You are uniquely qualified to be a Secretary of the Interior.
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Readiness
In short, are the operational units of the military services prepared to execute their combat missions when asked?
Many of us do feel that the situation at the southern border is also a national security issue.
So, oil, gas, coal, solar, wind, livestock, logging, and outdoor recreation all pay to use the public lands, but mining ...
So, it decimates your industry, plus we don't have the ability to clean up most of these abandoned mines.
We end up carrying the burden, and especially in a situation such as the one we faced in Montana...
Fifty billion dollars?
Too bad we don't have any say in that.
All of us would like to understand how this steady funding has improved readiness with specific examples.
It would be destabilizing? Is that your assessment?
If we went to sequestration levels again, it would be four times that.
In your testimony, you identified the lack of royalties as one of the biggest problems with the Mining Law of 1872.
Are the Armed Forces of the United States prepared to fulfill their constitutional duty to provide for the common defens...
We all recognize that readiness suffered during several years of underfunding following the 2011 enactment of the Budget...
We can't do it without it, I don't think.
And do you think that if we don't have a dedicated hardrock abandoned mine land fund, we could ever come close to cleani...
I am going to leave now and head to the airport to be with the families during this time.
