[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 212 (Tuesday, December 16, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8768-S8770]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            LA PAZ COUNTY SOLAR ENERGY AND JOB CREATION ACT

  A bill (H.R. 1043) to direct the Secretary of the Interior to convey 
certain Federal land in Arizona to La Paz County, Arizona, and for 
other purposes, was passed.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the motions 
to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I would like to thank Senator Sullivan 
from Alaska for helping to get us all to the floor here today. I would 
like to thank Chairman Lee for his leadership getting us here, Ranking 
Member Heinrich, and Senators King and Hoeven and Padilla. Thank you to 
Senator Hoeven for his kind words.
  We are working together to try to make progress, and I want to thank 
my team for working well with his on this as well.
  I am not going to go on for a long time today, but I do want to talk 
about the Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act, which just passed the 
floor of the Senate, and the bipartisan effort to get this bill done 
and get it to the President's desk.
  Over six decades ago, President John Kennedy came to Pueblo, CO, and 
famously promised to build the Arkansas Valley Conduit. It is the last 
component of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, a Federal water diversion 
and storage project that Congress approved in 1962.
  Once completed, the Arkansas Valley Conduit will deliver clean water 
to over 50,000 people in 39 rural communities across southeastern 
Colorado. That is why for over a decade, across Republican and 
Democratic administrations, I have worked to secure over $500 million 
to ensure that the Federal Government keeps its word and that we finish 
the conduit.
  Unfortunately, due to recent increases in pipe and labor costs, the 
total cost of the conduit has nearly doubled. This has created a huge 
challenge for local communities, many of whom currently rely on 
contaminated groundwater for their water supply.
  Our bill, based on the great work of the Southeastern Colorado Water 
Conservancy District, takes this affordability crisis head-on, cutting 
local costs by lowering the interest rate and providing more flexible 
repayment terms. This is a commonsense solution to ensure that 
southeast Colorado can afford safe and reliable drinking water.
  This legislation costs the American taxpayer nothing, but it would 
pay dividends for 50,000 people in southeastern Colorado, and it would 
fulfill a decades--many decades--old promise on which they have relied.
  I am glad the House and Senate have acted unanimously to pass this 
legislation, and I look forward to the President now signing this bill 
into law.
  I want to say again to my colleague from Maine how much I appreciate 
his willingness to be able to, in the spirit of bipartisan compromise, 
withdraw his objection to this package as well, and I look forward to 
working with him to pass the bills he has said are so critical not just 
to Maine but to this Nation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I want to thank my friend and colleague the 
senior Senator from Colorado for his outstanding work on this, for 
working with me and my team. I am glad that we were able to make this a 
success. It is my hope and my intent that this will not be the end but 
the beginning of a much bigger pattern of success. It is a good example 
of the kind of legislation we ought to pass every time we get the 
chance. When we have bills that are uncontroversial, we can get them 
passed.
  Sometimes these bills are held up not in spite of the fact that they 
are noncontroversial but because they are noncontroversial--because we 
want to couple them with other legislation that may be less popular.
  We have heard some observations today, some concerns expressed about 
the ability, once we pass legislation over here, to get it passed over 
on the House side. There are a couple of things I think we ought to 
take note of that should give us hope on this.
  In the first place, the way legislation like this works on the House 
side--they don't have the 60-vote cloture standard that we have in the 
Senate, but with these lands bills, they tend to pass them under a 
procedure known in the House as suspension of the rules.
  Under suspension of the rules, it requires them to be passed with 290 
votes instead of 218. Because of the way that works, it ends up 
yielding a similar outcome to how it works over here. They tend to be 
able to enhance their ability to pass those under the suspension 
calendar if they bring them to the floor while paired with other 
bills--not surgically stitched together so it is the same legislation, 
but they bring them forward for procedural consideration in the House 
on the floor, resulting in an approximate number of noncontroversial 
Republican and Democratic bills passing regardless of who happens to be 
in the majority at the time.
  My friend and colleague the distinguished Senator from California had 
mentioned a moment ago concerns about that process over in the House, 
but I will remind him that at the end of the last Congress, he and I 
had several bills that were brought together and passed through the 
procedure that I am describing on the floor and that were passed into 
law by the House of Representatives after that.
  Although, under certain circumstances, two separate bill sponsors of 
two separate bills may choose to merge, surgically stitch their bills 
into one bill, there are downsides to that too, and it certainly ought 
not be that without which, not passing legislation in the Senate--they 
ought to be able to stand on their own.
  I, for one, am happy--particularly within the range of this type of 
bill

[[Page S8769]]

that we have dealt with here, bills that have passed the Senate in the 
past and that do not have significant opposition over here--happy to 
work with my counterparts in the House to make sure those move forward.
  There are sometimes reasons why something doesn't move as quickly 
over there as it might over here, and there are as many different 
reasons for that as there are types of legislation.
  In any event, I want to thank all the people participating today--in 
particular Senator Bennet and Senator Sullivan for their tenacity in 
moving these bills forward.
  Finally, Mr. President, let me just remark briefly on another topic 
that has come up within the last few minutes where we are celebrating 
anniversaries related to the First Step Act. This is something that I 
worked on for nearly a decade before it became law. It was an honor and 
privilege to do that.
  I appreciate the remarks made earlier by Senator Booker from New 
Jersey. I still remember the exact moment Senator Booker first stepped 
onto the floor in the Senate right after he came to the Senate in 
October of 2012, I believe it was. He introduced himself to me and in 
the same sentence said: I am really interested in your criminal justice 
reform efforts, and I want to be partners.

  So it was a great privilege to work with him, with Senator Durbin, 
Senator Grassley, and all the others who made it possible. It has been 
a good development for the United States of America.
  We have been more effective in combating crime by being smart in the 
way we punish crime. When we unduly take away discretion from judges to 
allow them to be judges, sometimes it can present odd outcomes, as it 
certainly did in the case of Weldon Angelos, the young man who, in his 
midtwenties, sold three dime-bag quantities of marijuana over a 72-hour 
period to what turned out to be a confidential informant.
  The firearm that he had in his possession at the time--because of the 
way minimum mandatory laws were being interpreted and applied in the 
courts at the time, Mr. Angelos was subjected to a minimum mandatory 
sentence that would put him in prison for the rest of his natural 
life--to a 55-year minimum mandatory sentence because he had a gun on 
his person at the time even though the gun was neither brandished nor 
discharged in connection with the offense.
  Under the so-called three-strikes laws at the time, the Federal 
district judge, Paul Cassell of Salt Lake City, who sentenced him said: 
There are hijackers, there are murderers, rapists, all kinds of people 
who do horrible things who don't get anywhere near this much time in 
prison, but I, as a Federal judge, have no discretion here, no choice 
but to send him to prison for 55 years based on three dime-bag 
quantities.
  Each of the two first offenses, even though they were all charged on 
the same document and occurred over the same 72-hour period--they 
counted as prior convictions for purposes of the three-strikes law, and 
that is one of the many issues we set out to address in the First Step 
Act. The country is better off for it.
  Mr. President, back to the lands package, I again want to thank 
Senator Sullivan for his tenacity in this, for his patience and his 
willingness to stick with the effort. The people of Alaska are 
fortunate to have him serving that great State.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I want to thank the chairman, Chairman 
Lee, for his comments, I want to thank Senator Bennet for his hard 
work, and I really want to thank Senator King.
  You know, I have worked well with Senator King of Maine for many 
years. He and I are good friends, good colleagues. We have worked 
together on a lot of issues--actually, all the Senators down here: 
Senator Bennet, Senator Padilla, who was here a little bit ago.
  So I certainly give my word to Senator King on working with House 
Members. As a matter of fact--I think he knows it--my team and I have 
already been doing that with the chairman of the Natural Resources 
Committee over there and with our Alaska Congressman. We have been 
pressing them already on the issues that Senator King has raised. He 
has my word and continued commitment to work with him on these other 
bills that I think it is important to continue to move forward on.
  What we just did, Mr. President--as you know, but I think for people 
watching, particularly back home, our Alaska Native Vietnam veterans--
we just passed four Senate bills that were actually House bills that 
were pushed by four different Senators--two Republicans, two Democrats. 
I think that is a good example of cooperation and moving forward on 
these issues that matter to all of us, and they matter to all of our 
constituents.
  Now, I want to talk again--I have probably given 10, 12, 15 speeches 
on the Senate floor about my bill, the Alaska Native Vietnam Veterans 
Land Allotment Act, and I already mentioned this idea of special 
patriotism. Alaska Natives--almost 20 percent of the population of my 
State--serve at higher rates in the military than any other ethnic 
group in the country.
  This is a great picture of a good friend of mine, George Bennett, who 
served in the Army from 1966 to 1968. He served in Vietnam from 1967 to 
1968--a tough time to be in Vietnam, by the way--from Southeast, where 
we have a lot of our Vietnam vets.
  Let me talk about the importance of this program and this bill.
  By the way, just so there is no confusion, these four pieces of 
legislation are going to the White House to be signed. It is really 
exciting, particularly on this bill.
  It is a simple bill. It is essentially changing a program--it is a 
one-sentence bill--from 5 years to 10 years.
  Let me step back and speak a little bit about this bill because I am 
so pleased and it is such a great honor to represent great Americans 
like George Bennett and others. Here is the background. As I mentioned, 
Alaska Natives--whether it is World War I, World War II, Vietnam, 
Korea, the gulf war--they just serve in the military. It is part of 
their heritage. It is part of their culture. It is an incredible part 
of who they are. It is remarkable, like I said. I refer to it as 
``special patriotism.''
  This special patriotism was on full display during the Vietnam war, 
in the Vietnam era, when so many Alaska Natives answered the call. Here 
is what happened. A lot of them, like George, got drafted. They didn't 
complain. They said ``Hey, my dad served in World War II. My uncle 
served in Korea. It is my turn to go,'' and they did. They went 
overseas.
  But here is what happened. It is a little complicated. They came home 
during this time--and it is not just for Vietnam vets. If you deployed 
to Korea or Germany during this time, we had a program in the law 
dating back to 1906 that gave Alaska Native people the right to apply 
for what was called a Native allotment--very, very important program 
for these people. It said: Hey, if you can show that this part of 
Alaska you hunted, fished, your family raised you in this part of the 
great State of Alaska, you have a right to a 160-acre allotment.
  Now, look, you can't do that in a lot of States, but Alaska is so 
big, so vast, that these Native allotments were a really important part 
of the Federal Government taking care of but helping Alaska Native 
people. So that was going on for years--very noncontroversial.
  When they were overseas in 1971, Congress passed one of the most 
important pieces of legislation, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement 
Act. And it was a great piece of legislation. I won't go into it. I 
have talked about it on the floor many times. But what that legislation 
did, it extinguished the ability for Alaska Natives to get their 
allotment--extinguished it.
  Well, think about it. If you are in Vietnam or Germany or Korea 
serving your country, let's face it--especially during the Vietnam era 
when a lot of people were avoiding service--you didn't have the 
internet; you didn't have iPhones. They didn't know. Nobody knew that 
their right to an allotment was extinguished.
  So they came home--and let's face it, they weren't treated well. A 
lot of Vietnam vets were not treated well. It is still a stain on the 
honor of our great Nation. They are Alaska Natives. There was still a 
lot of discrimination against Alaska Natives. That wasn't good.

[[Page S8770]]

  Then they are told: Oh, by the way, that allotment that you wanted, 
sorry. When you were serving your country, fighting in Vietnam, the 
deadline passed.
  A triple whammy, in my view, of injustice.
  We worked on that in a bipartisan way and got my Alaska Native 
Vietnam Veterans Land Allotment Act that said: Hey, if you were serving 
overseas and you missed the deadline to apply for your allotment, you 
can still do it. That is just fair.
  I was in the Oval Office when President Trump, during his first term, 
signed this legislation. It was part of a bigger land package. And I 
remember his saying the injustice that happened to the Alaska Native 
Vietnam vets--that we ended that with this bill. It was great. We were 
so excited.
  The law created a 5-year window by which to have Alaska Native 
Vietnam vets--and there are still several thousands--apply for their 
allotment. It was all great, exciting. Again, a lot of them are getting 
a little old in age. We wanted to hurry up and make sure you apply for 
your allotment.
  Then we had another speed bump in this long saga. The incoming 
Secretary of the Interior, Secretary Haaland, in two different meetings 
with me--two--committed to me that she would expedite the application 
process in granting these allotments to these Vietnam vets under the 
new law. Twice she committed to me on that before her confirmation 
vote. As a matter of fact, I told her: This is more important than 
anything else you can commit to me on, Congresswoman Haaland. She was a 
Congresswoman then. It is more important than oil and gas in Alaska, 
more important than our resource economy, this issue. Please commit 
with me to work with me, expedite it. Let's get these American heroes 
their allotments before a lot of them start passing away.
  Well, that didn't happen. About 2 months into her tenure, she put a 
2-year freeze on getting any of these allotments out to anybody. I 
mean, a blatant--blatant--I am still mad about it--disregard to the 
commitment she made to me twice. It was the biggest thing I asked her.
  By the way, I voted for her--big mistake.
  Two years' freeze. None of these guys could get their allotment. 
Remember, it is a 5-year program. We only have so much time, and it is 
complicated to prove that this is where you grew up and hunted and 
fished. In the 4-year tenure they had with Secretary Haaland, only 40 
of these were issued. That is just shameful.
  What this bill does--all it says is, we are going to keep the status 
quo. We are going to extend the program from 5 years to 10, so we can 
go back to the business that the Trump administration and Secretary 
Burgum are doing of getting these veterans their allotments.
  That is the bill. That is what it does. It is a one-sentence bill 
saying this really important program is going to go from 5 years--
which, by the way, was going to expire at the end of this year. It was 
going to expire in 2 weeks. It is going to go from 5 years to 10 years. 
We are going to have time.
  I hope heroes like this guy are going to work with us, work with the 
Department of the Interior to get their allotment. This is kind of a 
Christmas gift for these great American heroes. I put on my Christmas 
tie today thinking maybe we can work this out--a Christmas gift for 
these great American heroes.
  Even if you don't live in Alaska, you have to love this story. These 
are great heroes, and they served at higher rates in Vietnam. If you go 
to Alaska Native villages and ask: How many veterans do we have, almost 
every male in the village raises their hand. It brings a tear to your 
eye. It brings a tear to my eye.
  I want to thank Senator King, Senator Bennet, Senator Padilla, and, 
certainly, Senator Lee, Senator Hoeven, and, again, my staff. Erik Elam 
is the best LD in the U.S. Senate. He is relentless and creative, 
bringing everybody down here today. It wasn't easy, but we got this 
done at the buzzer. It is going to be signed into law. It is going to 
go to the White House. The President will sign this, and we are going 
to get to work--get to work--and get these heroes the land allotments 
that they deserved.
  The only reason they don't have them right now is they were serving 
their country in a war. I mean, I think it is a really important day, a 
really good day.
  I commit to working with all my Senate colleagues on other 
commitments. Senator King, Senator Padilla, thank you again.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

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