On the recordOctober 26, 2011
I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, look, just to be clear with this amendment, it does not kill the project. The amendment simply states that the Secretary will exclude sacred and cultural sites as identified by the Secretary. If we're serious about protecting sacred sites and respecting tribes across the country, I don't know why this is so complicated. And the only area in the legislation, as we look at section 8 of the bill, talks about preserving and consulting with tribes about Apache Leap. But again, it's too little, too late. It's consulting after the fact, not before the legislation is taken into effect. And so, Mr. Chairman, it's as if we were going to go into a site, say, the cathedral in Santa Fe or the Vatican in Rome, and they were going to go and do something to that land, and they said, well, don't worry, we have some other land that we're going to give you. It's about the religious and sacred nature of these sites that we're talking about. At the very least, and of its very essence, let's look to see what we can do to preserve the government-to-government trust responsibilities that we have with our tribes and respect those religious sites, respect those sacred sites, and see what we can do to work collectively. Again, this isn't going to kill the project. Let's work together to make sure that we respect the tribes that we're so honored to represent here in the Congress. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
