Cynthia Lummis

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mrs. LUMMIS. It appears from the text of this program, the Ag Marketing Service, that the $77.5 million appropriated may be derived from fees that are collected for the cost of standardization activities as established by regulation, because, if you look on page 18, line 9, it reads: not to exceed $61 million from fees collected shall be obligated during the current fiscal year for administrative expenses. My question then is: Is this a fee-for-service program rather than a generally funded, taxpayer-funded program? I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam Chair, I ask unanimous consent to reclaim my time.

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Thank you. My amendment would strike section 547, which would devote border security dollars to environmental mitigation along this country's southern border. The Border Patrol has unlimited access to private property, but the Border Patrol cannot always patrol Federal land, even if it is a known corridor for illegal traffic, including trafficking of humans and trafficking of drugs. Some permits, which are required to be issued by the Department of the Interior to the Department of Homeland Security for Border Patrol, take months to approve. Others are not granted at all. But when the Department of Homeland Security, our Border Patrol, is given access, Federal land managers force the Border Patrol to fork over money for environmental projects that may or may not have anything to do with the constitutional obligations of our Border Patrol. Madam Chairman, these are American taxpayer dollars. And more than that, they're dollars for border security, which I again repeat is a constitutionally delineated function of the Federal Government. But under section 547, these tax dollars are paying for the unreasonable demands placed on the Border Patrol by Federal land managers--one Department of the government, the Department of the Interior, taking dollars from another, the Department of Homeland Security, for a function that is required in the Constitution by the Border Patrol. I appreciate the chairman's staff taking time to try to work this out with my office and with the Natural Resources Committee, the standing committee that is responsible for supervisory control of the Department of the Interior. I regret that we were not able to come to resolution of this issue before floor consideration. So I'm moving to strike this provision with the hope that we can continue to work with Chairman Simpson, who is the subcommittee chairman of the Appropriations Committee on Interior and the Environment, and Chairman Hastings, who is the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee in the House, to come up with a better approach to solving this problem of Border Patrol access to Federal lands. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New Mexico for yielding. I appreciate his leadership of the Western Caucus and look forward to this robust discussion tonight. The West is rich in natural resources. And natural resources, their good stewardship and using them for the benefit of our country is what the West does best. This administration is turning its back on the stewardship that is available in the West as we produce our natural resources and, instead, is taking away the jobs, the environmental progress, and replacing it with further dependence on foreign energy from places like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. We can produce our own energy in this country. Between the resources of Canada and the United States, we can produce enough energy for us to meet our foreseeable needs. But that requires us to use the technologies and the jobs associated with those technologies that will create tens of thousands of jobs, in fact, hundreds of thousands of jobs. Instead, we are actually going in exactly the opposite direction. Let me give you an example. Fracking technology is advancing dramatically the ability of America to recover its rich natural gas resources, and it allows us to do so by casing a well with perforations. There is an explosion that cracks the tight sands or the rock. Then fluids are forced into these gaps in the rock, keeping the seams open, allowing this gas or oil to percolate back up the well casing and be produced, allowing Americans to use American-grown energy. But the attack on fracking technology is based not on science but on the idea that fracking could damage drinking water. None of us want to see our precious drinking water polluted by contaminants that some people believe are being used in fracking fluids. The States know their own geology better than anyone in Washington could and the very diverse geology that is different from State to State. You are going to be hearing later this evening from G.T. Thompson, a Member of Congress from Pennsylvania, where the Marcellus shale formation is being produced. I am going to talk about the use of fracking technology in my State, where the geology is very different from the Marcellus shale, but where it can be used in a responsible manner to produce American oil and gas with American jobs. The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, recognizing the concern that our drinking water could be imperiled, set about and created a set of rules and regulations to disclose the contents of fracking fluids and the processes that are being used by companies that are fracking wells in the State of Wyoming. Those rules are being used to provide people with the information that is needed to assure them that fracking fluids are not contaminating our water. Furthermore, there have been repeated stories, using an example from Wyoming, in Pavillion, Wyoming, of an area that some argue was fracked to the detriment of local water wells. Well, we are learning more and more about those water wells. And what we are finding is, out of over 100 water wells in the area, only about one-fifth of them are permitted, and some of them are not even cased. Well, this allows for the natural percolation of gas into water that has nothing to do with fracking. If we look at the science and apply it correctly, using good stewardship principles, we can produce oil and gas and have good drinking water. I even have a photograph from someone in my home State, Mr. Speaker, that has a flame coming out of a pond. The flame is a consequence of a natural methane seep coming out of the water that has been on fire as long as this gentleman can remember. These are natural phenomena. We need to make sure that we are assuring people in this country that drinking water will be safe at the same time we recover these resources. Those very assurances require scientists, they require environmental companies, they require fracking experts; more jobs, more oil and gas, more diverse energy for the American economy. Of course, clean burning natural gas provides us also an extension of the air quality that we value so well. These are American jobs that can be saved, nurtured and grown, and used successfully all over the United States, on and off shore. Mr. Speaker, you just acknowledged a project in the Beaufort Sea, which is off of the coast of Barrow, Alaska, 87 miles. Shell has put $4 billion, as you pointed out, into preparing to produce that resource, and still does not have a permit to produce it. At some point, those investments begin to devalue their sunken costs in a way that may make companies like Shell look elsewhere. That takes jobs away from America and into countries where we are competing for jobs, and in places that sometimes are not our best friends when it comes to foreign policy and human rights. So, Mr. Speaker, let's produce oil and gas with American jobs, with good pay, with good benefits, and with the residual goal of having an all-of-the-above energy policy that benefits the West and the country as a whole.

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam Chair, the Equal Access to Justice Act restrictions in this bill is necessary to avoid costly delays to domestic energy development based on the political agenda of a few groups. EAJA was established in 1980 as means for small businesses and individuals to seek judicial redress from wrongful government action. It allows for party's to seek reimbursement of attorneys' fees from the taxpayers. Payment of these fees comes directly of out agency budgets, in this case the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. EAJA was intended to allow people and small businesses with ``limited financial means'' the ability to sue the Federal Government without having to worry about the costs associated if they prevail. However, it is being abused by deep-pocketed organizations with a political agenda. For example, in 2005 the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council received nearly $200,000 dollars in taxpayer dollars after suing the Federal Government on an offshore energy project in California. The Sierra Club has annual revenue of $85 million dollars, and the Natural Resources Defense Council has annual revenue of over $100 million dollars. There is no justification for forcing the American taxpayer-- particularly those on the gulf coast--to pay the attorney's fees of political advocacy organizations that have ample funds of their own. That is not what EAJA was intended to accomplish, and restricting its use in this bill is both necessary and appropriate. Environmental groups can continue to sue to their hearts' content-- and they will because suing the Federal Government is their modus operandi--but taxpayers shouldn't have to foot the bill. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chair, I along with Representative Gwen Moore from Wisconsin, submit the following statement on H.R. 1, the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act for 2011. As Co-Chairs of the bipartisan Women's Caucus, the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is important to us. It is a program that has and continues to serve over 9 million women, infants, and children monthly, providing food, education and access to health care. Many of the women and children who use these services are at-risk for poor nutritional diets and WIC provides them with greater access to nutritious foods as well as preventative services to improve their families' health over the long- term. At caucus meetings, we have discussed this program and the impact of reduced spending on women across the nation. It is important for this Congress to advance ways in the upcoming budget that can ensure benefits are provided to constituencies with the greatest need. WIC is the largest discretionary program under the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and as such has been targeted for cuts in the continuing resolution. For the pregnant, postpartum and breast-feeding women who participate in WIC, as well as for their under-five children, we look forward to working together on solutions acceptable to both sides of the aisle.

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the staff of this House of Representatives. We adjourned this morning at 3:48 a.m. with a staff that diligently stayed and worked these amendments, the staff outside that provides security. It is an amazing effort by the people who serve this country as the staff members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and I want to take this opportunity to thank them for their outstanding service. Mr. Chairman, I'm here to propose an amendment and tell a story about laws, and it is ironic that these two proposals came up simultaneously. In 1980, a law was passed called the Equal Access to Justice Act, and it allows Americans who are being challenged by the Federal Government to recover their legal fees if they successfully sue the Federal Government when the Federal Government has wronged them. It is a very fair law. The problem is, in 1995, the Federal Government quit keeping records on who is receiving payouts and how much under the Equal Access to Justice Act. Consequently, this law has been hijacked by certain groups who use it to sue and recover judgments. For example, there are 14 environmental groups that have recovered $37 million by filing 1,200 lawsuits for which they've recovered judgments and even legal fees under settlements with the Federal Government, thereby fueling the fire of suing the Federal Government over sometimes procedural issues. There's a group at Virginia Tech University who, through the FOIA law, the Freedom of Information Act, has uncovered how many abuses there are of this law and how many unintended consequences there are of the use of this law by certain groups, and we need to have a 6-month moratorium on expenditures and payouts under EAJA so we can get information about who's receiving this money, what the lawyers are being paid per hour, and who it's going to, how many environmental groups are actually paying for their organization by routinely suing the Federal Government to stop certain activities on Federal lands. This is taxpayer money that's being used for this purpose; and in light of my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle's enthusiasm for sunshine, for full disclosure, for knowing where taxpayer dollars are going, I strongly encourage you to support my amendment.

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 66, I was at a constituent meeting. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam Chair, I rise to correct some of the statements that were just made. In my home State of Wyoming, we have more than 30,000 wild horses. The wild horses have no natural predators. And I have ridden BLM wild horses. My sister adopted two of them. I've ridden them. We've used them on our ranch, and I know whereof I speak. Wild horses overgrazing our fragile ecosystems in the West on lands that were not conducive to the type of grazing that occurs when a hoofed animal that does not have a split hoof is grazing causes the soil to be tamped down. Horses are a solid-hoofed animal. When they run, they tamp the soil. When we have our sparse rains, it runs off, thereby causing soil erosion and causing difficult grazing situations. The natural grazers on that land for millennia were split-hoofed animals such as elk and bison, and that is why sheep and cattle are more conducive to protecting the grazing of that sparse fragile resource than a solid-hoofed animal. When you put too many solid-hoofed animals tamping down that fragile grass with a very shallow reservoir of top soil, you cause overgrazing and you are loving horses in a way that causes the fragile grass ecosystem to the Western States to die. It is this Congress that has caused the problems by saying that we cannot slaughter horses. Yet we're not supposed to keep them in pens. We're supposed to allow them to overgraze the West. When the gentle people east of the Mississippi will take these excess horses into their backyards, I will support this amendment. Until then, I oppose efforts by those well-meaning people that measure animal unit months by the acre and we measure acres by the animal unit month. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam Chairman, in December, I voted for that historic agreement between President Obama and Congress to keep American taxes low and to extend unemployment benefits. Now we are here to debate how to pay for that, and I have an idea about how to help pay for that. My amendment, No. 193, would strike the remaining funding for this 6 months in this year totaling $35 million from the budgets of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the BLM and the Forest Service for the purpose of buying new Federal land. There are many alternatives to buying land with cash that would allow them to continue using Yankee ingenuity, and those include land exchanges. In my own State, we have over half a million acres that have been designated for disposal by Federal agencies because these lands don't fit into good land management, yet there are other lands that these same Federal agencies would like to acquire. They can do exchanges. They can do sales of this land that is designated for disposal and purchase other lands that work better for the fragmented land ownership patterns that we sometimes experience in the West. This is a much better alternative to using $35 million to pay cash to buy new land that adds to the management base and responsibility. At the same time, it would free up land that would be disposed of for people to buy and begin to earn a living on. So this is a way to create jobs, not to burden the Federal Government, and to recognize that good stewardship and good conservation can be practiced by good Federal and private partnerships. Those are the opportunities that are available if we adopt this amendment. It saves the taxpayers money and it helps pay for those people receiving unemployment benefits, and this is a win-win amendment. It is only a moratorium, and when we begin the next fiscal year, we would have an opportunity, from having reviewed projects between the Natural Resources Committee and the Interior Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, and have a better understanding of the ultimate goal of our land acquisitions programs within these Federal agencies. So, Madam Chairman, I urge adoption of the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, first of all I want to thank you personally, as well as your colleague from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz) and also Mrs. McMorris Rodgers of Washington, for your work on this amendment. The continuing resolution as written would reinstate a 2009 Fish and Wildlife determination that the gray wolf in Montana and Idaho should be removed from the endangered species list. This amendment would replace that 2009 determination with an earlier-approved Fish and Wildlife determination, the one made in 2008, and that expands the scope of delisting of the gray wolf to include the full range of the Northern Rockies wolf. Mr. Chairman, after gray wolves were introduced in 1995 into Yellowstone National Park in my home State and placed on the endangered species list under section 10(j), which is the nonessential experimental population section of the Endangered Species Act, a list was determined about what it would take to recover the species, when would we consider it recovered, and it was determined by experts at the time that the recovery would be complete if the population of wolves grew to 300 wolves with at least 30 breeding pairs. That was the target, that was the goal, 300 wolves, 30 breeding pairs. So how many wolves are there today, Mr. Chairman? Here we are, 16 years later. There are more than 1,600 wolves and 113 breeding pairs. By every reasonable definition, the wolf has recovered, and yet these wolves remain on the endangered species list. They remain protected, even as they overwhelm and decimate other wild game herds. For example, in the Grovont, the moose population in terms of young calves has declined 90 percent, 90 percent, and it is due to wolf depredation. Wolves remain protected in each State because of court determinations, not because of science, and it is now time to be honest about the wolf and its recovery. Its continued inclusion on the endangered species list has everything to do with special interests and emotion and nothing to do with science. Organizations that repeatedly sue the government at taxpayer expense orchestrate these strategies and make people believe that the wolf is not recovered. The simple truth is the wolf is doing very well. Lest anyone be confused, my amendment will not create an open season on wolves. It will return management of the wolf populations back to the States, and they are the ones who suffer the effects of the wolves. It will allow for appropriate management of wolf herds, wolf herds by any definition, that have fully recovered. So it is time to be honest. It is time to delist. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. Point of Order

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 24, because I was having a root canal, had I been present, I would nave voted ``no.''

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chair, on rollcall No. 23 I was absent because I was having a root canal. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this resolution. I rise to add the voice of the people of Wyoming to the chorus of united Americans reaching out in prayer to the victims in Arizona and to the families of those whose lives were stolen from them. On January 6, Representative Gabrielle Giffords took to the floor of this House and eloquently read to us the First Amendment of our Constitution. She gave her own strong emphasis to the phrase that grants Americans the right to peaceably assemble. Two days later, she and her constituents have had their God-given rights violently taken from them. In the midst of our national grief, the desire to make sense of the senseless is profound. We err if we attempt to rationalize what is wholly irrational and to understand what cannot be understood. The Apostle Paul writes, ``Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror.'' Instead, let us all stand with the gentlelady from Arizona in her time of trial and in defense of the Constitution which she is striving to uphold. Let us stand with our 9-year-old daughters who are fostering a budding interest in our representative democracy. Let us stand with our 76- and 79-year-old mothers and fathers who seek only to forge a relationship with their elected representatives and to impart a wisdom that comes with long life as a citizen of this country. And let us stand with our servant leaders of all ages and parties and to spend every day in a passionate effort to better a great Nation and a beautiful ideal. We do them honor if we continue, not with idle speculation, but with a renewed commitment to exercise the rights of liberty and freedom. We begin the long road to healing by fervently praying for peace in our world, peace in our country, and peace in our hearts. God bless the victims of Saturday's violence and their families. God bless America. And now may the peace of God which surpasses all human understanding and all human misunderstanding be with us all.

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the University of Wyoming Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2010. This year's inductees include Norwegian skiers Steinar Hybertsen and Staale Engen, who was also recognized for his accomplishments in track and field along with Karen Sanford Gall of Casper, Wyoming. Cowboy wrestler Jerry Frude of Laramie is inducted alongside football players Bob Jacobs of Bozeman, Montana, and Chuck Lamson of Ames, Iowa. And rounding out this year's class is the 1966 Pokes football team that won the Western Athletic Conference title, then finished with a 10-1 record by beating Florida State 28-20 in the Sun Bowl. I extend my congratulations to all the student-athletes voted into the University of Wyoming Hall of Fame Class of 2010 on their outstanding accomplishments and their inspiration to Wyoming's community of fans. Powder River Let'r Buck and Go Pokes.

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to urge my colleagues to support my proposal to halt the unchecked growth of the Federal Government. In selling the $1.1 trillion stimulus package to the American people, the President promised that it would keep unemployment under 8 percent. The results of this expensive experiment are in. It failed. We have lost millions of private-sector jobs, and unemployment is hovering just under 10 percent. But the Federal workforce, fueled by the stimulus and other massive spending bills, has grown by 188,000 employees--or 15 percent--and it's only going to get worse. The Obama administration is on track to hire 230,000 new employees by next year. As we approach the full implementation of ObamaCare in 2014, our government will have to staff a vast new health care bureaucracy. This could include thousands of new IRS employees to enforce the health care mandate on individuals and businesses. My bill, the Federal Workforce Reduction Act, would halt the sprawl of government and get us back to pre-Obama government employment levels. My bill would not force any civil servant out of their job, and it would exempt the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs. But all other agencies could only hire one new civilian employee for every two that retire or otherwise end their service. Our President and his agency heads would have to control their appetite for government expansion. They would make due with fewer resources--just like the individuals, families, and small business owners who have had to make sacrifices and cut back to deal with the recession. By attrition the government would shrink back to pre-Obama levels and save taxpayers $35 billion over 10 years. But most importantly, my bill would help reverse a dangerous trend in which the private sector shrinks and the government sector expands. Growing the government does nothing to help our small businesses--the engines of job creation. Taxing to give people less money and the government more money to expand does not help the economy. Yet the Big Government chameleon-- debt-financed stimulus, cap and tax, ObamaCare, tax increases coming this January--continues to roam the halls of Congress, threatening to choke off the entrepreneurial spirit that built this country. Important decisions that should be made by individuals, families, their doctors, or our small businesses are being relocated to Washington to be made by unresponsive bureaucrats. The policies of the Democratic leadership are fostering a culture of dependency on Big Government. They are marching us towards European-style social democracy. But there is another way. Vote for this provision, cut spending and government employment back to pre-stimulus levels. Stop the big march of government.

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, Americans want the spill cleaned up, BP to pay for it, jobs to be restored, and the Federal Government to do a better job of inspecting for worker safety and environmental safety. To my colleagues in the majority party, we agree. Take ``yes'' for an answer. But what does this bill do? It raises taxes, it removes the BLM land managers from doing land management and over the objection of the Director of the Bureau of Land Management. Only Congress would view this bill as a response to what Americans want. No wonder Congress has an approval rating of 11 percent. This is nuts, Mr. Chairman. This is nuts.

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3967 renews the authority to spend appropriations for the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. A legislative hearing was held on this bill, but, unfortunately, the National Park Service did not provide us with any information about this program or the necessity to fund it. What we did learn is that this program will be funded and overseen through the Department of Justice, leaving us with even more questions, not the least of which is why this bill went through a public lands committee. That being said, I am concerned that extending Federal spending at this time may not be appropriate until we can better understand how this program will be administered and what has been done in the last 6 years since it was originally authorized. Finally, while I have no doubt that the Great Blacks in Wax Museum is a positive influence in the City of Baltimore, it is unclear why it is necessary to involve the Federal Government in the wax museum industry. This may be yet another highly illustrative example of why we are buried by overwhelming Federal debt.

Mrs. LUMMIS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this bill authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to study the suitability and feasibility of designating the Colonel Charles Young Home in Xenia, Ohio, as a unit of the National Park Service. The bill also directs the Secretary to consider other initiatives for protection of the home and interpretation of the life and accomplishments of Colonel Young. Colonel Young was the third African American to graduate from West Point and had a distinguished career in the U.S. Army from 1884 to 1922, including command of troops in the Spanish-American War. Colonel Young is also the first black to serve, in effect, as the superintendent of a national park, because he commanded the Army unit assigned to protect Sequoia National Park and General Grant National Park. Colonel Young served our country with great distinction, and I hope this study will help us find appropriate ways to honor his life. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.