Mike Lee

Our fee-setting authority expires in 2018. And I cannot tell you, as head of this agency, how helpful it has been to be able to set the price of the services that we provide.

Patents are a key driver of investment and innovation.

Two percent of all the claimed hours by an examiner that lacked a digital footprint were unsupported.

It is an issue that we are very aware of, we hear a lot from, from American companies.

We want them to get the right laws on the books.

But, that has got to be balanced against the desire to incentivize innovation.

Yes. We have made a lot, and we will continue to make any additional improvements as is necessary.

I wish I had more time to explore this with Dr. Rivlin and Senator Gregg. But I thank you for being here, and I just add to that that our interest payment on our debt has been relatively stable in the last 20 years.

One of the things that I do worry about, about millennials and about all generations of Americans, for that matter, relates to what could happen in this sort of doomsday scenario that keeps me up late at night, the scenario in which we…

I'm worried about the fact that not only are we driving up the government's debt with costly decisions in Washington.

It's one thing to hand over a business to your kids with the corporate credit card maxed out, with a steady income stream.

I think it's the best way to bring consensus and bring good will out of the end product.

There is no law, there is no judicial precedent that guarantees that Native Americans will have continued access to or use of their sacred sites on this land, if that land is, in fact, designated as a national monument.

I believe that states have a significant role to solve problems of most of the issues that we talk about today.

These supposed protections, supposed protections that are often invoked by people who are wanting to promote the idea of a national monument, quickly deteriorate.

If you really care about the land this is not some kind of a political tomahawk to be used.

Taking care of ancestral land, protecting and preserving it for the next generation, is not optional for many Native Americans.

I also believe in accountability. Those who are elected by the people bear the burden of accountability of those who have put them into office.

But the good news is that there is a better way, and it is called the Public Lands Initiative (PLI) which is a piece of legislation that has been written to achieve what a monument designation cannot.

One of the biggest lessons, I think, we've learned over time is that local input is critical to getting success and to get buy in to whatever the solution is to the problem at hand.

We still have animus anger and distrust for the Federal Government because of that lack of process and having something done to us that we have evidence of visceral anger still today because of that process.

The process involved with the PLI is, in fact, the right way.

Many of the promises the Obama Administration has made to the Bears Ears Coalition may well be sincere but history, in my opinion, suggests that many of those promises are likely to prove hollow just based on our track record.

A unilateral monument designation will divide the people, not only here in Utah, but elsewhere.

The Antiquities Act, which the President would use to make a national monument designation, simply does not allow for the inclusive, grassroots-based, land management required by these shared goals that I have outlined.