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Floor Speech

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Mr. SHEEHY. Mr. President, first, I want to congratulate the Presiding Officer on the momentous occasion of becoming a golden gavel recipient. That is the achievement of a lifetime.

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Mr. SHEEHY. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about a historic occasion where we are passing a CRA for the Miles City Resource Management Plan.

In the last 5 years, in the previous administration, we have seen historic attacks upon American industry, primarily our resource industry, which is so critical to Montana's economy and, most importantly, is critical to the 21st-century economy of the United States.

We are facing an energy crisis where we are not going to have enough power, literally, in our grid to power our homes, turn the lights on in our homes, and, most importantly, fuel the 21st-century economic revolution that is coming.

From AI, to digital currency, to quantum computing, the needs for energy will be insatiable here in America and around the world. For us to lead in these technologies, to lead in artificial intelligence, to beat China in the digital currency game, to beat the rest of the world in quantum computing--if we want those technologies to exist in a free and flourishing market, in a free republic like the United States of America, we have to lead in those industries. That means we have to literally have enough electrons, we have to have enough electricity, we have to have enough power--baseload, reliable, cheap power--in our grid to power those industries, and right now, we do not. Not only do we not have it today, we won't have it tomorrow if we do not expand our resource economy yet again.

That means things like coal have to be unleashed. China is building coal plants every single day. We haven't built one in decades here in America. Right now, there is enough coal under the ground in Montana to fuel our economy for another thousand years. It is about time we start extracting it yet again. Not only will it mean thousands of jobs in Montana--rural Montana--where economic development has stalled for decades, but most importantly, it means economic dominance for the greatest Nation in the history of mankind.

Many other nations depend upon the economic leadership that America provides, and in the 21st century, that leadership will depend on a strong, 21st-century economy based on cryptographic currency, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. All those industries revolve around cheap, reliable baseload power. We need that out of the coal mines in Montana; we need it all across the Nation.

We need to bring commonsense policies back to our resource economy. We don't want to be pouring cyanide in our rivers, blowing tops off mountains, and clear-cutting forests. We do not want to go back to those days. We have learned our lesson, and nowhere more have we learned that than in Montana, the site of America's largest Superfund site based on disastrous copper and coal mining from decades ago. We have learned our lessons from those.

If we don't mine these resources in America, all we are doing is pushing that mining somewhere else--places like Africa, South America, and Asia--where there are no environmental regulations, there are no labor laws. Eight-year-old kids are hauling these materials out of mines on the backs of their heads--child labor, slave labor, cyanide being poured into lakes without any environmental regulation whatsoever. We do it cleaner, safer, and better here in America than anywhere else in the world, and Montana is the perfect place to start reviving our resource economy.

So I am proud to support this CRA. I am proud to see the resource economy of Montana once again be supported by our government. It is so important for these projects that they have a predictable regulatory environment to operate in. When these companies have to raise billions of dollars in capital to fund these projects, they have to have comfort that the projects will not simply be canceled the next time the political winds shift.

Four years is not a long time when you are making tens of billions of dollars in investments--pipelines, mining, powerplants, and huge resource projects. Our investors--American investors and foreign investors--need to have confidence that if they put dollars into the American economy, those dollars are going to be respected, encouraged, and, quite frankly, rewarded.

Nowhere is it better to mine coal than right here in the U.S. of A. and nowhere better than Montana. We have hard-working people with a great work ethic who take pride in their work and want to fuel the 21st-century economic explosion that will happen right here in this country.

The time is now to build our electrical grid. The time is now to revitalize our resource economy, from timber, to coal, to copper mining, to oil and gas. The Miles City CRA brings back common sense and gives certainty to a resource economy and, most importantly, our private sector partners, who will make the investment so that is possible.

I vote in favor of this and hope our colleagues on the other side of the aisle also support the Miles City CRA.

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