Jared Huffman: “I need to provide some translation services for those who may not be fluent in Orwellian distortion. When my colleague…”

“I need to provide some translation services for those who may not be fluent in Orwellian distortion. When my colleague says that this legislation only deals with NEPA, that it doesn't touch the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, or Endangered Species Act, what that really means is that within the four corners of this particular bill, they are not gutting those other laws. Rest assured, they are working separately to gut those other laws. In fact, just last week, Republicans attacked longstanding Clean Water Act protections, and just yesterday, the Committee on Natural Resources had a markup that advanced their legislation to gut the Endangered Species Act. For those who want to see a complete annihilation of environmental protections across the board, rest assured, our Republican friends are doing that, just not all of it within the four corners of this bill. There is another translation that I think is needed. We heard from my friend from Arkansas that they want to end the administrative ping-pong process. What they really mean by that, if we actually read this bill, is that they want the 69 individual steps that Secretary Burgum has imposed on all solar and wind projects to remain in place. I guess that is not administrative ping-pong, but I think it is an important part of the translation. Then, finally, we heard that this legislation is about restoring NEPA's original intent, to just be a procedure bill.…”