▶ 0:08:20on interior environment and related agencies will come to order. I'm pleased to be here uh marking up the fiscal year 2026 interior appropriations bill with chairman Cole, ranking member Deloro, subcommittee ranking member Pingri, and the members of the subcommittee. Those members that aren't here will be here before long. They had we had a conference over in the Capitol Hill Club and it's just ending and so they'll be wandering in here before long. Better be before long or we'll get out voted.
▶ 0:08:50I'd like to thank Yeah, I was going to say that might shorten your opening statements. Let's go straight to the vote. Yeah. I'd like to thank Chairman Cole for his leadership of the committee and getting us to this point in what is uh an unusual uh fiscal year with this uh with uh the new administration coming in and and uh all the things that have been done.
▶ 0:09:15It it has been a difficult uh appropriation season and Chairman Cole and and uh Ranking Member Deloro have done a good job at getting us to where we are. I want to recognize Ranking Member Deloro and Ranking Member Pingri. Ranking member Finger has consistently been a wonderful partner uh and I appreciate her commitment to the subcommittee's issues. I look forward to work continuing our work together to move this interior bill forward. Lastly, I want to thank members of the staff on both sides uh of the aisle.
▶ 0:09:39They are truly the people that do the hard work of uh putting these appropriation bills together and uh they do a fantastic job. Without their without their dedication, we would never get as far as we do. And so uh both the ranking and uh and uh majority uh members of the staff are uh truly appreciated. The fiscal year 2026 interior bill provides 37.97 billion which is two 2.5 billion or 6.2% below the enacted level.
▶ 0:10:11I have consistently said that I refuse to balance the budget on the backs of the tribes. So I'm proud that this bill makes strong investments to further the federal government's trust and treaty responsibilities. doesn't meet it, but it furthers it in the direction that this committee has been working on for the last decade under both Republican and Democratic leadership.
▶ 0:10:28The bill provides 8.4 billion for Indian Health Services, 1.5 billion for the Bureau of Indian Education, 2.9 billion for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, including 771.84 million for public safety and justice programs to support law enforcement in Indian country. This includes 31 million for the missing and murdered indigenous women initiative, an issue that is very important to me and members of this committee.
▶ 0:10:51We've had a hearing on uh this when when we discover it and most people don't don't know that uh we lose 6,000 murdered missing indigenous people every year uh off reservations and stuff. And this is something that uh is is a huge issue that we've got to address. This moves us in that direction. This bill also fully funds must pay costs for our tribes uh including contract support costs and 105L leases.
▶ 0:11:17The total funding for Indian country reflects the same level overall that we provided in our 2025 house interior bill last year. The bill again fully funds the payment in le of taxes program which provides payments to nearly every state in the country for certain taxexempt federal lands. Most of our states received their received their uh 25 PL uh pill payments last month and this bill ensures that this bipartisan program continues to be fully funded.
▶ 0:11:45Additionally, the bill provides full funding for the federal wildland firefighter payix that was included in the 25 CR to help improve uh firefighter recruitment and retention and to give financial certainty to the men and women protecting our communities from catastrophic wildfires. to meet our obligations while prior prioritizing these critical programs to build rights sizes funding for most other appropriations. For example, the EPA has cut by nearly 350 million or 23% below the enacted level.
▶ 0:12:14This cut is deeper than the cut in last year's uh 25 house interior bill with reductions targeted internal operating programs and regulatory activities. The bill continues to fund grants that go directly to states and tribes for water infrastructure projects and to help fulfill their delegated authority under federal laws like the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. These programs are important for issuing permits for continued development and economic growth.
▶ 0:12:40The bill also contains community project funding for EPA clean and drinking water infrastructure projects. While requests greatly exceed the funding available for the projects, we did our best to provide some funding for all eligible projects given the impact these dollars will have in communities across the country.
▶ 0:12:58Lastly, in terms of policy, the bill echoes this administration's efforts to roll back costly regulatory overreach from the prior administration and promote domestic energy production by one, halting heavy-handed jobkilling EPA Biden era regulations, limiting the prior administration's attempts to abuse the Endangered Species Act and ensure continued access to our public lands, and expanding access to hard rock and critical minerals.
▶ 0:13:23In closing, I'm pleased that this bill focuses spending where it is needed uh most and makes great strides to address critical needs across Indian country. The bill doubles down on rolling back burdensome and costly regulations from the prior administration and it helps unleash American energy and domestic mineral uh development. I look forward to working with ranking member Pingri and other members to move this bill, this interior bill uh towards enactment. Uh I now recognize uh the ranking member, Miss Pingri, for her opening statement.
▶ 0:13:52Uh, thank you for yielding, Chairman Simpson. I very much appreciate our working relationship and I do hope that we will be able to find common ground during this appropriation cycle so we can enact a fullear funding bill. This seems especially important now that we are acutely aware of the damage that the fullear continuing resolution has allowed the administration to inflict. We've been witnessing how the inability to negotiate a fullear bill last year has undermined the power of the committee and the Congress.
▶ 0:14:23The administration is funding, or rather not funding programs at whatever level it wants, all the while refusing to share details with this committee. The chief of the Forest Service testified in the Senate budget hearing that he didn't know whether any of the funds appropriated for state and local fire assistance would actually go to the communities that they serve.
▶ 0:14:45Instead, the dramatic flexibility afforded by the continuing resolution has allowed the Forest Service to divert millions of dollars to pay employees who took deferred resignations. Talk about waste. States are losing critical funding while Trump's the Trump administration is paying employees not to work. And this isn't the only way that states are suffering. We've seen grants that didn't have the right buzzwords uh be illegally terminated.
▶ 0:15:12In my state of Maine, the EPA canled three PAS grants. It then reinstated them only to reterminate one for not meeting so-called administrative priorities. The upheaval and uncertainty caused by these frozen funds and canceled grants is causing real harm and will have lasting damage. President Trump continues the assault on the states through his budget request.
▶ 0:15:36The budget proposals to cut EPA funding to the states, asserting that the grant programs have become a crutch for the states. I don't even know what that means. This amounts to an enormous unfunded mandate and I am deeply disappointed that this bill does not rebuke their proposal. Instead, the bill cuts funding to the states for water infrastructure by 62%.
▶ 0:15:59It also cuts grant programs that fund state environmental programs and slashes funding for the EPA operating programs by 23%. Withdrawing federal funding will mean states and local governments will be forced to raise their taxes or cut their services and nobody will benefit. Republicans just increased the federal deficit by 3.4 trillion during reconciliation.
▶ 0:16:24And at the same time, they're cutting funding for programs that protect public health and the environment, that maintain our national parks, and that support the arts and The cuts in this bill, taken together with the recisions in the big ugly bill, will debilitate Americans ability to address the climate crisis. It has become clear to me that the administration has moved beyond climate change denial into actively dismantling the government's climate work.
▶ 0:16:53If we are going to keep the public safe, then building resilience and fighting against the impact of climate change is a common sense measure. Yet, Republicans have clawed back those funds so that they could give tax breaks to billionaires. Defunding the EPA's climate change work isn't just a policy position. It is condemning future generations, and our children and grandchildren will suffer because of these cuts.
▶ 0:17:20The bill cuts the National Park Service by 213 million. That is on top of the 1 billion Republicans rescended from national parks and public lands in the big ugly bill. That funding would have supported conservation projects, habitat restoration, and staffing at our parks. Making matters worse, the majority's failure to reauthorize the Great American Outdoors Act means that the National Park Service will no longer receive an annual 1.3 billion to address deferred maintenance.
▶ 0:17:51If we add them all together, these cuts have created a crisis that risks destroying the legacy of our national park system. Support for our national parks used to be bipartisan and a point of pride for this country. And I do hope we can recapture that spirit. The administration is also trying to sideline anything it deems artistically or culturally offensive, regardless of the effect its decisions have on people and communities.
▶ 0:18:16I think it was appalling to watch the Trump administration illegally terminate thousands of grants at both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities earlier this year. It fired nearly 80% of the NE staff and revoke the funding for the state humanities councils. This is money that was supposed to help artisan workers, to teach kids in rural areas, to support local economies that rely on cultural institutions but cannot afford to sustain them alone.
▶ 0:18:46In the wake of these assaults, it is critical that Congress asserts its support for the NEA and NEH. So, I am vehemently opposed to the cuts in this bill, which would slash each endowment by 35% or $72 million. With a relatively small budget, the NEA helps power 1 trillion$1.2 trillion dollar arts economy, creating jobs and sustaining main streets in even the smallest of towns.
▶ 0:19:12NEA funds go to book groups to NEA funds go to book groups for veterans, to afterchool theater programs in rural towns, to folk festivals that preserve cultural heritage, and to local arts councils. Cutting the NEA doesn't just silence voices and sty creators. It erases the spaces where healing, connection, and community happen.
▶ 0:19:38The bill also cuts funding for cultural institutions such as the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian This comes on the heels of the president accusing the Smithsonian of promoting divisive race- centered ideology and not doing enough to promote American It is one thing to criticize a particular program or funding stream, but attempting to recast entire agencies in your own political image or silence expressions that you don't like goes against
▶ 0:20:08the values that we hold dear. Free speech, equal opportunity, and the idea that our democracy is strengthened when everyone has access to knowledge, culture, and a voice in the national The president's attempt to dismantle our artistic and cultural institutions will not make America great again and it must not be tolerated.
▶ 0:20:33Despite having control of both chambers in the White House, Republicans could not restrain themselves with the inclusion of policy writers. There are 72 poison pill writers that environmental protection, undermine climate change policies, and add to the national deficit. There is one writer in particular that's particularly egregious to me. The bill includes a provision that would block the EPA from finalizing or implementing its draft risk assessment regarding PAS in sewage sludge.
▶ 0:21:03PAS contamination is a crisis facing the entire country. Maine has seen its devastation firsthand and has been ahead of the curve in testing and responding to contamination. Farmers in my state have lost their entire livelihood, have lost their farms and watched their families get sick from forever contam forever chemical contamination in their fields from sewage sludge which was spread on their Blocking the EPA to
▶ 0:21:33working to better understand the potential risk to human health and the environment posed by the presence of PAS and sewage sledge makes absolutely no sense. We know that PAS remediation is going to be immensely costly. So why wouldn't we take steps to prevent contamination in the first In closing, I want to thank the ranking member Deluro for tireless efforts on this committee.
▶ 0:21:58I want to thank um Chairman Cole for working together with me and the work he's done particularly on behalf of the tribes. And I want to thank the staff on both sides of the aisle. The cuts in this bill are irresponsible and they will hurt agencies that are already struggling to deliver services to the public. Any arguments that these cuts are somehow fiscally responsible responsible ring hollow in the wake of Republicans adding $3.4 trillion to the national deficit. I oppose the bill.
▶ 0:22:27I urge my colleagues to oppose the bill and I yield back. I now recognize the distinguished chairman of the full committee, Mr. Thank you very much, Mr. chairman and I appreciate being with you. I want to thank the ranking member as well, Miss Pingry, my good friend, ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Laura, and all the members of the subcommittee on both sides of the aisle for being with us this morning. Today, we continue our work on FY2026 Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill.
▶ 0:22:55The measure se covers several agencies including the department of the interior, the US forest service and the environmental protection agency that work to conserve and protect our nation's natural, cultural, and environmental resources. Importantly, it advances the federal commitment to honor our trust and treaty responsibilities to American Indians and Alaskan natives through Indian affairs and the Indian health service.
▶ 0:23:20I'm proud that the legislation prioritizes funding across tribal accounts and I want to thank you and Miss Pingry for that in particular. It's been an ongoing commitment of this subcommittee and I'm proud that that ensures the delivery of critical services in Indian country.
▶ 0:23:36Funding for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Educa Indian Education and Bureau of Trust Funds Administration and the Indian Health Service uh uh you know were held at FY25 House levels allowing for targeted increases in vital uh tribal programs. Overall, Chairman Simpson has demonstrated the importance of targeting resources where they are needed most. Funding has been reduced for lower priority programs and strategically reallocated to urgent needs including wildland fire management.
▶ 0:24:07Further, we include provisions that reduce regulatory burdens, protect American jobs, and lower energy costs with a focus on US energy dominance. We also strengthen our national security by promoting American energy production and expanding access to critical minerals. We meet all these vital objectives while cutting billions in spending from the previous fiscal year, demonstrating strong stewardship of both America's natural and financial resources.
▶ 0:24:35I'd like to thank Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member Pangry, the full committee ranking member Deluro, uh, and the majority and minority staff for their hard work. I look forward to consideration of this bill today. Thank you again, uh, Mr. Chairman, and I yield Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh I now recognize a distinguished ranking member of the committee, Mr. Lauro, for her Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
▶ 0:24:58It's a um a really important uh subcommittee, and I'm uh always grateful for the work that we do in concert along with you and chairman Cole and ranking member Pingri. And I also want to share my appreciation for the subcommittee staff's work and in particular Rita Culp, Jocelyn Hun, and Michael Schmeltz.
▶ 0:25:19I oppose the bill before us today, which will raise utility bills and energy prices, worsen the climate crisis, put polluters over public health, and abandon the stewardship of our national parks, and all to benefit billionaires and big corporations. We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis. President Trump promised to lower costs on day one, but instead he and House Republicans are making the cost of living crisis even worse.
▶ 0:25:49The big ugly bill is handling massive tax breaks to billionaires and to the biggest corporations while driving up energy costs for homes and businesses. Today, we are considering another House Republican bill which will raise costs for the struggling working class and middle class. It will damage our public lands, promote dirty energy, threaten Americans health by leaving them vulnerable to polluted air and water.
▶ 0:26:18Never mind that we've never received a complete budget from the White House. We are holding this markup in a completely unprecedented time when Congress's authority challenged is being challenged by a lawless administration.
▶ 0:26:33Since taking office, the Trump administration has stolen resources appropriated to this committee and appropriated by this committee passed by Democrats and Republicans in the House and in the Senate for programs and services across the federal government, including several in this bill that helped to lower the costs for the middle class and working class, protect vulnerable populations, keep our environment clean.
▶ 0:26:59The administration has frozen, attacked, and destroyed grants that help tribes with hazard mitigation. Grants that support the recovery of endangered species. Grants that decrease flooding flooding risks and grants that help restore areas damaged by floods and wildfires. Nearly $1.5 billion in funding for the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Bureau of Indian Affairs was frozen. Scores of public services were laid off. These cuts are not numbers on the page.
▶ 0:27:29They are not only felt in Washington DC. They affect all of our communities. Mary, a Connecticut grandmother, was devastated when her granddaughter, a trained EMT, skilled ice climber, and a member of the Alpine Rescue Team, was fired from her job at Mount Reineer National Park.
▶ 0:27:50Mary's granddaughter had worked for the park service for over five years, but because she had been transferred to Mount Reineer less than a year ago, was technically a prob probationary employee. Doge and the Elon Musk decided that Mary's granddaughter's public service was less valuable than a tax break for billionaires. Lost and injured climbers in Mount Ranger National Park will pay the price.
▶ 0:28:16I asked my colleagues, "Do your constituents consider national parks waste, fraud, and abuse? Do they come to your town halls and complain there were too many employees at our national parks?" I doubt it. The administration has also stole $100 million from the Connecticut Green Bank, which supports public private partnerships that lower energy costs for residents as well as resiliency, land conservation, and other areas of environmental infrastructure.
▶ 0:28:47The Green Bank is supported by greenhouse gas reduction fund grants, which the courts have repeatedly found was unlawfully terminated by the Environmental Protection Agency. The Green Bank Board of Directors member John Har said, and I quote, "It's just astounding that the work that the Green Bank does, which is so vital to the future of the state and the country and the world, should be impeded in this way." End quote.
▶ 0:29:13All of these programs Congress enacted and appropriated funding for in law. They are substituting Congress's decisions and judgments with their own, turning article one of the Constitution on its head. And unfortunately, this bill doubles down on President Trump's pro pollution, anti-environment, anti- parks and arts agenda.
▶ 0:29:34Because of this bill, families will pay more at the pump and on their utility bills thanks to deep cuts to funding for infrastructure and the removal of important fuel efficiency regulations. This bill abandons our children and our grandchildren who will have to confront an ever worsening worsening climate crisis by eviscerating the EPA, reducing science funding, promoting fossil fuel lease sales on public land, and deconstructing critical emissions regulations.
▶ 0:30:03This bill will worsen Americans health by ending enforcement of the numerous Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act regulations as well as hazardous waste and pesticide laws. all and by allowing corporations to spew toxic pollution into our communities. And this bill slashes funding for national parks and exploits our public lands for the sake of corporate profits.
▶ 0:30:25Underfunding the National Park Service, especially after Doge eviscerated Park Service staffing means fewer seasonal employees, making it more difficult and cumbersome for our constituents to visit and enjoy our nation's parks, which are vital to the economies of so many states. Americans cannot keep up with the everinccreasing cost of living. But instead of hard work of working with Democrats to make investments can help to lower their costs, protect our environment, and preserve our public lands and institutions.
▶ 0:30:56Republicans have put forward a bill that favors billionaires and corporations rights to pollute and destroy the environment over the health and the safety of the American people. I cannot support this bill and I yield I thank the ranking member. Are there other members who wish to make opening remarks? Mr. McCullum. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the courtesy of yielding.
▶ 0:31:21I want to thank you and ranking member Pingri and the staff on both sides of the aisle for your work on this subcommittee. I know difficult choices were made. I want to address some serious concerns that I find in the funding cuts and the 72 partisan writers in this bill um that make me unable to support passage of this bill out of this subcommittee at this time. We won't get into all of them in great detail, but I will touch on a few.
▶ 0:31:45But before I do that, I want to recognize the continued nonpartisan support Chairman Cole, Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member Pingri, Ranking Member Deluro, and all of us who work together to uphold our tribal and trust re treaty responsibilities. Even in these very contentious times, we stood united as our Interior Subcommittee leadership has for decades. And it's something that makes me proud to be an appropriator and a member of this committee.
▶ 0:32:12Chairman Simpson, as I said, I appreciate that you once again prioritize funding for life, health, and safety issues for Indian country. And I thank both you and the chair uh the ranking member for supporting and following through on your commitment to include advanced appropriations for the Indian Health Services for the fourth year in a row. This will continue to save lives. But this only happens because there were other cuts that had to be made in other parts of this bill.
▶ 0:32:39And unfortunately, even some of those cuts do affect our tribal brothers and sisters and things that are important to them. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency, something that our tribal nations work with greatly to protect the life, health, and safety of their tribal members. A cut of 23% to the EPA's budget and the roll back of climate regulations, I believe, will severely harm the quality of life for Americans in the years to come.
▶ 0:33:04The EPA's role helps us to live longer, healthier lives, protects the air we breathe, water we drink, and the soil which we receive our nourishment from. It cleans up polluted sites after environmental emergencies. Some man-made, some made by nature. But this bill, unfortunately, rubber stamps the Trump's administration's plans to gut this agency's scientific research offices and the environmental program work that it does to protect each and every one of us.
▶ 0:33:33We are all seeing the increased severe weather events, the extreme cycles of droughts and floods. And as the climate changes and absorbs more moisture, our weather patterns have changed with the way that storms intensify, the way storms just sit and rain for days and days on end now, increasing the rate of flooding and putting life and property at great risk.
▶ 0:33:58The writers in this bill will just pump more fuel, fossil fuel pollution in the air, increase the rate of climate change, even as the American people are experiencing yet another summer filled with dangerous levels of heat, haze, wildfire, smoke, and now trap. I can't even talk about the flooding in Texas. It fails to continue to confront ch climate change is what I'm trying to say. And when we do that, we fail to protect our communities. we fail to protect our constituents.
▶ 0:34:28As a ranking member on the defense committee, I'm intimately aware that the DoD considers climate change to be a top national security issue. Even here at home, our national security is impacted by climate change. Runways that constantly have to be replaced or can't be used because of perafrost thawing in Alaska. Radar stations that are falling into the Pacific Ocean.
▶ 0:34:53I could go on and on about the number of dollars that are now being spent for repair after we go through the hurricane cycles. The inadequate funding in this level for the EPA to address climate change will harm our country's ability to respond to this threat today, tomorrow, and the future. And that puts us, our economic security, and our national security at a global disadvantage. These cuts also carry immediate responses besides climate.
▶ 0:35:24I could go on about the other cuts in the bill and how they're going to rise cost to utilities has been point out and lower the quality of life for many other people in our communities by pollution not being addressed. But cuts to drinking water and wastewater infrastructure will shift costs to our local communities and increase rates for many. I could go on about the cuts to the National Park Service, the Forest Service, but I appreciate the ranking member doing such a wonderful job in pointing that out.
▶ 0:35:51But I do want to say that the major cuts to the National Endowment of the Arts, the humanities, the Smithsonian museums are another blow to our cultural, our civic and artistic exchange that is vital in living in a democ in a democratic society. We will pay greatly for not doing these civic lessons every single day that touch the lives of every American and every person who visits this great democracy. That's how we tell our story.
▶ 0:36:20And not to do that in a fair, free, transparent, without intimidation way is is just something that I find incredulous. So, Mr. Chair, I will close with this. I can find you more money. We should work to make sure that payment in lie of taxes goes back to the ways and means committee where it originally was because it is a tax issue. So I pledge to work with you as we as we move forward to make this bill better.
▶ 0:36:47But I also pledge to work with you in the years to come to raise the alarm of what the ways and means committee by pushing their payment in lie of taxes in this committee is hire is harming our environment, our future and the legacy we live our children. Thank you so much Mr. Chair and I yield back. Thank gentle lady for her comments. Are there other members wishing to make opening comments? Mr. Klyber. Thank you very much. Uh Mr.
▶ 0:37:14Chairman, I wish to thank you, Chairman Cole, Rank Member Pingri, Rank Member Delaro, uh, for your great work on this bill, but I respectfully and regretfully oppose this bill as written. Mr.
▶ 0:37:34Chair, this bill rejects the president's most damaging budgetary It includes a cut of more than $176 million to the National Park Services operational budget, which will force an additional $5,000 park staff cuts, stretching an already thin workforce that was devastated by Doge. Uh, Mr. Mr.
▶ 0:38:00Chairman, I began my professional career as a history teacher uh in the Charleston, South Carolina public school system. And I spent my entire congressional career working to preserve our nation's history, both its ugly failures and its beautiful triumphs.
▶ 0:38:20Among my most popular legislative accomplishments are the established establishments of the South Carolina National Heritage Carter, the Southern Camp of the Revolutionary War and the Gulliga National Heritage Carter that runs from Wilmington, North Carolina down to St. Augustine, Florida. This is an interesting corridor.
▶ 0:38:46I remember when I first attempted to get it passed, it took me six years. They told me that South Carolina was too small a state to have more than one heritage carter. Of course, we now have three because South Carolina played a very critical role uh in the uh Revolutionary War.
▶ 0:39:08People remember the civil war having started there uh but but for the battle of Charleston uh and the campaign around cow pins. I'm not too sure the revolutionary war uh would have uh uh ended the way it did.
▶ 0:39:27But national parks, like our heritage corridors, are home to many of our nation's most beloved historic sites, hallowed grounds, and iconic landscapes. While we just celebrated America's birthday on July 4th, Republicans gift of gutting our treasures, our parks, and national monuments seem to be a broader deliberate campaign to erase history and degrade
▶ 0:39:57educational integrity. While there are 63 national parks, three of which are in South Carolina, none of which were there before I was elected to Congress. Uh the National Park Service uh manages 433 sites across more than 85 million acres. The locations amassed over 330 million visitors last year.
▶ 0:40:27And according to the National Park Service, their spending in communities around these sites resulted in over 55 billion dollars in benefits to our nation's economy and supported over 400,000 jobs.
▶ 0:40:43Now I might add that these national parks are mostly in rural communities and but for these national parks uh the economy in these communities uh would not be uh what they are uh today.
▶ 0:41:03Two weeks ago, the Republicans passed their big ugly bill that took away more than 267 million dollars from the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management that Congress previously If that isn't enough, this bill cuts an additional $213 million from the National Park Service.
▶ 0:41:31The Republican obsession with DEI initiatives is distorting the history included on the National Park Service website and throughout the park service.
▶ 0:41:45In March, it was reported that the Trump administration efforts to dismantle DEI uh caused the National Park Service to take down web pages dedicated to LBGT and other civil rights activities.
▶ 0:42:03And in a March 27th executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, the Trump administration removed references to Harriet Tubman from the National Park Service web page about the Underground Railroad before later restoring it. Now, this is happening throughout the park service.
▶ 0:42:28And I'll tell you, uh, as someone who has studied history, uh, all of my life, and I study it daily, there's not a day that goes by when I don't dedicate some time to looking at our nation's history and how it affects what we do today. It is a shame. And I I don't want to be personal here, but my youngest daughter serves on our local school board.
▶ 0:42:59And I was shocked over the week, this past weekend as we were celebrating July 4th. And she uh talked about what she her with these attempts to take the history out of the public schools. these attempts uh to get rid of civics in the public schools.
▶ 0:43:24And she said to me, "Daddy, what I know about government, I learned in the seventh and eighth grade and sitting down with you moms and now we can't teach it to our school children." That to me is devastating. And that seems to be what we are continuing to do here.
▶ 0:43:44So, uh, on May 20th, Secretary Bunger, uh, uh, ordered that all national parks and other per public lands must post notices encouraging people to report any signs or other information that are negative uh, about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize
▶ 0:44:14the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features. Charleston, South Carolina is in my I taught school in Charleston, South I see the monuments to enslavement. I don't tell my students not to learn what it means.
▶ 0:44:44I want them to know what it means and I want them to uh really work to help this country continue its track toward a more perfect union. So, I implore my Republican friends to stop the madness and reinvest in our national park system uh from the in our classrooms and in uh these we
▶ 0:45:14are the stewards of the of this history. the students of these classrooms in Pearl Harbor where my uncle on December 7th, 1941 in the USS Arizona when it was bombed. Uh he never talked about his life in the Navy.
▶ 0:45:45It was not pleasant back in 1940s. But I don't think we run away from that. I think we do the things that are necessary so that our young people will know we should not ever live that again. We ought to teach about the Japanese internment and recognize that as a site for us uh to continue uh to learn from and continue our trek toward a more perfect union.
▶ 0:46:14The point of preserving history is to learn from it. Learn that which was good, that which was bad. Do all that we can to accentuate those positives, eliminate those negatives, and continue our trick to water more perfect union. So, Mr. Chairman, as I said in my opening, I I regret uh that um I cannot support this bill.
▶ 0:46:41I love history, the good and the bad, and I think we should all work to preserve it, learn from it, and know how to conduct ourselves going forward. Now, the gentleman for his comments. Uh, are there other members who wish to make an opening statement? If not, I recognize the gentle lady from Utah, Miss Mallaloy, for an for purpose of making a motion.
▶ 0:47:09I move the bill be favor favorably reported to the full Question is on the motion. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed? No. Mr. Chair, I request a record. Chair, the eyes have it. A roll call is requested. Those in favor of taking a recorded vote will raise your hands. Sufficient number having in support. A recorded vote is ordered. The clerk will call the role. Mr. Ammeday. Mr. Amade. I Mr. Cloud.
▶ 0:47:40Mr. Cloud. I Mr. Klyburn. Mr. Klyburn. No. Mr. Cole. Mr. Cole. I Mr. Deloro. Mr. Deloro. No. Mr. Elseie. Mr. Else. I. Mr. Harter. Mr. Harter. No. Miss Mallaloy. Miss Malloy. I Miss McCullum. Miss. McCullum? No. Miss Pingri? Miss Pingry? No. Mr. Russianthaler. Hi. Mr. Russianthaler. I Mr. Simpson. I Mr. Simpson. I Mr. Zinci. Hi. Mr. Zinci. Hi.
▶ 0:48:10Any member wish to change their vote? You sure? On those on this vote, the eyes are eight, the nose are five. The bill is favorably reported to the full committee. Uh I ask unanimous con consent that the staff be permitted to make technical and conforming changes to the bill and report without objection. So ordered. Copies of the bill and report with the technical and conforming changes will be delivered to all full committee members offices no later than three business days before full committee.
▶ 0:48:40I thank everyone for being here. This concludes today's business uh with the markup of this bill. The committee now stands adjourned.