Mike Simpson

I am more than willing, and I know members of this committee are also, to figure out how we get to the level that we ought to be at so that there is not disparity between Indian Health Services and other health services delivered by the…

If it was mandatory, you would pretty much know what it is going to be the next year.

The Indian Health Service has been underfunded for years, and we have tried to increase it and so forth.

Indian issues and Indian Country has always been a bipartisan issue on this committee.

We need to work this out so that we are all on the same page because I am on your side on what you are trying to do here.

I appreciate what you do, and I would love to entertain you out in Idaho.

I do want to thank you for the work that you did in making sure that these local organizations could survive during this pandemic because it was critical to a lot them.

One of my advocacies is to make sure that we get grants and so forth out to rural communities.

To me, that is a very important program, and we need to make sure that it gets funded at an adequate level to be able to carry out their responsibilities and stuff, as I am sure you are well aware.

I think there is really good bipartisan support and has been for the National Park Service in this committee over the years.

We can't ignore that we have betrayed the trust of many people in the past because we haven't done some of this mining right in the past.

I come from an agricultural State of North Carolina. I have spent a lot of time on this issue.

I have kind of come to the conclusion, no matter what rule we write, we are going to get sued.

It just seems like writing a new rule in the midst of all this uncertainty before the Supreme Court rules seems premature now.

Well, I appreciate that answer. I wish my ranchers, and farmers, and others felt the same way.

We have all been committed to keeping our treaty obligations and trust obligations with tribes.

We have a treaty responsibility with these tribes, one that I am painfully aware of, that is necessary that we try and meet.

She said that Yucca Mountain had been both a political and a scientific failure. She is half right. It was a political failure.

I appreciate your being here today to shed as much light as you can on the DOE's budget request.

Using the administration's own numbers, nondefense programs are increased by $105 billion, or 16 percent, while defense programs only go up by $12 billion, or not even 2 percent.

Thank you for taking the time to be here and explain your priorities for us.

I am jealous of the thinking that has gone in, in the State of Washington on hydropower.

The Rural Water Program is vitally important, I am sure, all across the country, not just in Idaho.

As a former State secretary, I know that State and locals know their communities much better than the Federal Government ever could. We have to have an effective partnership.

I just had to leave for a second from the hearing because we were doing a press conference on a bill that Senator Bennet and Representative Crow and I just introduced called the Outdoor Restoration Partnership Act, which will help restore…