Rob Bishop

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa), one of the other members of our committee who has served for a long time and has heard many of these arguments before.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, the opposition to this particular bill goes from coast to coast. We just heard from California. Now we will go back to the East Coast. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho).

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Barr), who clearly understands the situation that this rule has presented.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Comer), a new Member of Congress, who realizes that this rule is long on regulations and short on real new protections for people.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis).

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, nice to know that 2:30 in the afternoon is the dead of night. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Rothfus).

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. The stream protection rule has got to be the poster child for the Congressional Review Act's action. There are 400 changes to the bill. There are 400 changes in over 1,600 pages of regulations, and there is no new, real protection above and beyond what we were using since the Reagan administration. But it does outline benefits and potential problems for 70,000 people directly with their jobs, for 300,000 people whose jobs are threatened in a ripple effect, and, unfortunately, for everyone else. Every time you turn a light on, your costs will be exacerbated because of this particular rule. This rule affects the most vulnerable of our population and it hurts them. It is time for us to realize that it is time to stop making rules and regulations for an ideological approach, and, instead, new rules and regulations that help people, not hurt people, as this particular one does. That is why this House, on four different occasions over the last three congresses, has voted against this particular proposal. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tipton), another State that was promised, in the Clean Water Act, to have authority which was taken away by this simple rule.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn), who chaired most of our 13 hearings on this issue, and who represents a State that is suing because they were ignored in this rule, where they should have had their rights under the Clean Water Act, which is part of the problem we have here.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I now have the pleasure of recognizing people who are not on our committee but still know how silly this rule actually is. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost.)

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Renacci).

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Jenkins), someone who has forgotten more about coal than I will ever know.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes. We are starting an historic week in the House, something that was replicated almost two decades ago, but we are doing it again and are using the Congressional Review Act to look at actual rules and regulations. What we are doing is the right thing. In 1996, when this act was first passed, President Clinton, after signing it, said that this act would give congressional accountability for regulations. Even Harry Reid said that this act would be reclaiming for Congress some of its policymaking authority, and Sander Levin of Michigan, at the time, also said that now we are in a position to do something ourselves. If a rule goes too far afield from the intent of Congress in its passing the statute in the first place, we can stop it. That is exactly what we are attempting to do, and this is one of the first of those activities we will be doing this week. The Congressional Review Act actually has three purposes in mind. They said, if a rule has excessive costs, if a rule goes beyond the particular agency's statutory authority, and if a rule is duplicative or unnecessary, it should be reviewed by Congress and rescinded. That is exactly what we are going to do because this rule, commonly called the stream protection rule, does all three of those criteria. What I want to do is talk about this rule that was passed at the last minute by the former administration--it actually went into effect on the very last day of the administration--and say that it violates all of those three elements. The act itself--the rule itself--was done in secret. They had their own opaque study that they did without letting anyone know what the data was. We asked for it repeatedly, but the agency refused to tell us. Even in 2015, Congress passed a law in the Appropriations Act that mandated they tell us the data, the information. They simply ignored that law. They have refused to work with Congress in any particular way. Actually, it violates law. If this rule goes forward, it violates the NEPA law. If gone into implementation, it would violate the Endangered Species Act. It violates a memo of understanding the Federal Government had with 10 States at the time. In fact, there are 14 States suing over this rule and regulation. We have the letters of support from 14 State attorneys general in support of what we are attempting to do here. If put into effect, it clearly violates the Clean Water Act by its effort to redefine hydraulic balance, which this agency does not have the authority to do. It is given to other elements. It also puts us at risk of litigation on a takings issue. There is precedent for that. It could happen again, all because of this ill- defined and unnecessary rule and regulation. If we roll it back, there is still protection. There will always still be protection. In a Department of the Interior study, they clearly said that 93 percent of all the impact has already been taken care of and does not actually exist. It would be easy for us to do and it would put us back to a rule established in 1983 that is effective in protecting these areas. Ninety three percent of all streams have no impact by this issue whatsoever. It also clearly says, under the report when this rule was being done, that the States that are legally supposed to be coordinated and be a part of the process were shut out of the process. It is one of the reasons why they are still suing, which means the memo of understanding signed by those States was ignored by the agency in coming up with this rule. The States that regulate 97 percent of the Nation's coal production, States and tribes that abate well over 90 percent of the abandoned mine problems--they have it in line, they have it ready, they are ready to move forward with it--they were simply shut out of the process. It is a poor process. There was a former icon of this body, a great Member who once allegedly said: If I let you make the policy and you let me make the procedure, I will screw you over every time. This is poor procedure that has produced a poor rule, which will result in poor policy. At best, this rule is redundant. It is clearly unnecessary, and it does have the potential of hurting people nefariously when it does not need to. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks on H.J. Res. 38.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield to 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Johnson) to explain this joint resolution.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers), the former chairman of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 70, I call up the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 38) disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of the Interior known as the Stream Protection Rule, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I yield myself the balance of my time to close. Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of false science today, which is appropriate since the agency that concocted this rule refused to allow any of the data they used to make the rule to be made public. We asked for it. We asked for it in legislation. They simply refused to comply. Ninety-three percent of the sites are not having any impact on the streams, and the other seven percent we already had rules that covered them that did this protection. There is no real new protection in this particular act. The States, which regulate 97 percent of the coal mines in the United States, were shut out of the process, which is why they are suing over it. This rule undercuts the State primacy that was provided in the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. What we are doing here today with this effort is to reestablish the article I authority that we have in the Constitution by saying we are responsible for the policy, not some agency of the executive branch. Adopting this resolution protects the rights of States tasked with regulating the coal industry in their borders, and it also actually helps people. People are going to be harmed if this act is not repealed and actually goes into effect, and the most vulnerable of our populations are the ones who will suffer the most because of it. Because of that reason, it is right for Congress to do our responsibility here and now and repeal this bad act that was done in secret that was not allowed to have the openness that we have requested in the past and that is simply redundant at best, totally unnecessary, and does the harm that it does to real people: 70,000 direct jobs, over 300,000 indirect jobs, as well as a higher cost to everyone who uses energy in this Nation. I ask my colleagues to support the resolution of disapproval and vote for its final passage. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gosar), part of our committee who has heard the 13 hearings, understands this issue, and was part of the House when we voted four different times to be opposed to this particular rule.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I don't want to quibble over details, but we actually held 13 hearings and passed four bills over the last three Congresses about this particular rule and found countless problems with it. That is why we are here today. I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. McKinley), who knows the real impact on his constituents that this rule will have.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa), another member of the California delegation who has been working tirelessly on this issue.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa).

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. One of the things we have to realize is we have had communities that have been suffering for a long time. Our job is to help people. We should be ashamed that it has taken us so long to try and move to a solution in these particular issues. What we have before us here is not a total solution, but it is a very, very good first step, and not just for the arid West. There are 17 Western States that will be assisted by this bill, but 29 States as well as Indian Country are going to be helped, especially as they try to repair their aging dams and their irrigation canals. We are finalizing Native American water rights settlements in California, Oklahoma, and Montana; doing land exchanges; helping with forestry management in the Nevada area; giving flexibility for Californians under the principle that, if it is going to rain, capture the water before it is lost to the ocean; having alternative end-water development programs like desalinization. All of these are done without undermining the Endangered Species Act. I say that not as a virtue of the bill, but simply as a fact. This bill in which we find some compromise between the Senate and the House, between Republicans and Democrats, is a final way of us being able to actually move forward. Let's make sure that we take ``yes'' as an answer. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.