Washington, D.C. – (RealEstateRama) — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA-23) spoke on the House floor today in favor of H.J. Res. 44 to overturn the Bureau of Land Management’s Planning 2.0 rule.
Full remarks are below, or watch online here.
“I thank the gentlelady for yielding.
“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlelady from Wyoming for her work on this bill and bringing it here today. You know, most people don’t realize just how much land the federal government controls. And it’s just a fact that someone a thousand miles away in an office in D.C. won’t understand those land issues as much as the people who live on the land do.
“Now the sponsor of this bill, Mrs. Cheney, knows that in her great state of Wyoming, they constantly struggle with the federal government over land policies, just as California and many Western states do as well.
“Federal regulators restrict how we can build, what our farmers can grow, where our ranchers can graze, and how our people can enjoy the beauty of the land.
“The Bureau of Land Management’s new rule—the innocently named Planning 2.0 rule—imposes Washington’s vision on land-management over vast areas of the west. This was devised by people who don’t live on our land and who don’t know our land and they just try to dictate how to use our land. They are undermining the very idea of multiple use of federal lands by making the lands entirely off limits for any type of economic purposes.
“Under this rule, the bureau will cut out local and county officials even more. They’ll consolidate control over 175 million acres of lands in 11 states out west. And that’s not a small amount of land. Just to put that into perspective, that’s over 261 times the size of Rhode Island.
“Under the Congressional Review Act today, we’ll be able to overturn this last-minute power grab from the Obama Administration and bring some power back to the people. The American people—they should have the power back again to write their own future.
“And I want to thank Congresswoman Cheney for keeping her word, for standing with Wyoming and all those out west who care for their land and want locals to be able to control—to understand where is best to graze, to care, to build—not somebody in Washington to dictate what to do with it.
“I yield back.”
