[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 62 (Thursday, April 21, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2353-S2354]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  ENERGY AND WATER APPROPRIATIONS BILL AND WATERS OF THE UNITED STATES

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the bill that is on 
the floor. The very fact that we have this bill on the floor deserves 
some attention. We have an appropriations bill on the energy and water 
responsibilities of the Federal Government. I think this is the first 
time this bill has been on the Senate floor in 7 years.
  With the current majority, the Appropriations Committee is 1 month 
ahead of any time in recent history that bills have been marked up and 
brought to the floor. The majority leader set aside 12 weeks to do the 
work that for decades--in fact, for a couple of centuries--was the core 
work of what the Congress did. The Congress set the priorities of the 
country by having an open and free debate on how the Congress and the 
country would spend the money that was entrusted to the Congress--the 
long-ranging discussion of the power of the purse. You know, you don't 
have to be a great student of American history to say: Well, don't you 
men and women in the Congress have the power of the purse? Well, we do 
have it, according to the Constitution, but we have not had it in the 
practice of the last 6 or 7 years when the work of the Congress simply 
was not done in a way that people could see what was going on or that 
Members could freely weigh in.
  One of the things about the debate we are having on this Energy and 
Water bill is that any Member of the Senate can come to the floor and 
they can say: Don't spend this money at all. In this bill, spend the 
money here rather than there. They can say some combination of those 
two things, and then the Senate votes on that before we approve the 
final bill.
  I am pleased that we are debating this bill. That may actually be 
more important than the bill itself. But the bill itself is important 
as well.
  This bill provides the critical resources to support the safety and 
long-term viability of our waterway systems. One of the reasons we are 
so competitive internationally and so competitive in our own domestic 
economy is that we have had the ability to use the waterways of the 
country--particularly the internal as well as the external waterways--
in a way that makes us more competitive than we would be otherwise.
  Our inland waterways in particular are critical to economic growth. 
We are right on the edge of a time when world food demand doubles from 
the Presiding Officer's State, from my State. Agriculture, which is the 
biggest economic sector of the economy, is in a great position not only 
to meet those food needs in our country but to meet food needs 
worldwide. That position is dramatically enhanced if we have a 
transportation system that doesn't just include highways and doesn't 
just include railroads but also includes the waterways of the country.
  Another thing our two States have had in common--the Upper Missouri 
and the Lower Missouri--is the devastating challenges that flooding can 
present. This bill makes it possible for us to deal with flood control 
and navigation. Once again, this emphasizes that the Corps of Engineers 
can't just say these are the top two priorities of managing the 
Mississippi River Valley system, particularly the Missouri and 
Mississippi, but those really need to be apparent in their commitment 
to both flood control and navigation as things we want to do.
  I am pleased this bill prioritizes things like the bank stabilization 
and navigation project on the Mississippi River, the tributaries 
project that is central to our flood control efforts in our State. I am 
also glad the bill increases funding for small ports and harbors to 
serve as vital places for us to compete.
  You know, the inland ports are basically export ports. There is 
nothing wrong with buying things from other people, but it is better to 
sell things to other people. The inland ports serve a geographic area 
that is roughly twice as big as the coastal ports. That doesn't mean 
there is anything wrong with the coastal ports; it just means, let's 
get realistic about where we are

[[Page S2354]]

making investments that allow us to compete. If a coastal port 
effectively really supports an area, say, 300 miles inland from that 
coastal port, an inland port supports an area 300 miles in all 
directions. So this is an effective thing for us to do.
  Also, we need to ensure that we are looking at our port systems as a 
system, not just as one individual port. The old days of the Congress 
being able to say ``This is what you want to do in this port or this 
harbor'' are now being replaced by being sure the Corps of Engineers 
understands its responsibility to do this.
  Another agency that needs to understand its reasonable responsibility 
is the EPA. So once again I am on the floor for the third time in about 
as many months--and heaven knows how many times in the last several 
years--talking about this incredible overreach EPA is making when they 
want to decide they don't want to change the law that says navigable 
waters of the United States are under the authority of the 
Environmental Protection Agency--not a new concept in law at all.
  Navigable waters have seemed to be a Federal responsibility since the 
1840s in law, in bills that have passed the Congress. So in the early 
1970s, the Clean Water Act was passed, and the EPA was formed. The 
Clean Water Act said the EPA will have jurisdiction over navigable 
waters. But with this outrageous waters of the United States rule, the 
EPA wants to now define ``navigable waters'' as basically all the water 
in the country.
  They want to say it is any water that can run into any water that can 
run into any water. I don't know how many iterations of that there 
would be that can run into any water that eventually runs into 
navigable water. There is a case before the Supreme Court right now 
where the EPA is challenging a company in Minnesota based on navigable 
waters. The location they are challenging is 120 miles away, by no 
argument, from the nearest thing that anybody would truly consider a 
navigable water.
  The Farm Bureau in Missouri has a map that I have brought to the 
floor now a number of times--the Farm Bureau map of where the 
jurisdiction of the EPA would be under waters of the United States. 
This is anything that deals with water: a building permit, runoff from 
your driveway, resurfacing a parking lot, fertilizer on a farm field, 
drilling a hole for a utility pole. Anything that involves water, 
theoretically, under this rule, could come under the jurisdiction of 
the EPA.
  In my State, anything that would meet the EPA definition of what 
could be the definition of their new sense of waters of the United 
States covers 99.7 percent of the State.
  The Presiding Officer is a little further from this map. He may not 
be able to see the two dozen white dots on the map that would clearly 
still under the jurisdiction of the State of Missouri or under the 
jurisdiction of a county government or under the jurisdiction of a 
city. That would be three-tenths of 1 percent.
  Senator Hoeven, who has fought to not allow this rule to go forward, 
as I have since the day it was proposed, has once again proposed an 
amendment to this bill. We all get to vote on it. A majority of the 
Senate has shown its concern about this particular regulation, this 
outlandish regulation--enough that the Senate and the House have put a 
bill on the President's desk in the last few months that the President 
vetoed, which said: Don't go forward with this regulation.
  What this amendment says is: No money can be spent to go forward with 
this regulation. I certainly encourage my colleagues to once again step 
up, as they are already on the record as having been willing to do, to 
stop this regulation. This amendment--the way to stop this regulation 
is to say that no money can be spent to move forward with this 
regulation, which a majority of the Congress, Democrats and 
Republicans, organizations all over America, government at virtually 
every level, county governments, city governments, and State 
governments, have said they don't want. The Attorney Generals of about 
half of the States have a case before the Supreme Court. But none of 
that seems to get through to the all-knowing EPA on this issue.

  Today I urge my colleagues to once again step up and say: We want 
this stopped.
  One way to stop it is not to have any money available to move forward 
with this outlandish rule.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.

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