Jeff Bingaman: “I wish to speak a few minutes in support of the motion to proceed to S. 22, the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act. S.…”

“I wish to speak a few minutes in support of the motion to proceed to S. 22, the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act. S. 22, which I introduced earlier this week, is a collection of over 160 bills. Primarily, they are bills that came out of our Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The question before us is whether the Senate should proceed to consider the bill. I strongly believe we should, and that is the vote the majority leader has scheduled us to have on Sunday. Although S. 22 itself is a new bill, the individual pieces of legislation contained in it and incorporated in it are not. This package includes 159 bills which were considered by our committee during the previous Congress. Several of the bills in the package have even been considered in one or more Congresses prior to the previous Congress. Let me make the obvious point that needs to be understood by everyone paying attention to this issue. This is not a partisan bill. The bills in this package have been developed on a bipartisan basis. Last year, we developed this legislation hand in hand with Senator Domenici, who was at that time the ranking member of the Energy Committee. This year, we have worked with Senator Murkowski, who is taking over as the ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, to develop this legislation. Almost all of the bills that were reported from our committee were reported on a unanimous vote.…”