Steve Pearce

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, we could go through all of the examples. The truth is many reports say that over three-quarters of the marginal wells--those are the ones in New Mexico; we have the stripper wells, the marginal wells--will be shut in by this action. You are going to take money away from our State government. You are going to take jobs away from the people. I support the resolution. We should back this regulation off, cut the red tape that is starving America's jobs out of this country.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, New Mexico gets 40 percent of its State's revenues from oil and gas, that is, 40 percent of our teachers' pay, 40 percent of our government institutions, law enforcement, hospitals--40 percent. So when the Federal Government begins to adjust the rules, we in New Mexico take an interest because it provides our jobs and it provides the way we educate our children. Now, we have two points of view being postulated on this argument nationwide. One says that the government is suddenly becoming the model of efficiency. I wonder where that efficiency is with regard to the $200 billion of fraud in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The government hasn't suddenly gotten efficient about that. Or just your local post office, has it suddenly gotten efficient about that? Or you could listen to the argument that the government is suddenly interested in the environment and we are going to make it clean. The BLM did not say a word when the Gold King Mine spill not only was allowed, but mandated to be turned loose by the EPA. The heavy metals ran down across those public lands and currently sit in the streambeds in New Mexico, and our friends say that the government is suddenly all worried about the environment. When you look specifically at the venting and flaring rule, we are told that oil and gas production went up dramatically in the last years. The truth is, when you dissect it down, oil and gas production on private lands went up dramatically. Oil and gas on public lands, the government lands owned by the BLM and other agencies, went down dramatically. So when the BLM decided to go in and control the venting and flaring of gasses, then we in New Mexico looked and said, is the government suddenly being more concerned about us or is it one more wink and nod to the special interests who want to kill the industries? They have already succeeding in killing the timber industry in this country. They have the coal industry on its back, and they want to kill the oil and gas industry that provides the jobs in New Mexico. Yes, we have an opinion about that. Oil and gas production, again, educates our kids. Oil and gas production provides our jobs. It provides the way of life that we in this country are looking for. We contribute heavily to that, but we don't stand silently when the government suddenly decides our best interests are at stake.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, many times, people ask me: Just what is it about regulations that kills jobs? That is what we are involved in this week is undoing some of those regulations. I will be introducing one today to unwind a regulation that the BLM recently put into place. What happened is, over a year ago, for the first time in 40 years, we allowed Americans to export oil. We are diminishing the trade deficits--that is, we are making our economy stronger--by shipping to South American countries and to countries all over the world. It is good for American jobs. Then the BLM comes in and puts in its onshore oil and gas order No. 3 rule, which will make it more difficult for us to produce oil off of public lands. It simply shouldn't be there. We are introducing legislation today that will reject that as a bureaucratic entanglement of job creation in the country. That is as simple as we could be. We look forward to the support of the Members of the House.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. ``No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no person holding any office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his continuance in office.''

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Missouri for his work on H.R. 5143. I rise in strong support of the legislation. Now, what we are hearing on the floor today is very similar, I suspect, to the discussion at the founding of this country, yet some who wanted a strong central government, strong regulating powers from Washington and some who said, no, that will not be the best way to provide a strong economy, that we should send the decisions closer to where people live. Frankly, that choice is being played out worldwide right now, and that is the case with the question in front of us. Should we allow people in Europe to tell us what our markets will look like here? Now, there are those who say yes. I am in the group that says no. Because our system here has created its own stability. In the financial difficulties of 2008 and 2009, our market performed just perfectly. We have got 56 different regulators, each one has their own responsibility. It provides a safer market for the consumer. It provides a safer product for the consumers to purchase. Why we would send that authority to some other country across the oceans just never made sense to those of us who want the decisions made closer to the people. Secondly, we have to think that it is good for American jobs. Anytime people in a different country are deciding what the rules are, they are going to skew it in favor of themselves. Again, our market is well diversified. It is spread among the States, and it provides insurance markets for every individual State and some more than just the one. So that tells us that it is good for the economy, it is good for the consumer; but, finally, we need the stabilizing force here, the ability for Americans to determine what we are going to do. I think that the recent election has been maybe a referendum on: Do we want to give up power to the local people, or do we just send it away? Mr. Luetkemeyer's bill preserves power for the people. It preserves power for the Congress. I would urge support for Mr. Luetkemeyer's bill, H.R. 5143.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I was not present to vote on H.R. 6297, the Iran Sanctions Extension Act. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 577.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Bishop for yielding the time. I appreciate the comments from my colleague, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), on this significant bill and resolution that we are talking about tonight. I grew up in the corner of New Mexico that does not have Indian tribes in it, so when I was elected to Congress in 2003, I began service, started traveling into some of the Indian reservations, and slowly began to develop relationships and friendships with those tribes. In 2013, one of my friends from Laguna Pueblo called and said: we have one of our culturally significant items that is going on sale in Paris and in France. And he said: we are going to try to buy it, but we are not sure that we can bring it home. They ended up purchasing that item at the auction. And, sure enough, France would not allow them to take it out of the country, so we negotiated between our State Department and the French State Department. Finally, they were allowed to bring that item out. They bought a first-class ticket for it. It was so significant that they did not want to let it travel as cargo in the hold of the airplane, instead, buying that first-class ticket to where it would sit there in the compartment with them. Now, that is not a culture that I was familiar with until I began to form friendships among the Native Americans, but it is a story I hear repeated. The same young man who purchased the item was going to buy the second item in that same sale and was dropped off the Internet down on the Indian reservation and did not purchase it. It is in his explanation of the missing of that second article. He said that he and his wife had lost a child in childbirth. And he said the feeling of missing that item was exactly the same as losing the child in childbirth. Now, that is not something I necessarily can identify with, but I certainly identify with the emotions that say there are things that are so significant they should not be trafficked in. We continued our kind of unofficial visits with the auction house at that point, and they began to say: look, many of the collectors would simply give the items back. They just don't want to be charged for things. These were sold usually in some sort of legal process. And so we had discussions, but nothing ever came of it. Then again, at that same point, the Hopi Tribe in Arizona had articles for sale. One of them cost $130,000. They had to buy them back. Again, the French Government would not help them at all. They took it to court and were simply turned down. This year, Acoma came and said: look, we have got a couple of items that are in France, they are going on auction. We contacted the French Government, and they were simply resistant. So we decided, with the help of the Acoma Tribe, with my friend, Mr. Cole, and Ms. McCollum, who has been a champion for Native American rights--we all formed the idea of this bill and submitted it. The day we submitted the bill, the French pulled the item. It was this time a shield from Acoma. They pulled it out of the auction. Negotiations are still going on to bring that item back. But the idea that we as a government, we as the U.S. Government, should be studying these things that are around the world being sold internationally, maybe have enough significance that we would want them to be repatriated, we would want them to come back to where people would know about their heritage. Now, as I began to be familiar with the Indian culture, the U.S. Government was not always gracious in dealing with those Native American tribes. And so the least that we can do is help them reestablish that culture that lets them tell the children who are coming up about who they were, where they came from, and the things that are significant to them. When I visit the tribes, occasionally they will bring out canes that were given to them to indicate their sovereignty. Those were given by Abraham Lincoln. Now, it sends goose bumps up and down my spine when I am standing on a tribal ground and they carefully bring out these canes that came from Abraham Lincoln to just signify their importance to the country. That is the value that their culture places on these items, and those items are passed around from one family to another to be in charge of the caretaking for it. So this resolution today simply says that we want to study it, we want to figure out what we can do better, and let's do better. Again, I thank my Democrat cosponsors. It is a very good bipartisan bill. It is a bicameral piece of legislation. I thank Chairman Goodlatte and subcommittee Chairman Sensenbrenner and the entire Judiciary Committee staff for the work on it. I urge the passage of H. Con. Res. 122.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas. Again, I appreciate the comments of the gentleman from California. I am sure most of you have seen this chart, but the color red designates the Federal ownership of land. So you can see some of the statistics that were quoted by the gentleman from California that, in the Eastern part of the U.S.--and it begins at New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana--is where the great mass of Federal lands come into play. You might ask why? These are the States that came in after Teddy Roosevelt was President. So in the early 1900s, he began the policy of holding many of the lands that were supposed to be given back to the States. He wanted the large national parks that we were many times enamored with, the large national forests. But they go beyond that. And that going beyond, that holding of land that has productive use but will not be used productively by the government, is the great source of economic problems in the West. Now, in New Mexico, which is the State here, we have many national forests in the areas covered with red. At one point, New Mexico had 123 mills that were processing timber that were cut out of our national forests. So 20 or 30 years ago, the Fish and Wildlife Service said that we have to protect the spotted owl and logging is the problem. They killed 85 percent of the timber industry nationwide. They killed those jobs nationwide. In New Mexico, of the 123 mills that we had processing timber at one point, we have closed 122 of them. So imagine these rural communities up in the mountains of a sparsely populated State, they have no economic basis now that the Forest Service has shut these mills down. By the way, about 3 years ago, they came out with a finding that logging was never the problem. So economic devastation occurred in the areas where the national forest had stopped all logging for a lie that had come from the Fish and Wildlife Service. So people in the West are understandably irritated, they are angry, and they are mad because their way of life has disappeared in these logging communities. But it goes much further beyond that. A couple of years ago, the Forest Service took a look at the grazing allotments in one of the forests and said: ``Oh, we have got to eliminate you 17 ranchers.'' We asked later if they would show us the science which said they have to get the people off. They showed me a picture of an orange, 5-gallon can turned upside-down in the forest and said: ``Look, the grass height is not high enough.'' I began to ridicule their orange-bucket science in public. It embarrassed them tremendously. Meanwhile, we asked the scientists at New Mexico State University to come and study the grazing and the height of the grass, and they said it is probably at historic heights. So we got involved in the issue. All the ranchers were eventually reinstated into their allotments, but these are private property rights. The allotments are things that have been purchased and sometimes passed along from generation to generation. Those private property rights, constitutional rights, were removed with no reason, with no understanding of what they are doing from a Forest Service that was arrogant with its power. Again, you see the effect on our economy. New Mexico is one of the lowest economies in the U.S.'s 50 States. So to find the U.S. Government at odds with the jobs in the State in this rural area just does not make sense to most people. So you find this budding anger across the entire West because the same policies affect everyone out there. Right now, we have a situation where one family has been fighting the U.S. Forest Service for their water rights. The court said the water rights belong to them. The Forest Service responded by putting a fence around the 23 acres. And they said: ``Well, it may be his water, but it is our 23 acres surrounding the water.'' The rancher went back to the courts. The courts said, over a period of time, he does not have a right to walk his cows on their 23 acres, but he does have the right to move the water from the 23 acres to his cows. The Forest Service responded by electrifying the fence. Now, our office has been engaged for 12 years trying to get some reasonable understandings between the rancher and the Forest Service, but it, again, is this arrogance that is willing to drive one of the largest ranchers in that area out of business over something that is, to most people, not understandable. We continue to analyze the effect, again, of these big red areas in our States. And at the end of the day, the most pressure is put on the Western schools. Now, the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) has done a magnificent study showing that the schools in these States are 20 percent below in funding all of the States in the rest of the country. So at the end of the day, the problem beyond the tax base, the problem beyond the jobs, the problem is in our schools that are starved for resources because we have no tax base on which to fund the schools and which to fund the local governments. So as you look at these footprints of the Federal Government ownership in the West, understand the trauma that it brings to us in our schools, in our jobs, and in our way of life. It is time for the U.S. Government to change its policies. It is time for the U.S. Government to begin to deal with the fact that people need to raise families in rural States, they need the access to good schools, and we need to be able to access the land which they are currently curtailing at an amazing rate. So that is the perspective from New Mexico on the ownership of Federal lands. Again, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for his leadership on this issue. I thank him for the time that he has yielded to us on this particular subject matter. I would, again, state that we can do better and we must do better.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, on Roll Call Number 454, on the Gosar amendment on H.R. 5538, I am not recorded because I was representing constituents on business outside of Washington, D.C. Had I been present, I would have voted Aye.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 477, on passage of H.R. 5538, I am not recorded because I was representing constitutents on business outside of Washington, D.C. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 466, on agreeing to the Senate amendment to the House amendment to S. 764, I am not recorded because I was representing constituents on business outside of Washington, D.C. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.'' Stated against:

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 443, on the passage of S. 304, I am not recorded because I am representing constituents in business outside of Washington, DC. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I appreciate my colleague for her support on the bill. The IMF plays a very significant role in global economic stability. Since they work with the world's central banks and financial institutions, it is only appropriate that we would be extending technical assistance to this organization and make it more permanent that they would finance and back up the plans of all countries to combat money laundering and terrorism. That is the simple precept of the bill. So as we look at the possibilities, the global rise of terrorism is causing instability in every corner of the world. The world should be now standing up saying that we all join hands, we join arms, link arms to fight this global scourge. One of the most important fights is the ability to choke off the financing, to interrupt the financing of the operations. This will not do completely what we need to do to stop the threats of global terrorism, but it will go a long way. But, more importantly, it will get buy-in from countries right now are reticent to take part. That is one of the essential things. Some nations are allowed to sit on the sidelines, and all we are saying is that should be up to all of us, not one country here, not the countries that are being affected, but the entire world should be standing together. This is just a commonsense, pragmatic approach to the situation of money laundering and terrorism. Again, it is not a partisan issue. So I appreciate the input of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. With that, I recommend that all vote ``yes'' on H.R. 5469.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Madam Chair, I would remind my friend and colleague that this amendment only addresses the funding. I simply used my time in order to advertise for this agency and the way that they operate. I would like to quote from an email that I got this morning: I cried when I saw what your boss did last night on the Leg Branch. This is referring to my amendment. I was unfairly targeted by OCE in 2013, for an action in 2008, which had been approved by the Ethics Committee. OCE even admitted there was no evidence. I complied with every provision of the policy, without exception. One of the staffers that was being investigated in this same circumstance left the Hill early on. I considered doing the same thing. I certainly had to endure all the phases of the OCE process, including referral to the Ethics Committee. The Ethics Committee dismissed the case against us, but it is, by far, the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my 21 years on the Hill. I am a strong person with resources, and was an emotional wreck over the thought of losing my credibility over an ethics investigation. I cried virtually every day for several months. And the prolonged process over many, many months took a toll on my life. And we are asking to give this agency another $191,000 to continue this kind of action? I think this debate is exactly called for at this moment on this bill and on this spending. Madam Chair, I urge Members to support the amendment to give notice to the OCE that we are watching what they are doing. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Madam Chair, I find it odd that we received the words today on the House floor that we are going to increase transparency through the Office of Congressional Ethics. That is exactly what they do not do. The Sixth Amendment of the Constitution gives the accused the right to be confronted with the witnesses against him. I will quote from a letter, a legal letter that was given to the OCE: This investigation has again revealed due process deficiencies within the OCE rules. While the Sixth Amendment of the United States provides for the fundamental right to confront one's accusers, the OCE rules do not allow to confront the accused with the accusers. Secondly, the Sixth Amendment gives us the right to a lawyer. I will again quote from Paul Solis, an employee of the OCE, in an email to my chief of staff: I forgot to mention on our call that should you retain a lawyer for the office, that lawyer would most likely be prohibited under our rules from representing a subject of this review to the extent that subject is a current staff member. So the OCE, in their email to our office, says you don't have the right to legal counsel, even though the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution says that you do. The third thing that I see is that we should be able to find out the nature of the charges under the Sixth Amendment. Again, our experience and the experience of others who have confronted OCE realizes you do not know what the charges are, you are not going to get to get a lawyer, and you cannot know who is accusing you. This hardly meets the word ``transparency'' that my good friend alluded to. Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Chair, despite what has been said about this amendment, it is very simple. There are two bodies that are funded through the appropriations process in the U.S. Congress. One is the House Committee on Ethics. That is the one that we all know as Members of Congress. But there is another body called the Office of Congressional Ethics that works pretty well outside of this body. Now, my amendment is simply taking this year's increase away from that outside body. Again, no change to the ethical process inside the body, the one that we are all familiar with and feel accountable to. But we are deducting $191,000 from this outside group because in this time of budget constraints, when I look at my office and all the other offices, our spending has been reduced. Our budgets have been reduced by approximately $200,000 since 2008. Now, we have to deal with 750,000 to 900,000 constituents. I have five field offices. Generally we drive, as a staff, somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 miles per year to deal with our constituents. Our budgets have gone down $200,000, with a small increase this year of $12,000. Then, on the other hand, I see a $191,000 increase on this outside group. I just feel like that is extraordinary and would suggest that the appropriations bill, H.R. 5325, be reduced in that amount in this budget area. Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chair, in closing, again, I just appreciate the consideration by the gentlewoman. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chair, reclaiming my time, what we are trying to do is put into the hands of two Indian nations land that has been designated for them since 1993. I think that all parties just want it to be done in the right fashion. We are so close at this point that I would really appreciate the fact that we put it in this bill, that we include it, and move it into the conference. I am certain that with the Senator's input, they will be listening to the same concerns as the gentlewoman is listening to. Again, I appreciate the help of Mr. Young, Mr. Lujan--all of those parties--and both Chairman Thornberry and Chairman Bishop. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. I yield to the gentlewoman from Minnesota.

Mr. PEARCE. Again, addressing the gentlewoman, those are the subjects that Mr. Lujan and I have agreed that we would work on in conference. I think that we are more than willing to accommodate, but to stall this out now--this is the last vehicle this year. Literally, we are out of time. I would gladly accept the gentlewoman's help in the conference committee, and I want to resolve this. Again, I have been working on it for 12 years. We go and we get the signatures. It has been very arduous on the parts of all, and I understand the difficulty when you have aboriginal lands. Again, when I look at the language, it is language that was previously established in the Ho-Chunk Nation distribution. The language literally is set in precedent, and the committee explains to us there is not much option there; but I am more than willing to work on the issue with the gentlewoman.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chair, that is a provision that I, personally, did not put into the bill. It came from the committee of jurisdiction, the Natural Resources Committee. They insisted on it because it is prevailing language under the law. The objection in the letter from the Navajo, which I was just showing the gentlewoman previously, describes that, and the language reads that they have so far failed to acquire a new right-of-way with the U.S. Army and now have come to Congress to address their error. What has happened is that the right-of-way has yielded, and the language here was language that has previously been set up by the committee in order to address this.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chair, in January of 1993, the BRAC Commission closed Fort Wingate in New Mexico. Fort Wingate was destined and designated to go to two tribes, equitably divided between the two--the Navajo Nation and the Zunis. During the past 12 years, I have been involved in negotiations back and forth between the tribes. The lands were occupied ancestrally by both tribes. There have been many long, ongoing discussions between all of the parties. We have gotten signatures in the past from different members of the Navajo government. We currently have a letter dated May 16, 2016, in which it states that it is the opinion of the Navajo Nation that the land division and the terms developed between the two tribes would provide a solution to the land division. All we are asking is that the agreed-upon maps be distributed in accordance with the terms, signed by the speaker of the Navajo Nation and the Zunis. That is the purpose of this amendment today. It is a fairly simple distribution according to the provisions that are listed in the BRAC ruling of January 1993. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding time to me. You might wonder: Why is someone from New Mexico even speaking about flood insurance problems? We get about 9 inches of rain a year in my district. Also, it is the high desert. They call it that because we begin at around 3,500 feet of elevation and work up from there. The way the National Flood Insurance Program has worked out in the past is that people are required, because they happen to be in a flood plain--and we are not dealing with whether or not they should be in a flood plain; we are dealing with the fact that they get no competitive bids--to only get the one government-size bid. And that is never very functional. So the most egregious circumstance that exists is one that one of my constituents mentioned. He said: I live at the top of a 7,000-foot mountain. The water is down here at about 4,000 feet, 3,000 feet below me, and I have to buy flood insurance. Well, the fact that he has to buy flood insurance is egregious enough, but the fact that he has to live and pay premiums based on the actuary standards that might exist in Florida is the egregious part. What it does is keeps houses from selling and people from being able to buy houses in New Mexico because they have been defined as being in a flood plain. If the market were out there, there would be companies that say: Wait. That guy is never going to flood. I can charge him a minute amount and still make money on his policy. Yet, nothing like that exists. So we find ourselves paying to the same standards as the people in Florida pay when we get 9 inches of rain a year. So I really appreciate the gentleman's attempt to bring some competition into the workplace. I appreciate Mr. Capuano's support of the bill, Mr. Murphy's underlying co-sponsorship. I am here to support heartily H.R. 2901, the Flood Insurance Market Parity and Modernization Act.