Pete Stauber

For the last 4 years, under Democratic control, this Subcommittee has preached a 'keep it in the ground' mantra.

The biggest copper nickel find in the world, 95 percent of the nickel, 88 percent of the cobalt, over a third of the copper and other platinum group metals are sitting in a beautiful reserve in northern Minnesota.

The towns, counties, and cities have their pulse on these issues. And as Mr. George said, they support mining on the Iron Range.

We can do both. We have proved we can do both.

If today the Communist country of China and Russia stopped selling us their rare earths and critical minerals, his response, it would be devastating to the United States.

We have to reform our permitting process in order for us to mine, bring processing and manufacturing back to our country.

I introduced the Permit for Mining Needs Act, which provides needed updates to our broken permitting process.

Mining is our past, our present, and our future. This Administration banned mining in northern Minnesota to include taconite mining.

It is unacceptable and immoral that this Administration is using child slave labor to mine the critical minerals to get to the green economy.

It was purely political. The biggest copper nickel find in the world, and this Administration, not only did they pull the leases and ban mining, including taconite mining, what they did was take union jobs away.

Good-paying union jobs are on the line.

The latest example is a decision by the Department of the Interior to ban mining on more than 225,000 acres of northern Minnesota land that contain the vast majority of our mineral resources.

What we also don't have is a fair process for permitting mines that is based on science and reason, from my experience.

Today, I have the pleasure of introducing my friend, Jason George.

In Section 3, it limits environmental assessments and environmental impact statements to 1 and 2 years.

I appreciate and share your passion for mining.

This is important. America needs this to become critical mineral dominant again.

According to an analysis of President Biden's first year in office, this administration has issued regulations that will cost $201 billion of additional regulations and add 131 million hours in annual paperwork.

If this is going to be our last meeting as a Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, I want to thank you for your leadership and your fairness at these hearings.

This Administration has set out from day one by executive fiat to ban domestic energy production.

This is an unserious bill. Clearly, Democrats need to toss a bone to their most radical, anti-American energy supporters.

Today, we are holding a legislative hearing on recently introduced legislation that triples down on the Democrat policies that sent energy prices sky-high for Americans.

It is hard to believe that this is likely our last Energy and Mineral Resources hearing before November.

Why should rural Minnesotans have to wait for engineers from Silicon Valley to come fix a product they would happily fix themselves if given the chance?

In October of 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden said to the American people we are going to mine these minerals domestically.