[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
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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
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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
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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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