Political Quotes

“Mr. President, just to talk a little about bit how this bill is funded, again, the legislation relies on the use of the oil and gas revenues from both onshore for part of the bill and offshore for other parts of the bill, and that has been the tradition of the legislation since its passage in 1965 until 5 years ago, since we have had the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Of course, the new Historic Preservation Act provisions rely on these revenues as well. To give you kind of a run-through or an example of how this would have proceeded in 2019--and thanks to my colleague Senator Alexander for really pointing this out and highlighting how this funding works-- it would have been the total revenues generated from offshore production and the revenues that the Federal Government would have received from that. This gives us, I think, a good example of how this works. The revenue generated from oil and gas production on Federal land in fiscal year 2019 totaled about $11.6 billion. Of that $11.6 billion, $2.4 billion went to the States. First out of the gate was the $2.4 billion. Now, this may change from year to year, but the formula distribution is the same. So $2.4 billion of that went to the States. Another $1 billion went to Tribal entities. Then another $1.7 billion went to the reclamation funds. First, the money comes into the Treasury. It goes out to the States. Then it goes out to the Tribal entities. Then it goes out to the reclamation fund.…”