there's always some reservation on Capitol Hill to forego the oversight function

Okay. So the program remains the same, but it remains available at more locations in Indian Country?

Native communities have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic with Native COVID mortality rates twice as high as non-Native populations.

During a May 11, 2022, Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Interior hearing to review the fiscal Year 2023 President's Budget for IHS, Senator Jeff Merkley asked IHS Acting Director Elizabeth Fowler if more grants went out to UIOs due to…

I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct for one simple reason: It is up to America to lead the world in reducing the use of fossil fuels and in pivoting to renewable energy. Yet this motion to instruct says we cannot do anything to…

when vigorous storms attack the heartland and destroy crops, I hope that the President has emergency powers to assist those farmers. When fires--fiercer fires in a longer fire season--proceed to burn not just one town but six towns to the…

The budget is a historic first step and the start of an ongoing conversation with tribes.

Because if the Administration is not responsive, then it's clear it's not a serious proposal and so we're ready to dive into the details and explore it, but we need the partnership from the Executive Branch in that regard.

In fiscal year 2022, for the first time in a decade we included Congressionally Directed Spending Projects.

One of the issues that they are wrestling with is the implementation in regard to stream buffers, and how those stream buffers affect sedimentation and other impacts on the streams in terms of both the trout and the salmon.

Well, I thank you very much for your testimony.

I want to make sure that I have your commitment, that will honor that requirement in the 2022 bill to maintain the scope and functionality of that plan?

I just went to the Mass Timber Conference, and it has developed into an industry that has an annual event...

Can you assure me as to whether these programs have your support?

I am really struck by how being a kid when we drive north and south in the state; we would always be stopping to clean all the insects off our windshield, and now that is a very, very rare moment.

if it is 30 million tons, and then the entire sink is 450 billion, we are talking about one-ten-thousandth of increase in carbon storage.

I mean that is a very small fluctuation.

Public Law 280 is a nearly 70-year-old law affecting criminal jurisdiction in tribal lands in six states, including Oregon.

So I am very pleased that in the Omnibus I secured $4 million to start a new EPA grant program that helps communities prepare for, and protect against wildfire smoke.

I teamed up with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, to save those 24 centers when they were proposed for elimination.

I don't call them 'congressionally directed', I call them 'community-initiated', because they are community initiated.

And I hope you will also replicate your emphasis on simplicity. So many of the small communities, you know, do not have grant writers, they find that the process is so complicated that they give up, and don't apply in the first place.

So tribes that are interested in partnering with the Forest Service will, under your leadership, the Forest Service will hold government-to-government meetings with them to try to work out arrangements?

All right, well that 50 percent sounds a little scary, thinking about the fires that we will be facing in our various states.

the fact that they are being completely bypassed by the procedures, totally unacceptable, it was a scandal then, it will be a scandal again