Newsroom

I called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate charges of collusion before Mr. Mueller was appointed. I believed the President was completely innocent of these outlandish charges and that a full and independent investigation would show that. Now it has. And I, too, want to see as much of the report made public as quickly as possible to put the lie to those politicians who have been telling us for more than two years that they held in their hands irrefutable evidence of coordination between the Russian government and the Trump campaign...

The subcommittee meets today to consider “The State of Western Water Infrastructure and Innovation.” Central to this discussion is a simple question: which is better: abundance or shortage? The answer is so self-evident, it seems like a trick question.

The Subcommittee meets today to consider the Colorado Drought Contingency Plan, agreed to by all of the states that draw from the Colorado River Basin. The dams on the Colorado have been the foundation of the prosperity of the Western states that rely on them to store water from wet years to assure abundance in dry ones. Forty million people and 5 ½ million acres of productive farmland now depend on the water stored behind these dams and 4,000 megawatts of hydroelectricity their turbines generate.

For 43 years, the President of the United States has had the statutory authority granted by Congress to declare a national emergency and to re-program unobligated military construction funds to meet that emergency. Fifty-eight times, previous presidents have invoked this authority to address such matters as civil unrest in Sierra Leone and Burma...

For many years, our nations’ water policy was one of abundance and our nation’s lands policy was one of sustainable, scientific management. These policies served the betterment of both humanity and nature.

Consent of the governed is the cornerstone of our democracy. In America, the people are the sovereign and they govern through the votes they cast. At the very core of this process is fair and free elections. EVERY citizen should be free to express themselves freely and to vote, and NO citizen should be muzzled or have their legitimate vote cancelled out by a fraudulent one. By definition, ONE side is always disappointed with the outcome, which is why it’s essential that BOTH sides are confident they were treated fairly.

H.R. 8 is brought to us by the same organizations and politicians who have made no secret of their intention ultimately to strip law-abiding citizens of their right to defend themselves. They know they can’t do it outright, so they do it through cynical measures like this, which weave a web of laws so intricate that sooner or later everyone can be caught up in them. This law affects not only a transfer of ownership – it affects ANY transfer of a weapon for ANY period of time.

This is a massive document encompassing 147 individual bills, including mine on establishing a permanent fund for medical clinics in our National Parks. It reduces total federal land ownership at a time we can’t take care of the land we currently hold, shares considerably more LWCF money with states which have proven better land stewards, and relaxes public use restrictions on 168,000 acres of federal land. I am greatly concerned about adding 1.3 million acres of federal land to wilderness designation which greatly restricts public access, but more than half of this amount is in exchange for opening up other federal lands to greater recreation and economic development and has the support of the local governments most directly affected. I am also concerned over permanent reauthorization of the LWCF without reforming it to assure that maintenance needs are met before we acquire new lands. However, it does provide for 40 percent revenue sharing with state governments.