On the recordMarch 26, 2014
What I was trying to say was, this is a damn good bill. And there is a reason why it is a good bill: because it simply requires the President to have public information and get the input of people. If there is an emergency situation, it allows for them to create something under 5,000 acres on an emergency basis without doing NEPA, it is just that Congress has to respond within 3 years to validate it, otherwise it reverts back. Anything that he wants to do with NEPA, he can do it regardless of the size. It is the appropriate thing to do. This bill moves us forward and takes a bill that may have been appropriate in 1906--but we are certainly living in a different time and a different era, and we need to make sure that a President, before he puts his pen to a paper, has actually talked to local people, and it has not always happened.
