[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 130 (Tuesday, July 29, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4803-S4805]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Unanimous Consent Requests

  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, last year, this body unanimously passed 41 
bills from the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Now, 16 of those 
bills, for one reason or another, didn't end up getting signed into law 
last year. Some of those bills perhaps were casualties of the 
legislative calendar but for one reason or another didn't make it 
through but remained undisputed and remained noncontroversial. They 
have been reintroduced by Republican and Democratic Senators and are 
cleared on the Republican side of the aisle.
  It is important to note here that these noncontroversial, bipartisan 
bills all remain completely unchanged. Not a single letter, not a 
single period, comma, or exclamation mark has been altered on them. 
They remain utterly noncontroversial--not a whiff of partisan dispute 
between them.
  In the past, these bills were, in many circumstances, packaged 
together. It has been something of a custom in the Senate to package 
together groups of bills. Lands bills in some cases were paired 
together as part of much larger bills.
  In some instances, parts of some of those bills were themselves 
controversial--larger bills, bills that were sometimes written in 
secret and not available to individual Members to review prior to the 
time that they were propounded for a unanimous consent request on the 
floor.
  So today, I am going to make an entirely reasonable offer to move 
four bills off of the floor from among that group that passed last year 
by unanimous consent in the Senate. They are unchanged, they are still 
noncontroversial, and they carry no substantive policy objections, no 
objections to the merits of the bill and what they do. They are bills 
that are locally supported, bills that have been thoroughly vetted by 
the committee of jurisdiction and that are ready to move today.
  In short, they are bills that are ready to move in the same type of 
open, Member-driven process that the Senate was built for and that the 
Senate, quite frankly, prides itself in fostering and encouraging 
rather than being held hostage for a larger backroom deal negotiated in 
secret.
  The first is a bill from Senator Barrasso that would provide 
commonsense flexibility for ranchers during natural disasters to help 
ensure rangeland health on Federal lands.
  The second is a bill that I have introduced called the Utah Wildfire 
Research Institute Act, which would add Utah as a fourth location for 
the Southwest Ecological Research Institutes, which would be housed, 
for the Utah portion of it, at Utah State University. This institute 
would foster collaboration to promote healthy forests, wildfire 
prevention, and resilient water supplies. Utah is well positioned and 
ready to work with the other institutes, including the New Mexico 
Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute, to protect the unique 
landscapes and communities across the Western United States.
  The third bill is one from Senator Cortez Masto, the Sloan Canyon 
Conservation and Lateral Pipeline Act.

[[Page S4804]]

This bill would make certain boundary changes and would authorize a 
right-of-way for the Horizon Lateral water pipeline in Nevada--
something important to Nevadans as a desert State like mine. Water for 
Nevadans is very important.
  The fourth bill is one from Senator Padilla which would adjust the 
boundary of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
  Now, again, just to reiterate, all four of these bills have certain 
things in common. They do different things. They operate in different 
parts of the country. They have different sponsors from different 
political parties. But they all have a few features in common: They all 
passed by unanimous consent in this body just a few months ago. Not a 
single Republican, not a single Democrat objected to any of them. They 
remain entirely unchanged and entirely noncontroversial.
  If there is any outstanding policy issue, I would love to be made 
aware of it and would love to address it, but as of this moment, I am 
not aware of one--not on the House side and not even on the Senate 
side.
  So to that end, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule 
XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural 
Resources be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate 
consideration of the following bills en bloc: S. 211, Resiliency For 
Ranching and Natural Conservation Health Act from Senator Barrasso; S. 
457, Utah Wildfire Research Institute Act of 2025 from myself and 
Senator Curtis; S. 1142, Golden Gate National Recreation Area from 
Senator Padilla; S. 392, Sloan Canyon Conservation and Lateral Pipeline 
Act from Senator Cortez Masto; further, that the bills be considered 
read a third time and passed and that the motions to reconsider be 
considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
  The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I 
appreciate the Senator from Utah being here tonight to offer this 
package, but I believe there needs to be a more bipartisan and 
thoughtful way to consider how we protect the future of our public 
lands.
  For example, the legislation that the senior Senator from Utah wants 
to pass tonight does not include my Wild Olympics bill. Now, this is a 
bill that will help preserve the wild and scenic rivers of the Olympic 
Peninsula. That has very strong support from Democrats and Republicans 
in my State. There is a strong nonpartisan coalition of support for 
this bill from Tribes, hunters, fishermen, conservationists, and even 
loggers. That is because my bill supports the peninsula economy and 
ensures continued access to our world-class outdoor recreation on the 
Olympic Peninsula, and it preserves critical habitat for salmon and 
water resources for our very rural communities.
  Moreover, this bill has passed the House several times now with 
bipartisan support. In fact, I have been working on this for over a 
decade to build support and consensus around this bill. It is carefully 
drafted, it is a thoughtful piece of legislation, and the grassroots 
support for this bill has only grown over the years. That is exactly 
the kind of bill which should be included in a bipartisan public lands 
package.
  I would invite the senior Senator from Utah to visit the land this 
bill covers, to help protect our Olympic National Forest.
  I think you would find out why I am here tonight objecting to this 
because it doesn't include it.
  I want the Senator from Utah to know that my door is always open. I 
hope that in the future, we can work together in drafting a public 
lands bill that does include legislation like my Wild Olympics bill, 
and I know I am not alone. Many of our colleagues have worked on 
important legislation for their respective States.
  So for now, I object, but I do so with my hand outstretched, ready to 
work with the Senator together on a public lands package that is 
comprehensive.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I appreciate the characteristically 
thoughtful and thorough remarks by my friend and colleague the 
distinguished Senator from Washington. I do want to be clear about a 
couple of things.
  No. 1, this has been the product of a lot of effort on our part, 
good-faith efforts that we have made to work with Ranking Member 
Heinrich and Members of both political parties to move these bills to 
the floor to get them passed over many months.
  Now, again, I want to reiterate that if there are substantive policy 
concerns with any of the bills in this package, understanding that 
these are only four bills--those four bills don't comment on--they 
neither preclude nor prejudice in any way, shape, or form our ability 
to pass other bills.
  Anytime you are choosing a finite group of legislative proposals to 
be considered for adoption by unanimous consent or through any other 
expedited process, you are necessarily excluding others that are not on 
that list. And so it becomes incumbent upon those involved in the 
effort to decide which ones belong.

  Let's talk a little bit about how we go about that, how we went about 
that here with these bills. These are four of the bills that, again, 
passed the Senate unanimously just a few months ago that remain 
unchanged in this conference; that didn't draw a single ``no'' vote, a 
single objection from any Republican or from any Democrat. In that 
respect, they all have things in common, even though they operate in 
different States, have different sponsors from different political 
parties and do different things.
  The bill of which my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator 
from the State of Washington, refers does quite opposite of those 
things. I am sure she put an enormous amount of effort into it. I am 
sure it is important to her. And I am sure it has been carefully 
drafted because my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from 
the State of Washington, is thorough.
  But there are some things that bill doesn't have in common with 
these. In fact, harkening back to childhood, there is a song called 
``One of These Things Is Not Like the Other.'' If you were trying to 
include that bill in a list of these bills, that would be the clear 
standout. Why? No. 1, it hasn't passed the Senate; No. 2, it was 
considered in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and it 
resulted in strict party line votes--Democrats vs. Republicans, Shirts 
vs. Skins. There was not a single vote overlapping between the two 
parties.
  That doesn't mean it is not a good bill. It doesn't mean it is not 
important to her or the people in the State of Washington. But it does 
mean it lacks the core characteristics held in common by each and every 
one of the bills I just offered by unanimous consent.
  If that is going to be the standard, that anytime there is any 
package of bills--a package consists of two paired sets, a Republican 
and Democratic legislation brought forward together; in this case, 
bills that drew not a single ``no'' vote, not a single objection from 
Members of either party and remained unchanged since that last 
happened. If anytime we try to offer those bills, it is appropriate to 
object in the absence of any substantive on-the-merits objection or 
concern with the legislation, it is going to be very difficult for us 
to get this done.
  Now, none of this means we couldn't find a way to pair that with 
something that would make sense, coupled with any changes that Members 
of both parties might insist on in order to make them comfortable with 
moving it forward. But it does mean that it would be incongruous, 
illogical, counterproductive, and destructive to the effort to pair 
that bill with this bill.
  That is a wilderness bill. By definition, by its very nature, it 
designates large tracts of wilderness and large scenic rivers. It is 
not something inherently repugnant to either party, but it ended up 
drawing objections and ``no'' votes from literally every Republican on 
the committee. That suggests to me that before it is ready to be 
included in a unanimous consent request, it might need some additional 
work.
  I am confident we can get it there. Most types of legislation can get 
to the point where objections can be addressed through some combination 
of

[[Page S4805]]

modifications to the legislation itself and the legislation that it 
might be paired with in order to help offset those objections.
  But, nonetheless, I will keep working to pass bipartisan bills that 
have unanimous support. I hope and expect and respectfully request that 
my colleagues across the aisle would take into account these 
dissimilarities. If they want to add others that meet similar 
characteristics, let's have that conversation. If they want to get to 
the point where we can pass Senator Murray's bill, I am sure there is a 
way that could be considered and we could possibly get there.
  But we can't assume that you can pair something that is that 
dissimilar; that is, by its very nature and according to the 
legislative record, it is the very definition of partisan and not the 
kind of thing that one can expect. We would be crazy to assume that 
something that resulted in a party line committee vote last year would 
suddenly get to the floor and not draw a single Republican objection.
  I would also hope that next time, when we add pairings to the floor--
Democrat and Republican bills--I would love to see those hotlined on 
the other side of the aisle in the same format of which they were 
hotlined on our side. My understanding is they were not; and they 
should be. There should be an apples-to-apples comparison. If they are 
given the opportunity, I can't imagine that many, if any, of my 
Democratic colleagues would object to any of these bills in isolation. 
If they wouldn't object to them in isolation based on their substantive 
policy merits and if they were given that in a hotline request, I think 
this would have turned out differently.
  I do think it is important we should pass bills expeditiously and in 
the light of day. These bills have gone through public examination in 
the light of day, and they have been found not wanting for 
bipartisanship. They have been found richly blessed with bipartisanship 
through a proven, undisputed track record.
  So, look, I think it is a big mistake to hold noncontroversial bills 
put forward by Senators in good faith--to hold those hostage in order 
to perpetuate a broken and sometimes corrupting process from a bygone 
era, one in which bills were prevented from passing, not because they 
were controversial but because they were popular and being used as bait 
in order to bring about the passage of other bills that were 
controversial. That makes no sense.
  What makes the Senate work best are those moments when we can 
identify things as to which we do not disagree. This, Mr. President, is 
one of those things. This, Mr. President, is where we can do better; 
and do better we must.
  I am not going away. I will be back. I will be back soon--hopefully, 
successful next time--and we will do what we have to do in order to 
move the legislative process.
  I humbly implore my friends and colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle: Let's not take these moments where we do agree for granted. 
Let's not assume that just because anytime--by definition, anytime you 
come up with a list of four bills offered at once, that necessarily 
excludes the thousands of others that may be submitted during the 
course of any particular Congress in that legislative Chamber.
  You can't get everything all at once. Why not take the things that we 
know can pass and have passed in the past? Let's get that done.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.