Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I think the real question for the majority is: What do you have against Secretary-elect Ryan Zinke? He is being given a brand-new rule and the keys to the castle. He has a clean slate to develop the playbook for a hugely impactful planning process and free rein to make it what he wants. Yet, one of the first moves the majority is making, before Mr. Zinke has even been confirmed, is to undo Planning 2.0 and leave the agency with a planning process that was written before my staff was born. In other words, the majority is tying Mr. Zinke's hands. Quite simply, the majority is laboring under the false impression that Planning 2.0 makes the BLM's planning process worse when, in fact, it makes it better. Under the current regulatory framework for resource management plans, it takes BLM an average of 8 years to update and revise a plan, and this matters because, by the time the plan is completed, it is almost already out of date. Significant public involvement doesn't happen until the end of the process. There is often litigation which stalls the process even more. This is a huge waste of government resources and taxpayer money. Mr. Speaker, as Ranking Member Grijalva said earlier, the use of the Congressional Review Act to revoke BLM Planning 2.0, or any other Federal regulation, is a radical step. That is the reason why the Congressional Review Act has only been used once before this year.…”