Jerry Moran: “This is an organization that was established by President Nixon. It was Bill Ruckleshaus who was the first head of it.…”

“This is an organization that was established by President Nixon. It was Bill Ruckleshaus who was the first head of it. What it does is to coordinate the implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act. That act, as I recall, goes back to 1976. 1969. It was President Nixon that put it into effect. The Council on Environmental Quality does the National Environmental Policy Act reviews, and it's a critical function. In addition to that, it coordinates the environmental programs throughout the Federal Government. If you didn't have CEQ, you'd have to invent it. I know if we didn't have it, we'd be creating it in this appropriations bill because this appropriations bill is replete with requests to the administration to coordinate environmental programs, particularly those related to climate change to avoid duplication. Well, that's the role of CEQ. The Council of Environmental Quality is very inadequately funded. It's a relative handful of people. So the only thing that I can interpret from this amendment is that it's meant to be punitive. You're hardly saving any money, and what you're doing is eliminating the White House's ability to coordinate environmental programs to continue the same tradition that we have had since Richard Nixon. It's now been 40 years, and no one up till now has thought that the Council on Environmental Quality was not performing an important and valuable function.…”