I want to thank Chairman Manchin and Senator Barrasso for giving me this opportunity...

I think it would be safe to say that if the agency no longer has the management challenges that were involved with it that would actually save the Forest Service time and resources if you didn't have to deal with it.

I do have some concerns that the bill, as drafted, may have unintended consequences of pressing upon the rights of private property owners on State owned lands.

I mean, because if so, if they have that authority and I would say why did these families have to wait for over a year to get closure when, you know, the teams were finally allowed to recover their loved ones.

I think a bipartisan agreement on the committee that what you're talking about just makes sense.

I appreciate your comments and hope you've taken those to heart.

thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for convening this subcommittee hearing.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It is critical that tribes have the tools they need to mitigate and respond to the damage caused by a natural disaster.

Often we don't pay much attention to the need for emergency preparedness until after there is a disaster, but the risk of one form or another of natural disaster in Indian Country is not theoretical and, as we can see, it is real, and…

We could stop making--we should make it--we should stop making it harder to produce energy on Federal lands.

So it's a budget impact in terms of roads, hospitals, schools.

Last month Senator Tom Udall and I introduced S. 2440, the BLM Permit Processing Improvement Act of 2014.

The legislation before you today would remove the pilot from the pilot program and make necessary changes.

So I want to thank Senator Udall and his leadership on this bill. He's been a great partner to work with.

We need to reauthorize the program so the people of Wyoming and other States can create jobs, grow their economies.

delays in the timely permitting of oil and gas wells makes States with Federal lands less attractive for development.

Federal onshore oil production also makes up a smaller percentage of total U.S. oil production than it has in 7 years.

I come to the floor today because Democrats in Washington continue to put out misleading information about the President's health care law. Last week the Senator from Connecticut came to the floor and said Republicans have, in his words…

Thank you. Because Mr. Chairman, I think effectiveness of a key point of this whole thing.

Well, a key part of the President's climate change strategy is to have us believe that he and his environmental and diplomatic all-star team can arrive in Paris in 2015 at the U.N. Climate Change Conference and convince the world to follow…

I agree with Chief Hicks, people will try to test systems, will try to find ways around them.

On July 6th of this year, the New York Times wrote a piece about the outsized role that the National Resources Defense Council, the NRDC, had in developing the EPA's new regulations to curb power plant emissions.

We need to continue to work together to improve the regulatory framework.

In our Committee hearing back in July, I think it was July 23rd, we talked and you testified that the Assistance, Compliance, Enforcement initiative, the ACE initiative, would be a guiding principle in fulfilling your agency's regulatory…