Executive Session
Floor Speech
EXECUTIVE SESSION -- (Senate - May 13, 2009)
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Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Hayes nomination. I am here with the Senator from Alaska, and I wish to be told after I have consumed 15 minutes so the Senator from Alaska and I can coordinate our presentations.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Chair will do so.
Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I listened with interest to the statement of the majority leader with respect to David Hayes, and I agree with much of what he had to say. I feel compelled to correct some of the things he had to say because they are some of the same things the Department of the Interior has been saying that I find are, in fact, not factual.
I agree with him that the President should be entitled to appoint whomever it is he wants. And I agree with him that David Hayes is qualified for this position. I also believe, however, that Members of this body, who have the responsibility of the confirmation vote, are entitled to clear answers to their questions before the confirmation should proceed.
It is my opinion we have been asking for clear answers to those questions--to legitimate questions--and those answers have not been forthcoming. Therefore, I am not willing to proceed with the confirmation vote until we get those answers.
This is not to say I am opposed to David Hayes and will do everything to see to it he is not confirmed. Indeed, I want to do everything I can to see that he is confirmed as rapidly as possible. But ``as rapidly as possible'' does not mean I must give up my rights to receive clear answers to legitimate questions.
Let me go to some of the items the majority leader covered in his statement because they are the same items the Secretary of the Interior has used, and that others have used in press releases, that I believe need to be set straight. They are simply not factually true.
Let's start with the question of leases. Numbers. How many leases were put up and sold by the BLM in the last month of the Bush administration in the State of Utah? The answer to that question is 128. Not 77; 128. All of those 128 leases were subject to exactly the same kind of procedure. All of them went through the same kind of review. All of them were handled by the same team of experts: career people within the Department. And all of them ultimately were sold.
The majority leader said this happened in the midnight hours of the Bush administration, as if this whole thing were cobbled together in the last minute. In fact, much of the activity dealing with the sale of these leases occurred over a 7-year period. Why? Because all of the parties involved wanted to make sure they complied with all of the rules. If it had been handled in a ``rush it through,'' ``get it done during our political circumstance'' sort of manner, they could have been granted in 2004 or 2007; it did not have to wait until the last months of 2008. The reason it waited until the last months of 2008 was because the plans were so meticulously reviewed to make sure they complied with every rule that it took that long. So let's get rid of the idea that this was a political decision on the part of the Bush administration. The record is very clear it was not.
All right. After the Obama administration took over, out of the 128 leases that were granted, suddenly 77 were withdrawn by the Secretary of the Interior. Why? If there was a flaw in the way these leases were handled, the entire 128 should have been withdrawn because they were all handled in exactly the same manner. The 77 were withdrawn because an environmental group filed a lawsuit. The environmental group decided which leases should be challenged, not the Department of the Interior. It was not a review by any career officer in the Department of the Interior that said these leases were flawed. It was a political decision by an environmental group that said we are going to file a lawsuit; and in response to that lawsuit, the Secretary of the Interior said: I am going to pull these 77 leases, and then gave the same justification for his actions that the majority leader has given here on the floor today; that is, they are right next door to the national parks and no one wants an oil rig next to a national park.
No. 1, most of the leases are natural gas; there are not oil rigs involved at all. And, No. 2, they are not right next door to the national parks. Some of them are as far as 60 miles away.
Let's look at a map I have in the Chamber and see where these leases are. On this map, shown in yellow are the national parks. This one is Arches National Park, and this one is Canyonlands National Park. Shown in green is existing oil and gas leases that were in place long before the December lease sale. Shown in red are the leases that were granted in the so-called midnight hours of the Bush administration.
A quick glance at the map makes it very clear that the challenged leases
alleged to be ``right next door to a national park'' are surrounded by existing leases that are closer to the national park than the leases that are being challenged.
The facts simply are not there to support the position the Secretary of the Interior has taken and the majority leader has repeated here today. The majority leader has depended upon the Secretary for his facts. The majority leader made a mistake in depending on the Secretary because the Secretary is wrong. That is one of the things that has caused me to raise this issue.
What is the real motivation behind this? Because to say the motivation is ``they are too close to the national parks'' simply does not apply.
There are some leases shown in red on the map that do not have any existing leases between them and the national park. But they do have a highway. If you are concerned about the national park experience being degraded by having leases where there may be some natural gas activity going on--that this activity will somehow that will destroy your experience in the national park--how about a highway destroying the experience of a national park? They are separated from the national park by a highway.
Let's look at another map, this one having to do with the Dinosaur National Monument. This is the one where some leases are 60 miles away. Yet the Secretary of the Interior would have you believe they are right next door, that they abut the existing boundaries of a national park.
Look at the green on the map which does, in fact, abut the boundaries of the Dinosaur National Monument. No one has ever complained about that. This was a purely political decision based on the lawsuit filed by an environmental group rather than by any kind of review.
I have asked the Department of the Interior: Justify your actions. Appoint a team that will give us the information we need and will tell us why these 77 leases are different than the rest of the 128 leases.
This is the reaction, this is the response I have received from the Department of Interior to my questions.
The first response that came from David Hayes was a supplemental answer to one of my questions regarding the review Secretary Salazar had committed to undertake. The next day, David Hayes followed up with a letter that came on Department of the Interior letterhead, and he signed it: David Hayes, Deputy Secretary Designee. This is as official a statement as we are going to get, and this is what he says in his response: ``If confirmed, David Hayes will have overall responsibility for undertaking the review of the 77 parcels that were withdrawn from the Utah lease sale. Pending Mr. Hayes' confirmation''--not dependent upon, but pending Mr. Hayes' confirmation--``the review team will consist of the Acting Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget, the Acting Directors of the BLM and the National Park Service, and their designees. The Acting Solicitor, Art Gary, will provide legal support to the extent needed.''
In the document where this team was named and laid out, the commitment was made that there would be preliminary work done on the report by the first of May and that the entire matter would be resolved by the 29th of May. And when the first of May came along, and we expected some kind of preliminary report from the Department, Secretary Salazar said: ``We have done nothing, and we can do nothing until David Hayes is confirmed''--directly contradicting the statement we have in writing over the signature of David Hayes. I think we are entitled to raise a question about this kind of procedure.
The majority leader talked about the real issue in this matter. The real issue in this matter is the credibility of the Department of the Interior. If we are going to deal with the Department in the coming 4 or 8 years--whatever the electorate decides--we need to have some confidence that when the Department sends us a document and makes a promise, and names the specific people who will be involved in fulfilling that promise, that will happen.
One final comment. The majority leader and the Secretary have said this happened without consulting the National Park Service. On that I have two points. No. 1, it is a matter of law that the BLM is not required to consult with the National Park Service on lease sales. They could have done this whole thing without talking to anybody at the National Park Service and been completely proper in terms of the law. They went beyond the requirements of the law and consulted with the Park Service to make sure there was no interference with national parks.
Here is what Mike Snyder, the National Park Service Regional Director for the Intermountain Region, had to say about that kind of cooperation and coordination:
I would like to personally extend my appreciation to the BLM field office managers who worked with the Park Service on the parcel-by-parcel review of these oil and gas lease parcels. They did an outstanding job working in collaboration with us.
Secondly--Mr. Snyder said:
Working with Selma Sierra, the BLM Utah State Director, has resulted in the kind of resource protection that Americans want and deserve for their national parks.
The BLM didn't consult with the national parks? The BLM did not discuss this with the national parks, when the National Park Service makes a statement of this kind for the record?
I repeat: The problem has to do with the credibility of the Department of the Interior. They have made a series of statements that are not true. They say these leases are too close to the national parks. Sixty miles away is not too close. They say there was no consultation with the National Park Service. The National Park Service is on record as saying it is done. They made a promise on official letterhead from the Department of the Interior that a team would be appointed and a date would be met and the team was not appointed and the date was not met.
I am perfectly willing to vote for the confirmation of David Hayes as soon as the Department of the Interior lives up to the promises they have made and acknowledges that the statements they made about these leases are factually incorrect. It is not a matter of interpretation. It is not a matter of opinion. The maps are here. The documents are here. The statements are here. Let's have an honest discussion of it, and when that discussion is taken care of and a commitment made by Mr. Hayes on Department of the Interior letterhead is met, I will be happy to remove my hold and vote for his confirmation and urge all my colleagues on this side of the aisle to do the same. That is the issue with which we are faced.
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Mr. BENNETT. I thank my colleague.
I have listened with interest to the comments of my friend from Illinois--and we use that term loosely around here, but he really is my friend--and I would simply like to add this one historical postscript: Two of the Deputy Secretaries for Interior were held up by Democratic holds in the Bush administration, one for 6 months and one for 8 months, both on issues I consider to be less significant than the issue I have discussed here today. Senators have a right to get answers to their questions before they make their confirmation votes, as demonstrated by the Democratic Senators who held up these two Deputy Secretaries. My hold of this Deputy Secretary for Interior is nowhere near the amount of time Democrats used when they were holding them up. I would like that historic footnote added to the Senator's comments.
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