    [Senate Hearing 119-121]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                                           S. Hrg. 119-121

                         THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET REQUEST
                         FOR THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE
                         INTERIOR FOR FISCAL YEAR 2026
    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                                  COMMITTEE ON
                          ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
                              UNITED STATES SENATE

                        ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                                 JUNE 11, 2025

                                   __________

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                           Printed for the use of the
                   Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

            Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov

                                    __________

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
      61-237                    WASHINGTON : 2026

                   COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES

                            MIKE LEE, Utah, Chairman
    JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming               MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
    JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho                RON WYDEN, Oregon
    STEVE DAINES, Montana                MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
    TOM COTTON, Arkansas                 MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
    DAVID McCORMICK, Pennsylvania        ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine
    JAMES C. JUSTICE, West Virginia      CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada
    BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana              JOHN W. HICKENLOOPER, Colorado
    CINDY HYDE-SMITH, Mississippi        ALEX PADILLA, California
    LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska               RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona
    JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota

                      Wendy Baig, Majority Staff Director
                Patrick J. McCormick III, Majority Chief Counsel
                     Jasmine Hunt, Minority Staff Director
                     Sam E. Fowler, Minority Chief Counsel

                               C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------

                               OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                       Page
    Lee, Hon. Mike, Chairman and a U.S. Senator from Utah............     1
    Heinrich, Hon. Martin, Ranking Member and a U.S. Senator from
      New Mexico.....................................................     3

                                    WITNESS

    Burgum, Hon. Douglas J., Secretary, U.S. Department of the
      Interior.......................................................     4

              ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED

    Burgum, Hon. Douglas J.:
        Opening Statement............................................     4
        Written Testimony............................................     7
        Responses to Questions for the Record........................    57
    Cantwell, Hon. Maria:
        Poster of quote from the President in support of permanent
          funding for the LWCF.......................................    45
        Poster depicting National Interagency Fire Center Significant
          Wildland Fire Potential Outlooks for June, July, August,
          and September 2025.........................................    48
        Poster of Seattle Times Headline ``Wildfire Burns Buildings,
          Threatens Homes Near Cle Elum'' from June 9, 2025..........    49
    Cortez Masto, Hon. Catherine:
        Map entitled ``Southern Nevada Economic Development and
          Conservation Act Disposal Map, February 6, 2025''..........    39
    Daines, Hon. Steve:
        Photograph of June 2025 Environmental Impact Statement for
          Bull Mountains Mine No. 1, prepared by the Office of
          Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, U.S. Department
          of the Interior............................................    21
    Heinrich, Hon. Martin:
        Opening Statement............................................     3
    King, Jr., Hon. Angus S.:
        Photograph of FY25 and FY26 National Park Service Budget
          Justifications.............................................    24
        Chart entitled ``NPS Staffing and Visitation''...............    26
    Lee, Hon. Mike:
        Opening Statement............................................     1

                         THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET REQUEST
                         FOR THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE
                         INTERIOR FOR FISCAL YEAR 2026

                                  ----------

                            WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 2025

                                           U.S. Senate,
                     Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:00 a.m. in
    Room SD-366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Mike Lee,
    Chairman of the Committee, presiding.

                  OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MIKE LEE,
                         U.S. SENATOR FROM UTAH

        The Chairman. Good morning. The Committee will come to
    order. We will be hearing today from Secretary Doug Burgum, as
    we discuss the Fiscal Year 2026 budget for the U.S. Department
    of the Interior.
        Welcome, Mr. Secretary, and to the Secretary's team. Thanks
    for being here today. When we last heard from you as a
    Committee, back in January, you were President Trump's nominee
    to lead the Department at that time. You have since been
    confirmed and have now taken the reins at the Department of the
    Interior, and this Committee, and ultimately the full Senate,
    has since considered and confirmed Kate MacGregor to be your
    Deputy Secretary. This Committee has already favorably reported
    several additional nominees for senior positions within your
    Department, who are now pending on the Senate floor. We
    encourage Senate leadership to bring those nominees to the
    floor quickly so that we can provide you with the personnel--
    the people you need to help you lead the Department in carrying
    out the important work that you do there on behalf of the
    American people, for which we are very grateful. I would just
    add that I am very honored to have supported you, and am
    thrilled with the work that you are doing so far.
        Last year, the Department of the Interior had a budget of
    $16 billion, but our nation simply cannot fund on the scale
    that we have for decades. We have spent money that we don't
    have, and so we must borrow it, often from our adversaries, and
    saddle our children and even our grandchildren with that debt,
    much of which has been accumulated before some of the people
    who have to pay it back were even born or were old enough to
    vote. It is a form of taxation without representation. We
    generally frown on that in this country. President Trump knows
    that, and it shows in the budget that he sent to Congress. By
    acknowledging limits on what can be spent, a reality that every
    family, every business, every other organization in America
    deals with on a daily basis, the budget that the President sent
    to Congress is a long-overdue step in the right direction.
    Decades of unchecked federal spending have created structural
    deficits that now threaten our economic security and our
    ability to respond to real emergencies. President Trump's
    budget begins the challenging but essential work of turning
    that gargantuan ship around.
        That work falls, in part, to your Department, Secretary
    Burgum, from land and water management, to energy and mineral
    development, to partnerships with states, territories, and
    local governments. The decisions made at Interior affect
    millions of Americans and shape the future of our public lands,
    of our economy, and of course, our national security. The
    Department has a hand in many things--in everything from
    infrastructure projects to mineral policies that either enable
    or block our ability to compete effectively with China. It is
    responsible for stewarding vast tracts of land while supporting
    rural communities that depend on access to those same lands for
    jobs, for housing, for growth, for energy, for water, and many,
    many other things. In the best case, the Department of the
    Interior can serve as a partner to the states and an enabler of
    prosperity. In the worst case, it can become a bureaucratic
    gatekeeper that shuts out the voices of local communities. This
    Administration is committed, of course, to the former.
    President Trump's budget sets clear expectations: get results,
    streamline operations, and stay focused on core
    responsibilities. That means resisting mission creep, reining
    in regulatory overreach, and prioritizing the needs of working
    Americans over Washington's special interests.
        I want to commend the recent opinion by the Department of
    Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, which affirms what many of
    us have long argued, that the President has legal authority to
    consider monument designations that are over-broad,
    duplicative, or disconnected from the statute's stated purpose.
    For nearly a century, the Federal Government has often operated
    under a flawed interpretation of the Antiquities Act, one that
    allowed presidents to unilaterally lock up millions of acres of
    land but denied future presidents the authority to undo or even
    revise those designations. But as OLC's recent opinion
    discusses at length, there is actually a long history, spanning
    decades, of presidents reducing the size of previously
    designated national monuments or even de-designating them all
    together. With this new legal clarity, we hope the Department
    of the Interior will work with us to ensure that public lands
    are managed in a way that reflects the needs of those who live
    closest to them.
        Today's hearing is about the kind of government we want to
    have and what it may take to achieve that. It is about whether
    the Department is prepared to implement the President's agenda
    with the urgency and discipline that this particular moment in
    history requires. So we look forward to hearing from you how
    you intend to align the Department's operations with the
    President's budget and how you will ensure that the Department
    of the Interior may plan to deliver on President Trump's
    agenda.
        So, again, Mr. Secretary, welcome, and I would now like to
    recognize my friend and colleague, the Ranking Member on the
    Committee, Senator Heinrich, for his opening statement.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARTIN HEINRICH,
                      U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW MEXICO

        Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman.
        We are here today to talk about the budget proposal of a
    Department that is, quite frankly, not being resourced to meet
    its mission. Parks are cutting hours and services for visitors.
    Ranger tours are canceled. Toilets are overflowing and trash
    cans sit unemptied. Permits are languishing on empty desks.
    Energy projects are delayed or canceled. Contracts slowly wind
    their way through a byzantine bureaucracy that was invented
    overnight. The senior leadership positions at the Department
    are mostly vacant. Roughly 100 park superintendent positions
    are vacant. Five of the seven regional director positions for
    the National Park Service sit empty. At the Bureau of Land
    Management, about a third of senior leadership positions are
    vacant, including both Deputy Director positions and the
    Director position itself--and the front-line staff is in no
    better shape. After promising to hire 7,700 seasonal employees
    to serve Americans in their national parks this summer, the
    Park Service has managed, at least according to public reports,
    to hire only half of that. Memorial Day is gone. The Fourth of
    July is around the corner. And all of this has occurred before
    this budget request is put in place.
        Mr. Secretary, when you were going through the confirmation
    process, I believed that you would be a responsible steward of
    our public lands. Conservative, of course, but responsible. And
    with your experience in the private sector and as a governor, I
    believed that you could rein in the sometimes-reckless
    tendencies of DOGE, at least within the Department of the
    Interior. We are never going to agree on everything, but I
    thought we could agree that our public lands are the greatest
    heritage of our nation. And we have a responsibility to hand
    them down to the next generation well-stewarded. This budget
    request will not resource your Department to responsibly
    steward our lands and waters. The proposal for the Interior
    Department operations next year includes a 30 percent cut
    across programs. It is no exaggeration to say that this would
    cripple the Department as we know it. The cut to the Park
    Service is paid for by getting rid of most park system units.
    The National Park System would have to lose more than 350 of
    its 433 units to swallow that kind of a proposed cut. And yet,
    the Department has still not told us which units those might
    be.
        Any hope for a speedier permitting system from the BLM is
    gone with a 35 percent proposed cut to that agency. Anyone who
    needs a recreation permit, a right-of-way, a grazing lease,
    will be left waiting. That is not efficiency. The 35 percent
    cut to the Bureau of Reclamation puts critical water
    infrastructure at risk of failing to safely deliver water to
    farmers, fish, and people. The proposal completely eliminates
    the WaterSMART program that provides resources to local, often
    rural communities and water users to conserve water and to make
    efficiency improvements to their infrastructure, thereby
    reducing conflicts over this scarce resource.
        The nearly 40 percent cut to the U.S. Geological Survey
    would kneecap the scientific research we need to understand how
    our natural world is changing in the face of a changing
    climate. And the major reduction to the Natural Hazards Program
    would leave communities more vulnerable to earthquakes,
    volcanoes, and landslides. This proposal also completely
    eliminates the Biological Resources Program at USGS, which
    could mean abandoning bird flu monitoring, closing the most
    advanced wildlife disease lab in the United States, and
    discontinuing research efforts for climate adaptation. The
    USGS's migratory bird research also directly informs the Fish
    and Wildlife Service's bag limits for migratory bird hunting
    seasons. Eliminating this research would hobble the management
    of migratory bird hunting seasons. One of the seven pillars of
    the North American Model of Wildlife conservation, the
    foundation of wildlife management in the United States, is
    scientific management. We cannot manage wildlife without
    wildlife science.
        The budget proposal also overturns the bipartisan work of
    this Committee in 2020 to pass the Great American Outdoors Act,
    signed into law by this President. Instead of supporting
    reauthorization of this great accomplishment, this budget robs
    the Land and Water Conservation Fund in order to pay for
    deferred maintenance projects. And lastly, but most
    importantly, this budget request, if implemented, would cause
    irreparable harm to Indian Country. With 30-plus percent cuts
    to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian
    Education, this budget represents a dereliction of every treaty
    obligation this country has to tribes and their members. This
    proposal even cuts the BIA's Public Safety Account, belying any
    claim that this Administration might try to make that it cares
    for the safety of people in Indian Country.
        Mr. Secretary, you promised to prioritize the needs of
    Indian Country in your time leading this Department, but this
    budget simply doesn't give you the resources to be able to
    effectively accomplish that. I think we need to do better,
    which I say out of respect for you and our shared values. It is
    often said of presidents' budget requests that they are dead on
    arrival on Capitol Hill. For the sake of the shared landscapes
    that we hold and trust for our grandchildren, I hope that's the
    case for this budget.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Heinrich.
        Mr. Secretary, we will now hear from you in your opening
    remarks before we proceed to questions.
        The time is yours.

                 STATEMENT OF HON. DOUGLAS J. BURGUM,
               SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

        Secretary Burgum. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Ranking
    Member Heinrich. To the two of you and the distinguished
    members of this Committee, thank you for the opportunity to
    testify this morning in support of President Trump's Fiscal
    Year 2026 budget request for the Department of the Interior and
    discuss what our team is doing to make America safer, stronger,
    more beautiful, and more prosperous.
        The Department oversees onshore and offshore energy
    resources, honors federal trust responsibilities with our
    tribal neighbors, delivers water to the West, oversees wildlife
    refuges and national parks. The resources we sustainably govern
    directly impact the lives of every American every day.
    Interior-managed resources hold a significant position on
    America's balance sheet. The public lands and minerals within
    Interior domain include more than 480 million acres of surface
    land, 750 million acres of subsurface and mineral estate, and
    more than 2.5 billion acres offshore. Our natural resources are
    natural assets and should be responsibly developed to grow our
    economy, help balance the budget, and generate revenue for
    American taxpayers. With common-sense approaches and modern
    systems, we can increase return for our citizens, strengthen
    our economy, and create great-paying and meaningful jobs, all
    while protecting our beautiful lands, our abundant wildlife,
    and our clean air and clean water.
        President Trump's 2026 budget requests $14.4 billion in
    current authority for the Department, providing significant
    savings to the American people. The 2026 budget for the
    Department features strategic investments to further President
    Trump's commitment to energy dominance, which is the foundation
    of American prosperity, national security, and world peace. We
    are increasing production of affordable, reliable energy on
    federal lands. We have already taken measures to increase
    production of oil in the Gulf of America by 100,000 barrels per
    day, which will help reduce the price at the pump for American
    families. And we proudly announced that the first historic
    lease sale in the newly renamed Gulf of America will occur this
    year.
        We are also busy rectifying the mountain of restrictions
    designed to restrict resource development in America, and
    especially in Alaska. We removed layers of red tape that
    undermined coal production on federal lands. Clean American
    coal is a triple win for our country, because thermal coal
    provides reliable and affordable baseload electricity.
    Metallurgical coal provides the foundation for bringing back
    our steel industry, and the mining and refining of coal that
    contains critical and rare earth minerals is absolutely
    essential to secure our own domestic supply chains for our
    defense, transportation, and technology industries. Right now,
    America is in an artificial intelligence arms race with China.
    Keeping domestic coal-fired generation open will help us win
    that contest, while also driving down electricity costs for
    American families and increasing the reliability of our grid.
    The Department is also undertaking efforts to establish our
    position as the leading producer and processor of critical and
    rare earth minerals, which will create jobs and prosperity at
    home, strengthen strategic and important domestic supply chains
    for defense for the United States and for our allies, and
    reduce the global influence of adversarial states.
        Preventing and combating wildfires is vitally important to
    protect people, communities, and the environment. Nearly 65,000
    wildfires burned more than 8.9 million acres across the United
    States last year, endangering communities, critical
    infrastructure, and local economies. Federal wildfire
    mitigation and suppression responsibilities for wildland fire
    are currently split across five agencies in two different
    departments. The current budget is duplicative and an
    ineffective structure. Today, this budget reforms federal
    wildland fire management to create operational efficiencies by
    unifying federal wildland fire responsibilities into a new
    centralized U.S. Wildland Fire Service within the Department of
    the Interior. This new service will streamline federal wildfire
    suppression response, risk mitigation efforts, and coordination
    with non-federal partners to combat the wildfire crisis.
        The Department of the Interior upholds the Federal
    Government's unique trust responsibilities by fostering
    government-to-government relations between the Federal
    Government and federally recognized tribes, American Indians,
    and Alaska Natives. This budget supports programs at the Bureau
    of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Indian Education, and the Bureau
    of Trust Funds Administration, sustaining the Federal
    Government's support for the core programs that benefit tribal
    communities.
        Since becoming Interior Secretary, I have had the
    opportunity to travel the national parks, historic sites,
    wildlife refuges, and more, to learn and hear from the
    leadership on the ground. We are instituting changes to get
    more people actually working in our parks and refuges, and are
    looking forward to an outstanding summer. By opening more areas
    to hunting and outdoor recreation, we are helping to drive
    tourism, create jobs, and generate revenue for local
    communities, all while promoting responsible stewardship of our
    natural resources.
        Interior is also focused on streamlining our core business
    operations, which will result in dramatically improved
    efficiencies and lower costs for American taxpayers. This
    budget is about putting America first and doing the best for
    the American taxpayer. As Interior moves forward, these
    initiatives set the foundation for a renewed focus on
    responsible resource management and economic growth. I look
    forward to working closely with you to advance the President's
    priorities.
        [The prepared statement of Secretary Burgum follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        The Chairman. Thanks so much, Mr. Secretary.
        We are now going to turn to alternating five-minute rounds.
    I will ask the first series, then go to Senator Heinrich, and
    then we will alternate back and forth in order of seniority,
    subject to the early bird rule on the Committee, between
    Democratic and Republican Senators. And we will proceed that
    way.
        Mr. Secretary, the housing crisis is one that is felt in
    many parts of the country, but it is especially severe in some
    of our western states, like my home State of Utah, where the
    Federal Government controls the vast majority of land--about
    two-thirds of it, nearly 70 percent. Now, as you know, one of
    my top priorities has been to make a small percentage of
    underused federal land available to address housing
    affordability. The truth is that federal land is a massive
    underutilized asset, and local communities in the West are
    often those that pay the highest price for federal inaction in
    this area. Now, I was encouraged to hear President Trump talk
    at length about the need to use unused federal land to address
    the housing crisis, and I was very excited to see the joint
    HUD-Interior task force that you helped to establish. Thank you
    for doing that to take the lead in this area.
        A bill that I have introduced, called the HOUSES Act, is
    something that follows through on the President's commitment--
    promises made, promises kept. Could you expand a little bit
    more on how just a fraction of one percent of underutilized
    federal land could help address the western housing crisis?
        Secretary Burgum. Yes, I would be happy to, Chairman.
        As I said at the opening, just within Interior there are
    about 480 million acres of surface. You take the U.S. Forest
    Service, you can add another couple hundred million on that. If
    you took that number, 680 million acres of surface, and you
    said one percent of that, that would be 6.8 million acres. But
    we don't need to even think about that, I mean, let's just
    think about an example--Harry Reid, when he was the Senate
    Majority Leader, passed bipartisan legislation called the
    Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act, that instructed and
    created a framework on how to dispose of lands in Southern
    Nevada, particularly in fast-growing Clark County, around Las
    Vegas. The Secretary of HUD and I were in Las Vegas there.
    There was a land transaction that we conducted through that
    process. Only 41 acres were sold--41 acres. We're not talking
    hundreds of thousands or millions--41 acres produced $16.75
    million back to the Federal Government from that small land
    sale. Another parcel that we were on was being sold through
    that to build affordable housing. It was about an 80-acre
    parcel. This isn't recreation land. This isn't national park
    land. This isn't resource land. This is right next to a four-
    lane, you know, not a highway, but it was, you know, a busy
    four-lane street with center turn lanes with billboards on the
    side of it, billboards sitting on top of the federal land. And
    that is going to provide much needed housing for the fast-
    growing Henderson.
        In your own state, we have been able, since February, since
    I have been in office, we have conducted two land swaps. These
    were things that were long considered, but not executed, which
    again, swapped land between the Federal Government and the
    state, filling in the checkerboard. In one case, we got land
    from Utah that helped us fill in a checkerboard of federal
    wilderness, but we also freed up land for the State of Utah to
    be able to use more productively. So, as you stated so
    articulately, we have a lot of value trapped in land,
    particularly bordering our fast-growing metro areas. We did a
    study of all these federal lands, and there are 250,000 acres
    that are within just a few miles of cities of 5,000 or more.
    And again, in the states like Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and
    particularly where we have a high, high percentage of federal
    land, we have a great opportunity to help lower the cost of
    housing by being smart, on a case-by-case basis, in moving
    forward with projects that help communities and help our
    states.
        The Chairman. Thank you.
        It's no secret that the Department of the Interior has a
    maintenance backlog. It's a significant one. Backlog that some
    have estimated at more than $33 billion, yet past
    administrations have prioritized land acquisition over
    responsible stewardship of the land the Federal Government
    already owns. Would you agree that before we acquire more land,
    the Department should first do everything it can to take care
    of the land that it already owns?
        Secretary Burgum. Yes, absolutely, sir. And we have a
    massive deferred maintenance backlog, not just in our national
    parks, of course, we have it there, but across BLM, U.S. Fish
    and Wildlife, every place I have been I have seen deferred
    maintenance, whether that's building roads, access. Back to the
    Southern Nevada Lands Act, which could be a model--some of the
    revenue that came from those land sales goes into and back into
    recreation. I had an opportunity to visit on BLM land a new
    visitor center that is being built near Henderson. The funding
    for that new visitor center is coming from a portion of those
    land sales. The Bureau of Reclamation applied for and got a
    grant. There is a new visitor center being built at Hoover Dam,
    which is not only hugely important for electrical generation
    and for irrigation, but there is a new visitor center there
    also paid for by these land sales. So one of the ways to solve
    for some of the deferred maintenance is to be strategic in how
    we dispose of federal lands and then recirculate those dollars
    into improving the recreational opportunities and the
    educational opportunities for our citizens.
        The Chairman. Great. Thank you very much. My time is
    expired.
        Senator Heinrich.
        Senator Heinrich. Thank you. Welcome, Secretary.
        I want to continue on this same vein, and when will we know
    which lands are being considered for land sales? And also, I
    want to ask you if you have--well, let's just start with that
    so that we can have a public process here so that the public
    can understand, really, what's at stake and so we can get
    beyond the current dynamic of what people are imagining, but
    actually understanding what lands you are talking about in this
    process.
        Secretary Burgum. Yes, thank you, Ranking Member. Right
    now, we are on the proposal stage. And so, we have taken a
    look, as I have just described it, at a macro level. We have
    tried to take a look and say--we have taken a look of how many
    acres do we have that might be something that could be of high
    value for an alternative use, say, like housing, that has low
    value for recreation, mineral resources, et cetera. And those,
    typically, are things that are directly adjacent to, you know,
    an existing and fast-growing population center. So that was our
    first target.
        And of course, those are occurring, most likely, in the
    states that I have described as the three states that have the
    highest percentage of federal land--or the four. Idaho, Alaska,
    Utah, and Nevada have the highest percentage of federal land
    and also have got fast-growing communities that are bumping up
    against low-value federal land.
        Senator Heinrich. I think to make sure that we are dealing
    with lands that are as you describe, one of the most important
    things will be to have a transparent and public process. Will
    you hold public meetings before offering those potential lands
    up for sale?
        Secretary Burgum. Yes, absolutely. And I want to reassure
    members here and the public that, you know, there won't be an
    acre of any of our 63 national parks that are considered up for
    sale. I mean, this is not about our most sacred and beautiful
    places. This is often about, like I said, you know, barren land
    next to highways with existing billboards that have no
    recreational value, but you know, would represent--do
    represent--a constraint. In some cases, cities are leapfrogging
    their infrastructure beyond the federal land, creating
    additional infrastructure cost for those cities. And of course,
    when we can do infill, that helps create a great revenue
    opportunity for us to help, whether it's deferred maintenance,
    new recreational opportunities, or reducing the deficit, but it
    also helps those cities operate more efficiently.
        Senator Heinrich. You talked about the Southern Nevada
    legislation, but there is actually a federal program that is
    available to every single state for the BLM to utilize, and
    that is the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act. The
    funds that get generated from public lands that get sold under
    that legislation go to recreation, they go to access, they go
    to conservation. We are currently developing some housing in
    New Mexico using that framework. Is that a framework you have
    looked at for this process?
        Secretary Burgum. I certainly want to look at all the
    models that we have today that are already working and learn
    from them as we go forward to make sure that we are using the
    best practices that we have identified.
        Senator Heinrich. Obviously, the advantage of FLTFA over--
    the Southern Nevada was designed for a specific county. And so,
    it's kind of a one-off. I would urge you to look at FLTFA, in
    part because it's something that is available to you now. It's
    proven. We have used it in New Mexico several times, and it's
    available west-wide.
        When you were before the Senate Appropriations Committee,
    we talked about this plan to potentially downsize the National
    Park System by transferring some sites out of federal
    management to the states, and I sent you a follow-up letter on
    that. I very much appreciate that you replied to my letter, but
    what your reply did not include is just what sites might these
    be. Where are you in that process? Because, you know, we are
    several months now from the next budget year, and if this is
    going to be a serious proposal, the American people deserve to
    understand what is potentially on the list.
        Secretary Burgum. Yes, and I want to go back to your
    opening remarks that suggested that we would need to be
    disposing of hundreds and hundreds of these smaller park units
    to make up some kind of budget deficit. I just would say,
    having had an opportunity to dig into the park service budget,
    I don't think that is the case. I think we have a tremendous
    amount of overhead that we are operating across the Federal
    Government in general, and across Interior in general. And I
    think that, as I learned as Governor of North Dakota, when we
    were able to reduce spending by 27 percent, there was a lot of
    anxiety when we had to do that, but we were able to do that and
    not--we actually increased the money that went to our parks. We
    created a new state park in North Dakota, even after reducing
    budgets, because we took cost out of what I call the overhead
    that was occurring in the capital.
        Senator Heinrich. That is precisely why we need a plan,
    right?
        Secretary Burgum. Yes.
        Senator Heinrich. So that we're not arguing over
    hypotheticals.
        Secretary Burgum. Yes.
        Senator Heinrich. So that we are arguing over real numbers.
    Given the fact that this is a budget year that we have to deal
    with now, as the Congress, I want to understand what those real
    impacts are, what the sites are that are being considered. Is
    there a list or a plan that you can get us, you know, in a
    week? In a month?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, certainly not in a week because one
    of the challenges we are having, even if we have a proposal
    like this, one of the things I have found is, I would say,
    really almost staggering from an operational standpoint, is
    that the systems that we have make it almost impossible to get
    information. You know, I hear regularly about, you know, we
    have 330 million people visiting parks. Those aren't 330
    million different people, those are visitor days, but then we
    often don't even have the data to find out, are those people
    that live in the local community? Are they international
    visitors? How often? I mean, if you are going to dispose of
    something like the Knife River Indian Village in North Dakota,
    that I think only, you know, may have less than a thousand
    visitors in an entire season, and yet, we have a park
    superintendent and other people there and federal dollars, and
    that would fit, in my own state, nicely into our state historic
    society framework, which could then take advantage of local
    resources to manage it.
        You know, our target would be to look at the places that
    have very low visitation, but even if you would ask a question
    like, hey, please give me the visitation by each of these over
    400 sites, that, you know, there are numbers that are not--
    there are not good data on that. So it's going to be difficult
    to make great decisions quickly. We just have to try to create
    the data framework, because I would want to have any decisions
    we make be data driven, and that is going to make it more
    difficult to identify how we can do things that make sense from
    a budget standpoint.
        The Chairman. Thank you.
        Senator Barrasso.
        Senator Barrasso. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
        Good to see you again, Mr. Secretary. Thanks for the great
    job you are doing. A couple of quick questions.
        I think during your initial hearing for this position, we
    talked about leasing and permitting for energy development, and
    I thought it was a disaster under the previous administration.
    Can you just talk a little bit about what actions the
    Department has taken over the past number of months to correct
    course and what it plans to do in the next fiscal year?
        Secretary Burgum. Thank you, Senator.
        Well, first of all, part of what we are doing is trying to
    reverse some of the activity which didn't follow the law last
    time around because, you know, part of what precedes permitting
    sometimes is leasing, and the Federal Government, under the
    Biden administration, was, as proven by court--you know, states
    took the Federal Government, the Biden administration, to
    court. The Biden administration lost. They were supposed to be
    holding lease sales. They weren't. When they don't hold a lease
    sale, that is lost revenue to the American public. So again,
    trying to get back on track on both onshore and offshore lease
    sales, both in the Lower 48 and the Gulf of America, and in
    Alaska, has been a big effort. On the permitting standpoint, we
    are getting closer to putting up a transparency dashboard,
    which will be able to show by department, by state, by permit
    type, where permits are in the process, how many days they have
    been in the queue. I think that shining this light on this will
    help the public and others understand, you know, just how much
    red tape we have created, but it will also create an
    opportunity for us to accelerate.
        We also quietly announced that we felt that we could get an
    environmental assessment (EA) done in less than 14 days and
    that we could get an environmental impact statement (EIS) in
    less than 28 days. On the pilots that we have done already,
    both of those have been accomplished.
        Senator Barrasso. Great.
        Secretary Burgum. People have said, how is that even
    possible that you can reduce something by such a factor, but it
    turns out that if you are doing an EA and somebody works on it
    for a few hours and they pass it on to somebody else and it
    sits on their desk for a month and then they pick it up, they
    work on it and they pass it on. By the time you get it, a year
    has gone by. You know, we have an opportunity where we could
    put more minutes on mission, more time on task in two weeks
    than what they might have put in a year in the quality of
    product we can put up. At the end of that we will inform the
    decisions that the private sector and public local political
    subdivisions need to make. So I know that we can actually
    deliver a work product faster.
        Senator Barrasso. Great.
        Secretary Burgum. But this is about improved business
    processes. And of course, in your state, we are now--in a few
    weeks, we are going to be permitting new mining operations for
    the first time in decades in this country, and we have approved
    it for the first time in Montana, some mining operations. So
    again, we are back--this nation has to get back in the mining
    game. We have got to get back in the energy development game,
    and we are pleased to be part of that.
        Senator Barrasso. In addition, talk about my state, you
    know, after the Biden administration lost the election, they
    came out with some punishing things. Out of office, they lose
    the House, lose the Senate, lose the White House, and their
    Bureau of Land Management finalized what was the Rock Springs
    Resource Management Plan, which is the final plan. It is
    punishing to the State of Wyoming, devastating the people and
    the economy of Southwest Wyoming, locking up millions of acres
    of land that local communities and the entire state rely upon.
    Can you just talk about what the Department is doing now?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, the Rock Springs RMP, as well as
    the Buffalo one, I mean, these are a couple of things that were
    incredibly egregious that weren't really management plans. I
    mean, they were creating new concepts out of whole cloth that
    were really meant to restrict all forms of land use, as opposed
    to following the multi-use mandate that we are given. So those
    are under review, and we hope to get back to following the law
    and making sure that the citizens of Wyoming and those private
    landowners that live in those areas have the same opportunities
    to thrive that others do without the heavy hand of government.
        Senator Barrasso. And we knew, as in your home state and
    mine, we are very fortunate to have great relationships across
    the state with private, state, federal partners. In Lander,
    Wyoming, there is a U.S. Fish and Wildlife office that serves
    both tribal nations--the Northern Arapaho, the Eastern
    Shoshone--on the Wind River Reservation, along with our
    neighboring counties. The office does valuable work for
    Wyoming, such as big game monitoring, studies of wildlife
    disease, grizzly bear management, habitat restoration. There
    has been some confusion on the status of the office as to
    whether the staff are currently present or not. Can you give us
    an update on the current status of the Fish and Wildlife office
    there?
        Secretary Burgum. The Lander, Wyoming office is an
    important office, and we are going to make sure that it is
    staffed and able to execute their important duties and do that
    from the Lander office as opposed to working remotely from
    someplace else.
        Senator Barrasso. Great.
        In terms of sage grouse, we are the home of a large
    population of Greater Sage Grouse and habitat. For over 15
    years, Wyoming has been in the forefront of adopting and paying
    for new management approaches to protect this species. The
    Biden administration proposed to designate over 600,000 acres
    as so-called areas of critical environmental concern, which is
    basically a way of locking up the land. Is the Department
    planning on reopening the Greater Sage Grouse Management Plan,
    do you know?
        Secretary Burgum. Yes, the greater sage grouse is neither
    on the threatened or endangered species list, and this critical
    habitat, you described again, is another whole-cloth creation,
    effectively creating a wilderness area out of nothing. And so,
    we are taking a hard look at that because we want to get back
    to following the actual law.
        Senator Barrasso. Great.
        Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
        The Chairman. Senator Wyden.
        Senator Wyden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        Good to see you, Mr. Secretary, and I know when you came to
    see me, you didn't know a whole lot about the details of the
    clean energy tax law that I wrote, and particularly its
    manufacturing encouragement and the critical minerals. And so,
    I want to talk to you about where we are now. I believe the
    administration today, on this technology-neutral law, is making
    an unforced error because the administration, with the House
    bill, is basically taking clean energy sources off the table.
    Now, just in the last couple of days, energy company owners
    that have gas plants, they have gas holdings, are saying they
    need more energy now and that renewables have got to be part of
    that equation. So my question to you is, why not work with us
    here in the Senate so that we can fix these provisions in the
    House bill on renewables that basically are putting clean
    energy through bureaucratic water torture. Let's clean that up,
    and as a result, we could do more to work together for your
    concept of energy dominance, market growth, and more than
    anything, do it without mandates. That's what the law says
    today. Why not go that route and clean up the House bill now?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, Senator, I would love to connect
    with you following this hearing and learn more about the gas
    plant operators that you are saying need more.
        Senator Wyden. Ketchum, the head of NextERA Energy, the
    President's hometown utility, said ``I need electrons now. Get
    them to me from any possible source.'' But renewables have got
    to be part of it. So why can't we make that part of your
    agenda?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, I would say the House bill
    reflects, I think, a priority, which is that we need to have
    reliable and affordable, and some of what we tend to call
    renewables would fall into the category of being intermittent
    and expensive. And so, I think that has been the----
        Senator Wyden. But this is about creating choices. And my
    time is short. There are no mandates here. I understand you are
    interested in issues relating to batteries, that can deal with
    intermittent questions, but let's get down to fixing this
    flawed House bill that--executives are now all over Capitol
    Hill saying that we really like technology-neutral. We like the
    concept. We want to make it work. Right now, it includes
    provisions that--so, make the provisions with respect to
    international aspects unworkable. They call this ``Hill kill
    the American business structure.'' We need to correct those
    kinds of provisions. I would like you to be part of that, and
    we will follow up with you.
        Let me talk to you next about the parks. We are having
    terrible problems with respect to Crater Lake. The
    superintendent of this treasure left because he didn't have the
    staff to protect it. Now, you all are saying that these reports
    say that visitors can have the same kind of experience this
    year that they have had in the past. That's not what we are
    hearing in Oregon. What we are hearing in Oregon, you know,
    they have problems even with volunteers running the show. So my
    question on this issue is, can you make a commitment to work
    with me to ensure that all the national park sites in Oregon
    have the staff and resources they need?
        Secretary Burgum. Yes, absolutely. And I would say at this
    time that we do have thousands of positions that we filled for
    summer, hiring in the parks, and in addition to summer help in
    the parks, also wildland firefighters. And so, if anybody is
    listening, we are still hiring at the parks for summer
    positions. So I would be happy to continue to work with you on
    staffing up.
        Senator Wyden. The last one is on wildfire. I can tell you
    we are expecting more heat in Oregon than we thought we were
    going to have, particularly in eastern Oregon. Federal staffing
    is well behind where it should be because of the hiring freeze.
    Can you assure Oregonians today that despite these issues, we
    are going to have the firefighting staff that we need?
        Secretary Burgum. Yes, because there is no hiring freeze on
    wildland firefighters, and we are staffed between Interior and
    U.S. Forest Service about identically where we were last year,
    at about 17,000 firefighters. If there is a discrepancy in
    Oregon, we will be happy to look at that.
        Senator Wyden. I have a few seconds left. I want to go back
    to my first request. My door is open to work with you on this
    question of a technology-neutral policy. It makes sense. The
    markets like it. Companies like it. It would allow us,
    particularly in the case of somebody having gas holdings, to do
    something now about this great need when we are concerned about
    AI to make sure we have enough energy. You are interested in
    that, but we have got to fix the problems in the House bill
    because companies are telling me they are drowning in the
    bureaucracy and trying to figure out how it would work. We can
    do better than this, and we would like to work with you.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Secretary Burgum. Thank you, Senator.
        The Chairman. Senator Daines.
        Senator Daines. Secretary Burgum, good to see you here
    today. I am grateful for your leadership. You have made a lot
    of significant accomplishments here over the first five or six
    months of your tenure. Thank you.
        One issue that we are focused on in Montana, among many, is
    grizzly bears. As you are well aware, the Fish and Wildlife
    Service advanced a proposal on grizzly bears in January that we
    have spoken on. I want to again emphasize that this Biden-era
    proposal punishes Montana's successful grizzly bear recovery
    efforts. We should celebrate the fact that the bear populations
    are way over the recovery targets, delist the bear, and
    transfer the responsibility of the management of that great
    species back to the State of Montana. Your agency reviews the
    status of bears. Would you commit to looking at those recovery
    targets that were set by FWS for the Greater Yellowstone
    Ecosystem and the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, which,
    by the way, have been well exceeded?
        Secretary Burgum. Yes, absolutely, I will commit to that.
    And you are absolutely correct, well exceeded by more than
    double, I think.
        Senator Daines. It is. You are exactly right. You know, for
    Greater Yellowstone, 500 bears was the recovery target. We are
    at 1,100 bears right now. So it's time to celebrate recovery
    and delist the bears.
        I want to move to the Bull Mountains mine and coal
    operations. Montana is home to three major coal mines that have
    been in limbo for years because of inaction by the Biden
    administration. But under your leadership--I was talking about
    it on the radio here this morning, in fact, what you did--you
    have got Montana back on track. Earlier this year, you approved
    the Spring Creek Mine in eastern Montana, and just last week,
    you approved the Bull Mountains Coal Mine in Roundup. I can
    tell you, there are a lot of Montana families who depend on
    those jobs who are--it's a big sigh of relief at the moment. So
    I want to thank you for prioritizing that made-in-Montana
    energy. It's not going unnoticed. And, by the way, some have
    said this was not well thought out and that this was a knee-
    jerk reaction. This is the 700-page EIS for the Bull Mountains
    Mine.
        [Photograph of the Environmental Impact Statement displayed
    follows:]
    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1237.006

        Senator Daines. It is the result of extensive public
    comment, extensive public input, years of review, and that is
    contained in this EIS. I know the community in Montana is
    grateful for the hard work your team put into this. The last
    piece of the puzzle is the Rosebud Coal Mine, which feeds the
    Colstrip Power Plant. I hope to see that permit in the very
    near future.
        Secretary Burgum, my question is this: could you speak to
    the work you are doing to support more made-in-America energy
    and the work you have done in Montana?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, be happy to, and again, it's
    exciting to see what is going on in Montana. It's an example of
    what could happen in this country, because when we have
    reliable, clean, affordable baseload going into our grid, that
    creates opportunities for everyone. Lower energy prices drive
    every aspect of the economy. Having affordable, reliable
    electricity right now is key to artificial intelligence. It is
    key to manufacturing, and in a state like Montana, that is
    supportive of having ample amounts of baseload, it is going to
    be attracting advanced manufacturing, attracting AI data
    centers, attracting jobs, helping your universities and your
    schools.
        And it's an interesting thing right now, where we have
    people that are pursuing energy poverty in some other states.
    It's great we have 50 states, because states can have some of
    their own approaches. We are--in Interior and the Trump
    Administration--we are trying to help all 50 states. Some are
    welcoming that help. Others less so. But I think Montana is a
    shining example of what a state can do. I mean, you're going to
    have electricity prices that might be 50 percent lower than
    other parts of the country.
        And you know, if you're someone who is thinking about a $10
    billion capital investment in an AI data center, you're going
    to go to a place like Montana and say, I am going to go to a
    place where they actually believe in having affordable,
    reliable electricity.
        Senator Daines. You know, what's amazing, Secretary Burgum,
    is Montana has the most recoverable coal of any state in the
    United States. It's one of the sometimes undertold facts. The
    welcome sign is out, Secretary Burgum. Thank you for your
    leadership.
        Secretary Burgum. And in that coal, in addition to thermal
    coal for electricity, there are also critical minerals.
        Senator Daines. There are.
        Secretary Burgum. And those critical minerals are
    absolutely important for us to have secure supply chains. This
    is one of the important challenges we are facing as a country,
    and Montana can be part of the solution.
        Senator Daines. Secretary, I want to close with the America
    the Beautiful Act. My good friend Angus King and I have worked
    long to protect and strengthen our national parks. Last month,
    we introduced the America the Beautiful Act to reauthorize the
    National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund.
    Remember, when President Trump signed the Great American
    Outdoors Act, many said it was the greatest conservation win in
    50 years, signed by President Trump. The only problem we have
    is that it expires after five years. Well, it has been five
    years, believe it or not. It's time to renew this to deal with
    the crumbling infrastructure and the deferred maintenance
    problems we have in our national parks. With America's 250th
    birthday around the corner, I can't think of a better gift to
    give America than to sign that bill. We are working hard on
    that, Senator King and I. This is a legacy item for President
    Trump.
        Mr. Secretary, will you work with Senator King and me to
    get this to the President's desk as soon as possible?
        Secretary Burgum. Absolutely.
        Senator Daines. All right, thank you.
        The Chairman. Senator King.
        Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Governor, which I consider a higher title than Secretary or
    Senator, just so you know. I am disappointed----
        Secretary Burgum. As a former Governor.
        Senator King. That's right. Oh, yes, that's true.
        I am disappointed, Mr. Secretary, with the budget,
    particularly for the National Park Service. First, is what
    materials we have been given. This is the budget justification
    for the National Park Service for the 2025 budget that's
    submitted to Congress so that we have something we can work
    from and work with. That's 2025. This is what we have been
    given this year for 2026.
        [Side-by-side comparison of the FY25 and FY26 National Park
    Service Budget Justifications follows:]
    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1237.007

        Senator King. That's just--that's an insult to the
    Congress. That's not adequate to give us the data that we need
    in order to make the oversight decisions, because we don't know
    the details of what's being done. There is some boiler plate in
    here about how we are going to make things more efficient. It's
    hard for me to understand how gutting America's best idea isn't
    America's worst idea.
        A 37 percent cut in the National Park Service budget, which
    was already underfunded, I don't believe is responsible. The
    word stewardship has come up in this hearing several times.
    That ain't stewardship. Here is some data.
        [Displayed chart follows:]
        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1930.040

        Senator King. This is visitation at our National Parks
    going back to 2010. The blue bars are visitation. The orange is
    staff at the National Park Service. So you can see there was
    already growing disparity back in 2010. This is where staffing
    was. This is where visitation was. Here is where we are as of
    this budget. We are here. That's where we are as of this
    budget. We are already woefully understaffed, and you are
    talking about cutting the budget by another third.
        Now, my real question is why? The $1.2 billion you are
    cutting from the National Park Service is devastating to the
    National Park Service. It doesn't amount to anything in terms
    of our federal budget. I did a calculation. If our federal
    budget was the height of this room, what you are cutting from
    the National Park Service is the combined height of two credit
    cards. In other words, to save virtually no money from the
    federal budget, we are devastating one of America's treasures.
    That's what I don't understand. And you, yourself, a few
    minutes ago said we don't have the data. You don't have the
    visitation data. This is ready, fire, aim. How about waiting a
    year, developing the data, finding out what it is, because you
    can't convince me that a detailed analysis of the National Park
    Service took place in the last couple of months to justify this
    pitiful submission to this Committee.
        So I am anxious to hear. We all know the term bang for the
    buck. This is damage for the buck. This is huge damage to the
    Park Service for a very minimal return in terms of reduction to
    the deficit, reduction of our federal budget. Why in the world,
    given your commitment to the National Parks, the new park, the
    Teddy Roosevelt Park in your state, why did you let them do
    this?
        Secretary Burgum. Senator, I want to just--first, I
    appreciate the chart that you are holding up behind there. I
    believe that that number, if I can see it correctly, probably
    is the full-time staffing, as opposed to the summer and
    seasonal. I think that we actually have, you know, it's a mix.
    I think that line, I am trying to see there.
        Senator King. Well, you allowed more seasonals for this
    year, but I understand only half of them have been hired and we
    are in the summer right now.
        Secretary Burgum. More than half have been hired, but I
    think, again, this is a mix. Again, I just got back from a trip
    to Alaska. I was at Kenai Fjords. This is, you know, a
    beautiful and amazing park. It's, you know, the road gets
    plowed in May. It snows over in November. You know, this is a
    classic case where we need a lot of staffing. Cruise ships are
    stopping in Seward. They get, you know, hundreds of thousands
    of visitors over a three- or four-month period, and in the
    wintertime, the visitor centers aren't even open. So we have to
    figure out a way to be able to do flex staffing. It's not just
    as simple as the raw number. And the one number that I was able
    to----
        Senator King. Well, the raw number--there may be details in
    here, but it's pretty unmistakable, the trend on this chart
    and----
        Secretary Burgum. But the other thing----
        Senator King. But again, I don't understand. You are saving
    a very small amount of money. You are gutting the--I looked it
    up last night--the National Park Service is the most popular
    federal agency--the most popular federal agency. Why in the
    world would you target this agency, particularly when you,
    yourself, in your testimony today, said, I don't have the data?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, we are working----
        Senator King. That's ready, fire, aim. Get the data.
    Understand the details of the budget. Give us something like
    this, and then we can decide what the plan should be. To echo
    the Vice Chair, what is the plan for doing this in a thoughtful
    way, not an arbitrary way of, you know, all probationary
    employees and that kind of thing?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, in that thick book that you have
    there, I am certain that there is one thing that is missing,
    which is how many of those people actually work in a park,
    because we spent eight weeks this spring rebuilding all the
    H.R. data to find out, of all the people you have in your
    chart, how many work in a park, because the real issue that
    citizens want is, do I have an interpretative person? Do I have
    a ranger? Do I have, you know, are the bathrooms clean? And so,
    part of that is making sure that we have fewer people working,
    you know, in places like Washington, DC, and more people
    working in the parks. I believe that we can reduce what we
    spend in overhead in the park and have more people actually
    working in the parks. And in a place like Yellowstone this
    summer, there are more people right now on the ground in
    Yellowstone than there were three years ago.
        Senator King. And I would like to see that plan before you
    submit a budget that cuts the budget by 37 percent, that's all.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Secretary Burgum. I just want to say one thing, Mr.
    Chairman. It's one thing that we are in the saddest point in
    America if we say that cutting a billion dollars is
    meaningless, or it's as thin as a piece of paper. We are all
    Americans. We were all part of a budget. Last year, this
    country spent $2,000 billion--$2,000 billion--more than we
    brought in. That's what a $2 trillion deficit is. And to think
    that we can't find savings in every agency, particularly when
    we have got, you know, decades-old IT systems and way too many
    people in overhead. I mean, we just have to all agree that we
    can be more efficient and still deliver great services at
    places like our national parks. We can do both of those things.
    It's not an either/or. These are false trade-offs. We can have
    better experiences at the parks, better staffing at the parks,
    and we can have fewer people working for the National Park
    System. My best guess is that barely half of the people of that
    number actually work in a park. The rest are in some other
    jobs.
        Senator King. Part of the responsibility of the National
    Park Service is stewardship and resource management, not
    necessarily being park rangers. That is part of the
    responsibility of the Organic Act of the National Parks. And I
    point out that $600 billion of that deficit that you mentioned
    could be covered by better enforcement at the IRS of a lot of
    people not paying their taxes--$600 billion. That is the
    estimate that the deficit could be reduced.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        The Chairman. Thank you.
        Senator Hoeven, you are up next.
        Senator Hoeven. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Secretary/Governor
    Burgum, thanks for being here. Thanks for your commitment to do
    both. And I agree, provide better service, and still find
    savings. And I think you can do it, and I think you will do it.
    I think you will show that that's exactly what you are going to
    do. I have seen you do it before. Thanks for being here today.
        In addition to all your tasks as Secretary of the Interior,
    you are also the leader, or the Chairman of the National Energy
    Dominance Council. So I want to talk to you about that work and
    how that is progressing as well. So if you would, I mean, as
    you know, I am all in on energy dominance for this country. Our
    state is a huge part of it, and we want to continue to be a
    huge part of it, and that involves both private land, but also
    public land, right? So it fits with your day job as Secretary
    of Interior. So talk to me. What steps is the Department and
    are you taking to unleash more oil, gas, and coal production on
    federal lands, onshore and off, to help meet the growing demand
    in our reliance, not only for ourselves, for energy with AI and
    everything else that is going on, but also, to partner with our
    allies to get them off energy from countries like Russia and
    other adversaries?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, thank you, Senator Hoeven and thank
    you for being such a champion for energy policy. You understand
    as well as anyone that the right energy policy drives American
    prosperity and it drives peace abroad. So thank you for your
    support.
        The approach has been, again, a lot of this is coming from
    President Trump's executive orders, unleashing Alaska's
    extraordinary potential, the energy emergency that he signed on
    day one, appropriately, because of the risk that we are facing
    with our electrical grid in this country and also the risk that
    we are facing with critical minerals. These are key things that
    our nation is up against for insecure supply chain. So across
    the board, we have been working to try to accelerate projects.
    We do that first by following the law. As you know, the Biden
    administration failed to hold lease sales, onshore, offshore.
    They closed down areas, even like the National Petroleum
    Reserve-Alaska, which was, you know, designed in 1923 to be a
    petroleum reserve. Going through the steps to reopen the public
    lands that were designated for energy resource, we are going
    through those steps.
        As you have heard from some of your fellow Senators here,
    whether it's coal mines in Wyoming or Montana, or Alabama,
    metallurgical coal, we are back in the business. We have to get
    back in the mining business. We have killed mining--not we--but
    the prior administration has basically killed mining in this
    country. And if we're not mining, we're not in the critical
    minerals business. If we're not in the critical minerals
    business, we can't build a fighter jet, we can't build a car,
    we can't build a cell phone--all of those things that we need
    to be. So it's across the board, oil, gas, you know, rolling
    back the Biden export ban. We are seeing record amounts of
    capital investment coming to this country around AI because
    they know that this is a country now that is committed to
    building the power to power the future economy.
        Senator Hoeven. Well, I am not surprised, but you went
    right to my next question before I even asked it, and that is
    critical minerals. You will be glad to know in your home state
    we are just christening a plant that is going to convert--or
    that is going to process nickel for advanced battery
    manufacturing in the United States, so we don't have to get it
    from China. And of course, that is the legacy of some of the
    great work that you did as Governor. But you went right to my
    next question, which was on critical minerals, which is a key
    part of it, too.
        Also, I would add that under the very strong leadership of
    Chairman Lee, we are going to provide some more tools for you
    both in terms of lower taxes and less regulation that is going
    to help continue this all-in effort for energy dominance.
        The other thing, and again, as people get to know you, they
    are going to know that you have a love for the national parks.
    I mean, I know it. I have known you for over 30 years. You love
    the national parks. But you are also a rancher, so talk to me
    about what we can do for our ranchers who are on public lands
    as well, grasslands and other aspects, and of course, that
    farming, ranching, that goes to forestry, that goes to so many
    things. People don't realize what a huge diverse industry Ag
    is. What can you do in that realm?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, one of the things we can do is make
    sure that we are speeding up permitting. And again, as we work
    toward, I mean, because, again, you have a grazing permit on
    BLM land or U.S. Forest Service land that can hold up people,
    and if they have uncertainty about their permits, that affects
    these ranch families. So we are redoing the whole permitting
    process, putting up a permitting transparency dashboard,
    holding the BLM offices at the state and local level
    accountable for how fast they get permits, helping them with
    the IT systems to address backlog.
        We just have to be in the business of serving our
    customers. When a rancher is getting a grazing permit from us,
    they are the customer. They pay us, the Federal Government, for
    that right. When someone is getting a timber permit from us,
    they are paying us. We want to be in the business of serving
    those customers because when they pay us, they are paying us,
    meaning that is revenue to the Federal Government. That helps
    reduce the deficit. That helps, you know, us have resources to
    be able to, you know, tackle deferred maintenance. So we just
    have to, again, get back into the business of the people that
    are utilizing public lands, appropriately following the law,
    that we serve them like the customers that they are.
        Senator Hoeven. Right. And they live out there. They are
    good stewards of the land. That's their home. And the other
    thing that is really important is access, as I know you know.
        Thank you for your good work.
        Secretary Burgum. Yeah, and we have opened up--we have
    taken steps to open up hundreds of thousands of more acres to
    hunting and fishing. There is red tape there, so we are
    increasing access as we go through this.
        Senator Hoeven. Glad you brought that up. We both love
    hunting and fishing, so thank you.
        Secretary Burgum. Yeah.
        The Chairman. Senator Padilla.
        Senator Padilla. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and just to note,
    I don't have questions this morning about critical minerals,
    but I am glad to hear Senator Hoeven and the Secretary engage
    in that conversation.
        Mr. Secretary, the invitation remains open to come visit
    Lithium Valley in Southern California and see the tremendous
    potential there for lithium and other critical materials as
    well. It feels like it has been years since you were here for
    your confirmation hearing and your vote and our previous
    conversation. So I hope you are enjoying the job and it's
    everything you were looking forward to and then some, but look,
    we are knee-deep on a number of issues and concerns, so I will
    get right into it.
        As I am sure you are aware, the Department of Justice, just
    yesterday, published an opinion that asserts that presidents
    have the authority to abolish national monuments. I know the
    Chairman made a reference to that in his remarks earlier today.
    I believe this is an extremely dangerous opinion that flies in
    the face of 90 years of precedent. And you and I discussed this
    when you were coming through for confirmation, because we
    worked very hard in recent years on establishing and expanding
    monuments in California in a very thoughtful and balanced way.
    So this is personal for me. Given the recent opinion, I do need
    to ask you, for the record, what are your intentions towards
    recently designated national monuments in California, which, as
    I have shared with you, enjoy strong bipartisan support, not
    just at the federal level, but from local and tribal leaders as
    well?
        Secretary Burgum. Thank you, Senator, and I do want to tell
    you, I would love to accept your invitation to come out and
    visit, and of course, California does have some of the top
    critical mineral resources in the country and can play a really
    important role in our national security. So I look forward to
    talking to you about that.
        On the monuments, we have a responsibility and direction to
    take a look at the recently created ones. I think this is
    something that we all know, if you just, again, we do have the
    data on that. And most of these monuments have been created in
    the last weeks and months of presidential terms, and always
    under the idea that everyone was consulted. I have had people
    in my office--not for the ones in California--but I have had
    people in my office saying hey, we weren't consulted. So,
    again, as we listen to the feedback from tribes and citizens
    and others around the country, we have a responsibility to get
    on the ground and do some ground truth. And I think the
    question is not whether their monument serves a purpose, I
    think the real question is the size that generally comes up,
    because there are people in communities, when we create
    restrictions on land use that does restrict some of their
    economic opportunity, and we want to listen to those as well.
    But again, we are looking for a balanced approach and I am
    happy to continue that dialogue with you.
        Senator Padilla. Well, I appreciate that, but just, again,
    for the record, recognizing that states in the West tend to be
    larger than states in the East. So the appropriateness and size
    of monuments and other areas of designation tend to be larger
    because of the acreage that we are talking about. You mentioned
    engagement and consultation in the creation of monuments. That
    absolutely happened, as you know, in California. So I
    appreciate you recognizing the distinction. If it's going to be
    revisited or undone, we expect that same level of engagement on
    the back end before any action is taken or before any decisions
    are made.
        I know my time is limited. Let me move to another topic. As
    you and I have talked in the past--water, water, water--so
    important to California and to everybody, but especially
    California. The Bureau of Reclamation, according to reports,
    has lost 1,400 public servants, approximately 25 percent of the
    agency's entire workforce. In the Bureau of Reclamation's
    regional office in Sacramento, there used to be 50 staff
    handling financial issues alone, and now, there are only 12.
    This is the staff that works to approve contracts, grants,
    agreements, et cetera. Yet, the Bureau of Reclamation's
    California office has cut its staff responsible for these
    aspects of water infrastructure by nearly 80 percent. Will you
    commit to look at the number of finance staff at Reclamation's
    California regional office to ensure that there is sufficient
    capacity there to meet the administrative needs of our critical
    water infrastructure and investments?
        Secretary Burgum. Yes, happy to, for sure, take a look at
    that. I am a little surprised at the 80 percent because the
    only reductions so far would have been through people taking
    one of their early retirement options, unless in that data, and
    my team can follow up because we did take some people that are
    in finance, HR, and IT and roll them up to the Secretary's
    office because we felt there was an opportunity for unification
    at a broader level--you know, state, you know, versus say,
    regional. So I would want to make sure that some of those
    people--I am just wondering if they are still there and they
    are just being accounted in another area.
        Senator Padilla. Well, accounted, but also where is their
    work--the roles, and responsibilities, and have they changed to
    still be California-specific or more broad for the Department.
        I know my time is up. Let me just put a pin in, both on the
    Reclamation side, how critical it is, not just within
    California infrastructure, but also as we have discussed
    multiple times, the role Reclamation plays for all the Colorado
    River states, both in the Lower Basin and the Upper Basin. So
    we are going to be calling each other more frequently yet again
    after this hearing.
        And lastly, we will submit for the record questions about
    the cuts to the U.S. Geological Survey. They play a critical
    role in developing ShakeAlert, the nation's only public
    earthquake early alert system that more than 50 million
    Americans depend on. Technology has come a long way. It can be
    very helpful to preserve, to save lives, and minimize damage in
    the event of inevitable earthquakes. And so, I want to revisit
    some of the budget cuts to that program as well.
        Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        The Chairman. Thank you.
        Senator Hyde-Smith, you are up next.
        Senator Hyde-Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
    Mr. Secretary for the great job that you are doing. And I so
    appreciate you revitalizing our nation's offshore energy
    potential. The short-sightedness of the last administration to
    block the lease sales in the lease areas could have been so
    much more detrimental, but thank you for bringing us back. And
    I truly think that the Department is headed in the right
    direction, and that revitalization is so important to states
    like Mississippi, who are on the Gulf of America, and the
    offshore oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of America is vital to
    ensure the entire nation's energy dominance, as we well know.
    And allowing states like Mississippi to continue to receive the
    GOMESA funds for coastal conservation and the restoration work,
    and for making funds available through programs like the
    American Battlefield Protection Program. The Battlefield
    Program plays so many important roles across the United States
    and helps to preserve the historically significant battlefields
    and parks like the Vicksburg Military Park, which is our number
    one tourist attraction in Mississippi, and it's good to see
    that the President's budget has included the funds for that
    program.
        My question is, will you speak to the Department's
    commitment to ensuring our historic battlefields continue to
    have access to these funds, because it is very critical to us?
        Secretary Burgum. Yes, thank you, Senator.
        Yes, we have a commitment to that, and also, again, I mean,
    this is one of the--on a broader policy standpoint, when we
    develop our nation's resources, we have the revenue to go back
    to protect other things that people care deeply about. And one
    of the things, which I don't think is widely understood, is
    that the number one contributor to coastal restoration around
    the Gulf is revenue coming from the oil and gas industry as
    part of the revenue sharing from the royalties that the
    government receives from those that are developing. And so,
    again, whether it's, you know, battlefields or coastal
    restoration, it's a win-win for our Gulf states and it's a win-
    win for America when we have got the revenue to be able to, you
    know, both lower the cost of energy for all Americans, improve
    energy security, have more prosperity, but also have revenue
    that's not tax revenue, it's royalty revenue from an asset that
    we are participating in that helps pay for these things like,
    you know, the tourist attraction that is number one in your
    state, or whether it's coastal restoration, which matters to
    everyone.
        Senator Hyde-Smith. Thank you for that commitment, and we
    are all enjoying that.
        I am pleased that the budget request also highlights the
    need for marine minerals and expanding critical mineral
    information and access in the Gulf of America. The University
    of Mississippi--Ole Miss--has provided support to these efforts
    over the years and is a willing partner in continuing to
    provide the technical and scientific support. What is the
    Department and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's vision
    for critical mineral exploration and development in the Gulf of
    America, and will the Department continue to rely on
    partnerships with research universities to achieve all of this?
        Secretary Burgum. I think that the partnerships are key,
    and this is, again--one of the ways that we can stretch a
    federal dollar is working in conjunction with, you know, great
    universities, private sector, private companies. There are
    private companies doing advanced research around the potential
    for ocean-bed critical minerals. So I think this is an exciting
    area, and I think we, again, as we, you know, are in the
    current global environment that we are in, where we are in a
    battle, where it has been well understood for some time that
    China is controlling 85 percent of the refining of the rare
    earth minerals that we are dependent on, this has to be a
    national priority of the highest order that we have got to get
    into the critical minerals game because we, like I said, we
    can't build a fighter jet, a drone, a car, or a cell phone
    without them. And yet, somehow, we have found ourselves
    dependent on an adversary for that. So whether it's onshore or
    offshore, that's a game that this administration is committed
    to making sure that America's secured future is secure, and
    these offshore opportunities present a great opportunity to
    help secure that future.
        Senator Hyde-Smith. Thank you very much. I love the
    direction you are going and want to be very helpful, as much as
    we possibly can.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Secretary Burgum. Thank you.
        The Chairman. Senator Hickenlooper.
        Senator Hickenlooper. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Mr.
    Secretary--Governor--thank you for being here.
        Your budget proposes transferring public lands out of
    federal management, and in a couple of places it refers to a
    bloated federal estate, but in many cases, these lands are
    supportive of our outdoor recreation--$17 million in recreation
    in Colorado, $1.2 trillion nationwide--and there is discussion
    in your remarks about increasing outdoor access, but the BLM
    recreation budget, which is where most of that access gets
    created, is down 60 percent, and that's not just compared to
    last year, that's compared to pre-COVID. I am very sensitive to
    that notion that, you know, during COVID--so I have done all my
    numbers back to 2019. And that 60 percent cut, I mean, as a
    former business owner--we both are--when you make those kinds
    of dramatic cuts, it's often hard to get just the fat. You end
    up getting a lot of what's really necessary as well.
        So, I guess I would ask, shouldn't we be looking at ways
    that make better investment, but still maintain, to a
    significant extent, those investments in outdoor recreation and
    in our access to public lands?
        Secretary Burgum. Yes, Senator, thank you--or I should say,
    Mayor/Governor/Senator--we agree with your comments, and this
    is certainly--we want to make sure that we are being strategic
    in terms of where we are applying the dollars. Love the fact
    that you have gone back and done that analysis to 2019. You may
    be ahead of some of the work we are trying to do with the
    systems because we are trying to put together a look so we can
    see where we were, because when people talk about dramatic
    cuts, sometimes the cut would take us back to 2021 spending.
    And I am like, wow, we got, you know, the world wasn't falling
    apart in 2021, maybe we could live with that for a while as we
    try to balance the budget, but I appreciate that.
        Recreation is such an important--the outdoor recreation
    industry is massive. I mean, it's like three percent of the
    employment in this country is now in outdoor recreation. And
    that group does so much. I mean, they are doing so much. They
    do--this is a group, broadly, that is leading in conservation--
    you know, hunters, fishermen, anglers, campers, climbers. Those
    are the people that are contributing their own personal dollars
    back. So this is a community that's most important to us going
    forward. So I appreciate your zeroing in on that piece, and we
    will continue to take a hard look at that.
        Senator Hickenlooper. Yeah, and I think even the U.S. Fish
    and Wildlife Service caught my attention--going back to 2019,
    it is cut 30 percent. And I know from experience as a governor
    that they run pretty lean, always anyway. And that's a kind of
    a foundational for a lot of outdoor recreation, making sure of
    the habitat for wild animals, for fish, that we maintain and
    always are trying to think about ways we efficiently and cost-
    effectively can improve that.
        Secretary Burgum. And they run 65 fish hatcheries, which
    then help support all the entire fishing industry as well.
        Senator Hickenlooper. Absolutely. And it's a place where,
    in many ways, it helped pay its own way, because there are all
    sources of revenue as well. You know all that.
        Wildfires--confronting this wildfire crisis really does
    push us toward making our forests more resilient, but
    obviously, staffing losses and BLM's land resources funding
    being cut by a third, again, back to 2019. I am worried about
    our capacity to respond to the wildfire risk and especially how
    do we make sure we have resilience. And it's complicated, and I
    am not trying to gloss over the complications. How do you
    expect the BLM is going to be able to deliver on the wildfire
    and forest management goals when you are making these kinds of
    cuts to the workforce, and to critical parts of the planning?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, as we head into this wildfire
    season, we just had a briefing yesterday, but Secretary Brooke
    Rollins and I have been working together. We have held joint
    reviews on firefighting. We have talked about ways to gain
    additional efficiencies at the operational headquarters
    overhead level so that we can put more boots on the ground,
    literally. This summer, we are at about 17,000 staffing across
    the two agencies for wildfire fighters, so we are about equal
    with where we were last year. But we do have--there is no
    hiring freeze on that. We still have positions open if people
    are interested in jumping in and having an amazing summer
    experience. We can get them trained up for wildfire fighting.
        But we are also looking at some other models. There is a
    great model that is going on in Alaska between the state and
    Federal Government, and we also, this budget proposal does
    include that we would consolidate wildland firefighting,
    because there are four firefighting units in Interior, one in
    Fish and Wildlife. Sometimes we are well coordinated. Other
    times we have got like five generals pursuing different
    strategies and tactics, and we have a checkerboard of federal
    land. So we are taking a hard look at some opportunities there
    and Senator Sheehy and others are advancing legislation to take
    a look at this as well. So we would be happy to continue that
    dialogue, particularly with states that are deeply involved in
    having their own state resources.
        Senator Hickenlooper. Right, like Colorado. I appreciate
    that. We will stay in touch and do that.
        I yield back.
        The Chairman. Senator Cassidy, you are up next.
        Senator Cassidy. Hey, Mr. Secretary, great to have you
    here, sir.
        Leasing off the outer continental shelf of Louisiana, as
    you might guess, it's on my mind. And the Biden administration
    couldn't have screwed it up more if they had actually just said
    let's screw it up, which actually, I think they tried to. How
    successful do you think you will be to get regularly scheduled
    lease sales, understanding that that not only contributes to
    American energy dominance, but creates a lot of well-paying
    jobs for people in my state and across the country, you know,
    well-paying jobs? So I toss it to you.
        Secretary Burgum. This is a priority for us, to get back on
    a predictable, regular, follow-the-law schedule of lease sales,
    and for the Gulf of America, we are targeting to try to have a
    lease sale ready to go by December of this year.
        Senator Cassidy. That's great.
        Now, one thing I have heard from my industry leaders is
    that it used to be so clockwork that they could plan a fishing
    trip with their son, fly into New Orleans, go to the lease
    sale, and then go out there. Now, that's important, as you
    know, not just because they want to go fishing in our beautiful
    waters with their son, but because time is money. And if there
    is regulatory delay, it's just chewing up their capital, making
    it less likely that they can do this. So what is the
    possibility that we will get back to where a regular, like, you
    know, first week in May or something, where you can kind of
    count of it?
        Secretary Burgum. Absolutely, predictability is a goal of
    ours because, again, it helps on all the capital planning
    processes, the internal planning processes of these companies,
    and they have other places to spend their money. I mean, if
    they know that a lease sale is coming and they know what date
    it is happening, they can do the research, they can do the
    evaluation, and they can try to figure out where they may want
    to bid. If they don't even know when the lease sale may happen,
    they go look at other fields and other opportunities and
    sometimes those dollars are going to other countries. We are
    chasing capital away from the United States. And if people care
    about the environment, you should want to have every drop of
    every barrel produced here, every electron produced here,
    because we produce it cleaner, safer, and smarter than anywhere
    else in the world. We are the country that is actually
    reducing, you know, solving pollution, solving environmental
    issues, solving CO2 issues. That's all happening in
    America. That's not happening in the rest of the world.
        So we want to have those dollars for energy development
    come to this country. That's energy security for us. It's
    prosperity at home. It's peace abroad. And predictability of
    lease sales in the Gulf and on land is absolutely central to
    that.
        Senator Cassidy. Music to my ears. It makes total sense.
        Tell me, you talked a little in your testimony about mining
    the ocean for critical minerals and other things. Now, the law
    of the sea attempts to address that ability to do so. As you
    know, the U.S. has had several areas marked for itself. At
    least one or two of those areas, we have since lost because we
    have not ratified that treaty. What are your thoughts on that,
    and how do we progress on that?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, I think that one of the things that
    is exciting about America is that innovation has always been
    the key to American greatness. The amount of innovation around
    mining in general--I think there is this, you know, outdated
    30-, 40-, 50-year-old idea of what mining is, but mining, oil
    and gas development, I mean, again, I had an opportunity to get
    to an offshore platform off of your state--I mean, these are
    technology-rich, unbelievably sophisticated operations. You
    know, any American would be wowed or thrilled to see what we
    are accomplishing. And I think that the future for really
    clean, efficient--say, like vacuuming, but think of vacuuming
    the sea floor with little impact, but what it could mean to us,
    particularly when we're in a spot right now where we have
    ceded--us, ourselves and the rest of the free world has ceded
    the control of critical mineral refining to China. They control
    85 percent of the refining on critical minerals, and for some
    rare earth minerals, they control 100 percent.
        Senator Cassidy. So let me ask you that. Knowing that this
    could be part of the solution to that very issue, is there a
    plan kind of being initiated that we are actually going to
    begin to do just that, develop the technology or use our
    remote-operated vehicles to go deep and to pull up whatever?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, I think you will see in the weeks
    and months ahead, and now with the threat of China flexing
    their muscles relative to control of the supply chain, that
    this is going to become a national priority for our country
    that we have to make sure that we never put ourselves in a
    position of being reliant on an adversary for things that are
    fundamental to our entire economy.
        Senator Cassidy. Well, again, I like that. I always like to
    say, wherever there is energy in the world being produced or
    something like that happening, there is somebody from South
    Louisiana showing them how to do it. And so, this will be full
    employment for the people from my state. So thank you very much
    for your service.
        Secretary Burgum. Thank you, Senator.
        The Chairman. Senator Cortez Masto.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the
    Ranking Member.
        Secretary, welcome. Thank you for being here.
        I want to jump back to the public lands conversation that
    you had with the Ranking Member. In Nevada, as you well know--
    and thank you for being there, by the way. I appreciate your
    working with our state, along with HUD. But in Nevada, we
    support public land sales, particularly in Southern Nevada,
    within the parameters that are set by SNPLMA. And I thank you
    again, you identified SNPLMA as a model, and I think it is a
    model because the model was created and requires robust
    stakeholder engagement that really addresses all of the varied
    land management issues we need to work together on, from
    affordable housing, to economic development, to addressing our
    infrastructure needs, our water needs--it's a stakeholder
    group, and it is important we have that. And the money actually
    comes back to BLM, to the benefit of the federal lands in the
    State of Nevada.
        But here is my challenge: you talk about the benefits and
    that it should be a model, but in action, you're not actually
    doing that. And through reconciliation, instead of supporting
    the model that you talk about and tout, and the Chairman also
    talks about this as well, and invokes Harry Reid all the time,
    but the reconciliation package isn't really true to the SNPLMA
    model. In fact, on the House side, I am assuming working with
    the administration, the reconciliation package included federal
    land sales, but those federal land sales, and particularly in
    Southern Nevada, weren't near areas where we could actually do
    affordable housing. Here is a map of Clark County. It's 8,000
    square miles.
        [The map referred to follows:]
        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1237.009

        Senator Cortez Masto. This is the area where Las Vegas is,
    and this is where the boundary is that we want to expand to
    address affordable housing and other issues, but in the
    reconciliation package on the House side, the pink areas are
    the federal land you guys identified, in the middle of the
    desert. There is no infrastructure. I don't know any builder
    that is going to build housing in the middle of the desert. It
    makes no sense.
        And now I am hearing there is a proposal by the Chairman of
    this Committee, again, to put this back into reconciliation
    because that was taken out of reconciliation. It wasn't well
    thought out and it wasn't working with the local communities to
    figure how we actually build affordable housing and use the
    federal lands to benefit everybody living in those states. But
    now I am hearing that there is a proposal going to be put back
    into reconciliation to allow the Federal Government to sell up
    to two million acres of federal land. Is that correct?
        Secretary Burgum. I understand that there is some
    consideration of that, but I don't believe that has been
    formally introduced yet.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Okay. And so, if you are going to
    look at selling up to two million acres of federal land, and
    most of that land is across the West, what states will be
    involved in that process?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, I would say that if the law passes,
    you know, what we would do is, in the executive branch, is
    follow the law, but generically, I think when anybody has
    looked at land sales, they would look at the states that have
    been most overburdened by the Federal Government percentage,
    and among the top of that, Nevada, Alaska, Idaho, and Utah are
    among the states that have the highest percentage of federal
    land. They also----
        Senator Cortez Masto. And certain states, like Montana,
    might be exempted.
        Secretary Burgum. Not familiar with that or understand why
    that would be or not be that.
        Senator Cortez Masto. And then, so who are you working with
    in my state, if you believe that SNPLMA is a model and that
    stakeholders should be engaged because it makes sense? We don't
    want something like this, where you're selling land that
    doesn't--it's not going to benefit you because it's not a high
    dollar-value. It's not going to help us because it's not going
    to build affordable housing. So who are you working with in my
    state, as stakeholders, as you are looking to sell some of the
    federal land in Nevada? Who are you talking to?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, we're not--I have got a hundred
    things on my plate, and right now, the only activity that we
    are involved in on a day-to-day basis in Nevada is following
    the existing law, which is the Southern Nevada Lands Act.
        Senator Cortez Masto. But you just said you are going to be
    selling up to two million acres across the West----
        Secretary Burgum. I didn't say that.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Oh, you're not going to be selling up
    to two million acres of land, looking at two million acres of
    federal land in the reconciliation package? I thought you said
    you were.
        Secretary Burgum. No, I think you said that, and I said
    that proposal may be coming, but----
        Senator Cortez Masto. Oh, okay, so it's a proposal. So as
    it may be coming, and if it becomes law, who would you be
    talking to in my state as you look to sell federal land in the
    State of Nevada?
        Secretary Burgum. This is a hypothetical about something
    that hasn't been introduced and hasn't been passed.
        Senator Cortez Masto. It's coming. I mean, it's going to be
    dropping here any minute now. We are going to see a
    reconciliation package, I am told. There is going to be a sale
    of federal land in it. You can't deny that, or are you telling
    me that maybe the sale of federal land will not be in the
    reconciliation package?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, wouldn't this be something the
    Senate would be debating?
        Senator Cortez Masto. I would hope so. And that is why I am
    asking you, because we have not seen anything. The Chairman has
    it. He has the information. It's behind closed doors. I am
    assuming they are talking with the administration because you
    are going to be taking the lead on all of it. So you are before
    me now and that is why I am asking you the question.
        So if you don't know, then I am really concerned. And we
    should all be concerned across the West. So that is my concern
    here, and I think from my perspective, and many of us in the
    western states, I would hope, as you are looking at selling
    federal land that impacts our states, you are going to be
    working with us to address that. And you talked about SNPLMA
    being a model, but the money comes back into BLM for the
    purpose of these western states, not into the Treasury to
    reduce the deficit. So you are also going to be looking to
    changing the formula, isn't that correct?
        Secretary Burgum. Well, I think you are acting like I am
    proposing legislation, and I----
        Senator Cortez Masto. Well, I am concerned that you are the
    lead agency and they're not talking to you about how the
    federal lands are going to be sold. So maybe I am assuming
    something that is not happening. You have no involvement in the
    reconciliation package when it comes to the sale of federal
    land?
        Secretary Burgum. I think what I would say, which I have
    said here many times, is that the same principles, which I can
    repeat over and over again, which is, it would only make sense
    for us to sell federal lands if we were----
        Senator Cortez Masto. I get the principle, but are you
    actively engaged in the negotiations in the reconciliation
    package?
        Secretary Burgum. I am not actively engaged in
    negotiations----
        Senator Cortez Masto. You're not actively engaged at all in
    the conversation around the sale of federal lands in the
    reconciliation package, the proposal? You are not involved in
    that?
        Secretary Burgum. We have had--there are conceptual talks
    about how that would lay out, but there have not been
    negotiations.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Okay.
        I am running out of time. I am going to submit the rest of
    my questions for the record.
        Let me just say this--this is not antagonistic. This is
    about how we work together. In the State of Nevada, over 80
    percent of the land is owned by the Federal Government. We have
    always wanted a good relationship, and I work toward that 100
    percent. And I look forward to that continuing. But you can't
    come here and say that you support a model program that was
    started by Senator Reid in SNPLMA and then upend it and
    completely do something different. And that's all I am looking
    for, is accountability with this Administration and working
    with us and doing what they say they are going to do to the
    benefit of everybody in the State of Nevada.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        The Chairman. I will add here that the language will be out
    shortly. These things take time. We have been going through the
    Republican-side Byrd process. We are going to be releasing bill
    text soon. Anything on public land sales in this will involve a
    public process that would be part of any sale.
        Senator Justice.
        Senator Justice. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, thank you
    all.
        How you doing there, Mr. Secretary?
        Secretary Burgum. Doing great, Governor.
        Senator Justice. I will lead off by just saying just this--
    you know, we talk about so many different things, it is
    unbelievable, whether they be grizzly bears or, you know,
    government land sales, offshore, hunting and fishing, parks,
    energy. Can you imagine that all of that is going through this
    man? Now, let me just say just this--I am from West Virginia. I
    know an awful lot about energy. And I will get to that in just
    one second, and forgive me, these allergies are going crazy
    right now, but I can tell you this, and I can tell you this
    with complete confidence, here you have got a man that has been
    an unbelievable Governor. He has unbelievable experience. He is
    a business guy. He is a rancher. He is absolutely an
    outdoorsman beyond belief. He is the absolute perfect choice
    for this job. And it's an avalanche of stuff of what he has to
    do. That's all there is to it. He has got to wear so many
    different hats, it's unbelievable. Absolutely, without any
    doubt, he is the pick of the litter of all the secretaries, in
    my book, hands down. I have said it over and over and over.
        One of our colleagues, just a little while ago, said that
    from the renewable standpoint--and I have been one to embrace
    all. I want us to all have a level playing field but embrace
    all. I did that in West Virginia over and over and over because
    we are going to awaken to a situation in this country in just a
    little while where we have an energy meltdown. We all know
    that, an absolute energy meltdown, and we are not moving at the
    speed that we will have to move at. But one of my colleagues
    says, you know, from a renewable standpoint, we are in a
    situation now to where we are having a Democratic water
    torture. Well, what do you think has happened under the Biden
    administration to the gas industry, the coal industry, you
    know, what has happened? You talk about water torture, it was
    off the chart.
        Now, we have got to do something about it and we have got
    to all come together and we have got to have a kumbaya moment
    where we all come together and we move forward in a really,
    really good way. We can do that. We can genuinely do that. We
    have somebody here that cares for our parks, our lands, our
    nature, everything in the world, and we could never have
    selected anybody any better. So I will tell you just this--
    there is one thing, one thing in the budget here, and it jumps
    out at us all over the place, and it's Wildland Fire Service.
    Please explain a little bit more because it is the only thing
    that we have not found a way--and the last thing I will say in
    just one second, but please, please explain.
        Secretary Burgum. Well, thank you, Governor/Senator, for
    those kind words.
        Wildland fire--we have got some incredible people on the
    ground. We have incredible, dedicated professionals. We have
    got aviation resources combined between the four wildland
    firefighting groups in Interior and the one inside of U.S.
    Forest Service, over 400 aircraft that either we own directly
    or contract. We have all these resources. The thing that is
    missing sometimes is that we aren't deploying them in a way as
    fast as we could. I had this experience last fall as Governor.
    We had a wildland fire, prairie fire, pushed by 60-mile-an-hour
    winds, burned 124,000 acres. That's larger than--like, five
    times larger than the LA fires. Two people died--a rancher
    trying to save some horses, and another guy trying to dig a
    fire break on his tractor, and it just, you know, when it's
    coming from a mile away at 60 miles-an-hour, it's there in a
    minute, it's not there in ten minutes. And they just
    underestimated the power of that.
        But here's the deal: as Governor, where the fire started,
    it's early on Saturday morning. We know we have a problem. I
    got the National Guard out. We got helicopters, Black Hawks,
    flying with buckets, you know, trying to save property. I
    called the feds on Saturday morning and said we have got
    something here, let's get after it when it's still small. We
    can get this thing out. We need aerial support. I mean, we need
    fixed-wing aerial support to go along with our National Guard
    'copters. That was Saturday morning. The planes arrived on
    Tuesday, after two people had died and 124 acres had burned and
    there were planes sitting in Bozeman, Montana on the ground
    that were never deployed because there wasn't the decision-
    making hierarchy to say let's send them over there. We only
    needed them for half a day. These skimmers come in, they pick
    up six tons of water in 11 seconds. They were flying laps off
    Lake Sakakawea, and they had this fire out in a canyon in the
    Badlands in four hours. So we have to get the right equipment
    at the right place at the right time. We have to respond. We
    have to have guaranteed--I don't want to say guaranteed
    response time--but if you are in a community and you call 911
    because your house is on fire, you know, maybe it's in your
    kitchen and then, you know, by the time they get there, your
    house is burned and so is the neighbor's, as opposed to putting
    it out when there is no damage.
        So part of our expense for wildfire fighting is response
    time. The longer we wait to respond, the more money we spend on
    the back end. So Brooke Rollins and I, working together, are
    saying we need to have a unified approach in this budget. There
    are the transfers--the wildland firefighters from U.S. Forest
    Service. They will still be branded U.S. Forest Service
    firefighters, but we get them under a unified command,
    reporting up to a structure inside of Interior. So we take the
    four, because we have firefighters in BLM, BIA, National Parks,
    and U.S. Fish and Wildlife. All four of those have wildland
    fire groups, plus Forest Service. So we take the whole 750
    million acres of federal land and say you guys are reporting up
    to a unified command as opposed to five generals. We do have
    some examples. The Interagency Wildfire Center in Boise, Idaho
    gets us closer to that. We have some examples in Alaska we can
    build on between the State of Alaska and the BLM and Forest
    Service up there.
        So there is some great work that we can do to build on, and
    we can give these people the technology resources, because we
    put them in danger. We're not giving them--we gave technology
    to our soldiers on the front lines in Afghanistan 25 years
    ago--better tech than we are giving wildfire fighters that are
    walking into these heat storms. And today, with satellite
    imaging and heat recognition, there are all these things we can
    do to protect land, protect property, protect the lives of our
    firefighters, and they deserve that. And we think we can get
    there, so that's in this proposal, is getting us unified across
    those five groups.
        Senator Justice. I hope that everybody just listened to
    that answer. What you saw right there is a CEO, a business guy,
    a governor, absolutely a super-experienced and super-smart guy.
    Really and truly, that is who we have given the keys to, to
    lead us, and absolutely, the Secretary of the Interior today. I
    know you will do an incredible job. And I thank you so much
    from the bottom of my heart. And God bless us for having Doug
    Burgum right now. Thank you so much, sir.
        Secretary Burgum. Thank you, Senator.
        The Chairman. Senator Cantwell.
        Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Secretary Burgum, good to see you. I think that there is a
    big theme here about public lands. And I join my colleagues,
    the Ranking Member and the Senator from Nevada, who asked you
    about the selling of public lands, but we have already had this
    debate here. We had a very big debate here. So, my state,
    obviously, we like public lands. It's a juggernaut of an
    economy. So when you think of our state, you think of ports and
    parks and you think of $22 billion and over 200,000 jobs. So
    it's big money to us. We led a fight with many of our
    colleagues on this Committee to get permanent funding for LWCF,
    to get it reauthorized and permanent funding. In fact, this, if
    you will hold that up, is an actual quote from the President of
    the United States during the big battle. He said, ``I am
    calling on Congress to send me a bill that permanently funds
    LWCF and restores our parks. I will sign it into law. It will
    be historic and it will be for our public lands.''
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        Senator Cantwell. Okay. So that--I was there. I was at the
    bill signing. I know what it says. It basically says you have
    to do acquisition. It is setting in law the amount of money
    that should be spent on acquisition. So when we are talking
    here this morning, we are all amazed that you seem to be
    putting forth a budget that is basically saying, I don't want
    to acquire, I want to actually sell public lands. What we
    figured out, as a coalition of people--hunters, fishermen,
    outdoor recreationists, travel and tourism people--we figured
    out that it's a juggernaut of an economy and we want to grow
    it. And we were able to get President Trump to sign a bill.
        So now, your budget, and I asked you about this at your
    confirmation hearing, I asked you specifically whether, if
    confirmed, and you said, ``I will implement the law as enacted
    by Congress.'' Well, the law enacted by Congress basically says
    that you have to spend 40 percent of these LWCF funds and make
    acquisition. It doesn't say sell public lands. It says acquire
    lands. So I don't know how you are proposing a budget that
    basically is going in the opposite direction of what was, let
    me refresh my memory, 60 sponsors in the Senate, 254 in the
    House. This was not a little decision. This was putting to bed
    this notion that, oh, it's either I am going to fix some roads
    in our forests or I am going to do land acquisition. Now, I get
    it, even the Chairman, he and I have had many conversations, as
    did his former colleague from Utah, Mr. Bishop. We have had
    many conversations about LWCF in the past. I get some of their
    issues that they have brought up about LWCF, but Congress voted
    and President Trump signed the law. Now we are asking you to
    implement it.
        And so, I want to understand how you are proposing anything
    other than following the Dingell Act.
        Secretary Burgum. Well, certainly, we will continue and
    will follow the law and I think what we are having here is, we
    shouldn't be confused that two things can happen at the same
    time, which is--so it's about which lands and which
    acquisitions, because 40 percent of the LWCF is a pretty small
    number relative to the scale. I mean, it's meaningful--hundreds
    of millions of dollars--but the opportunity for us to
    accelerate purchases, say, of infill and fill out the squares
    where we might be acquiring land for the Federal Government
    that is a private inholding inside of a national park----
        Senator Cantwell. But we do it all the time. One of the
    biggest things we used LWCF for is because the Federal
    Government kept having to spend money because a road washed
    out----
        Secretary Burgum. Yes.
        Senator Cantwell [continuing]. In accessing Mount Rainier.
    So we basically acquired more land, built the road on a
    different thing so we weren't paying $250,000 every few years.
    So we are all for that.
        Secretary Burgum. Yeah, and we can----
        Senator Cantwell. But we are for following the Dingell Act,
    following the law of the Great American Outdoors Act, and
    making sure that we are actually doing acquisition. Why?
    Because we have figured out--I think somebody said during that
    time that it was the third biggest industry behind finance and
    health care--so we figured out that it is a big economic engine
    for our nation. So we want to see it.
        Now, I get that you have people here who didn't succeed in
    that battle and who may not believe that, but this was
    bipartisan, bicameral, and we need that support.
        I want to just----
        Secretary Burgum. I am just saying it's not--both of these
    things can happen at the same time. You can take LWCF funds----
        Senator Cantwell. Your budget doesn't say that, and I think
    it's heading to a catastrophe. So that's why I am bringing it
    up.
        On the fire point, we have a big fire in Cle Elum right
    now. They aren't getting the direction. I hear what you just
    described as Governor and the issues, but we are--this is where
    we are heading.
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        Senator Cantwell. This is where we are now. This is where
    we are going to be. What is this, September? All of this is in
    red. So we have a fire in Cle Elum now and we need direction.
    We need to know. My constituents want to know, what are people
    going to do to help coordinate with Interior and the Forest
    Service. We need to know now. So if you could help us with
    that, I would appreciate it.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        The Chairman. Senator Hirono.
        Senator Hirono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Aloha, Mr.
    Secretary.
        We are dealing with an administration that is dismantling
    government services that provide services to our people by
    cutting employees, by cutting programs, by cutting whole
    agencies out of our departments. And you had the spectacle of
    DOGE cutting thousands--thousands of federal employees, and I
    don't think any of our secretaries, I don't think you were
    consulted as to who should be cut from the Interior Department.
    So our secretaries--you and others--are left to come and
    respond to our questions of why this happened, why these people
    were cut, and you sit here saying, well, you don't have that
    information, you don't have that breakdown. Maybe for Forest
    Service people, these were not the people who were actually
    working in our national parks, but you don't really know that,
    do you?
        So I am really glad that Senator King, right here, he
    talked about the concerns that he had about the cuts to our
    National Park Service people because these are the people who
    actually interact with the American people. And if the parks'
    bathrooms are not cleaned or if there are not the services that
    are provided at our national parks, it's kind of obvious. And
    so, you are not able to provide us with the kind of breakdown
    that we asked for. And I don't know why you have to come here
    without the kind of information that we ask. And this is not
    just you, but you know, I serve on the Veterans Committee. The
    VA Secretary says he doesn't know, he doesn't have the
    information as to all of the veteran employees who were cut,
    and maybe another 80,000 will be cut. He comes and testifies
    without that information. He says that he will provide that
    information. And when asked to commit, to come back to the VA
    Committee to respond to the questions that we will have, he
    doesn't make that commitment.
        So there you have it. You know, while you may not know who
    has been cut, those of us who are actually on the ground know
    some of the employees who are no longer there. For example, in
    Hawaii, reductions in NPS, FWS, USGS, and more have eliminated
    necessary positions that are critical for these agencies to
    carry out their missions. And we have parks with extremely high
    vacancy rates. We have lost a superintendent, a chief of law
    enforcement, a chief of interpretation, the list goes on. These
    are the people on the ground who are providing services. And
    so, when they are gone, it's pretty obvious to us.
        So that I can understand what efficiencies you claim that
    these cuts are providing, we need data. I would really
    appreciate it if you would provide a list of all the DOI
    positions in Hawaii that have been vacated since January 20th,
    including those that have been fired and those who accepted
    early termination, including locations, positions,
    descriptions, and justifications for their elimination. Will
    you provide that information to us?
        Secretary Burgum. Yes, we will be happy to, Senator.
        Senator Hirono. And will you commit to coming back and
    responding to our questions as to how all of this happened,
    once you provide us with the information and explanation?
        Secretary Burgum. Yeah, happy to, but I should clarify that
    if there is anybody, so far, some of them would have taken
    early retirement because that is where the vast----
        Senator Hirono. Oh, that's another thing, you know, yeah,
    the fork in the road early retirements. I don't even know if
    that's considered legal.
        One more question: federal programs that research or
    address climate change, like the USGS Climate Adaptation
    Science Centers, have been indefinitely paused, whatever that
    means. Indefinitely paused--that sounds like they are not
    coming back. Is it your intention that any programs that have
    to do with climate change or climate-related programs within
    the Department will no longer be supported?
        Secretary Burgum. Given the explosion of spending that
    occurred during the last administration, we are taking a look,
    operationally, ourselves. It wasn't a DOGE thing. It was
    something that I was fully supportive of to take a look at all
    contracts and grants. There were over 36,000 contracts and
    grants that were issued from the Department of the Interior----
        Senator Hirono. So are you going to be targeting all those
    that have to do with climate change and the impact of climate
    change? Is that the directive from this administration? Because
    we know that this administration does not think that climate
    change is real, and our understanding is that departments have
    been directed to eliminate references to climate change. Is
    that what is going on in your Department?
        Secretary Burgum. What's going on in our Department, if I
    would be allowed to finish, is that we are looking at the
    36,000 contracts and grants that are totaling billions and
    billions of dollars of spending. In some cases, we have found
    that those grants were going to organizations that got 99
    percent of their revenue from that grant. To me, that is no
    longer an NGO, that is just an extension of our own
    government----
        Senator Hirono. Last question then. Of the thousands of
    contracts that you are reviewing, can you provide us with which
    of those deal with climate change?
        Secretary Burgum. We can certainly take a look, but I think
    so many organizations included references to that as part of a
    way to access funding, it's hard to know who was actually
    working on it or who was just using that as a way to drag in
    more grant money.
        Senator Hirono. Well, considering that you are doing a
    review, I would think that your review would be able to
    identify those contracts that have to do with climate change.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        The Chairman. Senator Murkowski.
        Senator Murkowski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Secretary, welcome. You still have that Alaska glow. I
    can tell you have been up in the state doing your due
    diligence. Nobody takes a vacation up there. We work you hard.
    And I really appreciate the time that you and Secretary Wright
    and Administrator Zeldin gave to Alaska-specific issues. The
    fact that you were from the North Slope all the way down to the
    Kenai area, on the ground, listening to people and really,
    really leaning in on the President's executive order. I deeply,
    deeply appreciate it, and I know that you are all putting
    together your action plans. Know that I and the other members
    of the delegation stand ready to assist you with all of these
    efforts.
        But just as important as it is that we are leaning in with
    you, I know that we all need your folks, your teams, whether
    it's those that are going to go through the process here and be
    back here in Washington or those men and women that are on the
    ground. And so, I have raised with you before some of the
    concerns that I have about some of the reductions in forces.
    You have kind of walked me through what you are looking at, how
    you want to get folks out of headquarters, out in the parks. I
    am supportive of this. I do ask for your help and your
    commitment. As the Chair of the Interior Appropriations
    Committee, and I am dashing in between these committees right
    now, it would be very helpful if you could provide us with a
    full list of the BLM, the U.S. Forest Service, and National
    Park Service staff positions and their locations that we have
    lost since the new administration. We are just trying to
    understand, again, where the staffing within the various
    agencies falls out. So this is an ongoing process, I get that,
    but as close as communication and connection that we can have
    on that, it's greatly, greatly appreciated.
        I am going to ask you a question here. I have the Chief of
    the Forest Service in the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee
    room right now. We are questioning him, and my last question to
    him was with regards to the Wildland Fire Service
    consolidation. This is moving 11,000 wildland firefighters,
    $2.85 billion, into the new DOI Wildland Fire Service,
    eliminating the U.S. Forest Service wildland fire program
    altogether.
        What I shared with the Chief is, I don't know whether this
    is right, wrong, or indifferent. I do think the effort to be
    smart with efficiencies and consolidations just makes sense.
    But I also know we have seen threats from wildfires all over
    this country. My Ranking Member on the Committee, Senator
    Merkley, what his state has seen in Oregon is just, I mean,
    it's scary stuff. You know all about it. I am just hoping that
    there has been good discussion and fair assessment about how
    this restructuring might affect the coordination between
    Alaska's interagency fire management efforts, particularly with
    our Alaska fire service, our state, and our tribal partners. We
    are going into our fire season, unfortunately for us--or
    fortunately for us, I guess--it has been the wettest summer
    that we can possibly imagine. So hopefully, we are going to
    escape the fires this year, but can you just share with the
    Committee a little bit of where you think we go on this fire
    services consolidation effort? And you may have repeated this,
    but I appreciate it.
        Secretary Burgum. Let me just say on this topic, first of
    all, what we are doing for this summer and this fire season
    right now is just, at the top, very top, Secretary Rollins and
    I are just staying in close coordination. We have held, I think
    for the first time ever, we have held joint fire briefings. I
    have been over to the U.S. Forest Service with her to get the
    briefings there. She will be invited to hear briefings from the
    four firefighting groups that operate within Interior. And the
    proposal of the unification--I will call it unification--I
    wouldn't say move, because people aren't being asked to move
    where they work or where they report to, or their duty
    stations, it's just getting the five generals at the top to
    actually have, sort of, not just a joint chiefs of staff, but
    to have a unified strategy, particularly around things when we
    are optimizing across aircraft----
        Senator Murkowski. Right.
        Secretary Burgum [continuing]. Because this is one of the
    places where we know from personal experience, we are under-
    optimizing the decisions around when to deploy and, you know,
    if we can put out a fire early, it saves us a lot of cost on
    the back end being able to do that.
        So first of all, it's not for this fire season.
        Senator Murkowski. Right.
        Secretary Burgum. We would have time to plan for next year
    to do that, but overall, we want to take a look at models. The
    positive models I have cited already today here, such as the
    National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, is what I would call
    a good start, and gets us a long way there, and then also the
    model that I was able to get deeper on in Alaska between where
    BLM takes the leadership across a number of agencies and then
    the coordination, including the co-location at a military base
    with the Alaska Fire Service, which is a fantastic fire
    service, and how they have divvied up the approach where they
    are covering each other's land in some cases, but then
    optimizing the use of forces. So I think the Alaska model and
    the Idaho model are two things we would look at as we would go
    forward.
        But also, it's unifying pay. That's something I didn't
    mention earlier, but we have different pay and benefits for
    these different firefighting groups. And they should all be the
    same. I mean, the fire doesn't know, the fire itself doesn't
    know whether it's on BLM land, U.S. Forest Service, BIA, and
    the people that are fighting those fires are facing the same
    dangers. So getting unified pay, benefits, bonuses, retirement
    benefits, those things is another thing that Brooke Rollins and
    I are working on as part of this unification.
        Senator Murkowski. Well----
        Secretary Burgum. And the last thing I would say is
    technology. We have varying applications of technology. Some
    are way ahead and some are way behind. That puts us at risk,
    but when we are thinking about how do we budget and how do we
    make sure that the people that are fighting those fires on the
    ground have access to life-saving technology, how do we use
    satellite technology for early detection across these massive
    areas that we have, including Alaska, there are just some
    things we can, when we are applying these new technological
    resources, if we, you know, get one satellite system going, we
    don't need five. We need one for what would be the new Wildland
    Fire Service.
        Senator Murkowski. Well, I look forward to talking with you
    more directly as you are moving forward with what this really
    looks like and how it's going to be implemented. I appreciate
    the recognition of some of the unique partnering that we have
    made work, but yeah, we don't need to reinvent the wheel here.
    We just need to fight the fire.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Murkowski.
        Okay, we have now completed round one. We had aimed to wrap
    up this hearing by noon because of other commitments we have.
    We aren't going to be able to do a full second round, but
    Senators King and Heinrich would like to say something briefly
    before I wrap up.
        Senator King.
        Senator King. Thank you.
        Mr. Secretary, you and I differ on the National Park
    Service. You may have picked that up in our conversation, but I
    just want to compliment you on the fire service unification
    effort. That makes total sense, and I think it's a very
    sensible proposal. I think it will help in managing fires and
    managing the resources more efficiently. So we disagree on some
    things, but this is one where we agree. Nice work.
        Thank you.
        Secretary Burgum. Thank you, Governor.
        Senator Heinrich. Secretary, in the exchange between you
    and Senator Cantwell, I wanted to point out that I think you
    are absolutely correct. You can use existing federal law, like
    FLTFA or like this other Nevada law, to dispose of isolated
    tracts next to urban areas for housing and simultaneously use
    the Land and Water Conservation Fund for public access for
    hunting and fishing, for filling in those inholdings in the
    midst of national parks or other federal public lands.
        I think what is missing and probably generating some of the
    angst around the LWCF piece of that is that we haven't received
    the priority list from the administration. Normally around now,
    we get a list of those projects that make sense--the projects
    that create access, the projects that improve hunting and
    fishing conditions, and the conservation projects. So I would
    just encourage you to get that list to us so that we can have
    fidelity to both of these legal constructs at the same time.
        Secretary Burgum. Great. Thank you.
        The Chairman. Secretary Burgum, thanks so much for being
    here. Thanks for your willingness to serve our country. You
    bring to the table a lot of expertise, experience, and hard
    work, and our country is better off as a result. So thank you
    for being here.
        This concludes today's hearing. I want to thank everyone
    for participating. Any Senator who would like to submit
    additional questions for the record, those will be due by 6:00
    p.m. this evening.
        Thanks again, Secretary Burgum, for answering our
    questions.
        Yes, Secretary.
        Secretary Burgum. Mr. Chairman, I just want to again say I
    concur 100 percent with your opening remarks. I do want to
    thank you for acknowledging that we have six different leaders,
    all of who could help advance the concerns of this Committee,
    who, some of them, as far away as April, went through and got
    approved in this Committee but have not yet had a floor vote.
    The sooner we can get those six executives actually working,
    the faster I can be responding to requests from people of this
    group, so I appreciate everyone's attention to that. I know,
    very busy with the Big Beautiful Bill, and lots of other
    things, but you know, making sure that we have the leaders to
    execute on your requests would be greatly appreciated.
        The Chairman. Yes, that is an excellent point. I couldn't
    concur more, and yes, while we have other legislative matters
    going on, as has been said in other contexts in this hearing,
    we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and we have got to
    get that done. I am doing everything I can to expedite that
    logjam.
        The Committee stands adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 12:04 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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