Steve Daines

I think the message that industry is hearing from the Obama administration is that they are really pulling the rug out from under this industry.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order. There being no objection, the Senate, at 6:14 p.m., adjourned until Wednesday, February 24, 2016, at 9:30…

My hope would be that as we look at where we are spending our dollars as it relates to foreign efforts is that we try to maintain a balance, and ensure that we are creating incentives to invest in clean-coal technology.

I rise to recognize Alee Lockman. Alee Lockman is the pride of Brockton, MT. In fact, Alee grew up on her family's wheat farm 10 miles north of Brockton in eastern Montana. Alee is also the pride of Froid High School, a classic high school…

Thank you all for testifying today. I am truly grateful, as a guy from Montana, to hear your rural perspectives.

I appreciate it. And just for perspective, Montana is a state, and we are not as big as Texas and Alaska, but you can put Chicago in one corner of our state and Washington, D.C., in the other.

On the three-year question, could you commit to us though that the review will not take any longer than three years?

That is why the rail is so important to us.

Coal creates good paying Union and Tribal jobs and also, very importantly, affordable electricity prices.

I know somebody who takes the responsibility very seriously to manage the taxpayer dollars and be a steward of such.

In Montana we do see the moratorium on coal leasing as a direct assault on our state.

I appreciate it. It has taken quite a while to get here, and I think it needs to be a high priority.

It is something that I know many of us on this committee care deeply about.

I am looking forward to working with you to upgrade those facilities there for the men and women who protect us every day.

I thank the junior Senator from Alaska, and I appreciate him joining me in this most important effort and also for the leadership he has demonstrated on this issue. As the junior Senator from Alaska knows, the Ninth Circuit Court is…

I remember as we were raising our four children, sometimes it would be late at night with a sick child, and I would turn on ``Sesame Street'' with the child. I remember there was that ``One of These Things (Is Not Like the Others)'' song…

Let us think about my home state of Montana and the importance of connectivity.

I am concerned this means spending money upgrading customers who already have service at the expense of consumers who may not have any service.

I would encourage my colleagues on this Committee and in Congress to ask themselves how can we, in good conscience, pass legislation to fix the VA but ignore the needs of the Indian Health Service?

I would like to begin by noting that on top of facing the bureaucracy of the Indian Health Service...

This is an unacceptable reality that both Congress and the Administration must work to fix.

American Indians and Alaska Natives are still waiting.

Modernizing our Nation's energy policy is vital to protecting our national security. The bill that we are discussing today advances our Nation's energy independence and provides for new measures to defend our critical infrastructure…

The Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015 is a crucial step forward in modernizing our country's energy policy and public lands management for the first time in nearly a decade, and we are doing it in a strong, bipartisan fashion…

My concern with mandates in this domain, like so many others, is that they typically do more harm than they do good.