Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the Bipartisan
Sportsmen's Act. I am pleased to join my colleague in introducing this
legislation.

I am grateful for the opportunity to work with my colleagues on
legislation that will promote our country's hunting, fishing, and
conservation heritage.

This bill does a lot of good things. It prevents antihunting groups
from restricting sportsmen's ammunition choices, which would
unnecessarily drive up hunting costs, impede participation in shooting
sports, and consequently decrease conservation funding.

The Sportsmen's Act provides States with more flexibility to build
and maintain public shooting ranges in order to provide Americans with
more opportunities to engage in recreational and competitive shooting
activities. The legislation also expands and enhances hunting and
fishing opportunities on Federal lands by establishing a more open
policy for access to recreational activities on our public lands.

I am especially encouraged by the fact that this bill contains
provisions I have championed that would increase transparency regarding
the judgment fund. It has the potential to help our efforts to track
taxpayer-funded litigation that impacts our public lands policies.

As my colleagues may or may not know, the judgment fund is
administered by the Treasury Department and is used to pay certain
court judgments and settlements against the Federal Government.
Essentially, this fund acts as an unlimited amount of money that is set
aside to pay for Federal Government liability. It is not subject to the
annual appropriations process, and, even more remarkably, the Treasury
Department has no reporting requirements, so these funds are paid out
with very little oversight or scrutiny.

This is no small matter, as the judgment fund disburses billions of
dollars in payments every year. Because the Treasury Department has no
binding reporting requirements, few public details exist about where
these funds are going and why.

The Public Lands Council has decried the lack of oversight of the
judgment fund by stating:

Certain groups continuously sue the federal government, and
[the] Treasury simply writes a check to foot the bill without
providing Members of Congress and the American taxpayers
basic information about the payment.

This kind of litigation can have a big impact on sportsmen and others
who enjoy multiple uses of Federal lands. This is because the
government is permitted to blindly fund lawsuits by activist groups who
use the court as a backdoor to policy making.

A recent report from the GAO found that cases filed against the EPA
have shown a pattern of these groups working in unison with big law
firms to sue under the same statutes in order to push their political
agenda through the courts.

The legislation I introduced this week with Senator Gardner, known as
the Judgment Fund Transparency Act, will bring these cases to light.
That bill has been included as a provision to the Sportsmen's Act and
will provide even greater transparency and accountability.

I am proud to be a vice chair of the Sportsmen's Caucus, and I look
forward to continuing our work to advance these important legislative
measures.

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