I am offering this amendment with Representative Labrador after discussions with our local agriculture producers and the Public Lands Council on some needed adjustments to the underlying bill. This amendment includes some conforming…

We are going to see more of that if we don't allow ourselves to plan for the future with all the tools in the toolbox.

water is essential to life.

Water transcends partisan politics, it transcends regions, it transcends the kinds of issues that divide us here in Congress.

I have never thought about water as being a commodity. I think about water as being an absolute necessity.

God help us if we are not smart enough to seize the moment. And that moment is the water, as the underlying blood of all of us.

I was in Israel just last week, and a big water project, Red Sea-Dead Sea, is being contemplated to provide water to Jordan.

If additional storage had been in place, would some of the water that was turned out, would it have been available for capture, increasing storage water?

I have no further speakers on this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Lummis) that the House suspend the rules and pass the…

I urge passage of H.R. 3008, and I yield back the balance of my time. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Lummis) that the House suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R…

Having completed our presentation and all of our speakers, I urge the adoption of the bill. I yield back the balance of my time. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Lummis)…

I thank the gentleman from Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I now yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop), the chairman of the subcommittee.

I have no further speakers, if the gentleman is prepared to close. I reserve the balance of my time.

Well, I can elucidate this: $5 million over 5 years, as opposed to $8.6 million over 4 years, and without actually now proposing a rule.

Do you consider $8.6 million to be excessive, particularly considering the rule has yet to even be proposed?

Do you know if there have been any changes to OSM senior management, as a result of these problems?

Why is there an entire section of the IG's report on issues within the new contract?

Given that, how can we be sure that more than 5 years into the process, the Department is not continuing to waste taxpayer money?

I might note that on my very own ranch the swift fox was captured for reintroduction elsewhere with our full cooperation.

I could relate, as Mr. Southerland said, to the reference that there are spiritual and moral reasons to be good stewards and good caretakers of our land and our water, and to the species of the earth.

I support the Endangered Species Act.

All they hear about is the bleating from the environment groups, like, 'Oh, we are going to lose all these species,' except they are not hearing what it is really costing them in jobs in this bad economy and everything else that is going…

But the problem is we are still administering it and enforcing this law by a 20th century litigation model.

I would assert that we have moved beyond 1973 in terms of our ability to save species.

It took acts of Congress to accomplish delisting of wolves, and they were listed under the non-essential experimental population component of the Endangered Species Act.