Lower Energy Costs Act

Floor Speech

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

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Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, the underlying legislation would already roll back all the positive reforms Democrats have made to the oil and gas leasing program in the Inflation Reduction Act.

For too long, Big Oil paid the taxpayers a pittance for publicly owned gas and oil they extracted and sold for an enormous profit. In the IRA, Democrats fixed our outdated royalty rates, bringing them in line with the royalty rates charged by States. Studies have shown that this will have no impact on gas prices, but it will bring a fair return to the taxpayers.

Republicans want to repeal our reforms and lower royalty rates-- again, a giveaway to an industry that clearly doesn't need it. These low royalty rates are part of the reason this bill increases the deficit.

So much for that fiscal responsibility and restraint.

Big Oil doesn't need the giveaway. The rich are getting richer.

Mr. Chair, I urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, let me remind everyone that Big Oil giants reported their largest profits in history in 2022, together making over a trillion dollars in sales, all while American families were struggling.

We can't continue to rely on the decades-old Republican ``drill, baby, drill'' mantra to lower prices for Americans. Policies that make us more dependent on fossil fuels will keep subjecting Americans to the whims of dictators and global market shifts, which always means higher energy prices.

Instead, we can invest in clean energy here at home. We can reach our true energy independence, bring stability to the American family, and fight climate change all at the same time.

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Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, I would like to, once again, remind everyone that H.R. 1 is the pinnacle piece of legislation for the Republican majority. This bill, as the debates have shown throughout these last few days, is a boondoggle. It is a giveaway.

H.R. 1 puts us back into the position of less protection for the American people and less protection for our environment, and it sets us back in the struggle with the ticking time bomb of the climate crisis. H.R. 1 and this amendment continue that pattern. I urge a ``no'' vote.

As far as H.R. 1, the polluters over people act, if this is the pinnacle of legislative effort on the part of the Republican majority, one can only wonder why we are not concentrating on giving time to the gun violence that is all around us in this country and the recent deaths of children and adults at the Christian church.

That is not an issue with this Republican majority. In fact, they have said they can't do anything about it, that the sacrosanctity of the Second Amendment prevents them from doing anything.

Yet, H.R. 1, the pinnacle, the zenith of their legislative effort, undercuts basic protections for the American people, fundamental, core environmental laws that have protected the American people since the 1970s.

H.R. 1 and this amendment deserve to be defeated.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment.

During our markup of this bill in the committee, Representative Gosar offered a similar amendment to this one, though it applied only to oil and gas, not mining. I asked if he would consider adding mining to that ban, but that was declined.

I also had an amendment to this bill to include mining in this ban, which was not made in order. However, this Republican amendment, which is very similar to my own, was made in order.

I am glad to see that at least some Republicans have come around to the point of including mining as part of the ban.

If we don't want the Chinese Communist Party developing oil and gas leases on Federal land and water, then we shouldn't be supportive of the CCP mining our publicly owned minerals.

It isn't hard to find that many foreign-owned parent companies have terrible records of human rights abuses, environmental degradation, harming indigenous communities, and destroying sacred sites.

Some foreign companies, specifically several owned by the Government of China, are known to have horrible records on all of these fronts, yet they can operate freely on our Federal land, including in my home State of Arizona, through their subsidiaries.

I have repeatedly heard from my colleagues that we agree that human rights and environmental abuses are wrong, but so far, they have refused to address the problem.

As the demand for these minerals increases, let's not rush to open our lands to just anyone who wants to mine. Let's take a closer look at who is operating on our Federal lands and work to raise the global standard.

Let me remind Members that under our outdated 150-year-old mining law, mining claimants do not pay a cent, not one penny, for the public's valuable resources that they extract and turn around and sell--nothing. That is a better deal than even oil and gas get.

We absolutely should not be handing our public mineral resources over to the CCP with no fair return to the American people, no return to the American people at all, where the result would be simply just to destroy our lands.

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Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, let me just give one important example of what this amendment addresses.

In my home State of Arizona, at Oak Flat, an area sacred to the Apache people and other indigenous Tribes in Arizona and in New Mexico, there was a deal made to give Federal land to a foreign-owned mining company, Rio Tinto. It is a domestic, local subsidiary but owned by Rio Tinto, which is also partially owned by the Chinese Government. This company has a horrible track record around the globe.

In 2020, it demolished a 46,000-year-old Australian aboriginal site, an irreplaceable cultural site, an artifact and sacred site, to expand an iron mine. This amendment stops rolling out the welcome mat for these mining companies.

Mr. Chair, I urge support of the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, I rise in support of this amendment.

Environmental reviews are how we learn about a project's potential impacts on our lands, water, and public health. They are a critical safeguard against harmful industry practices.

The section of the bill this amendment amends says that project sponsors can fund their own environmental reviews. The entire section is wrong, and this amendment begins to recognize that.

It would ban the Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior from accepting funds for environmental review from the Chinese Communist Party.

But my question is: Why stop there?

What about other foreign adversaries?

What about the entities that have committed human rights abuses?

What about the entities that have lobbied the Federal Government?

How do we ensure that any outside funding will be clear of conflicts of interest?

From my view, we can't.

The Federal Government should have the sole responsibility to conduct unbiased environmental review, because the Federal Government is responsible for protecting its citizens.

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Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, I concur with much of what Chairman Westerman said. I support the amendment. I don't think it goes far enough.

I think that as we confront the question that he brought up of Chinese communism and their influence and their participation in activities on our public lands and waters, that we need to make sure that that doesn't occur.

But I would extend that further. I would extend it to cronyism. I would extend it to insider trading. I would extend it to large corporate interests, many times foreign-owned companies, dictating our energy policy and production for this country.

The point that we have here, as Representatives of our constituents and the Federal Government, is to protect the American people. To protect the American people is to make sure that their public health and their right to know and their right to seek redress is protected.

H.R. 1 does not do this. This amendment is a step in that direction, but the underlying bill does not.

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

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Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

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Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, this amendment requires the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service to do very basic reporting on funding that the agency would start receiving under the bill from outside groups for processing permits.

The agencies would only have to report at the end of each year how much money they got from which outside groups, not which permits that money funded. This won't do much, if anything, to prevent conflicts of interest and corruption in permitting.

The section that this amendment amends is very, very bad. To me, this amendment demonstrates that some Republicans are noticing the absurdity.

Instead of requiring after-the-fact reporting on outside money influencing our permitting process, why not prevent conflicts of interest in the first place?

Again, the Federal Government should have sole responsibility to conduct unbiased environmental reviews, because the Federal Government is responsible for protecting its citizens.

Mr. Chair, I urge a ``no'' vote, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, there is a way to speed up and deal with the backlog. We, Democrats, in the Inflation Reduction Act fought for and included $1 billion to deal specifically with NEPA and the review process to bring it up to capacity and staff it. The same can be done for the other agencies that do species reviews, marine reviews, et cetera. It can be done and it needs to be done by the government.

I think the Federal Government should have the sole responsibility to conduct unbiased environmental reviews. That would deal with the backlog. With the $1 billion under NEPA, we will reach that 2-year threshold that the Trump administration wanted, that the Republican majority wanted, and Senators, including Manchin, wanted. We can do the same with the other agencies as well.

It is about backlog. It is not about continuing a self-fulfilling prophesy. The prophesy has been to starve these departments so that you can claim that things are not being done in a timely fashion.

This is an opportunity. The President has recommended it in his budget to fully allow the transfer of money from the IRA to this review process with other agencies, not just NEPA.

I think this amendment is redundant in the sense that we establish a dependency on outside funding from potential claimants to leases and permits within our Federal lands and waters and depend on them to be able to deal with that backlog.

If we are going to speed this up, let's do it correctly. Let's do it with the taxpayer and the American public's rights and public health in mind and fund them fully. We should allow the President and the departments to transfer money to the areas in which they are needed. That is what speeds it up.

What we are doing today in terms of requiring a report will have no real effect on the backlog and opens the doors to conflicts of interest and corruption in our permitting process.

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

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Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

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Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, this amendment says that if the Secretary of Defense takes any action under the Defense Production Act related to solar panels or electric vehicles, it can't be treated as a covered project under FAST-41. I have my own concerns about FAST-41, specifically around ensuring that communities have proper input in project permitting. This amendment is a blatant attack on clean energy infrastructure, and I cannot support it.

Mr. Chair, I urge a ``no'' vote, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, I would be remiss, after the chairman's acknowledgement of his staff, not to do the same.

I thank the Democrats on our committee for their hard work and their effort to keep the worst from happening with H.R. 1. Their work has been phenomenal and all of us on the committee, as members, are very appreciative.

Let me just go back to polluters over people act, H.R. 1. H.R. 1 is supposed to be the pinnacle, the apex of legislative action on the part of the Republican majority. While we are having this discussion, looming over the Nation is the default--the debt ceiling--and the negotiations being promoted by the Republican majority and the cuts that are being promoted to the basic services and programs that the American people not only depend on, but rely on for their lives.

We are not talking about that. All we are hearing is that if permitting doesn't happen the way that the industry wants it in terms of changing the basic laws that protect the American people, their health, and our environment, then we will make that part of the hostage-taking in any discussion and any negotiations that we have around the debt ceiling.

We will continue to work hard, the Republican majority are saying, to gut NEPA, to gut basic environmental and public health laws in this country because that is the zenith of the effort.

H.R. 1 is not a legislative effort; it is a giveaway. It is empowering Big Oil and Big Gas to once again control the energy policy of this Nation, ignore climate change, and cost the American people more and more through the cuts that are being anticipated and through the fact that we are not concentrating on their needs and concentrating on the needs of Big Oil and Big Gas--an industry that doesn't need our attention, doesn't need our help, and certainly does not need the handouts in H.R. 1.

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

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