Political Quotes

“We need more mining engineers. Approximately 70 percent of the mining industry's technical leaders will reach retirement age over the next 10 to 15 years. In our mining engineering programs, almost all current faculty members will need to be replaced by the coming decade. At our Federal agencies, there is already a dangerous lack of employees with the necessary technical expertise to carry out their essential duties, such as permitting and inspections. Mr. Speaker, this is irresponsible, and it can have catastrophic consequences like we saw with the Gold King Mine disaster. In order to sustain our Nation's mining schools, we need to ensure that vital Federal funding is made available for faculty to conduct more research and to better educate the next generation of mineral scientists and engineers. It can be done by using the existing funding streams under SMCRA. My bill, H.R. 3734, the Mining Schools Enhancement Act, will accomplish this goal. ____________________”