[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 17581-17582]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       AMERICA'S ENERGY SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
North Dakota (Mr. Cramer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CRAMER. Mr. Speaker, let me begin by thanking my colleague, Mr. 
Reed, for his leadership on the Congressional Diabetes Caucus. Thank 
you, that was very inspiring.
  Mr. Speaker, I am of the firm conviction that America's national 
security and America's economic security are tied directly to America's 
energy security.
  We have a wonderful opportunity today to vote on a couple of very 
important bills that will enhance that energy security, and I urge my 
colleagues to vote ``yes'' on both of them.
  I get to represent the entire State of North Dakota. North Dakota was 
once described by one of our favorite sons, Eric Sevareid, the famous 
CBS newsman, as the rectangular blank spot in the Nation's mind. But 
today, everybody is talking about North Dakota. It is the fastest 
growing economy in the word. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the 
country. It has the fastest growing personal income in the country. In 
fact, today, Mr. Speaker, there are tens of thousands of high-paying 
jobs in North Dakota waiting for more people to come to the State to 
fill them. If you are willing to work hard and put in a full day's 
honest work, you can be very successful there.
  We have heard some speeches already this morning about the need to 
reduce hunger. We have heard some speeches this morning about the 
availability of affordable health care. I am for both of those things, 
and the best way to enhance availability of health care and to reduce 
hunger is to provide jobs.
  Again, I would urge my colleagues today to vote for the bills that 
will be in front of us.

                              {time}  1100

  H.R. 1965 is the Federal Lands Jobs and Energy Security Act. It is 
not a complicated bill. It acknowledges two things. It acknowledges the 
vast energy resources that our country owns under its Federal lands 
onshore. It also acknowledges contemporary technology that provides all 
of the security and safety that is required to do the job well. But 
what it does is it diverts

[[Page 17582]]

some of the resources into the right places, that allows the 
streamlining of permitting while also empowering the local offices of 
our Bureau of Land Management and our U.S. Forest Service in ways that 
allow them to do the jobs that they do very well even better.
  This is something I know a little bit about. Prior to coming to 
Congress, I was an energy regulator for 10 years in North Dakota. I 
worked closely with our Federal partners, in fact, found them to be 
some of the best people that I had the opportunity to know. I just met 
with a number of them last week out in the western part of the State. 
They do a great job, but they need more resources, especially in an 
economy that is so competitive for workforce and so competitive in 
areas like rent and housing and the cost of living.
  So by allowing the local offices to keep more of the permitting fees, 
we can channel the resources to allow them to do their jobs better and 
faster, without compromising the integrity of their charge to protect 
our other natural resources above the ground. They do it as well as 
anybody, and we ought to let them do that job and empower them to do 
it.
  H.R. 2728, the Protecting States' Rights to Promote American Energy 
Security Act, simply acknowledges what the Constitution guarantees, and 
that is that we are a Nation of States and that States are, in fact, 
sovereign, and that nobody is more protective of the land and the water 
and the air than the people who live on it and drink it and breathe it. 
It simply states that if you have fracturing rules in your State, that 
is good enough. It is your State, and the Federal Government's minimum 
standards ought not impose, be an imposition, on the States and their 
rights to develop their resources the way they want to. It frees up 
resources of the Federal Government, while unleashing the ingenuity and 
innovation of our energy economy, providing wealth, providing jobs, 
and, by the way, reducing the cost of energy for the rest of us, which 
makes us even more competitive in the global marketplace.
  We have a grand opportunity today, Mr. Speaker, to pass these two 
bills and to put America on a path to full economic recovery and, 
perhaps, to bring more troops home from the Middle East to reduce our 
dependency on foreign oil. Let's do this not only as a country, but as 
a continent, acknowledging that our friends in Canada are better 
trading partners than Venezuela. Let's build the pipelines and 
infrastructure necessary. Let's unleash American ingenuity, and let's 
put America back to work by becoming more energy secure.

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