Ed Markey: “This bill is ostensibly a bill that is supposed to be discussing rare Earth. It's supposed to be discussing strategic…”

“This bill is ostensibly a bill that is supposed to be discussing rare Earth. It's supposed to be discussing strategic minerals that we can use in our competition to produce high-tech products that we're competing with the Chinese and others in order to produce in our country. The kinds of strategic materials that we're talking about are scandium, cerium, europium, and terbium. These are not minerals that people ordinarily hear about. And from the high-tech manufacturing sector, we hear that they're central to their ability to be able to compete. What the underlying bill would do is to reduce or eliminate the proper review of mining operations on public lands for virtually all types of minerals; not just for those rare Earths that I just mentioned, but also for gold, silver, uranium, and things like sand and gravel that are clearly--I think we should all be able to agree upon the fact that sand and gravel are not strategic minerals for our country. They're plentiful. They're available. We don't need to be watering down environmental laws in our attempt to be able to have enough sand and gravel and clay in the United States of America. This amendment would not only allow for insufficient review for future mining operations, it would allow mining operations that are currently being reviewed to also escape proper scrutiny. Even worse, this amendment is drafted in such a way that it could potentially even apply to mining operations that already have been approved.…”