Work Highlights of Western Caucus

Floor Speech

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Ms. MALOY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to be here today, and I commend my colleagues in the Western Caucus for their unwavering dedication to preserving the values and livelihoods of rural America, the Western States, and our Western values that we both represent.

I will highlight today three pieces of legislation that I have introduced. One of them addresses abuses of the Antiquities Act, one of them addresses the inefficiencies and unfairness of our permitting system, and the other one addresses the need to get geothermal energy up and going more quickly and more efficiently.

Mr. Speaker, I will start with the Antiquities Act. For decades, the executive branch, Presidents of the United States, mostly Democrats, have used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to designate vast areas as national monuments, and that is in an authority that we delegated to them in the Antiquities Act of 1906.

The abuse of that narrow delegated authority has resulted in restricted access to lands, hindered economic opportunities, and it has left local voices unheard and frustrated.

In my district, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was created by Bill Clinton in 1996, over the objections of Utah's Governor, Utah's Federal delegation, and local, county, and State- elected officials. Those frustrations and scars and wounds have not healed in the years that have passed since then.

Mr. Speaker, my Ending Presidential Overreach on Public Lands Act ensures that the decisions of this magnitude affecting public lands are made collaboratively, respecting the role of Congress with our jurisdiction over public land, and taking input from local voices. It should be Congress that makes those widespread, large-scale land management decisions.

Mr. Speaker, the next one I will talk about is the FREE Act, which encourages agencies to look at the permits they issue and determine which ones can be done by permit by rule, which means they have a predetermined list of requirements for a permit and firm timelines on making those decisions. An applicant can bring an agency everything on that list, and the agency can either say: Yes, this is adequate for a permit, and issue the permit, or say: No, it is not adequate for a permit, and give the applicant what they need to do to remedy that so that we can have quicker permitting, especially on infrastructure projects.

Right now, it takes years and millions of dollars to permit infrastructure projects, especially in States like Utah, where most of the land is managed by the Federal Government and everything we do has to go through multiple layers of Federal processes.

Lastly, the GEO Act addresses the time that it takes to permit geothermal energy projects. Geothermal energy is abundant in Utah. We are leading out in a lot of ways on developing new geothermal resources. Yet, the time it takes to get the permit to build a geothermal plant is prohibiting us from developing some of the resources and getting clean, reliable baseload power online that this country needs now and will need even more in the future.

These three bills are not all of my bills, but I wanted to highlight those three today because they are about safeguarding public lands, fostering economic growth, and empowering our communities. They are about letting ranchers, families, small businesses, and entrepreneurs benefit from thoughtful and responsive government as opposed to government that drowns out their voices and ignores their needs.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support these measures, which offer pragmatic solutions to real challenges in Utah, throughout the West, and throughout the whole country.

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Ms. MALOY. It has had a negative impact on energy production--as soon as I get in front of a microphone, I have a tickle in my throat--by restricting the areas that are open for use, withdrawing them from mineral exploration, oil and gas exploration, and energy production.

The original intent of the Presidential proclamation authority in the Antiquities Act was for the President to be able to move quickly and declare a national monument in an area with antiquities, or an area of scientific interest, to hold it until Congress could make a decision.

Since 1976, when the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, FLPMA, passed, it has been the policy of the Federal Government that we don't dispose of land anymore, so that threat has been removed. The need for a President to move quickly no longer exists, and the act is just being used to create land policy that couldn't get through Congress.

The process matters when it comes to land management. We need to take back the authority we gave Presidents because they are not using it in the way Congress intended it to be used. It is being abused, and we need to end that abuse by exercising our legislative powers.

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Ms. MALOY. I don't know what the current timeline is, but I know it has taken years when it should take months.

We know what a geothermal power plant looks like. We know how to do it in a way that is environmentally sensitive. We are just taking time and money to get to that end point that we already know we are headed to.

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