Political Quotes

“I, too, would like to thank Chairman Calvert and the subcommittee for a great underlying piece of legislation. We have got a great appropriations bill here, and I look forward to supporting it. My amendment to the FY 2016 Interior and Environment Appropriations bill will keep the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement's spending in check with the agency's obligation. Specifically, it will reduce OSM's regulation and technology budget by $2 million and transfer those funds to the Drinking Water State Revolving Funds. According to OSM, States and tribes perform 97 percent of the regulatory activity relating to surface coal mining in the United States; yet OSM receives 25 percent of the staffing resources to perform 3 percent of the work. This amendment will help bring spending in parity with the work done by OSM. Although the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, or SMCRA, was enacted to allow States with approved programs to assume exclusive jurisdiction of mining in their States, under the current administration, OSM has increasingly used its inflated budget to improperly usurp the lawful decisions of State regulators. This amendment will help curtail excessive Federal interference and restore the State's role in surface mining regulation. For instance, over the past 5 years, OSM has spent more than $10 million of its disproportionately large budget to pursue a wholesale regulatory rewrite of the agency's regulatory program.…”