Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chair, bad process leads to bad policy. Unfortunately, the process for this bill has been a chaotic mess from the start. We never had a hearing on an introduced bill, just the discussion draft, and that is despite, or maybe because of, the longstanding administration policy of not spending limited time and resources testifying on draft bills. We raced to markup without testimony from the Department of the Interior. The administration nevertheless went above and beyond and provided extensive technical assistance and edits from both the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service. I am not talking about policy differences here. I am talking about serious concerns with the bill not making sense. Unfortunately, the sponsor ignored those red flags. Let me give you an example. The bill sets a timeline based on when a categorical exclusion is published in the Federal Register. I would like to make a point that was brought to our attention by the Forest Service itself: Categorical exclusions are not published in the Federal Register. That is how sloppy the drafting is in this bill, and the process defects have continued. This bill has numerous violations of the Freedom Caucus' floor protocols requiring offsets for authorized spending. I guess the CutGo protocols are out the window now. It is convenient that, as of this morning, we still don't have a score from the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, on the bill.…”