00:00I'm in yields back. The chair now recognizes the gentlelady from New Mexico, Ms. Stansbury, for five minutes.
00:05Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:08Well, it's always interesting to come to these hearings, especially after we've had many, many hearings on the same subject,
00:15and especially two weeks after a massive bill passed and was signed into law by the president in the Big Ugly Bill,
00:23which had major policy reforms to the actual policies that we're here to discuss.
00:30And two weeks certainly isn't even time to begin to implement those changes.
00:35So I guess my question is, when is enough enough?
00:39Why do we keep coming back to the well to discuss the same things over and over and over again?
00:46And I've worked in the field of water resources management and infrastructure permitting planning and environmental reviews my entire career.
00:53over two decades.
00:55And so I've seen this conversation happen in a million different places, in a million different ways.
01:00And, you know, my second question after when is enough enough is, like, what's the end goal here?
01:07Is the end goal to repeal NEPA or is the end goal actually to solve problems in the permitting process?
01:13Because the data is very clear that the primary reasons why projects get delayed, as Mr. Mergen and others,
01:22and just the thousands and thousands of data points that we have on permitting delays,
01:28is that it's either delays that are caused by permittees themselves, not submitting appropriate paperwork or studies or plans,
01:36or it has to do with a lack of appropriate staffing at these agencies.
01:42When I worked on the Hill and worked in OMB, I worked on these issues for years.
01:46In fact, I was part of one of the first permitting councils that was set up by the Obama administration as a career staffer at OMB.
01:52I was working on the Hill when FAST-41 was passed to reform the permitting process.
01:58I was here in this chamber in 2013 when literally the Republicans took the entire global economy to the brink
02:07and said if we did not get NEPA reform as part of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the end of the world would happen.
02:13And here we are two years later, and they just got major reforms passed through reconciliation.
02:19So, I'm like, what's the end goal, right?
02:23Like, what is the end goal here?
02:25When NEPA was passed in 1969, it was a bipartisan bill.
02:29And the reason it was a bipartisan bill is because at the time there were these massive dam projects being built all over the United States.
02:36There were massive mining projects.
02:38There were massive roads.
02:40There were huge federal actions that were impacting communities.
02:43Whole communities, for example, in inner cities were getting bulldozed for federal highway systems.
02:49You had, you know, rivers that had cultural significance and there were treaties on with tribes that were getting dammed and the fisheries were being stopped.
02:57So, the idea was that maybe we should take a minute before we approve these federal actions.
03:03Maybe we should take a minute and talk to the communities, find out how they feel about it,
03:08find out if there's resource conflicts with other extractive or other activities,
03:12find out if we want to preserve it because it has unique cultural value or environmental value,
03:17and then we make a decision.
03:20And the reason why it takes a long time is sometimes these projects are so complex.
03:25It takes a while to figure out whether or not this is the right course of action
03:29because for millennia, this is how the earth operated and how cultures interacted with this landscape.
03:35And you don't want to make a snap judgment in 120 days or 90 days or whatever arbitrary permitting requirement this body might pass.
03:46But I think the part that I find particularly disturbing is that the things that I'm hearing across the aisle being put forward,
03:54like, for example, taking away the public ability for judicial review and comment,
03:59is exactly the stuff that they tried to shove into reconciliation and which the parliamentarian ruled was non-germane.
04:06And the reason why it got stripped from reconciliation is because they didn't have 60 votes to pass it in the Senate to begin with.
04:12Because it's a bad idea.
04:14Because the whole concept of taking away public review is actually gutting NEPA.
04:21So, what's the end game here?
04:23The end game is to gut NEPA.
04:25We all need to make permitting more efficient.
04:27But, you know, I heard a lot of rhetoric today about, like, oh, we're not going to be able to build this infrastructure.
04:33You know, I've been meeting with utilities for the last two weeks in the wake of the big, ugly bill passing.
04:39And you know what the number one threat to utilities is right now?
04:43It's the big, ugly bill because they cut the federal subsidies for grid modernization.
04:48Every major utility and clean energy company and financial institution that holds equities in real property in utilities right now is in financial crisis because of the big, ugly bill that you passed two weeks ago to gut federal subsidies.
05:06So, if you're concerned about infrastructure, about energy security, about making sure that Americans' utility bills are cheap, that we can get energy to market,
05:17then why do all of your policies seem to completely point in the opposite direction?
