Mike Simpson

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Chairman, contrary to what the gentleman from Massachusetts just said, while this happened in 1995, it was not the Republican Congress. It was the Clinton administration and a result of the oil leases that were made under the Department of the Interior at the time and the Clinton administration. If this amendment passed, companies with existing Deepwater Royalty Relief Act leases would be required to renegotiate lease terms with DOI to include price thresholds before getting new leases. Companies with Deepwater Royalty Relief Act leases have been successful multiple times in court challenging Interior's authority to include price thresholds in the lease agreements. DOI has lost at the district court, the appellate court, and the Supreme Court. The Secretary does not have the authority to include price thresholds on these leases. The problem stems from language included in the Deepwater Royalty Relief Act itself and the regulations promulgated to implement the act that did not address or require Interior to include price thresholds in the Deepwater Royalty Relief Act leases. In addition, forcing companies to renegotiate the leases would be a violation of contract law and would be challenged in court. This would only cost us millions of dollars more. This would hinder our leasing ability, reducing revenues to the Federal Government, not increasing revenues to the government, as it limits the pool of potential leases. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. SIMPSON. Let me just conclude by saying I have one county that's 96 percent Federally owned. Ninety-six percent. That means 4 percent of the property is taxable in order to provide the services for all of you that come out and enjoy the beauty in the county. Do you think PILT payments are appropriate? I think they are and I would hope that we overwhelmingly reject this amendment.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis).

Mr. SIMPSON. I would be happy to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert).

Mr. SIMPSON. I would be happy to yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. SIMPSON. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. SIMPSON. I would be happy to yield--I think I just have 30 seconds left; is that correct?

Mr. SIMPSON. Is the gentlewoman's time expired?

Mr. SIMPSON. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Chairman, this is such a bad amendment. It's one of the few amendments I've ever seen that actually leaves me speechless, so I'm going to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop).

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

Mr. SIMPSON. I would yield the remaining time to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Brady).

Mr. SIMPSON. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SIMPSON. Could the Chair inform me as to how much time is remaining on each side.

Mr. SIMPSON. I would just remind the gentleman from New Jersey that it was the Clinton administration that let these leases. I would like to now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise).

Mr. SIMPSON. I am tempted to ask the gentleman: What part of the contract that was signed by the Clinton administration don't you understand? But I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Landry).

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. I thank the gentleman for yielding. It's important to remember what we're doing here. We're dealing with a CR that funds the government for the last 7 months. This is not a full-year appropriation bill. We're dealing with a much shorter period of time. So the $100 billion that we were asked to reduce in this budget, if you looked at it, by the time this probably gets done, would, in effect, be about $200 billion if it were a full-year appropriations bill. The Appropriations Committee has done its job. It has done what our Conference asked us to do. We had actually had amendments on the floor that would reduce some accounts to less than what they have in the appropriations process. So I guess they would be paying us, I don't know. But some of the amendments have just gone too far. This one I think goes too far. And as some have said, across-the-board cuts don't give us the opportunity to decide what our priorities are. What we need to do is make sure that we get this amendment defeated, that we get this CR to fund the government for the last 7 months passed, and then get on with doing a budget for 2012, which was not done last year, and pass the appropriations bills so that we can fund the government for the next year at a level that I think many of the RSC members will be happy with when we get that done.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. This is a dang good amendment, and it should pass. The EPA continually claims that they want certainty, but what they are creating is uncertainty. I can tell you that every rancher and every farmer in Idaho and across this Nation is concerned about what the EPA is trying to do with dust regulations and the impact it is going to have on food production. Pass this amendment regardless of what they say.

Mr. SIMPSON. How much?

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. I yield to my friend from Virginia.

Mr. SIMPSON. That's accurate. But you don't have to prevail in the overall case. You could actually lose the case for what you are trying to do. It is the problem that good intentions have gone awry. And I will tell you that there are groups all across this country who have seen this as a way to fund their organizations, and we need to put a halt to it. Because what we're doing is asking the people of this country to fund people to sue them. I don't know who else does that. But on the other hand, I agree with the gentleman that we want those people that don't have the ability or the resources to have a say in how public lands are managed, to have a say in that. But it has gone awry, and we need to put an end to it, and we need to reform the process. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Beginning in 2005, the Shell Oil Company purchased leases in the Beaufort and the Chukchi Seas located within the Arctic Outer Continental Shelf. The company paid over $2.1 billion for these lease rights, a reflection of the potentially vast reserves off of Alaska's coast. Shell applied for air permits from the EPA for its Beaufort leases in 2006 and for the Chukchi in 2008. The company went through a lengthy and burdensome administrative process. Shell's permits were initially approved, but subsequently overturned by the EPA's Environmental Appeals Board. Last year, the Appropriations Committee addressed the problem by including language in the FY 2010 conference report specifically directing the agency to allocate sufficient funds and personnel to process the OCS permits in a timely manner. This simply did not happen. The company is effectively at square one after spending millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours. Shell announced just this month that it had cancelled plans for drilling in the Arctic in the 2011 drilling season, which is a very short drilling season. They have spent millions on this and done everything by the book. And the appeals board has decided that because they should have foreseen that the rules were going to change, that they shouldn't have issued these air permits. I think it's an overreach by the EPA and by the appeals board, and I support this amendment and would encourage my colleagues to vote for it.