interest in securing our critical mineral supply chain, we actually do have an opportunity to create modern mineral policies that would empower American innovators to recover the minerals we need while honoring Indigenous sovereignty, protecting the environment, making sure American workers and communities share in the benefits, and also American taxpayers.
But instead, the majority is doubling down on the extraction above all land grab from the gold rush back when we codified this 1872 mining law.
They refused to engage with Democrats to include even common sense safeguards against letting foreign adversaries take our public minerals for free.
They refused to limit the industry's waste dump mill sites to only the public lands necessary for their operations.
And ominously, they refused to clarify that this bill does not affect the federal government's ability to regulate mining on public lands, which the unnecessary savings clause in this bill calls into question.
It bears repeating, the mining industry already has a sweetheart deal on our public lands.
We are the only industrialized nation that lets anyone claim whatever they want on public lands and extract public minerals for free.
This bill is no minor technical fix to overturn a court decision.
It's a massive giveaway of public lands to an industry afraid that one of those many giveaways that they've had for all of this time was about to be challenged.
Mr. Speaker, let's talk about some of the issues that were just brought up.
First, the foreign entity of concern restrictions.
Now, I agree, and I think everybody would agree, that we should scrutinize foreign direct investment to ensure that it does not pose a threat to the United States.
We have programs to do that, programs that possibly should be strengthened.
But imposing arbitrary standards could prevent publicly traded non-Chinese companies from mining domestically.
Doing what?
It would force a continued reliance on China.
We all know that China is already doing whatever they can to prevent us from building out secure domestic supplies of critical minerals.
The CCP has repeatedly used its dominant market position to strategically flood markets and make U.S. projects uneconomic.
When they see a project announced in the United States, they dump product on the global market, lowering the prices and making our mining operations uneconomic to investors.
If we create an arbitrary standard, they'll continue to play even more dirty.
The CCP will simply buy shares of publicly traded companies to disqualify the companies from mining on federal lands.
We're being naive if we think that China won't use any tool and loophole at their disposal to stop mining in the U.S. In any event, this bill is about regulatory certainty so that we can start mining again in America.
Now, I've already mentioned this, but we are blessed with resources here in America.
And we have a lot of those resources are on federal lands.
And this issue has come up about royalties.
It continually comes up, and people say this bill would allow mining companies to extract valuable public assets without paying any royalties to Americans.
I want to remind everybody of something.
U.S. mining companies already pay between 40 and 50 percent of earnings in federal, state, and local taxes and other fees.
These taxes are vital to funding school systems, roads, and other infrastructure projects, especially in rural communities.
And now, thanks to the Rosemont decision, on top of paying those taxes, companies must pay millions more dollars in litigation.
Developers would be required to pay fees for any mill sites established under this bill.
These fees would go towards remediating abandoned hard rock mine lands, something that my Democrat colleagues have repeatedly pushed for.
If we want to encourage investment in safe, responsible, and cutting-edge mining practices that provide billions to the public's coffers and essential materials to the American people, then we need to support H.R. 1366.
I also want to call attention to a letter we received signed by 28 organizations from A to Z, literally from A to Z, starting with A, the Alaska Miners Association, the American Critical Minerals Association, American Exploration and Mining Association, Bipartisan Policy Center Action, Battery Materials and Technology Coalition, Colorado Mining Association, National Mining Association, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Women's Mining Coalition, Wyoming Mining Association,
and to round it out with Z, the Zero Emission Transportation Association.
These organizations stress the importance of Congress enacting this bipartisan legislation, and they stated, and I quote, this legislation will ensure the U.S. can utilize its vast domestic resources to build essential mineral supply chains.
Your efforts to enhance mineral supply chain security while upholding our leading safety and environmental standards are crucial.
The passage of H.R. 1366 will support the trajectory of innovation in the U.S. and maintain the nation's economic leadership.
End quote.
Mr. Speaker, this bill is common sense, supporting American industries that are working to bolster our domestic mineral supplies.
I also want to draw attention to a letter we received from Nevada Democratic Governor Joe Lombardo in support of the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act.
And his letter states, Advancement of this bipartisan bicameral legislation is indispensable to the long-term economic resilience of our rural communities and Nevada's ability to help achieve domestic mineral security.
Again, this bill is common sense.
It's bipartisan.
It's bicameral.
It supports a key industry for states like Nevada, and it should be strongly bipartisan.
When we look at the abundant minerals that we're blessed with across the United States, I think of the claim that our colleague Mr. Begits from Alaska also says when he talks about the Ambler Road District.
And of 50 things listed on the U.S. critical minerals list, he says that in the Ambler District, 49 of those exist in abundant capacity to develop and process and mine, yet we're yet to be able to get a road into this area to process these materials.
When I look at my home state of Arkansas, we have the largest deposit of lithium possibly in the world.
At least 15% of the world's lithium is in brown water on public land in the great state of Arkansas.
We have all these minerals available all across the country, but according to the 2025 mineral commodity summary from the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. is 100% dependent on imports for 14 critical minerals, many from China and Russia.
Mr. Speaker, I've met with the Navajo Nation.
They've got abundant deposits of uranium that they could recover from former mining operations.
We are so dependent on uranium imports.
The last number I saw, we produce only one half of 1% of the uranium we use for fuel in U.S. reactors.
These are the kinds of minerals that we're dependent on foreign actors for.
If you support growing our domestic supplies of critical minerals, this bill provides the regulatory certainty necessary to strengthen domestic mineral supply chains.
If you support weakening China's global control over minerals, join us in voting for Mining Regulatory Clarity Act.
And let's talk a little bit more about China.
We need to do not only more mining here in America, we need to do more processing and refining in the U.S. to meet our energy infrastructure and national security and defense needs.
The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act will help strengthen domestic mineral supply chains.
I have a chart here that shows where we're at with China on rare earth and their monopoly.
My colleague mentioned child slave labor being used to extract cobalt in Africa.
It's atrocious where they go and mine these materials and the lack of standards that they have, both environmental, human health, human safety, and human rights that are violated in the mining.
They take that back to China and they process 90% of it in China.
This is all of the world's critical minerals.
And then they manufacture 93% of the things that are manufactured with critical minerals.
If you want to help China maintain their stranglehold over our critical mineral supply chains, then you should oppose this bill.
Look no further than the chart behind me, and you will see that we can't continue to allow China to continue to have the monopoly and the stranglehold on our economy and on our defense that they currently have through the critical mineral supply chain.
I encourage my colleagues to support this bill.
I again appreciate my colleague, Mr. Amade from Nevada, for bringing it to the floor, and I yield back the balance of my time.
unidentified
The gentleman yields.
All time for debate has expired.
Pursuant to House Resolution 951, the previous question is ordered on the bill as amended.
The question is on engrossment and third reading of the bill.
Union calendar number 285, H.R. 845, a bill to require the Secretary of the Interior to reissue regulations removing the gray wolf from the list of endangered and threatened wildlife under the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
unidentified
Pursuant to House Resolution 951, the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Natural Resources printed in the bill is adopted and the bill, as amended, is considered read.
The bill, as amended, shall be debatable for one hour, equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Natural Resources or their respective designee.
The gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Westerman, and the gentlewoman from Oregon, Ms. Hoyle, will each control 30 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all members have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 845.
Mr. Speaker, as we're getting close to breaking for the Christmas holiday, I'm glad that this last bill the Natural Resources Committee will offer is one that we will have a debate on that resolves an issue that has united the Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump administrations alike.
Not sure there's another issue like that out there, but this is one of them.
Because each of those administrations has agreed that the gray wolf is a recovered species and should be removed from the Endangered Species Act or ESA protection.
H.R. 845, the Pet and Livestock Protection Act sponsored by Representatives Boebert and Tiffany, instructs the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reissue its 2020 final rule that delisted the gray wolf from the list of threatened and endangered species in the entire lower 48 states.
Recovery of the gray wolf is a true ESA success story, and there aren't a lot of them.
In the 1970s, the species was at risk in the lower 48 states.
Today, the gray wolf numbers in the thousands across the Great Lakes and Rocky Mountains, with each of these populations being connected to tens of thousands of wolves in Canada.
The first Trump administration recognized this successful recovery and issued a delisting rule for gray wolves in the lower 48 states.
Unfortunately, this rule was vacated by a federal judge in California in a blatant instance of judicial activism.
But don't just take my word for it.
The Biden administration appealed the California judges' vacature of the 2020 Trump rule, arguing, and I quote, the district court misunderstood the ESA's clear mandate and compounded that error by imposing its own review of the science, end quote.
By every sensible definition, the gray wolf is a recovered species and that recovery should be celebrated as a success of the ESA.
Gray wolf populations are healthy and thriving in every region in which they are found.
The Great Lakes region has the largest concentration of gray wolves in the lower 48 states, with approximately 4,200 wolves inhabiting Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
Moreover, this population is connected to at least 12 to 14,000 wolves in central Canada.
The western United States is also home to roughly 2,500 wolves, including already delisted populations in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Wyoming.
This population is connected to over 15,000 wolves in Western Canada.
The Biden administration's own science determined that wolves in the western United States had a healthy abundance, retained genetic diversity, could respond to high mortality events, and maintained adaptive capacity.
Most of these wolves reside in states where they have already been delisted.
The science is clear.
Gray wolves have recovered in the lower 48 states, and it's time to return their management to the states which have managed and will continue to manage wolf populations responsibly.
I encourage my colleagues to support the bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.
unidentified
The gentleman reserves.
The gentlelady from Oregon is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We're here in D.C. during the final week before the holidays.
Families back home are struggling with the increasing costs of groceries, housing affordability, natural disaster recovery, and health care.
That's what we should be working on.
Instead, what has Republican leadership scheduled this week, a bill that's routinely used in Congress to kill time on the floor and that will go nowhere in the Senate?
H.R. 845, the Pet and Livestock Protection Act, would strip federal endangered species protection from gray wolves and block courts from reviewing that decision.
This bill would force the Interior Department to reissue a 2020 Trump rule to delist the gray wolves that was struck down by a federal court in 2022.
Why was it struck down?
Because a Republican-appointed judge found it failed to use the best available science, didn't consider threats to wolves outside core populations, and ignored the needs across their entire range, all in violation of the Endangered Species Act.
Instead of accepting that decision, this bill doubles down on bad science and even prevents courts from weighing in.
If you're sure wolves have recovered, then there's no need to block judicial review.
But that's not the case here.
Instead, my colleagues want to remove endangered species protections because of politics instead of science.
And that's not how the Endangered Species Act works.
Wolves are an Endangered Species Act success story.
Their population has increased from fewer than 1,000 animals to over 6,000 today, but recovery remains fragile and incomplete.
Wildlife management should be based on science and collaboration.
Our natural heritage and the health of our ecosystems are worth protecting for future generations.
I urge my colleagues to vote no on this bill, and I'm looking forward to hearing further discussions from my colleagues.
Mr. Speaker, I yield five minutes to the gentlewoman from Colorado, the lead sponsor of this legislation, Ms. Boebert.
unidentified
The gentlelady is recognized for five minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, Mr. Chairman, for helping lead on this issue.
I want to say thank you to my colleague, Representative Tom Tiffany, who has also been instrumental in this piece of legislation.
Mr. Speaker, Colorado is at the center of our nation for wolf battles.
That's why Congressman Tom Tiffany and I introduced H.R. 845, the Pet and Livestock Protection Act.
My bill delists the gray wolf from the federal endangered species list and returns the issue of wolf management to the states and tribal wildlife agencies.
This doesn't mean that wolves will not be managed.
It just means that the federal government will step aside and we will have proper state management.
I think we believe in federalism here in the 10th Amendment and trust our states to do the right thing.
Leftists want to eliminate hunting, lock up our lands, further restrict gun rights, and pander to the interests of extreme environmentalists who don't understand our rural way of life.
In 2020 in Colorado, Denver and Boulder voted to reintroduce gray wolves west of the Continental Divide.
This ballot box biology has led Colorado to rush through the importation of Canadian gray wolves and has set them loose in our state despite numerous protests and questions about the legality of this dysfunctional and chaotic approach, putting predators over people.
And these predators do not obey arbitrary boundaries.
Sure, Colorado may say they will be introduced west of the Continental Divide, but that doesn't keep them west, and that doesn't necessarily keep them in Colorado either, as we have seen.
Importing foreign predators into our state has received pushback from our tribes, energy operators, and our farmers and ranchers.
ESA restrictions prohibit ranchers and pet owners from protecting their livestock and pets as ranchers who shoot at, injure, or kill protected wolves stalking sheep or cattle face potential prosecution.
Unfortunately, wolves, again, don't see state lines.
They don't know the difference between state, federal, tribal, or private land.
It's in their nature to travel great distances in pursuit of prey, whether that's deer, elk, sheep, cattle, or even our pets.
And it's been well documented that wolves don't only hunt to satisfy their need, to satisfy their hunger.
They also hunt for sport.
In March of this year, one of the Canadian wolves attacked and killed a working cattle dog in Jackson County, Colorado, neighboring one of the counties that I represent in my district.
Last year, a gray wolf from the Great Lakes region was found over 1,000 miles away in Elbert County, east of the Continental Divide, in Colorado's 4th District, where I represent.
Colorado's agricultural producers have lost $580,000 in just one year from wolves already introduced.
We should listen to our farmers and ranchers and finally delist the gray wolf.
Gray wolves were first listed under the ESA in 1967.
That's 58 years ago.
Since then, delisting the gray wolves has been supported by the Obama, Trump, and even Biden administrations.
In November 2020, scientists and nonpartisan career employees at the Department of Interior once again found gray wolves were fully recovered and once again issued a rule that returned management of the gray wolf populations to state and tribal wildlife agencies, as it should be.
Unfortunately, frivolous litigation was filed by environmental extremists and an activist, California judge, pandered to them by vacating the 2020 rule and unilaterally relisting the gray wolf by judicial fiat.
Mr. Speaker, the science is crystal clear on this issue.
Gray wolves should no longer be on the endangered species list.
We can no longer put farmers, ranchers, and even our pets in harm's way by using taxpayer dollars to protect a species that has been fully recovered.
It's time for the federal government to get out of the way and allow the state and tribal wildlife agencies to manage this species.
Again, just as my colleague on the other side of the aisle agrees, this is an Endangered Species Act success story, and I urge support in my bill.
I yield.
The gentlelady yields.
The gentleman reserves.
The chair lays before the house the following enrolled bill.
Senate 1071, an act to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2026 for military activities of the Department of Defense for military construction and for defense activities of the Department of Energy to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year and for other purposes.
unidentified
The gentlelady from Oregon is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
When my colleagues say an activist judge overturned this, it was a Republican-appointed judge that found, again, that it failed to use the best available science.
I also want to say that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service just canceled the first ever nationwide gray wolf recovery plan, which was due this month.
This comprehensive science-based plan would have finally provided a holistic approach to wolf recovery with all stakeholders at the table.
This is a type of solution that the courts have been seeking after invalidating five of the six previous attempts to delist wolves.
Unfortunately, H.R. 845 is part of a pattern.
Instead of investing time and money into supporting proven paths of success, we're voting on far-reaching and unscientific proposals that don't actually solve the problem and won't make it into law.
H.R. 845 would also fragment and make wolf management harder.
So, with that, I would like to yield four minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan.
The gentlelady from Michigan is recognized for four minutes.
Today, we are witnessing an unprecedented extinction crisis with one million, one million species at risk of disappearing forever in coming decades.
As the co-chair of the Endangered Species Act, protecting our nation's wildlife is one of my top priorities.
I am deeply concerned that the provisions included in this bill will cause our country to backtrack on the progress we've made, and that's why I have to be opposed today to the bill on the floor, the so-called Pet and Livestock Protection Act.
There's been a lot of discussion about the gray wolf.
Well, let's talk about the delisting of the gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act.
While progress has been made in certain regions, the reality is clear: gray wolves have not yet achieved full recovery, and removing federal protections would be premature and dangerous.
unidentified
Today, wolves occupy only a fraction of their historic range.
Large areas of suitable habitat remain unoccupied, and many existing populations are small, isolated, and genetically vulnerable.
True recovery under the Endangered Species Act requires not just survival in a few regions, but long-term security across a significant portion of the species range.
We also know from experience what happens when protections are lifted too soon.
After previous delifting efforts, several states moved quickly to authorize aggressive hunting and trapping seasons.
And in some cases, wolf populations declined sharply within one single year.
These setbacks erase decades of conservation progress and create instability rather than sound wildlife management.
Gray wolves play a vital role in maintaining healthy ecosystems.
As apex predators, they help regulate prey populations, they reduce overgrazing, and promote the recovery of forests and watersheds.
These ecological benefits support biodiversity and contribute to healthier landscapes that benefit hunters, farmers, outdoor recreation, and rural communities alike.
Some argue that delisting is necessary to address conflicts with livestock and local communities.
But science tells a different story.
Broad lethal control does not reliably reduce livestock losses and can actually increase conflicts by disrupting PAC structure.
Non-lethal tools such as range riders, flag reap, improved husbandry practices, and fair compensation programs have proven to be far more effective and deserve continued investment.
The Endangered Species Act is one of the most successful conservation laws in our nation's history.
It sets clear science-based standards for recovery and requires that threats be adequately addressed before protections are removed.
Delisting gray wolves without enforceable science-based state management plans undermines both the intent of the law and public trust.
unidentified
And this decision is about more than one species.
It's about whether we let politics override science or whether we uphold our responsibility to protect wildlife for future generations.
Until gray wolves are truly recovered, connected across the range, and protected by durable management plans, federal protections must remain in place.
That's why attempts to delist the gray wolves through congressional action are opposed by scientists, conservation groups, and the majority of Americans across the political spectrum.
For these reasons, I urge my colleagues to oppose delisting and to stand with science, conservation, and the rule of law.
unidentified
The gentlelady's time has expired.
I yield back.
Thank you.
I reserve the balance of my time.
The gentlelady from Oregon Reserves, the gentleman from Arkansas is recognized.
Mr. Speaker, I want to state again, the gray wolf is an ESA recovery success story.
We should be celebrating this.
Now, while gray wolves might not currently occupy all of their historic range, they do not meet the criteria for listing under the ESA.
This was confirmed by the Biden administration as with previous administrations before.
Now, most species are not found throughout their historic range.
Elk and black bears, for example, are still absent from much of their historic range, but they are not listed under the ESA.
According to my colleague's argument, the wolf can't be recovered until it's back into its entire historic range.
Mr. Speaker, the northeast United States is part of the historic range of the gray wolf.
If what I'm hearing is correct, are we promoting restoring the wolf to the northeastern United States with the metropolitan and suburban areas where packs of wolves can range 100 miles a day?
Is that what we want to make the criteria before we say gray wolves are recovered?
The scientists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Biden administration, along with the ones in the Trump administration, the Obama administration, and the Bush administration, have said the gray wolf is recovered.
This is just another push to continue a top-down federal approach to wildlife management that does little to actually help wildlife.
Mr. Speaker, I yield three minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Tiffany.
unidentified
The gentleman from Wisconsin is recognized for three minutes.
I would like to suggest to the gentlelady from Michigan if she wants to do a ride along with me and deliver wolves to Madison, Wisconsin, part of their previous range, I would be happy to do that if she would join along in that process.
I just want to address one thing in regards to the gentlelady from Oregon.
We've got really good news, what she talked about in regards to inflation.
I urge her to watch CNN this morning with the inflation numbers that have come out that are the lowest since 2021.
Good news as we end 2025, and it is really good news as we go into 2026 that the Pet and Livestock Protection Act is going to pass out of the House of Representatives today.
Federal protections were established a couple decades ago, and there were hundreds of wolves in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan.
Now there are over 4,000 wolves.
Talk about inflation.
It has hit the wolf population.
Also, if you go back to 2015, 26 of the most eminent wildlife biologists in the upper Midwest urged these judges to delist the wolf, take them off the Endangered Species Act, because the wolf is recovered, as the data has shown.
Populations have been bouncing back and forth between being listed and delisted, and this bill provides a permanent solution, returning the population management back to the states.
As everyone in Wisconsin knows, this is something we've seen far too often.
Most recently, when the judge in Oakland, California vacated the 2020 delisting rule and unilaterally put it back on the ESA list by judicial fiat.
Wisconsinites know best when it comes to managing Wisconsin's wolf population, and it's long past time we empowered Wisconsinites to be able to manage the gray wolf population once again.
unidentified
The chairman handled it in a very positive manner.
This is a recovery success under the Endangered Species Act.
This is the graphic representation of what is happening, the carnage that is happening across our states in rural areas where pets and livestock are being slaughtered because the wolf is not being managed.
You talk to any sportsman and they will tell you the wolf belongs on the landscape.
But when you do not manage a wildlife population, this is what happens.
The slaughter continues of people's pets and livestock.
Gray wolf delisting has been supported by four presidents.
Even the Biden administration's Fish and Wildlife Service asked a federal appeals court last fall to reinstate the rule.
The gray wolf has been the latest recovery success with significant populations in the Rocky Mountains and western Great Lakes.
There's something else we should all remember.
When a species is removed from the ESA list, it's something we should celebrate.
From farmers to pet owners to sportsmen and women, delisting the great wolf is of paramount importance to rural America and maintain 30 seconds.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
In order to maintain our rural way of life, the wolf needs to be delisted.
It's past time to return management to the states.
This is a legislative fix we can do.
I urge my colleagues to vote yes.
I urge the United States Senate to pass this bill when it comes over to them, and I yield back.
unidentified
Reserve.
Gentleman from Arkansas, reserves, the gentlelady from Oregon is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I appreciate the words of my good friend from Wisconsin.
Invite him to come to my district, where the manufacturers of my district are paying more for goods that they have to import to build things in the U.S, and my farmers and wine producers and exporters are losing their markets so have less money to pay for the things where the prices have risen for their Thanksgiving, Christmas dinner and presents.
But you are welcome to come also.
You know the issue with HR 45 after the 2020 delisting.
In Wisconsin, 30 percent of its wolf population was killed in just four days.
Idaho passed a law allowing the killing of up to 90 percent of wolves, including the pups.
Montana removed wolf protections around Yellowstone, raising bag limits and expanded trapping, killing many of the beloved wolves that tourists travel from around the world to see.
And the ecological consequences matter.
Wolves are a keystone species critical to health of healthy ecosystems.
When reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995, they provided benefits throughout the entire ecosystem.
Wolves changed elk behavior, allowing willows and aspens to recover.
They brought back beaver, whose dams created habitats for fish, amphibians and birds.
One study found a 1500 percent increase in the willow growth, surpassing 82 percent of Tropic cascades.
In global analysis, and recently we've seen evidence that wolves are helping to protect deer and elk populations from the spread of chronic wasting disease, a horrifying neurological disease rampaging through the states and causing real problems for hunters.
State of Oregon has worked to lead the way in wolf recovery, but there's only so much we can do if neighboring wolf populations are wiped out.
We want to see recovery, get the environmental benefits and also make sure that our ranchers are compensated for any losses that occur.
And with that I would like to yield four minutes to the gentleman from Virginia, my good friend, representative Beyer.
The gentleman from Virginia is recognized for four minutes.
Mr speaker, thank you very much.
As co-chair of this House, Endangered Species Caucus, I rise today in strong opposition to Hr 845.
This bill, formerly called the Trust In Science Act, has gone under a rebrand, since the best available science contradicts this politically motivated bill.
I'm here to remind the American people of some key facts underlying this bill.
First, a small reminder, people are predators too.
In fact, we're the most successful apex predator of all time.
This has the deeply unpopular Project 2025's name all over this.
Look at page 534, part 3, section 16, where delisting the gray wolf is listed as the second highest priority for the Department OF Interior, just behind delisting the grizzly bear.
Despite the Trump administration's incompetence and chaos.
We have not forgotten about the direction coming from Project 2025 and the damage already done to our country.
Second, this bill fails to recognize the status of gray wolves today, taking us back to an outdated rulemaking that didn't hold up in court.
It's important to recognize state-by-state differences in wolf recovery, but also in state sanctioned predation.
What does the best available Available recovery science say today?
That's what we should be supporting.
Gray wolf recovery goals are outdated, and they need to be updated, and that's what we should be working on instead of this extinction effort.
And that's what this is: permission to once again reduce wolf populations to the lowest 48 to zero.
And we know that premature delisting hinders the ability of gray wolves to be delisted legitimately.
Today, wolves continue to face ongoing serious threats to their survival, including poaching, habitat loss, and a patch-work of inconsistent state mismanagement.
The protections of the ESA have allowed gray wolf populations across the country to stabilize and regain strength.
If delisted nationally, gray wolves will once again be hunted and trapped to the point of extinction.
If we actually wanted to trust the science, we see that the gray wolf has made progress in their recovery, but also that wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains are being killed in dramatic numbers, even the celebrated Yellowstone National Park's gray wolves.
The Biden administration recognized this and put forth a national wolf recovery plan that was supposed to be released last week on December 12th.
This highly anticipated plan would have developed a comprehensive nationwide recovery plan that would have engaged the public to help develop a unified recovery approach based on scientific evidence.
But unfortunately, the Trump administration hastily announced its cancellation last November.
By the way, the only reason Canadian wolves were necessary because we had killed every last lower 48 wolf.
And finally, I have to address the spurious argument that protecting pets and livestock somehow is ample justification for delisting the wolves.
In Montana, Mr. Speaker, fewer than 60 livestock out of almost 3 million are killed every year by wolves.
That's a loss of one loss for every 50,000 cows or sheep.
That is a very tiny loss ratio compared to deaths by accident, lightning, freezing temperature, and all the other natural hazards that come from living outside 365 days a year.
Not to mention that most of these animals are being raised to be slaughtered.
The numbers don't look much different in Wyoming or Idaho.
And ranchers are compensated very generously for losses related to wolves, always more than market value, sometimes three times the value of the animal lost.
Mr. Speaker, State Farm reported that 93,000 dogs, not five or ten, 93,000 were hit by cars in 2022, yet no one has suggested banishing automobiles.
I love dogs.
Most of us do.
We know how smart and complicated and ferociously loyal they are.
They are just wolves we have tamed.
And there is abundant evidence that wolf families are more like human families than any other species.
Wolves and men have evolved together over the millennia.
One reason wolves show up in all our most important stories, poems, and songs.
When we kill all the wolves, we kill something in our own humanity.
When we deny our connection to nature and to what is beautiful and glorious.
How can we proclaim the wonder of existence, the generosity of a loving God, and then hate the charismatic creatures he has also given to this world?
I urge my colleagues to kill this bill.
Thank you.
The gentlelady from Oregon Reserves, the gentleman from Arkansas, is recognized.
Mr. Speaker, the whole state of Virginia was at one time a gray wolf habitat.
Washington, D.C. had gray wolves.
When are we going to turn them loose here on the mall or in Old Town or whatever part of Virginia?
This is a problem that seems to get exported to rural areas and people turn a blind eye to what happens in the rural areas.
Also, there is a difference between desiring fewer wolves and desiring no wolves.
States where wolves have already been delisted have a proven track record of success, which has been confirmed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
This bill does not prohibit the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from listing the wolf in the future if it determines a listing is warranted.
However, as the service has confirmed multiple times, the gray wolf currently does not meet those criteria.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield four minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Stauber.
unidentified
The gentleman is recognized for four minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As a member of the newly formed Follow the Science Caucus, I rise today in strong support of a bill I am proud to co-sponsor, H.R. 845, the Pet and Livestock Protection Act.
It's been proven time and time again that the gray wolf is not endangered and in fact has fully recovered.
When the gray wolf was listed as threatened in Minnesota under the Endangered Species Act in 1978, a recovery goal of 1,250 to 1,400 wolves was set.
Today, according to data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, we have over 2,700 wolves in Minnesota.
But as my constituents would tell you, Mr. Chair, that is a severe undercount.
It's more like 5,000 to 7,000 in Minnesota.
Over half of the gray wolves across the lower 48 are in Minnesota, and most of them can be found in my district.
The gray wolf might be one of the greatest success stories of the ESA and one that should be celebrated.
Now that the species has recovered, it's time to delist.
But that's just not my opinion.
It's a bipartisan view that's been held by several presidential administrations on both sides of the aisle.
In 2009, the Bush administration delisted the gray wolves.
Activist groups sued to relist.
In 2013, the Obama administration delisted the gray wolves.
Activist groups sued to relist.
In 2020, the Trump administration delisted gray wolves.
Activist groups sued to relist.
And just last year, the Biden administration even agreed when they chose to defend the Trump administration's 2020 delisting rule.
Bush, Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump, and even Biden trusted the science and sought to do the right thing.
It's activist groups, with the help of activist judges, who continue to choose to disregard the science and fight to keep these unnecessary protections in place.
As a result, my constituents have to face growing wolf populations in their backyards each and every day.
Look at this photo right here to my right.
Just last month in Ely, Minnesota, a wolf was seen in a school parking lot in the middle of the day, just feet from the schoolhouse door.
And because of the gray wolf's listing status, nothing could be done to protect the lives of the students there.
The broken ESA is putting my constituents' lives at risk.
Simply said, it's beyond time that the gray wolf is delisted under the ESA.
Unfortunately, as long as activists and activists are willing to abuse our federal court system to weaponize the ESA, I'm afraid an administrative delisting will never be possible.
There's only one alternative, Mr. Chair.
Congress needs to act and finally vote in legislation to delist the gray wolves.
You know, as a hunter in northern Minnesota, last year I held several town halls on the gray wolf and the concerns of delisting.
Hunters for Hunters, Hunter Nation, other pro-hunting groups supported this endeavor.
If you look at trail cams, for example, you'll see a nice, beautiful, in this case, eight-point buck.
Ten minutes later, on the same trail, same trail cam, comes the wolf.
Who knows what happened to that big, beautiful buck?
The fact of the matter is we should celebrate the ESA, the accomplishment.
The gray wolf has recovered.
Let the states manage it.
They can be more nimble than the federal government.
I urge my colleagues to join me in support of this important piece of legislation, and I yield back.
The gentleman from Arkansas is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Now, look, I want to acknowledge that wolf-livestock conflicts do happen, and ranchers deserve to be supported when there's a wolf problem.
And we already have tools that work to address these conflicts, but this bill does nothing to improve them or to help our ranchers.
H.R. 845 has no funding for conflict mitigation, no support for non-lethal deterrence, no additional compensation from losses.
And if we want to delist wolves responsibly, we need to give Fish and Wildlife Service the resources and direction it needs to work collaboratively, respond to science, and invest in conflict prevention.
And with that, I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from California, the ranking member, Representative Huffman.
If we want to talk about the occasional conflicts that exist between livestock and pets and any predators, that's a legitimate conversation.
But what we are hearing from across the aisle is really jumping the shark, if you'll forgive another predator metaphor.
We are being led to believe that packs of wolves are about to descend on urban areas in New England and Madison, Wisconsin, and that they are looming outside of schools.
And, you know, I think my colleagues across the aisle need to understand the American people are a little smarter than that.
They're kind of going to see through this little Red Riding Hood meets chupacabra narrative that you are trying to spin to scare people about wolves.
But let me tell you the way it actually works.
The Endangered Species Act does not prevent wildlife managers from intervening anytime a wolf or any other predator threatens property or human beings.
In fact, just a few weeks ago in Northern California, I believe it was the Sierra Valley, a pack of wolves from one of our packs there had begun preying on cattle in an area where they're concentrated because of the way they move through the state.
And the California Department of Fish and Wildlife came in and took some.
I think they took five or six of them, killed them.
There was no ESA lawsuit.
There was no violation of the law.
So a little reality check on what we just heard from my colleague from Minnesota, that there was nothing anyone could do about this scary chubacabra wolf in the school parking lot.
That's nonsense.
That's not the way the ESA works.
Now, let's be clear.
This bill is not protecting, it's not about protecting pets or livestock.
It's about politics overriding science.
And the consequences of doing that are disastrous.
The precedent set by this bill would be very troubling.
It would tell wildlife scientists that their expertise doesn't matter.
It tells tribal nations that their voices can be ignored, and it tells the American people they no longer have the right to challenge unlawful government actions.
The ESA is simple and effective.
It ensures decisions are grounded in science.
That's the heart of it.
And this bill throws that principle out the window.
It mandates a nationwide delisting of gray wolves and explicitly blocks judicial review.
It would prevent courts from doing their job to determine whether a government action even complies with the law.
Now, we don't have to speculate about what happens when protections for gray wolves are lifted because we've seen it play out in the state of Wisconsin, where hunters like the group Hunter Nation, which is led by Ted Nugent and Don Jr. on the board, swept in as soon as the wolf hunting season was open.
Quickly, they did that despite objections from tribes in the region, and the result was devastating.
218 wolves, about 20 percent of the state's population, were wiped out.
And by the end of the season, 30 percent were killed, nearly twice as many wolves as the state had authorized.
And over the course of about 60 hours, thousands of hunters, including some unlicensed hunters, participated in coordinating hunting groups.
They engaged in a dangerous, terrorizing campaign against the wolves using bait and wolf calls.
They hunted at night.
They used dogs.
188 wolves were taken by dogs.
They killed 130 wolf pups that were less than two years old.
This is not thoughtful, science-based management of the state's wolf population.
This is not celebrating the recovery of the wolf, as we keep hearing in this debate.
This week, we received a letter from the Wisconsin tribes who had sued to try to stop that hunt.
And in the letter, they object to this bill today.
They point out the inadequacy of existing state-level regulatory mechanisms that led to that disaster in Wisconsin.
I ask unanimous consent to enter that letter into the record.
78% of Americans support continued protection for wolves.
They want to see living wolf pups in Yellowstone, not news stories about tortured wolves in bars or wolf hunts with dogs.
So I urge my colleagues to vote no on this bill.
And I would also like to just move to some additional remarks that are part of our motion to recommit.
The entire debate so far has shown why members of Congress have no business in listing and delisting decisions.
We are not scientific experts.
We are not objective scientists tasked with assessing population numbers, recovery goals, and continued threats to the species.
And that is why the ESA properly leaves those questions to actual experts, not politicians.
For that reason, we shouldn't be passing this bill at all.
But if Republicans are going to go down this road, then there should at least be some guardrails in place that are based on actual science.
So for this reason, at the appropriate time, I'll offer a motion to recommit this bill back to committee.
And if the House rules permitted, I would have offered this motion with an important amendment to this bill.
We were not allowed to do that.
My amendment is straightforward.
The NRA gets to have this bill and its little hunting spree.
But if Ted Nugen and Don Jr. and all the other folks who need to do this to prove their manhood actually go where scientists have warned us about and take the wolf population down below science-based recovery standards, then the Secretary of Interior would have to issue an emergency regulation temporarily restoring federal protection in that instance.
So this would provide a necessary backstop if Congress legislatively delists the gray wolf and it careens right back toward extinction again, which we know it would.
I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the text of this amendment.
Hope my colleagues will join me in voting for the motion to recommit in a few moments and keeping a modicum of actual science in the Endangered Species Act.
As I've mentioned before, The Obama administration, the Bush administration, the first Trump administration, the Biden administration, all said the wolf has been recovered.
The experts, the scientists at U.S. Fish and Wildlife, have said it's been recovered.
Yet my friends argue it's not been recovered because there's some places where its native range is that the wolf is not there.
I remind everyone, we are in gray wolf territory, historical gray wolf territory.
Now, Mr. Speaker, like many, like you probably and myself, I've walked around D.C. at night, and this is a rat-infested city.
I think there would be at least a little bit of food for the wolves if we were to turn a pack loose on the mall.
But what happens when they eat all the rats?
What do they go after next?
Now, this is a preposterous situation because I don't think anybody really wants to pack a wolves on the mall.
But if you go down the logic trail that my colleagues are making, the wolf is not recovered until it's back in its historic range.
So why do we want to sit in a big city where wolves once were and say, we want wolves just not in our backyard.
We want them out in the Midwest or the West where it's somebody else's problem.
But we don't want those problems here because it makes no sense to put wolves back here in the big cities and across the Northeast.
Mr. Speaker, I yield two minutes to the gentleman from California where they have a lot of wolves, Mr. LaMalfa.
unidentified
Gentleman is recognized for two minutes.
Thank you very much, my colleague from Arksud.
You know, it's amazing here.
I represent the Northeast corner of California where the wolves are being inflicted upon the people and the wildlife of that area.
And the stuff I hear coming from the other side of the aisle about recovering the wolves and even the mocking.
Yes, it's real.
There's wolves that are encroaching on elementary schools in Siskiyou County, the little Shasta Elementary School.
This isn't some little Red Riding Hood story.
This isn't some made-up deal.
It's very real.
And they're coming closer and closer to town all over the northeast part of California.
So my colleague from the North Coast, when he mocks us like that, I'm wondering if this Proposition 50 in California kicks in and he ends up representing my constituents up there that are fighting against this and I'm their only voice in that echo chamber of California against this.
Are you going to have town halls up there?
Are you going to go into Modoc County, Siskiw County, Sierra Valley, and tell them this is a Red Riding Hood story about the wolves devouring their livestock, eating up all their wildlife?
You know, it's the mocking.
Why is it you suspected that the people who are going to be able to suspend the house will be in order?
Gentlemen may continue.
Why is it you can't stand the people that produce the food, the lumber that come from my part of the state, from the west, from the rural parts of America?
You want all of your beef, I guess if you don't eat beef, you might be able to have this conversation.
If you want your beef to be imported from somewhere else, you want it not to be produced here under our standards.
Why is it you hate my constituents that just try and provide the urban people with what they need?
Because we don't need a hell of a lot that's coming from the urban area.
I'll tell you what.
So if you want to cater only to Marin County and have this population continue to devastate our people up there and rein in just a little bit the misinterpretation of the Dangerous Species Act over the 50 years, yeah, it was well-intentioned when it came out.
It was a temporary tool, but it never was meant to be a life or even a death sentence for livestock and for people's livelihoods in this area here or all over the West.
So, this is a clear example of how the ESD has drifted a long ways from that.
And it's high time that people have tools, especially my home state of California, where they have no tools, until the fish and game finally decides to come in and pretend.
The gentleman's time has expired.
I yield back.
The gentleman from Arkansas Reserves, the gentlelady from Oregon is recognized.
I reserve the balance of my time.
The gentlelady reserves, the gentleman from Arkansas is recognized.
Mr. Speaker, I yield four minutes to the gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Bince.
unidentified
The gentleman is recognized for four minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 845.
The bill would address at least some of the injury and injustice being inflicted upon my state and my constituents by the inappropriate and unfair enforcement of the Endangered Species Act as it has been applied in the reintroduction of the gray wolf.
This injustice is apparent in the federal government's inability to manage and control the killing, the maiming, and the terrorizing of thousands of livestock across my district, across the rest of the United States, and in the failure of the government to properly pay for the cost of its decision to reintroduce the wolf.
I will address the lack of management first.
Let me begin my discussion of failed management by showing several pictures which are graphic illustrations of the lurking reality that many of my ranching families must deal with every single day.
As you can see, there's nothing refined about how a wolf goes about feeding itself.
You can only imagine the feelings of the rancher when he or she finds their livestock torn apart or dying.
You can try to imagine the anger they feel knowing that they are legally prevented from stopping that wolf before it causes this pain and horror to their cattle and calves and stopping these animals from doing the wolves this over and over again and again.
I've held meeting after meeting across my district listening over and over to stories about wolves attacking herds, scattering to the four winds, terrified cattle and calves, and ignoring the sad hazing efforts that we heard about earlier from across the aisle that livestock owners are reduced to using under the law to try to protect their livelihoods.
The fury, the anger, the frustration, the fear a wolf that may at some point attack a child, which it came close to doing earlier last year while children in my district were waiting for a school bus, is totally understandable and why we're on this floor sharing the reality of the wolf in America today.
If we are to protect those who are trying their best to feed this country, to make a living, to keep their communities viable and safe, to put out range fires, to pay their taxes, and continue to be productive parts of this nation, we must manage the wolf.
And this means we must delist the wolf and move management of these creatures back to the states.
Remember, this is exactly what the Democrat, Obama, and Biden administration, and Republican Bush and Trump administrations have agreed needed to be done literally years ago.
The wolf listed status continues only because of judicial fiat.
Let me turn to the actual cost of reintroduction of the wolf and the need for those who have created this cost to be responsible for paying for it.
University studies show that the annual cost of the wolf to the cattle business as of a few years ago is estimated to be $128 million.
That's each year, this number far higher now that cattle prices are higher.
Many think the only cost of the wolf is the killing of the livestock.
But the impact of the primal fear and terror cattle understandably feel when a wolf is near has dramatic and serious impacts on weight gain and on pregnancy rates.
These losses in production are real and they are serious.
In a time when even the president is concerned about beef prices, these losses affect everyone by causing a reduction in the size of America's cattle herd and, of course, their productivity.
In recognition of this damage caused by the wolf, laws have been enacted in the some in the Big Beautiful bill and some at the state level to try to bring at least some, at least some ESA reimbursement equity into play by providing some payment to the owners for the death of cattle caused by wolves.
But these programs come nowhere close to offsetting the very real loss.
And I can assure you, the rancher would be absolutely happier if he or she could completely avoid these losses that lead to asking for justice under these programs.
If we are to properly and fairly and logically manage the wolf, we must pass Congresswoman Boebert's and Tom Tiffany's bill, H.R. 845, the Pet and Livestock Protection Act.
This bill would federally delist the wolf and allow states to actually manage wolf populations, not exterminate, manage.
And if we are to properly allocate responsibility for the monetary cost of the wolf, that is, for the cost of the Endangered Species Act, America itself must pay for the consequences of this law.
And this means Congress must manage the problem and then appropriate dollars to pay for it.
Mr. Speaker, I yield two minutes to the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Crank.
unidentified
The gentleman is recognized for two minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I rise in support of the Pet and Livestock Protection Act, which I'm a co-sponsor of, led by my friends Representative Boebert and Representative Tiffany.
The truth is, Congress should not have to step in to delist the gray wolf here, but here we are.
That's because the Endangered Species Act listing process no longer works as it was intended to do.
The gray wolf has exceeded recovery goals, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, under both Republican and Democrat administrations, has repeatedly concluded that the species should be delisted.
unidentified
Yet every time, radical groups, litigious groups, step in to block that decision.
Mr. Speaker, I yield two minutes to the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Heard.
unidentified
The gentleman is recognized for two minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I am an original co-sponsor of the Pet and Livestock Protection Act because it delists the gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act.
This gives wildlife managers more control in states while protecting domestic animals from wolf attacks.
For years, Republican and Democratic administrations alike under Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden have all reached the same conclusion.
The gray wolf population is healthy, has exceeded all recovery goals, and can sustain life from a variety of threats and should be delisted.
The Endangered Species Act was never meant to be a permanent listing statute.
It was designed to recover species, and once recovery is achieved, to step back.
But that's not what's happening.
Environmental groups have repeatedly run to courts to block delisting, ignoring the science, and overriding bipartisan agency findings.
The cost is regulatory whiplash, uncertainty, and paralysis, while ranchers, landowners, and rural communities pay the price.
Mr. Speaker, I want to respond to something that was said at the beginning of this debate.
One of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle criticized this Congress for discussing wolves and said we should be focused on affordability.
Well, first of all, we have been and are voting on bills that improve life and make it more affordable for every American.
But here's the thing: for the ranchers and outfitters in rural Coloradans that I represent, this is affordability.
This is their livelihood.
This is how food gets to tables across America, whether you live in a small town or in the largest city.
This is a way of life that America depends on and it deserves respect, not dismissal.
H.R. 845 is supported by science.
It respects each state's circumstances and it delivers protection for rural America.
I urge support and yield back.
I reserve.
The gentleman from Markets Officers.
The gentlelady from Oregon is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
H.R. 845 delists the gray wolf across the United States and blocks judicial review of the delisting.
This is an anti-science bill that prioritizes politics ahead of species conservation.
This bill will result in hundreds of unnecessary and indiscriminate wolf kills while doing very little to address the legitimate conflicts between some wolves and livestock.
And I'll work with anyone on addressing those legitimate conflicts.
We have tools and funding available to address those concerns.
Not enough, but we have those without undermining the progress we've made to recover this iconic species.
So I urge my colleagues to vote no on H.R. 845, and I yield back.
It's time for America to celebrate that, and Congress needs to act to make that happen.
By passing this bill, Congress would be celebrating an ESA success story and endorsing the bipartisan policy of four successive presidential administrations, namely to trust the science and delist the gray wolf.
I again want to thank Congresswoman Boebert and Congressman Tiffany for their strong leadership on this important legislation.
I urge my colleagues to support the bill and I yield back the balance of my time.
unidentified
All time for debate has expired pursuant to House Resolution 951.
The previous question is ordered on the bill as amended.
The question is on grossment and third reading of the bill.
Union calendar number 285, H.R. 845, a bill to require the Secretary of the Interior to reissue regulations removing the gray wolf from the list of endangered and threatened to wildlife under the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
unidentified
For what purpose does the gentleman from California seek recognition?
H.R. 498, a bill to amend Title 19 of the Social Security Act to prohibit federal Medicaid funding for gender transition procedures for minors.
unidentified
Pursuant to House Resolution 953, the bill will be considered read.
The bill shall be debatable for one hour, equally divided, controlled by the chair and ranking minority of the Committee on Energy and Commerce or their respective designees.
The gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Guthrie, and the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Pallone, will each control 30 minutes.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Guthrie.
I use unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks on the legislation and extort extraneous material on H.R. 498.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 498, the Do No Harm and Medicaid Act.
This bill helps support our fellow hardworking Americans whose valuable and finite tax dollars should not continue to fund medically unnecessary care under the Medicaid program.
It is our duties as members of Congress to focus hard-earned taxpayer dollars on care that is medically necessary to improve the health of Americans.
The H.R. 498 Do No Harm in Medicaid Act does just that.
It prohibits federal funding from dollars from going towards specified gender transition procedures for individuals under 18.
My fellow House Republicans, particularly my colleagues on the Energy and Commerce Committee, have worked diligently this Congress to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicaid program and Working Families Tax Cut Act.
Our goal is to eliminate unnecessary and improper procedures and strengthen Medicaid for expectant mothers, their children, low-income seniors, individuals with disabilities.
CBO estimates that this bill would save taxpayers $445 million over a decade.
And I want to make it abundantly clear, it does no way prevents minors from accessing medical care that they truly need.
It just simply prohibits the use of Medicaid funding on specified procedures that are medically unnecessary.
This critical legislation builds upon our work in the Working Families Tax Act to create a more sustainable Medicaid program.
And I ask my colleagues to support the bill, and I will reserve my time.
unidentified
The gentleman from Protected Reserves, the gentleman from New Jersey, you're recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I yield myself such time as I may consume.
The gentleman is recognized.
Mr. Speaker, it is shamelessly bold for Republicans to bring a bill to the floor called the Do No Harm in Medicaid Act.
But that's today's Republican Party.
They simply lack any shame.
And I mean, really, saying that they are doing no harm to Medicaid when their big, ugly bill earlier this year cut nearly $1 trillion for the Medicaid program.
That's a huge cut that will leave millions of low-income families without any health coverage at all.
We're already seeing the devastating effects of their big, ugly bill.
States, which are already facing budget shortfalls, stare down a reduction of as many as 20% of their federal Medicaid funding.
They're being left with an impossible challenge that many have started cutting.
We're seeing across-the-board cuts that are crippling hospitals, maternity units, home care providers, and clinics.
We're seeing health care providers close their doors and cut their services.
And we're seeing states scale back benefits, leaving even those who are able to keep their Medicaid coverage with less of the health care that they need.
And now, and now, even with all that, Republicans have the audacity to bring a bill to the floor that they claim is about doing no harm in Medicaid.
That's not what this is about.
H.R. 498 is an extreme attack on medically necessary health care for children.
The bill bans Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care for minors and strips states of even more Medicaid funding if they choose to cover this medically necessary care with their own state dollars.
Republicans, Mr. Speaker, are once again reaching into the doctor's office and taking deeply personal and private medical questions out of the hands of doctors, parents, and patients and putting it into their own hands.
As if anyone wants politicians making medical decisions for them and their children.
Now, as members of Congress, we ought to be focused on bringing down health care costs and ensuring people have access to the health care they need, not getting in the way of doctors and parents who know what's best for their patients and their children.
The reality is this floor debate is nothing more than political theater aimed at distracting from the devastating health care crisis Republicans created and are making worse every day.
They're trying to distract from the fact that their health care cuts are going to strip health care away from 15 million Americans and close hospitals all across the nation.
They're trying to distract from the fact that they're letting the Affordable Care Act's enhanced premium tax credits expire on January 1st.
The Republican inaction is driving up health care quotes for more than 20 million Americans who are facing double, triple, or even quadruple premium increases.
So, Mr. Speaker, Republicans can't distract from this cruelty.
I urge my colleagues to vote no on this bill.
I also call on Speaker Johnson to immediately bring up the Jeffreys discharge petition that now has the support of a majority of House members, and that would extend the ACA premium tax credits for three years.
A majority of this House, Democrat and Republican, wants to act to extend these tax credits.
It's time, Speaker Johnson, to bring that bill to the floor.
I rise today in strong support of H.R. 498, the Do No Harm and Medicaid Act.
Medicaid was designed as a safety net to be used only by U.S. citizens when they fall into hard times and need medical support.
It was never intended to bankroll irreversible gender-mutilating surgeries on vulnerable children.
Yet today, this program is being exploited by the far left, preying on young children to advance their radical trans agenda.
Adolescence is a vulnerable time for boys and girls.
They are growing into the young men and women that God intended them to be.
What these children really need is love and wise counsel, not taxpayer-funded, permanent chemical sterilization, mutilating surgeries, or activists profiting from their confusion.
The most egregious actor is none other than Planned Parenthood, the leading abortion provider in the nation and now the leading provider of these dangerous procedures.
The Do No Harm and Medicaid Act shields innocent children from predatory companies and stops Medicaid from weaponizing against our next generation.
The federal government has no business paying for the destruction of children's bodies, and the American people should never be complicit in it.
Thank you to my colleagues for leading this bill, and I urge all to vote yes.
Thank you, and I yield back.
unidentified
The gentleman from Kentucky Reserves, the gentleman from New Jersey, is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I yield two minutes now to the gentleman from California, Mr. Takano, who is the chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this hateful legislation.
The so-called Do No Harm and Medicaid Act prohibits Medicaid from spending funds on medically necessary care, like puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormone treatments for transgender individuals under 18.
This is Congress seeking to ban health care for the most vulnerable among us.
Republicans are working to ban parents from providing their trans children on Medicaid with necessary health care.
These types of decisions should be made between families and their physicians.
Yet, here we are having politicians in Washington, D.C. telling parents across America that they know how to raise their trans youth.
Transgender people need consistent access to essential and medically necessary care like everyone else.
And this care makes it possible for transgender people to live safely and authentically as themselves.
I've spoken with countless families about the impact of this life-saving care and what it has done for their children.
I have also spoken with doctors that have provided this safe and effective care.
The health care that trans youth receive is a decision that they should be able to make in consultation with their parents, therapists, doctors, not by politicians.
Medical care for transgender youth is safe and effective and is supported by every major medical association representing more than 1.3 million U.S. doctors.
The hypocrisy of this legislation is staggering.
The bill bans Medicaid from covering medical care for transgender youth, but allows for the same exact care for non-transgender youth.
The proof is here in black and white.
Republicans are seeking specifically to target transgender youth, and trans people are less than 1% of the population.
Republicans are targeting the wrong 1%.
This is not the 1% that is trying to take away the health care of all Americans.
So I call on the Speaker to bring the Affordable Care Act tax credits to the floor now, today, and save gentlemen's career.
Health care for 22 million Americans.
unidentified
Gentlemen, time expired.
The gentleman from New Jersey reserves the gentleman from Kentucky.
I rise today in support of the Do No Harm in Medicaid Act, which will ensure taxpayer dollars are not funding the evil practice of transgender child mutilation.
And I thank my colleagues from Texas and from Kentucky for sponsoring this important bill.
As a father of eight myself, I know we all want our children to grow up healthy, supported, and empowered.
Children should not be subjected to a medical system that pushes life-altering medical procedures and hormone treatments that are incredibly harmful.
As a family doctor for over 25 years, I took an oath to do no harm and provide my patients of all ages evidence-supported treatment plans.
That is why, as a Utah State Senator, I led the way in 2023 by passing Utah's landmark legislation that banned transgender treatments and procedures for minors.
As a result, I faced death threats and my house was vandalized by woke activists, as demonstrated to my left.
I am not deterred.
That is why I am staunchly committed to getting this right and finding federal solutions, as I did in Utah, that will protect America's children.
At the core of the practice of medicine is that we do not subject a patient to unnecessary and dangerous medical treatments.
When it comes to gender transition interventions, puberty blockers, hormones like testosterone and estrogen, and surgical procedures, the evidence shows that this is the wrong approach to getting these kids the help they need.
The most comprehensive and authoritative review of these practices was conducted in the United Kingdom by Dr. Hillary Cass.
Her 2024 CAS review concluded that the scientific evidence supporting such interventions is remarkably weak.
There is no strong long-term evidence showing that puberty blockers in transgender surgeries improve long-term mental or physical health outcomes for minors, nor is there robust data on their safety or impact on development.
In the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services last month released a peer-reviewed report titled Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria, Review of Evidence and Best Practices.
This study concluded that harms from treatments, including these puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries, are significant, long-term, and frequently under-recognized in clinical research.
The evidence for these interventions in minors is weak and insufficiently tracked, particularly for outcomes like fertility, psychological well-being, and quality of life.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'm proud to have protected the children of Utah and commend the 25 other states that have stood up for their kids as well.
I urge all my colleagues to follow the scientific evidence and stop funding these horrific procedures on kids.
I yield back.
unidentified
Gentleman from Kentucky Reserves, the gentleman from New Jersey is recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I yield two minutes now to the gentleman from New York, Mr. Tanko, who's the ranking member of our Environment Subcommittee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding.
This bill is the latest in a long line of cruel and calculated Republican actions to erase and endanger LGBTQ plus people, especially trans youth, by using fear as a political weapon.
But let's be clear.
Kids trying to live authentically are not a threat.
Families seeking care are not political pawns.
And the providers committed to their oath to do no harm are no extremists.
Every major U.S. medical group agrees health care for trans youth is safe, effective, and necessary.
This care can reduce anxiety, it can reduce depression and suicide risk, and help young people thrive.
If any other treatment lowered suicidal ideation at the same rate, we'd call it a miracle.
The ability is that we have an opportunity here to help our kids live as their true and healthy selves, and that is a miracle.
Yet, instead of celebrating or expanding access to life-saving care, we're debating a bill that would prevent families from getting their children the care they need.
It is frankly embarrassing.
Politicians should not be telling parents how to raise their own children.
I will fight bills like this with everything I have because equality and dignity and justice are not up for debate.
I stand with the trans community in New York 20 and beyond and urge my colleagues to reject this bill.
And with that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back.
unidentified
The gentleman from New Jersey Reserves, the gentleman from Kentucky is recognized.
I will yield five minutes to the sponsor of the legislation, member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, my good friend from the state of Texas, Mr. Crenshaw.
unidentified
Gentlemen, recognized for five minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'm very proud to have sponsored this legislation and have fought this battle for many years.
And I think we could actually get it done this time.
I'm not sure that my colleagues even believe what they're saying.
I think they know their constituents don't believe it.
Let's not forget, you know, in the 1930s, the medical community believed lobotomies could cure psychosis.
They also believed electroshock therapy could do the same.
They even gave the lobotomy inventor a Nobel Prize in 1949.
Then the science caught up, but the ideology and medicine was changed for the better.
Now, today's great sin in medicine is perhaps one of the worst that we've seen in human history.
It's a sick and twisted ideology paired with a social media-fueled social contagion that has actually normalized the ultimate lie, which is that biological gender does not matter and can't even be changed.
But here's the greatest sin, that this lie also applies to children.
Look, there are some very simple fundamental truths in life.
Men are men, women are women, and children are innocent.
They can't be told that they're in the wrong body.
Mutilating children is wrong.
Irreversible treatments on children who need therapy is wrong.
These truths are very obvious to the vast majority of Americans, and it takes an incredible amount of propaganda and institutional coercion to get an entire society to even question these truths, and yet that's exactly what's happened.
Mr. Speaker, polls indicate that more than 70% of Americans support a full ban on puberty blockers for minors.
That's from places like the Washington Post.
Now, imagine if the question had been asked differently.
That's just about puberty blockers.
What if they had been asked about double mastectomies on 12-year-old girls?
I think the number would be probably about 90%, maybe higher.
I'm not arguing with my colleagues.
I'm pleading with you to understand this.
Your constituents don't want children to undergo gender transformations.
They don't.
Your constituents know that kids are too young to understand the consequences of permanent physiological changes.
I think you know it too.
Even if you're uncertain about that, I think you can rest assured that they definitely don't want their tax dollars to pay for it, which is all this bill does.
You know, this debate is so often buried under euphemisms.
It's gender-affirming care.
There's a medical consensus.
There's a standard of care.
Strip away the language.
Here's the reality.
Healthy children are being placed on drugs that halt normal development, sterilize them, permanently alter their bodies before they're even old enough to vote or drink or get a tattoo.
These are kids suffering from teenage angst.
And I don't deny the existence of gender dysphoria, but psychotherapy is the answer to that, not permanent hormonal changes or surgical mutilations.
That's not compassion.
That's not medicine.
That's an abomination.
And we're told that questioning this practice puts children at risk, that if we don't medicalize a child's distress, they'll take their own life.
That claim has been debunked.
It is not supported by science.
Studies from all over the world have proven it false, and those that continue to promulgate it should be ashamed.
The highest quality medical reviews have consistently found no clear evidence that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgeries reduce suicide risk in minors.
None.
And yet we're told to suspend our moral judgment, suspend scientific skepticism, and accept irreversible harm as the default response to childhood stress.
That's not how responsible medicine works.
Puberty blockers are not approved by the FDA for treating gender dysphoria.
They were never designed to interrupt normal puberty in otherwise healthy children.
Cross-sex hormones can permanently compromise fertility.
Surgeries irreversibly alter healthy organs.
These aren't neutral acts.
These are life-altering decisions imposed on minors whose brains, identities, and bodies are still developing.
And we're told treatments are reversible.
That claim is very false.
The international health authorities have concluded that suppressing puberty often locks children onto a pathway toward permanent medical transition.
Nearly every child placed on puberty blockers proceeds with the cross-sex hormones.
And so-called pause button that almost always leads to irreversible outcomes is not a pause.
It's a trap.
And while activists insist this is settled science, the rest of the world is pulling the emergency brake.
The United Kingdom now limits puberty blockers.
Sweden and Finland have sharply restricted their use.
France's medical authorities warn of serious risks to bone development and fertility.
Those lying, depraved activists reviewed the same evidence and they said, no, we're good with it.
Children suffering from gender dysphoria deserve care.
The gentleman's time has expired, but the gentleman is yielding an additional one minute.