Bruce Westerman

It takes an absolutely unreasonable amount of time to mine here in the United States.

Without reforms to ensure reasonable timeliness, crucial investments in American infrastructure will be delayed and in some cases diverted.

America needs permitting reform, whether it be for the burgeoning offshore wind industry, building transmission lines to upgrade our energy grid, solar fields on Federal lands, geothermal steam projects, mining proposals, or oil and gas…

Those actions don't exactly promote investor confidence.

We are going to write legislation, and we are going to pass that out of House and hopefully work in a bipartisan manner.

It shouldn't require Congress having to have hearings and pass laws to do the right thing.

It is wrong. It is misguided, and it is time we hold them accountable.

Just last month, Joe Biden chose to ban mining in more than 225,000 acres of an industrial working forest called the Superior National Forest, in the district that I represent.

We have a long ways to go to make sure that America is energy independent, that we are not relying on foreign allies, or foreign adversaries.

We were talking about American energy independence. We were talking about cutting supply lines that depended on China and Russia and foreign adversaries.

We also need an all-of-the-above minerals approach: new mining, recycling, and being as efficient and effective as we can.

We do need to work on trade. We do need to make American, not only mining, but processing and manufacturing, stronger than ever before.

As we pour more money into an electrified economy, we are increasing the labor participation rate in Congo with forced labor, with child slave labor.

And if we develop those minerals here and develop the other parts of the supply chain, then that means generating huge amounts of wealth for the United States, for U.S. workers, for great jobs in rural communities.

We are also seeing actions from the Administration to shut down mining, and those two things really don't go hand in hand.

We can't mine and permit our way out of this. Actually, we would have to permit and then mine.

Oversight should be a bipartisan effort by Congress to exercise our constitutional duty to have checks and balances over an administration.

It feels like we are getting even farther from a secure domestic supply chain, not closer.

We Can Do It in America.

The best time to Act was yesterday. The second best time to Act is today.

If you deliberately were to set out to destroy the prosperity of working Americans, is there a more effective way to do that than dramatically restrict mining and drilling?

That is environmental justice. That sustains their livelihoods.

We are proud to be providing the energy that Americans actually use.

The oil and natural gas industry is the No. 1 reason the United States has reduced more greenhouse gas emissions than any other country.

The problem with the Democrats, and especially this Administration's policy, is two things. It is physics and math.