Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CRAWFORD. Mr. Chairman, I offer this amendment in defense of agricultural producers across the country who continue to face the heavy hand of EPA regulations.

The EPA's Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure rule for on- farm fuel storage requires farmers and ranchers to make costly infrastructure improvements to their oil storage facilities to reduce the possibility of an oil spill.

These regulations fail to take into account, however, the relative risk of oil spills on farms, and they do not recognize the simple fact that family farmers are already careful stewards of the land and water. It is clear that no one has more at stake in the health of their land than those who work on the ground from which they derive their livelihoods. Even if EPA wants to resist common sense, USDA actually studied risk of oil spills on farms. It determined that more than 99 percent of farmers have never experienced a spill.

In the 2014 Water Resources Development Act, we made modifications to the exemption threshold and required EPA to go back to the drawing board and conduct a study to determine how to balance the needs of financial resources of small producers with their assessed spill risk. Instead, the EPA defied Congress' wishes and hastily put together a study without evaluating risk specific to agriculture. It offered the same unsubstantiated conclusions that it found in the original SPCC rule and could not cite a single incident of a spill on a farm.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CRAWFORD. Mr. Chairman, to require that all of our producers make a significant investment to prevent such an unlikely event seems out of touch with reality and disregards the already overwhelming number of safeguards our farmers already employ.

My amendment would restrict the EPA's ability to enforce SPCC regulations on farms so that farmers and ranchers can go about their business of producing America's food and fiber without having to worry about unnecessary compliance costs and red tape.

Let me say that on three separate occasions, the House unanimously passed my bipartisan legislation, the FUELS Act, which rolled back these same SPCC regulations on farms. We passed this same amendment during last year's consideration of the Interior and environmental appropriations bill.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to again support our farmers and ranchers and vote ``yes'' on this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CRAWFORD. Mr. Chairman, first let me start by thanking the gentleman from Washington for joining me as a cosponsor of this amendment.

Our amendment is simple. It prohibits the EPA and other agencies from using funds in violation of a longstanding law, formally known as the Anti-Lobbying Act. Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office ruled that the EPA violated the law by engaging in grassroots solicitation intended to urge the public to support the waters of the United States rule, a vast expansion of Federal jurisdiction. The GAO found that EPA went to unprecedented lengths using social media and other online tools to manufacture public support for the rule and to sway the opinions of Members of Congress. GAO cited two specific violations by the EPA that occurred during the critical time when the Agency was preparing the final WOTUS rule.

The first violation was an effort through an Internet tool called Thunderclap which enabled the EPA to reach 1.8 million people who simultaneously shared a message supporting the WOTUS rule. Not only did EPA write the message itself, but it disseminated the message covertly, failing to identify itself as the author.

Secondly, the GAO found that EPA violated the law by hyperlinking its own Web site to an outside advocacy group's grassroots campaign effort. The site asked members of the public to take action by contacting their Members of Congress using a form letter written in support of the WOTUS rule.

These unprecedented actions were crafted by the EPA in a deliberate effort to undermine Congress and advance its extremist environmental agenda. Even though the independent, nonpartisan GAO ruled EPA's actions clearly violated the law, nobody at EPA was ever held accountable, and no appropriate remedial action has been taken to prevent this from happening again.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CRAWFORD. Mr. Chairman, as I indicated before, the GAO cited two specific violations by the EPA that did, in fact, violate the Anti- Lobbying Act that was mentioned by my colleague from Minnesota. That occurred during a critical time, as I indicated before.

The Anti-Lobbying Act allows agencies to promote their own policies, but it prohibits them from engaging in covert propaganda efforts intended to influence the American public. Our amendment simply reinforces this important law. It will prevent agencies like the EPA from undermining Congress through the use of publicity and propaganda tools that interfere with the lawmaking process. The amendment serves as another important reminder to executive agencies of its proper constitutional role.

Congress, not unaccountable Agency bureaucrats, is responsible for writing the laws that our citizens must live by.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

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

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source