Steve Pearce

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding and for his work on this bill. As he mentioned in the opening statements, there is a provision in the bill that allows the Santa Clara Ohkay Owingeh 99-year leasing program to move forward. That is in resolution to the long-standing problems that we face there. So just a significant provision that affects these two units but also the underlying concept that we are going to recognize the sovereignty of our Tribes. As many people know, some of the Tribes are faced with just very difficult poverty conditions throughout the history of their Tribes since they have been on the reservations, and I work with close friends of mine who are trying to solve these problems and to find resolution to long-term prosperity on the Indian reservations. So when the National Labor Relations Board reversed its long-standing status of recognizing the sovereignty of our nations--70 years they had recognized that. In 2004, they simply reversed it without much explanation, without any warning, and certainly without precedent. It has caused things to be much more difficult, especially in States like New Mexico. So the Tribal leaders are saying: We should be sovereign. We should be allowed to make these sorts of decisions ourself without the Federal Government coming in and putting the bureaucracy there. The underlying concept of the bill is one that simply says we want prosperity on Native American lands, we want their sovereign actions to take care of themselves, to move themselves forward. That is what the entire Nation says is the American Dream. Let's let that occur for the Native Americans in this country. I think the provisions of the bill are very important. We have been working for 6 years now in Native American housing, another way to help move prosperity into Native American lands. Again, I support the concept of the bill.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. This bill today is simply saying that we have people with a need, and they have to be able to get access to loans to finance houses to live in. It is the way I began. It is the way I want other people in New Mexico to begin. Let's just restore order to the market. That is what we are trying to do. Mr. Speaker, I support the bill.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for bringing this subject to the floor. Mr. Speaker, I suspect I might be one of the few Members of Congress whose first house was a manufactured house. Not only that, but I represent a district where 50 percent of the homes are manufactured housing. I think that it is important that we kind of separate the two discussions. If the CFPB were looking at the abuses and going after the abusers that I have heard talked about from the other side, there might not be a discussion today, but that is not what the CFPB did. What the CFPB did is say that all balloon notes are bad. I can't find any bank, from the East Coast to the West Coast, that will come into New Mexico and lend $33,000 for a used mobile home and put it on a 30- year note. You can tear up a mobile home within days. So balloon notes are simply made in order for people to come in and check. They didn't use them to maybe put bad adjustments and higher interest rates or anything. They just want to be able to look. So they generally put these loans on a 5-year basis. At the end of 5 years, if everything is good, we continue to roll it. We don't start from scratch. We don't charge you prejudicial interest. But all balloon notes were made illegal by the CFPB. They were declared to be prejudicial in their nature when they weren't. Qualified mortgages were another way that they shut off the lending for the manufactured housing in our district. Owner-seller financing was another way. What happens in New Mexico, somebody will buy a trailer house, a manufactured home. They will live in it, pay for it, buy another one, and over their lifetime accumulate 10 or 15. Then, when they retire, they begin to sell one at a time. If you sell more than one or two, the CFPB said: You are now a broker-dealer, and we are not going to let you operate unless you become licensed. So it shut off much of the access of just one seller selling to another. We brought the CFPB in. We brought Kelly Cochran, about 5 years ago, to walk through these and say: Please, we understand what you are trying to do. No one wants to be protecting those who are violating consumer rights, but just get it within its lane. Kelly Cochran was there for almost an hour and admitted that she was not aware of the many things brought up that were on-the-ground problems. They never changed them. Mr. Cordray continued to assert that he had solved all the problems, when he had never solved any of the problems. Most of the banks in New Mexico--and I live right on the Texas line-- in that region of Texas and New Mexico, just quit offering to finance manufactured housing. That meant the people who needed it the most had no access to credit. We discussed these items in the open hearings many times with the CFPB Director, Mr. Cordray, and it just seemed like they could never get focused on those.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, the problem we are trying to solve--the gentleman asked the question--is that we are burning our forests down. We are burning up the habitat. We are burning up the endangered species. This was 40,000 acres. We had another fire in the Second District of New Mexico that was over 300,000 acres and they burned without regard. They burned human life. They burned animal life. They burned habitat and they contaminate our waterways. Those are the problems that we are trying to solve. The Forest Service agrees with us that the restrictions are too great, and they have worked with us on the language, understanding that they must go through the studies, they must do the work that is required, but we can expedite those in order to do larger-scale thinning projects. Otherwise, we will never get the forests in the West cleared up. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is a good amendment. I urge its passage, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, our national forests are overgrown, and the thinning projects which would restore them to health are delayed by lengthy and costly regulations and litigations. In New Mexico, it takes a look like this: the top picture is a picture of one of our national forests, and the bottom picture is a picture from an area that has been thinned. Now, take, for example, the Lincoln National Forest near Ruidoso, the Mescalero Forest is butted right up against it, so we are able to get a good comparison. Now, typically, the forests in the West look like this: widely spaced trees and mostly grass in between, so when the fires came, they were grass fires. The tree rings show us that every 8 years a fire occurred, and it would keep the small underbrush and the small diameter trees, the small, unhealthy ones, it would keep those burned out and our forests, again, looked like this. But because all of the thinning projects and all of the timber projects have been canceled for decades now, our forests, instead, look like this. When wildfires happen, they burn catastrophically and burn everything in their sight. So my amendment today simply allows the Forest Service to move forward on balanced thinning programs in large scale. Typically, they do all of the paperwork, all of the studies for small acreage, maybe 30 acres or 50 acres. Since the forests are about a million acres, you would never get through and never get the forest restored to its health, and that is the problem. The Forest Service has been working with me on the language for this amendment and submitted almost exact language that we have put here on the floor today. They agree with us that they should restore the forest to its health, but the environmental groups and the outside litigation have stopped the programs completely. Now, in New Mexico, this means jobs, but it also means the health of our environment, and it means the destruction of endangered species, because when the fires burn through, we get the effect on the next page; again, this is that same Lincoln National Forest that we were looking at just a second ago. This is after the Little Bear fire, which burned 255 homes and almost 40,000 acres. We almost lost the entire town of Ruidoso. If the fire had just capped over the mountain, it would have burned straight down the side. The winds were exactly the direction which would have caused that. So the Forest Service is agreeing with us that we need to do some thinning, and we are not going to be able to do it without legislative language, so this amendment is being offered here today. We used to have 123 mills working in New Mexico clearing timber, processing it. We have got vast national forests, and all of those have been shut down. The spotted owl came along in 1993, and the findings from the Fish and Wildlife Service was that logging was the reason that the spotted owl was going extinct. Over 20 years later, Dan Ashe, the head of Fish and Wildlife Service, said: Oops, we made a mistake and we burned down the West, and we have ruined our forests over a mistake. There was actually another predator out there. We still have the problem to go in and clean up these forests before they burn and before they look like this. Another real problem that exists is when we burn our national forests, then the watersheds are going to be choked up with mud, with ash, and with everything else. This is Bonita Lake there in that same Lincoln National Forest near Ruidoso. It provides the drinking water for several major communities in the southern part of the State. That lake was about 75 feet deep, pristine water, had fish in there. It was a recreational area right in the middle of the national forest. The Forest Service was alarmed at how much damage was going to occur to this lake if they didn't log above it, so they put in a project. They were sued and work grounded to a halt. They did not get to thin that area above the lake. A fire occurred, this fire that you just saw in the previous slide. Now, that 75-feet-deep lake is filled with 50- feet of mud and ash. It killed all of the fish. It is not suitable for drinking. The community does not have the money in order to drain that lake and to refill it. So that is what we find in the West because of these forest management processes. My amendment would simply allow the Forest Service to move forward on large-scale projects. They would still have to do all of the studies, everything. They would just be expedited. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to rise today in support of the fiscal year 2018 budget resolution. On behalf of Chairman Hensarling, I would like to take a moment to speak about the instructions given by the chairwoman of the Budget Committee to the Financial Services Committee to find savings of $14 billion. Now, that is what we were sent here to do: to find those places where it makes sense to cut the budget and we don't harm anything. In fact, in this case, the Financial Services Committee is going to help things in rural communities by finding those savings that the chairwoman instructed us to find. Several years ago, the Democratic majority passed the Dodd-Frank resolution, the Dodd-Frank Act. That enshrined too big to fail. It created unaccountable agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Earlier this year, this body passed H.R. 10, the Financial CHOICE Act. That was trying to prune back the capabilities of CFPB to hurt the rural areas, which it had been doing in my district. Carlsbad National Bank recently shared with us how it takes them 185 pages to complete a mortgage loan, 185 pages for a small bank for just the simple resolution of buying a home. Many times our community banks are simply stopping to offer that service. No one else is willing to come in to New Mexico and lend into these rural communities. So we are facing a very serious problem. Sometimes community banks are having to consolidate. That hurts rural communities even worse, because the consolidation usually moves the bank's headquarters outside the State or outside the community. It weakens the fabric of the community. So by finding the savings in this budget resolution which we were instructed to do, we not only save the money, but we also stop the encroaching regulations that CFPB is putting out, harming the rural communities, harming rural homeowners. So for those reasons, I gladly support H. Con. Res. 71, the Budget Resolution Act, and urge its passage.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gosar).

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the venting and flaring rule was, again, put in place by the last administration, intending for BLM to regulate methane. Historically, that had been regulated by the EPA. Now, keep in mind that methane production from oil wells is down 21 percent since 1990, while production is going up. Production is going up, methane production is down. So we wonder why the administration came at the last second to put this rule into place. Basically, the argument is exactly the same for opposing that venting and flaring rule that what is at stake are not the good wells. Those wells are going to produce in their economic with whatever burdens are placed on them. What is at stake are the stripper wells which, again, make up 2.6 billion barrels of production in the U.S. every day, 145 million barrels of production in the State of New Mexico. So you can imagine the economic catastrophe if that 145 million barrels weren't available to the State to both tax and to provide jobs. Again, 40 percent of New Mexico's pay, roughly the teachers' pay, the police pay, roughly that much comes from oil and gas production. You can do the math and see how much New Mexico would be affected if this venting and flaring rule continues to place the burden on the well. The estimates are for each well that a cost of $60,000 is going to be required to come into compliance. Again, keep in mind that this rule comes after the methane is more carefully controlled today under greater production than it ever has been. The estimates are that we will lose thousands of wells if this venting and flaring rule continues. Again, it is the stripper wells which are most at harm. If we lose the 2.6 billion barrels of stripper well production every year because of the high cost of implementation of the venting and flaring rule, that is going to mean we are less energy independent, that we rely more on outside sources. It is going to drive the price of gasoline up. The people who can afford it least are the people at the bottom of the economic ladder. They will be the ones penalized most by rising prices of gasoline and decreasing supplies of oil. Mr. Chair, again, I would urge people to support this amendment, the underlying bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I think it is clear that what is at stake is 2.6 billion barrels of oil a day made from wells that make maybe one or two barrels, three barrels a day. They are not extremely economic, but those businesses are located in New Mexico. Those businesses keep their headquarters there. They are just small mom-and-pop operators that care enough about the energy business to stay out there, and so when the government does things that says we are not going to let you operate, that we are going to shut you down, it accomplishes what the Saudi Arabians have never been able to accomplish, and that is defeat the spirit that says we can survive any attacks. Mr. Chair, again, I urge people to support this amendment and the underlying bill, H.R. 3354, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman).

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), the chairman of the committee and subcommittee.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I might consume. Onshore Order 3, put in place by the last administration, creates a number of unnecessary and duplicative burdens that cause energy production to be much more difficult. Now, many people visualize that oil wells are drilled into the ground and then they just produce oil on their own; that it flows to the surface magically, and it remains unabated through the life of the oil well. It is not true at all. What actually happens is that there is a pool of oil at the bottom of the well, and as it is produced, the production gets smaller each day until eventually the small production is classified as stripper well production. Now, the Saudi Arabians, about every 10 years, come in and kill the stripper wells because that would be approximately 2 to 3 billion barrels of oil a year they could produce that would be shut down here. In my home county of Lee County, New Mexico, we hunker down when we see these economic attacks coming, and we simply make it through; not because it is economic, not because it is productive, but because it is one of the few economic drivers of New Mexico. Oil and gas provides about 40 percent of our teachers' pay, 40 percent of police pay. So it is just our way of life. But the stripper wells are not extremely economic. So when this Onshore Order 3 came into place, it actually is assisting the Saudi Arabians to try to drive stripper wells out of existence because it is the small producers, it is the guys who will stay there and produce the wells when nobody has economic interest in them. They like sweeping up the crumbs off of the energy table. So Onshore Order 3 puts in processes that require monitoring that is already provided at the point of sale. So it is not as if somehow the government's being cheated. It just is trying to squeeze more out of these uneconomic wells. The estimates are that we have shut down a great number of those wells, affecting teachers' pay, affecting the economy of New Mexico, killing jobs. So my amendment is very simple. It would prevent funds from being used to fund the BLM Onshore Order Rule No. 3. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), the chairman of the subcommittee.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chair, Tribes in New Mexico and across the West depend on water for agriculture, they depend on it for their families, they depend on it for spiritual reasons. Without rights, water can be taken by anyone. The amendment that Mrs. Torres and I put forward is just trying to say that rights are personal. They are private property rights, and no government can take them away. It is a reasonable amendment. I appreciate the gentleman from Colorado's observations. We will attempt to see that those observations are dealt with in a meaningful way. In the meantime, I simply ask Members of the House to join with me in voting for this amendment to H.R. 23. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Huffman).

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to how much time I have?

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, water is life. We understand that in the West maybe more than anywhere else in the world. So any time we are talking about water, we are talking about life, we are talking about the ability to have an economy, we are talking about jobs, we are talking about communities. It affects us deeply in the West. When the original bill, H.R. 23, was being marked up, my friend, the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Torres), brought a concern to the members of the committee, saying that she felt like the underlying bill did not adequately address Tribal water rights. Tribes are some of the areas of deepest poverty in the country. As she brought that up, it struck my attention that we should take a look at it. Ultimately, her amendment failed in committee, but the two of us, with the chairman and the sponsor of the bill, huddled after the committee meeting and decided that we should move forward with our concerns. Those concerns are reflected in this amendment today. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Torres), to speak about this issue.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tipton).

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chair, credit is one of the most powerful devices of our financial system. It was designed over time by modern societies. In some countries, credit is simply not available to those who need it the most: people at the bottom of the ladder. In the United States, we have got a well-developed system where credit is available no matter how bad their credit rating might be. That is, it was available until the Dodd-Frank regulation created the CFPB. In the Second District of New Mexico, 50 percent of the homes are mobile homes or manufactured housing. Dodd-Frank immediately began to show that they had no clue about how rural societies worked, and put into place regulations that choked off the access of most of our homeowners to manufactured housing. That wasn't enough for the CFPB. They began then to set forward qualified mortgages, which then choked off traditional mortgages to many people in the Second District of New Mexico. Many people in New Mexico will buy their first mobile home and they will live in that. Then, over their life, they will buy 8 or 10 more. Then they sell those one at a time, usually to people who can't get credit any other way. The CFPB simply shut that down. Now, seniors with less income, but people who need the loans the most, have one more source of credit dried up to them. The rules that affect the rural mortgages and small businesses were so punitive that the economy in New Mexico has never come back. It is not just that the Financial CHOICE Act is the right choice in the rural areas, in our areas; it is the only choice. I support H.R. 10, and I ask my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the bill.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. The people at the low end of the spectrum had access to many different ways of borrowing. CFPB simply routinely eliminated almost every single one of them. As a representative of one of the poorest districts in the country, I have found CFPB's efforts to be meaningless to the big guys and punitive to us who are just trying to make a living out in the rural parts of the world. Mr. Speaker, I urge support for this rule and support for the underlying bill.

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, one of the most deceptive things that Congress does is regulate one part of an industry for the problems created by another part. The community banks had nothing to do with the collapse in 2008. It was Wall Street, the people in New York, the big banks. Yet the Dodd- Frank regulation kind of let them scoot by and gave them permits to continue operating, while many of the Main Street businesses and many of the Main Street banks have closed down. My friend just mentioned Wells Fargo. CFPB stood on the sidelines silently and mute while they were conducting their affairs. It was a county prosecutor who actually uncovered it. So this idea that we here in Congress are going to do things that are going to get it in check simply is not true. What is true is that the agency created by Dodd-Frank, the CFPB, or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, was so annoying that it put New Mexico's most sparsely populated county, with about 8 people per square mile, to be regulated the same as New York City. That is how much CFPB understood. In the process of their regulating, they shut down the loans for manufactured housing. That means nothing to the people in New York, but in New Mexico, that is 50 percent of the homes in my district. The CFPB didn't much care. They also limited the ability of regular banks to make loans on mortgages, establishing something called qualified mortgages. They simply said all balloon notes are prejudicial. Those things were hurting and penalizing the rural parts of this country. The people who suffered most were the people at the lowest end of the economic spectrum. Our credit agencies, our credit system in the U.S., has done much in order to make credit available, no matter where you are in the political and income spectrum.