Bruce Westerman: “There were a lot of claims made from my friends across the aisle about what this bill does or what its intent and…”

“There were a lot of claims made from my friends across the aisle about what this bill does or what its intent and purpose are. I think I need to clarify some of this. First off, I heard the claim that this bill would cost billions and billions of dollars to the taxpayer. I am not going to ask to submit that for the record because it is already part of the record. It is the CBO score for this bill that says, at most, it is a $2 million cost to administer the program, which actually seems high to me, but it is far from billions of dollars of handouts to anyone. That is what the Congressional Budget Office said. That is what I am repeating here. Also, a claim was made that we are exporting copper. I include in the Record the link from the U.S. Geological Survey's ``Mineral Commodity Summaries 2024,'' which shows that we import 46 percent of the copper that comes into the country. That is on page 64 of that report. https:/ /pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2024/mcs2024.pdf Mr. Speaker, it was mentioned about the demand for copper, and I do agree with that. We have an insatiable demand for copper. A lot of that is created by some of the massive spending programs that our friends across the aisle passed a few years ago. There are estimates that say we need to mine more copper than we have mined in the history of the world in the next 20 to 30 years.…”