Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. To the previous speaker and others who have complained about Grand Staircase-Escalante, you could introduce a bill to repeal it. Why don't you?

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. The Obama administration leased out 2.1 billion tons of coal in the Powder River Basin in its first term. That is twice what the Bush administration leased in the 4 years before that. Recent accounts from the GAO lead us to believe that maybe they were a little too cozy with the industry and in fact that those deals were a little too sweet for that 2.1 billion tons of coal. So that is a war on coal? No. What they are talking about is actually less coal is being used to produce electricity. Now they are also the party of market forces and capitalism. Well, guess what? Market forces and capitalism have reduced the use of coal. Natural gas was really, really, really cheap a couple of years ago. Coal used to generate electricity. It totally tanked. It had nothing to do with the Obama administration. It had to do with market forces, and they worship the market. I hope they are not trying to undo market forces here and have some kind of socialist dictate. So what has happened is coal use has bumped up a little bit as natural gas has become a little bit more expensive. But that was about economics and not policy. The bottom line here is should we allow, without any regulation, blowing the tops off mountains, dumping them into valleys, filling in streams, and pretend it has no impact on the environment. And I would say ``no.''

Mr. DeFAZIO. I appreciate the gentleman's statement and leadership. What are we doing here today? We are going to take a rule established by Ronald Reagan, the first modest attempt to protect water quality, stream quality, forests, and other environmental values in cases of strip mining mountaintop removal. So the Republicans today are going to overrule the judgment of Ronald Reagan, preempt him with a rule that basically says it is okay to blow the top off a mountain, dump it into a stream, and it doesn't affect water quality because the stream doesn't exist anymore. Except there is a little problem. The water does still leach through all the toxic soils and it does cause problems downstream. But let's not worry about that too much. Secondly, they are going to preempt states rights. Hey, the party of states' rights. They are all for local control. They hate those one- size-fits-all Federal rules, don't they? No, not today. We are going to impose a Bush administration midnight rule which a court found to be laughable in terms of its compliance with Federal law. They are going to impose that on all the States of the United States of America as the law of the land. We are going to preempt the judgment of any State that wants to do more to protect water quality than allow the tops to be blown off mountains and mining waste dumped into streams and saying there is no problem. But we will study it for 5 years, as we heard previously. Okay, sure. How much harm will happen in that time? So those are a few of the problems and the inconsistencies I see here today. We are preempting a Reagan rule that was quite modest and not overly burdensome on the industry. It should have been improved upon. The Bush administration tried to totally undo it. It was laughed out of court. The Obama administration fumbled and messed up writing a new rule with an incompetent contractor. And now we are going to impose the Bush rule on all the States. They are going to deem, as we heard earlier--that is, pretend--that it meets the Endangered Species Act, and give that pretension the force of law. What they are saying is there were at least two or three people in the Bush administration who had a conversation. That meant they talked about the Endangered Species Act, so that meets the intention of the Endangered Species Act. Finally, they are talking about a war on coal. We will hear from some well-intentioned people later here today who are going to talk about the potential job impact of this, and I appreciate that. There has to be a balance. But this is not a balance. This is yet another imaginary war being waged by the Obama administration on coal. A war on Christmas, a war on coal, a war on jobs, a war on whatever. At least it is not an overseas war that is unnecessary in Iraq that cost us many thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. But the war on coal? When the Obama administration came into office, there were 5,000 less jobs in coal mining than there are today.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, today I will vote against H.R. 4015 despite being a cosponsor of the original bill. It should not have been that way. H.R. 4015 as originally drafted repealed the misguided SGR formula and laid out a reasonable path toward reimbursing doctors based on the quality of care that they provide. The bill had 118 bipartisan cosponsors. I heard from medical professionals all over Oregon who were hopeful that Congress would actually be able to pass H.R. 4015 and finally do away with short term SGR fixes. Unfortunately Republican House leadership squandered this opportunity. Instead of finding a bipartisan way to pay for H.R. 4015, House Republican leadership inserted an ideological pay-for that would leave 13 million people uninsured according to the Congressional Budget Office. Because of this partisan gimmick, the Senate will never take up H.R. 4015. That leaves our nation's medical professionals exactly where they were before the vote--facing an approximately 27% cut in Medicare and TRICARE reimbursements if Congress doesn't fix the SGR before March 31st. In 1997 I voted against creating the faulty SGR formula. I opposed the 1997 law because it balanced the budget on the backs of seniors and health care providers by substantially cutting Medicare. By delaying these cuts instead of permanently fixing the SGR formula, the potential cuts have grown every year. Rather than cutting medical coverage for 13 million Americans, Congress should pay for H.R. 4015 by allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices. Every single other developed country in the world permits their government to negotiate drug prices for all of their citizens. In the U.S. private insurance companies negotiate prices, and the Veterans Administration negotiates prices, but the federal government is prevented from negotiating drug prices for Medicare. This means that drug companies are free to charge Medicare recipients higher prices than anyone else in the world. Allowing the federal government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare would fully pay for the SGR fix. The House could have ensured proper reimbursements for doctors and reduced drug prices for seniors in one bill today. Instead we voted on a bill that is going nowhere.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, here we are again. We had a real problem. The Forest Service did overreach and trigger this issue. Later on, we will have an amendment offered by Mr. Polis from Colorado--whose ski areas originally brought this issue to him and who now opposes this bill--to narrow the scope of this bill down to assure that the Forest Service doesn't re-propose the rule which they have withdrawn, which would have caused the problem. The rule was offered. There was litigation. A new rule was begun. The Forest Service withdrew the rule. There is no rule pending. But we are going to pass legislation that affects all water rights in the Western United States because of a problem that doesn't currently exist. This is fairly extraordinary. Because we held a hearing on this when the government was shut down, not very many people knew about or got to participate in the hearing. I was there. I read the bill. That is a bad habit I have. I pointed out that the bill was so broadly written that it would impact any and all Federal actions that have to do with water in the United States of America. That goes way beyond ski areas and water rights. It goes way beyond farmers or individual property rights. It has untold consequences. As a consequence, Republicans at the time denied it. But now this bill has six savings clauses. What does that mean? Well, the bill was so broadly and poorly drafted to begin with, they now are carving out six exemptions to say, Oh, we didn't mean to say we would take away tribes' water rights; we didn't mean to say that we couldn't have any control of Bureau of Reclamation projects and deal with flood control. Oh, we didn't mean this or that. So there are six savings clauses in this bill because it is so poorly and broadly drafted and has so many unfathomable and unintended effects. Then there is the sixth savings clause which says this bill does nothing. Now how could that be? Well, because we are here about headlines. We are here about a headline that will be meaningless by some gullible reporter somewhere who actually believes what they are saying on that side of the aisle. Here is the final savings clause of this unbelievably poorly drafted bill with unbelievable, unintended consequences: Nothing in this act limits or expands any existing authority of the Secretaries . . . That is, Interior and Agriculture. . . . to condition any permit, approval, license, lease, allotment, easement, right-of-way, or other land use or occupancy agreement on Federal lands subject to the respective jurisdictions. So in the body of the bill they create a whole bunch of problems by threatening concessionaires in parks, issues relating to the Columbia River in Washington and Oregon, and a whole host of projects that relate to use of the water in the West. It is a very sensitive issue, the use of the water in the West. Then they carve out five particular exceptions, which are really hot button issues. Then they have this uber exception which says this bill doesn't do anything. So what does the bill do? Well, that is the whatever thousand-dollar question here today. It may do something unbelievably destructive to private property rights. On that side of the aisle we hear about this all the time. A couple of weeks ago, they passed another show bill pretending to deal with the drought in California by preempting 100 years of water law in the State of California. The Federal Government preempting it. Now they are going to fight for water rights in the West--or, at least that is the headline they hope they get out of this. But that is not what they are doing because for the first time this bill has a Federal definition in statute of water right, which would seem to preempt or contradict the States. But it has sort of got a savings clause. So it says we are creating a new Federal water right, but it really doesn't mean anything because we are not affecting the States. And oh, by the way, we have got a clause at the end saying we are not doing anything at all anyway. So why are we here? We are here because there was a narrow issue which we could have, in a bipartisan way, agreed to deal with. It could have been what is called a suspension bill. We probably wouldn't have even had a vote on it on the floor of the House--one of those routine bills we pass generally on Mondays or Tuesdays, travel days, requiring a two-thirds vote because they are noncontroversial. It could have been done that way. But no, that wouldn't have got a headline. It would have solved a problem--a problem that used to exist and doesn't existing anymore and might exist in the future. It would have solved that problem if it ever existed again, if the Forest Service proposed the rule again, which they aren't going to. But let's just say some future administration chose to do that. We could have preempted them that way. But no, we couldn't just do that because how could you come here and say you are fighting for cattlemen and you are fighting for agriculture and you are fighting for the little guy and private property rights and all those wonderful buzz words around here, when you are not really doing that, but get an undeserved headline out of it if you find a gullible reporter. That is why we are here today. It is kind of a waste of time, to tell the truth. If you want to fix the bill and potentially fix a future problem if they do go after the ski area water rights again, vote for the Polis amendment. Go back to the narrow scope of the bill. That is where we started. If that is adopted, that would be great, and we could vote for it. If that is not adopted, I would recommend that Members think long and hard about it because you may be causing unintended effects with this bill by defining a Federal water right that potentially preempts and upends hundreds of years of precedent in the Western United States and causes untold damage. It will certainly make a lot of lawyers happy, but it is not probably going to make your farmers and ranchers happy, who you think you are pleasing here today.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for the time. I am a bit confused. If you are listening to the debate, you have got to be confused about what this bill is really about. Now, it is apparently about rapid siting of nuclear plants or about constructing of pipelines through your backyard without you being allowed to comment or any environmental review, and somehow this is going to lead to job creation in America. At the beginning of the debate, they were talking about transportation and infrastructure. I happen to be on that committee also. First off, we already did some streamlining in the last highway reauthorization. There is pending streamlining in the Water Resources Development Act. But let's drill down a little. What is the real problem? The real problem is that this side of the aisle, the Republicans, don't want to make the investments necessary to put people back to work. The highway trust fund is going broke on October 1. Not a word from that side, except the brave chairman of the Ways and Means Committee who proposed to fund it with some tax reform. But nothing else from that side. No proposal on how we are going to continue to fund transportation and infrastructure in this country. Water Resources Development Act, we have got a bill pending with some streamlining, but guess what? There are 60 billion--``b,'' billion-- dollars of backlogged authorized water resources development projects that have gone through the full NEPA process and been approved, but the annual construction budget, thanks to my friends on the other side of the aisle, is $1.2 billion a year. Let's see. I guess that figures out to a 50-year backlog, so it really isn't going to matter how much you eliminate NEPA review here, which is, essentially, what this bill is about, which cuts out the public and other small things like that. A 50-year backlog. But this will solve that problem. We will be building those--well, no, we won't, really, because we don't have the money. Well, how about roads, bridges, highways, transit? There is an $80 billion backlog in transit. NEPA? No, not NEPA. No money. Federal highways. We have 140,000 bridges on the Federal system that need replacement or substantial rehabilitation or repair. No money. It isn't a NEPA review that is stopping that. It is a lack of funding. We are not making the necessary investments. So you are not addressing jobs here. Don't pretend you are addressing jobs, don't pretend you are addressing utility rates, and don't even pretend that this bill is going anywhere. You know, the Republican majority repeals NEPA every other day in the Natural Resources Committee. It hasn't happened yet; and now, this is a new way to come at it, through the Judiciary Committee. I guess they get tired. I mean, we have had a lot of bills on the floor to repeal NEPA that have been passed and have gone to the Senate, and nothing has happened. So let's try to fool them. We will cloak it in a Judiciary bill, instead of in a Resources bill, and we will pretend that it is not really about NEPA or that it is about something else. Actually, this bill is really bizarre because it creates an entirely new process for reviewing projects by amending the Administrative Procedures Act. It doesn't repeal NEPA. So, wow, how are those conflicts going to work out? What are the agencies really going to do? I mean, it is gobbledygook legislation on top of making a number of false assertions about what it will accomplish. What it is accomplishing is it has got a great name. It sounds good. RAPID, I love that name. That is good. We are really good at names around here, but we are not really good at getting things done. There should be a bipartisan consensus, and there has been during my long tenure in Congress on building things and rebuilding things and building an infrastructure. You know, it is embarrassing. The United States of America is investing less money in its infrastructure--which is falling apart-- than many third-world countries, and I talked about how we are developing a third-world infrastructure. I had a colleague who is very knowledgeable on the issue who has come up and said to me: You know, that is insulting. I said: Do you know how bad the state of our infrastructure is? He said: No, it is insulting to third-world countries because they are investing a larger percentage of their gross domestic product in infrastructure than the United States of America is investing. It is plain and simple. You can dodge. You can weave. You can come up with great names. You can make unbelievable assertions on the floor. The bottom line facts, we need to invest in rebuilding America; and for every billion dollars we spend on infrastructure, it is somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 jobs that are created, and these are private sector jobs. Private sector jobs, they do the work when the government provides the money to the States, which goes out and competitively bids projects; and they build them, but without money, they aren't going to build them. It doesn't matter what the environmental review process is. No money, no projects. Drop it, guys. Come on. Let's do something real around here for a change.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I have always said that Congress would need to pass fixes to improve the Affordable Care Act. The original version of the bill that passed the House in 2009, and included my provision to repeal the anti-trust exemption enjoyed by the insurance industry, was much better than the Senate version that ultimately became law. Unfortunately the House Leadership has not allowed us the opportunity to vote on real fixes to the ACA. Instead the Republican leadership continues to engage in an ideological exercise of repeatedly bringing up bills that will never move beyond the House. H.R. 4118 is no different. It won't be taken up by the Senate. The President has threatened to veto it. It is not a real fix. Instead of bringing up bills that will never become law, Congress should be working on fixes to the Affordable Care Act that will actually help our constituents. Oregonians who want to buy insurance continue to face a state exchange website that does not function. Because of this problem I fought hard to let Oregonians to keep their current insurance plan if they wanted to. Small businesses in Oregon can't use tax credits to help them provide insurance to their employees on the SHOP small business exchange because there still is no SHOP exchange in Oregon, so I am asking for small business tax credits to be available outside of the SHOP exchange. Americans who want to take personal responsibility for all of their healthcare costs would benefit from an alternative to the individual mandate that I have proposed. My proposal would allow people to opt out of buying insurance without facing a tax penalty as long as they commit to taking full responsibility for any healthcare costs they incur.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, due to heavy snow in Oregon, and the associated cancellation of flights out of the State, I am unable to be present for the vote on S. 25. I plan to vote in favor of S. 25. I voted against the Murray-Ryan Budget that put in place the unacceptable cuts to military retirement cost of living adjustments (COLAs). These cuts would have reduced annual COLA for military retirees by 1 percent every year until the service member turns 62. This could be as much as an $83,000 cut over the lifetime of a typical enlisted member who retires after 20 years of service. It is unconscionable that Congress would try to balance the budget on the backs of our military retirees, and I am glad that S. 25 prevents COLA cuts from going into place for all current military retirees and future retirees who are currently serving. I am also pleased that S. 25 sets aside some funding for preventing Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) cuts to Medicare and TRICARE reimbursements for doctors. I voted against the creation of the faulty SGR formula in 1997 and have fought to fix it ever since. Unfortunately, instead of fixing the SGR Congress has delayed it year after year. This means that if Congress fails to act by March of this year, doctors would face a cut of approximately 27% in their Medicare and TRICARE reimbursements. This is not acceptable. I am hopeful that Congress will use the funds set aside by S. 25 to help pay for a permanent fix to the SGR rather than another delay.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, on January 17, 2014, the Governor of California issued a proclamation, a state of emergency regarding the drought. My amendment simply states that the Secretary of Commerce should treat this emergency proclamation as requested by the Governor under Section 312 of the Magnuson-Stevens Act to determine whether there is a commercial fishery failure for any fisheries that originate in the State of California. Many charter and commercial boat fisheries on the west coast are dependent upon chinook and coho salmon stock that originate in Colorado's rivers and then migrate to the Pacific Ocean, where they are harvested. Just one of these runs, the fall-run chinook from the Central Valley, turns north, and it makes up as much as 50 percent of the salmon production off Oregon and to areas to the north, and it is responsible for as much as 90 percent of California's salmon catch. This run and others are in peril due to the drought. The reductions in river flows will impact incubating eggs, juvenile fish that are rearing in the upper regions of the river, and fry that are trying to out-migrate to the ocean. While many fishing groups are working with Federal and State agencies to plan for the drought conditions and mitigate as much as possible against the potential impacts by facilitating out-migration, we cannot know how successful those efforts will be. While it is likely the drought will not have a large impact on commercial activities this year, many of these fisheries could see devastating impacts over the next several years, particularly in 2015 and 2016. This amendment does not mandate a fisheries disaster declaration, but it will enable the Secretary to issue one should it be necessary. Such a declaration will enable the fishermen to qualify for disaster assistance. Many of us--whether we are from fisheries in the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, or the gulf--have dealt with fisheries disasters in the past. During the last drought in California, I had to literally stalk Secretary Gutierrez of the Bush administration to get a declaration. Joe Barton graciously had him come in to testify and put him in a side room and said, Wait a minute. There are a few Members of Congress who want to talk to you, and it was myself and a number of other Members from California, Oregon, who got him to sign a disaster declaration, and we were successful. Well, this time, let's put it on the desk now and give the Secretary that capability to easily declare a disaster. While it is clear this drought will have wide-ranging economic impacts, this amendment will put Commerce Secretary Pritzker on notice that we have the potential to face a major economic hardship in the fishing industry as well. This amendment will ensure that our fisheries and our fishing industries that depend upon salmon stocks from California rivers will be given due consideration as these impacts unfold. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for accepting the amendment, and I appreciate his sensitivity to the potential disaster for our fisheries. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller). (Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, here we are, day two of the House Committee on Natural Resources' measures on the floor. Yesterday we spent the entire afternoon debating, among other things, whether 435 Members of the House were better suited to make decisions about individual Forest Service ranger District Wildlife Management programs or units of the National Park Service's motorized recreation regulations, overturning local managers. We were told that significant amendments, real amendments about real issues, like the reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, they couldn't be offered because we need to respect the legislative process. Are we respecting the legislative process here today? This bill was introduced last week. No hearings have been held in the committee. No action was taken by the committee. It was written, introduced, and brought directly to the floor of the House of Representatives. That is respect for the legislative process? Now despite everyone here knowing that we are going to face the worst drought the American West has seen in a century, the committee of jurisdiction has failed to hold even one hearing on current conditions. In case you have missed the news, here it is: California, driest conditions in over 500 years, extreme drought in 70 percent of the State. Nevada and Oregon, my home State, severe to extreme drought in 80 percent of the State. Idaho, severe to extreme drought in nearly half the State. To be thinking about how we are going to mitigate this, how we are going to fight the fires, what are we going to do for disaster relief, shouldn't we be looking at reality as opposed to this piece of legislative theater? No. A number of us on the committee have asked for a hearing, a comprehensive hearing on all the aspects of this drought, and the majority has yet to respond. Now, this isn't a joke. It is not something we should be playing political games with. Seriously. We have empty reservoirs, unemployed people, yes, tinderbox forests, fallowed fields, and failing fisheries. That calls on us to be bigger and better than playing these stupid partisan games. That is what this is. Just like the bill yesterday, this bill is not a serious effort to legislate. It is going nowhere. The Governor of California opposes it. Senator Feinstein opposes it. Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Oregon are all opposed to the provisions overturning State water law. The party of states' rights overturning State water law? The nonpartisan 18 Governor-appointed Western States Water Council has opposed provisions in this bill overturning State water law. This bill is a chimera, in the real sense of the word. It is a mythical beast that is part lion, goat, serpent, all in one with the breath of burning flames. Here it comes. It is ugly, it is scary, but it is a fiction. It is not something real. In Greek mythology, the chimera was defeated by a guy named Bellerophon, a great hero-- mythical, but a slayer of beasts. In this case, the U.S. Senate is going to replace Bellerophon. This is going nowhere. We are fiddling while our forests are going to burn this summer. The only way out of the current drought conditions is to make the skies open and rain. We aren't making rain today with this bill. We aren't even making law today with this bill. This is cynical. This is embarrassing. We should pull this bill from consideration and actually work on something that will help not only those in California but all of us impacted in the West by this drought. Let's hold a hearing on this drought. Let's form a task force and come up with real bipartisan solutions.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, we have talked about major problems confronting this Congress, and here we are now trying to resolve yet another local conflict. After considerable complaints by private property owners about hunters encroaching on their land to retrieve their dogs that have gotten lost, driving on their land and that, the Forest Service decided because of the intermingled ownership to prohibit dog deer hunting. Now comes the gentleman who says, well, we are going to reopen it. We will countermand the locally made decision, but we will have a new process where the private landowners can petition the secretary to re- close certain areas of the area that are now closed that he is reopening because of conflicts with their private property. However, these private property owners' petitions will have to go through the dreaded NEPA process, and that is, for deciding something as minor as that, kind of problematic. You know, I guess maybe we should have a special day here, and I have some beefs with some Federal agencies ongoing that I would like to settle with legislation, too. Maybe we should have an open amendment process some day where every little local issue we have been dealing with with a Federal agency which is contentious between conflicting users will be decided by the United States Congress in Washington, D.C., not at the local level. That is what we are doing here. It is pretty extraordinary. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chair, we often have conflicts in Oregon. We had a very substantial conflict relating to geese in terms of farmers' fields. The resolution was that the birds protected by the Migratory Bird Act would continue to be protected, but farmers would be able to hunt with the State license--and I don't know about the gentleman's State whether or not a State license would be required--the birds that were not migratory that were becoming pests and were resident in order to protect their crops. This substantially resolved the problem. I don't know if a similar fix would work here, but an amendment that gives an open license on the Migratory Bird Act, which has international implications, the migratory bird treaty, seems to me to be an extreme measure in this case. Therefore, we would oppose the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I believe that the information on the economic impacts of conservation is important. It is something that we don't quantify very well. As we have pointed out earlier, some of the provisions of this act, unfortunately, will fly in the face of conservation, the benefits of hunting and fishing activities on public lands. So I think, actually, on balance, the gentleman's requirement here would be very useful information in the future to help land managers who have to make decisions between opening up lands to mining or to oil and gas development versus the benefits the community could realize or has been realizing or will continue to realize from the recreational hunting and fishing. Federal lands had become essentially a reservoir, a place where these activities are protected, for the most part, from development, with the exceptions of what I had mentioned earlier. They are some of the premiere destinations for hunting and fishing in the country. Again, the chairman and I disagree over the merits of acquiring some of these lands which are now in private ownership from willing sellers that potentially will otherwise be slated for development, using the Land and Water Conservation Fund. I believe that addressing the Land and Water Conservation Fund proactively would have been useful. For certain, given the objections to that--because it has not yet quite expired, even though we are underutilizing it and using the tax dollars somewhere else--the North American Wetlands Conservation Act has expired. The Dingell-Wittman amendment was proposed to reauthorize that critical program, and that was not allowed. So that would also be something that would show a measurable benefit. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman, and I want to congratulate him on his diligence and on his foresight here to propose this amendment. It was an oversight in replacing the current council with a new membership. I am not exactly certain why we need to do that because we haven't heard particular complaints. In any case, this is an improvement upon the newly recommended council to include minorities and women fully engaged, since I see a lot of those folks out in the back country in my State, and I am sure you do in Texas, too. So I am pleased that for one brief moment here, we have a bipartisan consensus. With that, I congratulate the gentleman.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chair, as the designee of Mr. Ellison, who is detained at the White House, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I congratulate Mr. Polis and Congressman Kildee, who is detained at the White House, for offering this amendment. I appreciate that the majority has accepted it. This will be a temporary provision until such a time as the final rule is adopted. There was never, I don't think, intent to have this sort of a blanket ban on snowmobiles, and this would correct that error by the Forest Service as they go through a deliberative process on where, when, and how snowmobiles will access Federal forest lands on a unit-by-unit basis.