On the recordJuly 29, 2014
I do appreciate the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee yielding me this time. You know, it is amazing when you even mention dealing with reforming the Endangered Species Act how people all of a sudden think--and it is just a matter of putting some controls or limiting it--that you are antispecies, you are terrible on the environment. Really what we are talking about here is just basically like all of the things in life that are updated from time to time, this is something that needs to be updated. I have been pleased to work in this working group, together with the chairman and others, to bring about some sensible reforms. The reason we do this, farmers, ranchers, folks back home, my Farm Bureau, have been hit by lawsuits. And I appreciate what the gentleman just said. It is lawsuits, not science, that seems to be pressuring some of this along. In fact, in 2011, the WildEarth Guardians and Center for Biological Diversity entered into an agreement with Fish and Wildlife that added 1,000 species. Now, the only problem with that is that no one in the ag community and others who were affected were allowed to participate. Now, I have another bill called Sue and Settle that would have taken care of that when we passed it out of this House. It was said earlier that, when you take the ESA, you don't take a meat cleaver approach. Well, I think the problem is not a meat cleaver approach here. It is the fact that many don't want to take an approach at all.…
