Rob Bishop

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Bishop), who has the proper last name, if not the correct first name.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this longstanding issue has been one that has been before many Congresses, so I appreciate Mr. Butterfield for his efforts and Mr. Bishop--both of them North Carolina Representatives--for bringing their State together and coming up with a cooperative way of doing it. The issue with the Lumbees goes back to 1956, as has been mentioned, but also had, starting in 1988 and 1989 and finishing in the last administration, conflicting opinions from solicitors of the Interior Department that have caused this problem regarding the Lumbee Tribe on what they may or may not pursue as far as administrative recognition or other issues that are dealt with. So the proper way when there are conflicting opinions, especially coming from the executive branch, is for Congress to stand up and do its responsibility and its duty, and that is what H.R. 1964--which was a wonderful year for me; I remember it very well--does is allow Congress to do its responsibility by taking these conflicting opinions and stating what is the purpose and intent of Congress. This is the right way of doing things. Far too often have we tried to use administrative shortcuts when, in essence, we find out that it produces long-term problems for us. So I commend Representative Bishop from North Carolina, not only for a great name, but also for the fact that he is representing his constituency extremely well, and he is doing it in the proper way in bringing a piece of legislation to us through markup. I appreciate, also, the letter that was mentioned by Mr. Huffman as well, because it is significant. One of the things the majority party still has to do is make sure there is a CBO score attached to this bill, perhaps, before it goes all the way through, but we have overlooked those in the past. We don't need to necessarily overlook them in the future going through there. But I appreciate what the gentlemen are doing with this process. It is a positive thing, and I urge all of the Members who are here or who are not here to pass this one in the affirmative because it is something that needs to be done. I applaud those who have worked so hard to get unity within the delegation from North Carolina and move forward with it. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this bill, S. 327, requires the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture to make available, free of charge, a lifetime national parks and Federal recreation land pass to any veteran who has been found to have service-connected disabilities. This builds upon the Secretary of the Interior's, Mr. Bernhardt's, recent Secretarial order which provided free park and public land passes to all U.S. veterans and Gold Star families. Providing free access to our Nation's veterans connects them to the treasured lands that they fought to protect. Each year thousands of veterans will benefit by recreating on these public lands, and providing a park pass is a small token of gratitude to our Nation's cherished servicemen and -women. So I urge adoption of this measure, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I, too, wish to support H.R. 6237, which is officially the Proper and Reimbursed Care for Native Americans Act. Over the last century, Native Americans have served in the U.S. armed services at a higher per capita rate than any other ethnicity, and with Veterans Day occurring last week at the same time as the opening of the Native American Veterans Memorial, I thank those who have served and continue to serve in this capacity. Under current law, the Department of Veterans Affairs or the Department of Defense reimburses the Indian Health Services for any health-related services provided to Native Americans. Unfortunately, not all Indian Health Services or Tribally operated facilities can provide every level of care, and some patients must be referred. For these situations, the VA or the DOD cannot reimburse the Indian Health Service or Tribal facility for certain services. H.R. 6237 would amend the Indian Health Care Improvement Act to fix this problem and ensure that the Veterans Administration or the Department of Defense has authority to pay for the care Native veterans receive regardless of where those services are provided. So I have to thank subcommittee Chairman Gallego, who is, himself, a marine veteran, for his service and ensuring that Native Americans receive proper care. I urge adoption of this measure, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Puerto Rico (Miss Gonzalez-Colon), who will explain and introduce this particular bill. The gentlewoman is someone on our committee who clearly understands the significance of mapping, especially for storm preparations and flood management and everything else. I wish to congratulate Miss Gonzalez-Colon because she is the only one of us on the floor who just recently was returned here for a 4-year term.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. The Digital Coast Act will enhance Federal, State, Tribal, and local authorities' decisionmaking regarding coastal resiliency, mapping, and infrastructure planning. It is one of these good measures that we need to support. I truly support it. It deals with the entire coast of the Nation. It deals with the coasts in other areas that are not yet part of the 50 States--yet--and it deals with the Great Salt Lake. I am sorry, it deals with the Great Lakes. What I am saying is the only way you could improve this stupid thing is if you added the Great Salt Lake into it as well. But as part of the Intermountain West, I'm used to being ignored by the rest of Congress as they go merrily on their way, not realizing the kind of value that we have in the Intermountain West. So despite that flaw in this particular piece of legislation, I support it wholeheartedly and I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this particular piece. Mr. Speaker, I inquire of the gentleman from California if he has any further speakers.

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

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Puerto Rico (Miss Gonzalez-Colon) on this particular bill.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, does that clearance have to be in the form of a written statement to the Chair?

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, one final parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, is the Speaker telling me that if the Republicans have cleared this bill and are in favor of it, it has to have a written clearance from the Democrat side more than simply verbal commitment to the Tribes?

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, did you tell me the form the clearance has to have? In what form must it be?

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, thank you for your enlightenment.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's desk S. 886 entitled the Indian Water Rights Settlement Extension Act, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, since the minority leader is supportive, or I wouldn't be here, and I am the ranking member and I am supportive of it, and the Navajo Nation has been told. The chairman of the committee is in support of it, does that not constitute the clearance guidelines that would allow the Speaker to entertain the motion?

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, further parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let's get a couple of things very clear. First of all, this is not about the Land and Water Conservation Fund. We reauthorized permanently the Land and Water Conservation Fund in the last Congress, and in doing that, in a House Republican bill, I might add, we took the State-side projects--these are the kinds of things like easements and picnic grounds and roads and parks that your constituents are all telling you that they like, those are called the State-side projects--and we actually increased the funding for those programs. We also put in that act a limitation on the amount of money that could be used to buy more land. This bill is about that concept, the limitation of land acquisition. The special interest groups have been putting pressure on you and are giving you misinformation about this particular thing. They simply want to circumvent the limits that were pushed in that bill that was there earlier. This is two bills merged together. The first one was the old H.R. 1225, the backlog maintenance bill that Mr. Grijalva referred to in his speech. We wanted to see if we could actually help parks and other public lands who are having a maintenance backlog that is near $20 billion today. Many people, 330 people, cosponsored that bill. Obviously, it was popular. But for 1\1/2\ years, Democratic leadership failed and refused to move that bill. One of their arguments was, this is key, there is no offset for a bill that scored $7 billion. They refused to move it because there was no offset. That bill would fund parks' maintenance backlogs by taking excess revenue from those that come from all the energy development, but primarily oil and gas, off-coast as well as on land, and after we pay our obligations, the first $1 billion of the excess would be used to maintain our parks. That is still a decent bill. You have added that, or the Democrats in the Senate have added that, to a second bill that is mandatory $900 million of spending. That mandatory spending will be from now until eternity, but the goal of that is simply to increase the buying power to buy more lands, not to create the State-side projects which we increased. We are spending trillions of dollars on coronavirus emergency spending. We still have to pay for that. If you really think that mandatory increasing of our debt is the right policy, I think there is a problem there because the CBO did say that this new concoction--bill scores at $17 billion. And I want you to notice there is no offset for that in this bill. Both House Republicans and House Democrats have rules that they will not bring a bill to the floor that is not offset. The Blue Dog Democrats unanimously wrote a letter to their leadership saying, Do not bring a bill to the floor that is not offset. This violates the rules of both the Democrats and the Republicans clearly and adds $17 billion to the debt, and the reason this is here is, well, because. Both LWCF, as well as what we want to do with park maintenance, is paid for by royalties from those gas and oil explorations. The excess was to go to parks. We already have obligations with those royalties. GOMESA is an obligation. Historic preservation is an obligation. State reimbursement is an obligation. Those are priorities. Now, we are also saying in this bill, the $1 billion of money to buy more land is now also a priority above and beyond what is happening for the parks and what will get there for the parks, which may not in normal times be a concern, but in this era, CRS has already certified that we are 84 percent lower in the amount of activity and the amount of royalties coming in from our energy development than we were a year ago. That is 2 million barrels of oil a day less than we were producing and getting royalties from them last year. So if buying more land is the priority, the maintenance of our backlog could be totally left out. Now, this is not for wont of what we are trying to do. There were amendments to try and fix this, but they were not allowed to be brought to this floor. There are amendments in the Senate to fix these problems, but they were not allowed to be brought to the floor. There will be many on both sides of the aisle, some on our side, who will support and defend this bill. I will remind you we are having a heat wave here in Washington, D.C. For the first time in four years we are coming close to 100 degrees, but the heat index is well into three digits. There are a lot of people suffering from heat stroke. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Simpson) to explain why mandatory spending is good.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from the State of Washington (Mr. Newhouse).

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

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Graves), who is an active member of our committee, is ranking member of another committee, and who can actually springboard on Mr. Richmond's comments about this particular issue.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ to the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Fulcher).

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I won't tell the gentleman from Utah that the Utah Association of Counties is opposed to this and all the trails that he is talking about come from the State's side of projects. That is beside the point. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).

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