Today’s Grijalva Amendment to GOP Deregulatory Bill Would Strip Republican Language Harming Federal Land Management Agencies
Washington, D.C. – Ranking Member Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) will offer an amendment today to strip language in H.R. 5, the Regulatory Accountability Act, that makes it much more difficult for national land management agencies to protect public resources.
Formally, H.R. 5 would make all land use management plans published by the U.S. Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management (BLM) subject to an onerous economic analysis through a procedure described in the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA), which currently only requires detailed economic assessments for any rule expected to have a national economic impact of $100 million or more. Grijalva’s amendment would remove that language.
The goal of H.R. 5 follows a pattern set by multiple Republican votes last week. All but three House Republicans voted last Tuesday to change Congressional Budget Office rules to calculate the financial value to the public of federal lands as “zero” for accounting purposes. On Thursday, 229 House Republicans voted against an amendment Grijalva offered to another bill that declared climate change is real.
The Forest Service and BLM develop land use management plans for sites they manage around the country, which seek to balance resource development with conservation and recreation. The nationwide regulations that create the framework for establishing those local plans are already subject to RFA analysis. Requiring that same analysis for each local land use management plan regardless of its economic impact, as H.R. 5 would do, ties agencies’ hands and turns even minor land use planning decisions into laborious, time-consuming exercises – calling into question whether Republicans mean anything they say about reducing regulation.
“Republicans seem to think the only way to act in the public interest is to give large industries whatever they want,” Grijalva said. “If this bill becomes law, the agencies that oversee our public lands won’t be able to make important decisions in a timely way, and that’s the last thing the American people want. The Republicans have started this Congress by doing a series of expensive favors for industry and treating them as unworthy of public attention. Every vote my friends across the aisle cast for these giveaways is another vote that will haunt them and their party.”
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