Mike Rounds

Despite a large user population and an annual appropriation of $5 billion, IHS does not have a funding formula.

For years, tribal members in my home State of South Dakota have dealt with unimaginable horrors in dealing with IHS facilities.

Today, I am introducing my bill, S. 465, to provide for a comprehensive assessment of the Indian Health Service.

I want to start by thanking Chairman Hoeven, Vice Chairman Udall, and members of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs for their dedicated service to the Native American communities.

It's crucial that we support the sovereignty of tribal nations.

If the question is what has changed since 2015, what we have seen changed is a new Administration, what we have since changed is a new agenda by this Administration to see to it that the economy actually grows and that businesses are given…

I support the President's agenda to pursue trade policies to create American jobs and to promote U.S. businesses.

Some of those changes were also asked back in 2012, and they were not effectuated.

If we have within our abilities the opportunity to lay out a plan in which there is not just an auditable but a review process that could be put in place with assurances of the follow-through, we are still talking about the protections…

We are not focusing on going after the guys who are actually causing the problems for everybody else.

I think it is important that we recognize that there is a standard of security which has to be imposed.

We are facing, in my opinion, a Federal forest management crisis.

One of my concerns about the increased foreign investment in the United States is what kind of electronic and cyber-vulnerabilities that increased foreign investment poses for our country.

And so the reality is that while they may very well have tools available to them, there are also restrictions that an official in China would look at and say, 'We have already made a decision that these are appropriate in many cases, and…

Sometimes one size does not fit all.

I'm just wondering if you could shed some light just for the folks in the local area about why we're having this kind of challenge to cross Corps land to get to the water which we have a state water right to obtain?

It appears as though the Corps has either made this into an extremely burdensome process as to avoid or at least to delay the implementations of these easements.

The reason why we ask, and we're going to have testimony from the mayor of Pierre shortly, the City of Pierre has been undertaking a burdensome permitting process in order to obtain an easement to cross Corps land to have access to the…

So for Western Area Power Administration whose responsibility it is to maximize the output of power, as I understand it, in a cost-effective manner, for that organization this is a money-making opportunity to provide power when it is most…

By December. And that's based upon averaging out 30,000 cubes?

So you believe the 30,000 average coming through right now will bring you back down out of the flood and normal operating ranges by what time this year?

Are there any plans right now to open up any of the bypass spillways, the tunnels as we call them out here, to avoid or--because of the fact that there may not be the need for generation or the ability to generate through the power plant?

The 2014 Water Resources Development Act... authorized the creation of the program in response to the 2011 flood.

You say the Corps has essentially completed this work.

As you know, South Dakota is experiencing a severe drought this year.