Steve Pearce

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the time. Mr. Speaker, I do represent the Second District of New Mexico. That is the part of New Mexico that lies on the border with Mexico. Make no mistake about it: This issue is one that is important to the entire Nation. We are talking about a single subject, and that is securing the border. That is all the discussion is about. The rest of the spending in the bill, maybe it is right, maybe it is wrong, but that is not part of the discussion. The discussion is: Are we going to secure the border or not? The gentleman from Ohio had it exactly right, that the President sat there and said we are going to take this in front of the American people. He said: I will take responsibility for it, and we are going to have that discussion. But then the Speaker of this House has said we are not going to have the discussion. We came here as Members of Congress to make important decisions, sometimes very weighty decisions, sometimes very hard decisions. Frankly, this decision is not that hard: Secure the border. That is it. That is all we are asking for from this institution and from our friends in the Senate, but somehow we are finding that that is too hard an ask. The American people don't think it is too hard an ask. It is not that it is a racial question. The Second District of New Mexico is 52 percent Hispanic, 60 percent overall minority. They agree. No matter how they feel on immigration, no matter how they feel on amnesty, they agree that the border must be secure. They agree that we must know who is coming here and why they are coming here. As we watched the people gathered in Tijuana, there are concerns about exactly who makes up this group. A secure border allows us to answer those questions. An open border does not allow us to answer those questions. So I am here tonight to stand with my friends in the Freedom Caucus to say to the Speaker, to say to the leaders, that we simply need to take up this question. We have the amendment. It is very straightforward, very simple. Mr. Speaker, I support the amendment. I support the question: Will we secure the border? The answer should be yes.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, in June, New Mexico's unemployment rate ticked down to 4.9 percent. This is the first time the State's unemployment rate has gone below 5 percent since September of 2008. And just for perspective, one year ago, in 2017, the unemployment was at 6.1 percent. When we passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs bill, New Mexico didn't immediately feel the results, but now people are being filled with confidence, businesses are hiring, they are expanding, and people are going back to work. But an even more remarkable development was the right to export our oil. Two counties in New Mexico are driving a surplus that is causing America to extend above and beyond where Saudi Arabia is currently producing. We are on track to become number one. That is after decades of saying that we had reached peak oil in the country. When we release the ingenuity of the American worker, America can compete with anyone. These things are happening. America is better off today because of what we have done here in Congress as the Republicans.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, again, I would point out that the collaboration was unprecedented across the Nation. What is going to happen, if this collaboration fails, is that others are going to say, okay, that collaboration process simply doesn't work. Though, again, the courts, we are simply agreeing with the court findings in the matter that the Fish and Wildlife Service failed to ask very important questions and needs to reaccomplish the evaluation. All in all, the States and local areas can and will pitch in to help the species survive. But the heavy-handed approach coming from the Fish and Wildlife Service simply, again, is going to kill jobs and kill the potential of collaborative efforts. Mr. Chairman, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), the chairman of the subcommittee.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Estes).

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, this issue is very similar to the last one. As we approached the year 2013-2014, discussions were going on with Fish and Wildlife Service about the potential listing either as endangered or threatened of the lesser prairie chicken. We began to ask for volunteers. We asked for farmers and ranchers, for oil and gas companies, to work together to really come up with a collaborative plan in order to avoid the listing for the lesser prairie chicken as either threatened or endangered, and the industries responded very well. To date, partners in that effort have contributed more than $64 million in enrollment and mitigation fees. They have agreed to conserve more than 150,000 acres of habitat. It was at that point that the Fish and Wildlife Service said, okay, this is the best effort we have had in this collaboration nationwide. They were all ecstatic. Then they turned around about a month later and simply listed the lesser prairie chicken. Again, the science was somewhat lacking in that. So, in 2015, a Federal district court looked at the issue, and they vacated the finding and said that the Fish and Wildlife Service took no account of the ongoing conservation. Keep in mind that the conservation efforts actually have been working. Just this year, the number of birds is up from 30,000 to 39,000, so almost a 25 percent increase in the population. That is exactly what these collaborative efforts were intended to do. The court found that the Fish and Wildlife Service didn't conduct a proper analysis and that the analysis they did was neither rigorous nor valid. So we are simply asking, in this amendment, that the lesser prairie chicken not be listed, that it be delisted. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, again, I respect the gentlewoman's opinions and observations. I would point out that these are 1907 water rights, which, in New Mexico, water rights are given, and the earlier, the better. So they can't get access because of the listing of a species. The science is very flawed. The Agency had the opportunity to go out to the forest with us. And that day, they simply turned down the opportunity to meet with us. We had the State forester, the head of the U.S. Forest Service of New Mexico there. We had the regional forester. Everyone was there except the people who really needed to be there. They refused our invitation. I have been working on this single issue for 14 years myself, so it is not like we haven't been discussing the issue at length. Again, with that, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, with respect to the gentlewoman, if the science underlying the decision was sound, and even the Agency itself has admitted that the science was seriously flawed--if the stakes were not so high--the entire listing of species would demand sound science. So this is a serious problem throughout the West and throughout the United States. If it weren't a matter of being able to provide jobs and have economies in these big rural areas of New Mexico, and there are no other tax bases in those areas, so as we crowd out the ranchers, then counties simply don't have the revenues to survive themselves. If the stakes weren't these, then I would listen more closely to the gentlewoman's arguments. But as it is, I just don't think that we can sustain a decision like this. If the Fish and Wildlife Service had showed up at that meeting where we found other critical habitat within a couple of miles, it is just that critical habitat didn't block access to this source of water, the only source of water in that section of the ranch, and these are ranches that are on mountain ranges. So you have the inability for cows to cross the mountain ranges over to the next range. Also, it is miles in between some of the loading stations and the water stations. So these are things that compel me to say that we have to find something different here. We want the Agency to reconsider it, to look for better science, to look for better critical habitat. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, in the West, water is the key to everything. One small family, the Gosses--I met them my first year in Congress in 2003--has been fighting a 30-year, protracted battle with the Forest Service over the water and access to the water. They have been to two different courts, and the courts said, yes, the water is theirs. The Forest Service responded to the first court by fencing the water in. They said the 23 acres around it was their acreage and they couldn't walk their cows to get to the water. The Gosses went back to court, and found that the court said, okay, they don't have a right to walk the cows on your 23 acres, but they do have a right to move the water to the cows through a pipe or a ditch. The Forest Service responded by electrifying the fence. That is the kind of fight that we are in right now. A couple years ago, I stood out over that water for about 2\1/2\ or 3 hours with the Forest Service, the Gosses, and we all negotiated that the fences could be brought in, that accommodations could be met, that we could find habitat other places. And it was all agreed we would get to the water. Then, subsequently, the Fish and Wildlife Service said, well, there is a jumping mouse. They admitted themselves that the science was not very good, that they had never seen one of the jumping mice there, but they thought it might be there. They admitted that the science was very terrible. Despite the lack of any scientific evidence, despite everything, now that area has been shut back off. There are many areas where the jumping mouse could have a critical habitat, but the agency just refuses to do it. So my amendment is quite simple. It simply says that the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse cannot be listed as endangered or threatened until they do some better science. It is a very straightforward amendment where we are trying to find the balance between the Endangered Species Act and the need for jobs, the need for an economy in the West. And that revolves around open spaces, ranchland, water. It all comes together in this one single issue. 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. Speaker, the Triple Crown is one of the most significant achievements in all of sports, but especially in the sport of horse racing. In fact, it is such a rare achievement that only 13 times since 1875 has it been accomplished. This year, Mike Earl Smith, also known as ``Big Money Mike,'' jockeyed his thoroughbred horse, Justify, to achieve the Triple Crown. Now, the Triple Crown, in order to win it, you must win the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes all in the same racing season. And Mike did just that. It was only the second time in the last 40 years that it has occurred. Mike is the oldest jockey to ever win the Triple Crown. He was born in Roswell, New Mexico, and raised on a farm outside of Dexter, New Mexico. He has been racing since age 11. He won his first professional race in 1982 at the Downs at Santa Fe. At one point, he broke his back and returned from that. In 2003, he was inducted into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame; in 2013, into the New Mexico Sports Hall of Fame. Winner of nearly 5,500 races, these three this year set Mike into the history books. Congratulations, Mike.

Mr. PEARCE

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

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, before I start, I would like to join my colleague from North Carolina in recognizing the leadership of Chairman Shuster on this important bill and the manner in which it is brought forward with full amendment process allowed. My amendment is fairly simple. It simply asks that the Corps of Engineers would pay their bills. The Corps of Engineers, according to an authorization under WRDA of 1999, is allowed to enter into projects where a cost share is joined in with communities and organizations throughout the States. Many locations in New Mexico are still owed money for projects that were commissioned over a decade ago. The town of Bernalillo, the city of Rio Rancho, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, and the county of Bernalillo all have projects that are owed money. One of those projects, a simple arsenic treatment facility, cost $12 million. The Corps and the community both agreed that they would move forward with the project and the cost sharing agreement. A decade later, the Corps still owes money on that particular project. At one point, the Corps expressed they had forgotten that they owed that money; so it is just important for the government to pay its bills on time. This amendment is fairly simple and straightforward. It just authorizes that and ensures it. 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. Chairman, my friend from Pennsylvania was pointing out about the problem with storm waters running off. Bonito Lake, in the middle of the Lincoln National Forest, close to Ruidoso, provides water for Holloman Air Force Base and for Alamogordo. It is 75 feet deep, just a small lake in the middle of the forest. After the fire, the Little Bear fire, the next rain put 50 feet of fill into that lake. So, 75 feet; 50 feet now has mud and debris in it. All the fish were killed, and it is no longer usable for drinking water. That is what is going on in the West. Our watersheds are destroyed, our forests are destroyed, and our grazing habitat is destroyed, all because of the management of the forests. This amendment does a very simple thing: It allows the Forest Service to go in and do large-scale projects. Typically, they will be in a million acre forest, cleaning 30 to 50 acres at a time. This allows them to get very large-scale projects to where we can restore the health of our forests. It is a commonsense amendment. Mr. Chairman, again, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson).

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

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

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the chairman of the Agriculture Committee having this bill in such good form for us today, but I have an amendment which addresses the forests in the West. We are facing an unprecedented fire season this year. The drought has been extreme in many of the western States. We are facing decades of management by a Forest Service that decided that we can manage forests in the West, where we have arid climates and not enough rainfall, the same as we have managed in the East, where they have plenty of rainfall. As we find the droughts continuing, we have trees that are stressed by disease, by the drought, by pests, and, then when catastrophe strikes, when a fire actually starts, it just burns the entire landscape. Usually, these forests are not going to be regrown for decades. They will have soft undergrowth brush that comes up in the meantime, but no large trees, no national forests, as we know it. They are overgrown. The thinning projects that would restore forest health aren't happening due to the lengthy delays, costly regulations, and litigation. The Forest Service budget has stayed pretty constant, but the thinning projects, the cutting, the balanced thinning projects that would restore the health to our western forests, have declined precipitously since the 1990s. From the 1950s to the mid 1990s, timber harvest averaged somewhere between 10 and 12 billion board feet. From 1996 until now, they have only harvested between 1.5 and 3.3 billion board feet. This has occurred while the Forest Service budgets, again, have been enough to accommodate the programs. But in 1993, the spotted owl was listed as endangered. The scientific understanding, at that point, was that the spotted owl would go extinct because of the logging, because we were cutting trees. About 80 percent of the timber industry across the Nation was killed. In New Mexico, we used to have 123 mills. Those were reduced down to one or two that are still operational today. That is the devastating impact that the decision on the spotted owl had. Twenty years later, President Obama, and then-Director Ashe, determined that: Oh, logging wasn't the problem. It was other predators. So they killed the logging industry. They killed the thinning of projects in the West over a mistake in their scientific assumptions. The government is directly at fault for thousands of acres of timber that are being burned annually across the West. The Forest Service is forced to do expensive and time-consuming surveys in project areas every 5 years. They are hesitant to manage because of how close they are to the nesting area of the spotted owls, even though the understanding has been given that logging is not the problem. In the Mescalero, which butts up against the Lincoln National Forest--both are approximately the same size, about a million acres-- the spotted owls are actually moving en masse across to the thinned areas in the Mescalero. The fire, instead of burning up habitat, drops down. When it is burning through the Lincoln, it hits Mescalero, drops down, and becomes a grass fire. Every indication tells us that we are managing incorrectly, but still, the Forest Service is not able to do large projects. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This amendment would reauthorize the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, CFLRP, for another 5-year period. This program was initiated in 2009, and, basically, it aims to restore vital sections of our national forestlands. There are two projects in New Mexico, the Zuni Mountains and the Southwest Jemez, with over 420,000 acres total, that would be covered under this collaborative project. The Zuni Mountains project supports one of the last mills in New Mexico. We used to have 123 mills that processed timber. Now we are down to just one or two. That destruction in the capacity and the infrastructure for our national forest has been devastating to our ability to really accomplish projects of selective thinning and balanced management of our forests. The extension of the program is going to provide enough certainty so that this last mill operator can make investments that will reduce the cost of conducting forest management activities in western New Mexico. If we lose the mill, if it does, in fact, close--which should not be an option--it is going to increase the cost of the projects due to transportation costs. So it makes sense for the government, it makes sense for the U.S. Forest Service, the taxpayer, and the local economy to keep this mill open and to find others that would reopen with these collaborative projects that come under this program. This program is a good starting point, and, when paired with other reforms that open up more acreage for treatment, it is going to increase the profitability of restoration projects. That will, in turn, save taxpayers money. Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this noncontroversial amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chair, this amendment deals with a small community that is kind of circled around by the Gila National Forest. This amendment basically is going to allow the Forest Service to sell parcels of Forest Service land to the village of Santa Clara. It is a small village. About 2,000 people live in it. They, like many of our mountain communities, like many of our communities in the Forest Service, are slowly starving to death. The land that the Forest Service would sell to them is adjacent to the village. It is not a part of the larger national forest. It is just an isolated parcel. The Forest Service does not want to manage this land. It is in the state that it is in because it was set apart back in 1869 as a part of the Fort Bayard Military Reservation. Because the land is reserved as a military post, it cannot be disposed of in the normal fashion by the Forest Service. They must be released by law. Back in 1968, there was a bill that released other parcels of Fort Bayard to be sold and to be distributed to the State. This parcel just was not included in that for some reason, so the amendment steps around and includes that now to where the Forest Service would be allowed to dispose of the land. It would have to be appraised. It would be sold through normal processes. It is just that it requires a law to do it. It cannot go any other way. The village is desperately in need of expansion room. Like I said, this Forest Service land butts up against the village and stops their growth, stops their economic potential, and it is a very key piece of property for the village, but it is not a key piece of property for the Forest Service. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this noncontroversial amendment, and I urge its adoption. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I was proud to just cast a ``yes'' vote to open the government back up. I would observe coming into the Capitol tonight that they had Members and staff all kind of in the same car line, so I just barely made it here for that vote. I have heard all day long that we should be funding the government for the full year, and we should be doing it right. In fact, we in the House have passed all 12 appropriations bills. They are sitting over in the Senate. If the Senate Schumer shutdown was desired not to occur, then all they could do is bring up those full-year funding bills, allow them to come to the floor, and we fund our military, we fund all of the healthcare, the opioids, and every other single thing. That would require the Senate Democrats working with the Republicans over there, and we saw 2 days ago that is not going to happen. Today, under duress, it did, but we are still facing the same problem. We need nine Democrats in the Senate to help the Republicans get to the 60-vote majority.