Political Quotes

“Today I rise in support of the Amodei amendment that would ensure that the Secretary of the Interior does not combine the two agencies with competing missions into the same agency. Late last year, the Secretary of the Interior tried to merge the Office of Surface Mining into the Bureau of Land Management. After spending months of time and valuable taxpayer dollars to look at the issue and holding multiple public meetings, the Secretary of the Interior realized two things: First, he realized that he didn't have the power to merge the two agencies; and secondly, he realized it was simply a bad idea. Now there are reports that the Secretary is looking at taking portions of Bureau of Land Management and moving them under the purview of the Office of Surface Mining. The two facts that I just mentioned still hold true today. The Secretary doesn't have the power without it first being authorized by Congress, and the two agencies have competing missions. It simply doesn't make sense to combine the two agencies. During a markup at Natural Resources earlier this year, I offered an amendment similar to this that stopped the Secretary of the Interior from combining the two agencies, and it passed on a voice vote. I would hope that this amendment passes in a similar fashion. I am all for streamlining overlapping government functions and cutting wasteful government spending. However, in this case there are no overlapping functions or wasteful spending.…”