Garret Graves

There are technologies that exist today, we have done it with sharks, where we do real-time monitoring.

There is no one on this Committee that wants to go out there and trash whale populations. There is no one. But what we want to do is we want to find realistic solutions.

My concern is that you had people who put this thing together that are not boaters, they are not in a boat, not on a boat, and don't understand this issue.

I think that leverage was trying to be exercised that really threatened the economy in a large way.

We can't continue to see those types of challenges.

I would love to tell you that we could build upon this.

Hell no. Hell no. Not a chance.

Come up with a plan, practice it, and try it. You have to.

When Jimmy Carter was President, you had 1 year under his regulatory guidance to get through the NEPA process.

It puts in a timeline of 2 years for an environmental impact statement, 1 year for an environmental assessment.

That legislation actually helps to focus the NEPA process on the environment rather than all of these other ancillary things.

Those comments fundamentally misrepresented what was in that legislation.

Your physical stamp would be mailed after the season. Therefore, you don't have people having two validations at the same time.

So, our bill, what it does, H.R. 2872, bipartisan legislation, and it simply says that your electronic stamp gives you valid or hunting electronic permit through the season.

The program is established to provide for those individuals to buy that, and then also support the wetland restoration and reclamation of wetlands across this country.

Some of our arcane laws that require that we are not allowed to touch certain borrow resources, it doesn't make sense.

What Mr. Rouzer is trying to do is he is trying to simply take a resource and prioritize it.

I appreciate all of you all being here today, but I will also tell you that in a previous life I have done more restoration work than every single one of you combined times 100.

How in the world is it compatible to have our own Department of Energy saying that oil and gas demand is going to increase, and this Administration effectively stopping lease sales?

A 50 percent increase in global energy demand in oil and gas specifically.

Not as a result of actions of this Administration. So, don't take credit for the previous administration's actions.

You would have to go back to the Jimmy Carter administration to find anything that is even remotely comparable to the number of acres that have been leased under this Administration.

I have not been shy about looking at this Administration's energy policy and finding that it is absolutely incomprehensible.

What I mean by that is the challenges we've seen in recent years--dramatic drops and unexpected surges in consumer demands for airline travel, constraints for our air traffic control system--will become common practice.

We are well aware there are projections that make it crystal clear that we have got challenges ahead of us.