After Marathon Markup, House GOP Advances 'Most Extreme Anti-Environment Bill in American History'

Leading up to and after an early Wednesday morning vote by a key GOP-controlled committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, Democratic lawmakers and conservationists renewed their criticism of "a corporate polluter's wish list" that Republicans aim to include in the next reconciliation package.

Republican President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to "drill, baby, drill" and raked in cash from the climate-wrecking fossil fuel industry. While House Committee on Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) celebrated the new vote that advanced legislation intended to deliver on the president's "agenda to make our nation energy dominant," Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) has called the effort to pass the polluter-friendly bill "corruption in broad daylight."

"House Republicans' budget cuts national park funding, slashes clean air and water protections, and pushes the most extreme anti-environment bill in American history as the cherry on top," Huffman said on social media Tuesday, when the committee held a markup for the legislation. "Today, while Democrats called out this billionaire giveaway, Republicans hid in their offices."

Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Md.), a panel member who proposed amendments during markup, said in a Tuesday statement that "House Republicans are once again putting polluters over people. But as a mother, I refuse to let my children's future be auctioned off to Big Oil."

"I offered commonsense amendments that range from blocking funds to agencies that refuse to comply with the courts to stopping oil and gas drilling near schools and hospitals," said Dexter. "This bill is a giveaway to Big Oil and billionaires. My amendments demand House Republicans choose: people or polluters?"

Earthjustice has specifically sounded the alarm over proposed lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska; reinstatement of flawed management plans for both locations; additional lease sales in Cook Inlet; and mandates that the U.S. Forest Service enter into long-term timber contracts in each U.S. region annually for the next decade.

"Here in Alaska, temperatures are rising four times faster than the rest of the planet. We're facing warmer and wetter winters, and communities [are] already facing forced relocation because of climate change," Earthjustice Alaska office managing attorney Carole Holley said Monday. "This bill, if passed without drastic changes, would make things worse by doubling down on reckless oil and gas extraction in the Arctic, maximizing mining and logging on lands valued by the public for recreation and subsistence activities, and halting clean energy projects."

"It amounts to a giveaway of some of our most cherished public lands to bolster corporate profits, all based on wildly speculative assumptions about revenue generation," Holley added. "At the same time, the language includes an attempt to throw away commonsense safeguards like judicial review and public participation in the resource decisions that affect our state."

Ahead of the vote, Public Citizen research director Alan Zibel issued an ominous warning about Republicans' "radical budget plan."

"Welcome to the American petrostate," Zibel said. Like Holley, he blasted the proposed lease sales and "an absurd 'pay to play' permitting provision allowing wealthy corporations to pay a fee to speed up permitting and exemptions from judicial oversight."

"The plan is fiscally reckless, returning royalty rates to what they were in 1920, and half of what New Mexico and Texas charge," he argued. "Rolling back reforms to the antiquated federal oil and gas program would prevent taxpayers from receiving a fair return for the extraction of our public resources. Doing so would also impede sensible requirements that oil and gas companies clean up their messes."

After the vote, Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, said Wednesday that "public lands shouldn't have a price tag on them. But Donald Trump and his allies in Congress are working like mad to hand over our public lands to billionaires and corporate polluters to drill, mine, and log with the bare minimum oversight or accountability."

"These lands belong to all Americans, they shouldn't be given away to pad corporate bottom lines," Manuel added. "Congressional Republicans have made it clear that this is their plan, and our public lands, our clean air and water, critical habitat, and our communities will be threatened by unchecked industrial development. The American people will not tolerate it."

Food & Water Watch managing director of policy and litigation Mitch Jones put out a similarly critical statement on Wednesday.

"Selling public lands to pay for tax cuts to billionaires is a horrible idea," Jones said. "Fossil fuel corporations have been chomping at the bit to exploit federal protected lands for oil and gas drilling—House Republicans appear all too willing to pave the way. This partisan move to sell off federal lands is a betrayal of public trust. The spending bill must be dead on arrival."

This article has been updated with comment from Food & Water Watch.