Mining Regulatory Clarity Act of 2024

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 2925, and I will remind my friends across the aisle that mining is already happening on American lands and on our public lands.

However, this week, instead of working on meaningful legislation on behalf of the American people, our friends have opted instead to focus on a toxic free-for-all on our public lands and have opted to focus on legislation to rollback energy efficiency in home appliances.

In fact, they put forward a bill this week called Hands Off Our Home Appliances because they are so concerned about the American people that they want to regulate the efficiency of their toasters, their dishwashers, their refrigerators, and undermine the ability of our immigrant and our Hispano communities to have representation in the United States Census and, yes, to allow a free-for-all on our public lands.

Now, the American people are not asking us to do this. They are asking us to work on real problems: to work on the economy, inflation, helping families put food on the table and a roof over their head, protecting our reproductive rights and access to the ballot box, protecting our democracy, and dealing with the international crises that are happening on multiple continents.

My question is: Why the heck are we back on the House floor one week after we voted, on a bipartisan basis, to send this bad bill back to committee when it couldn't even be supported on the floor once?

Yet here we are, and our friends are trying to pass it once again, without revision, without changes because they think they found a few extra spare votes.

Let's talk about mining laws. The existing mining law of 1872 already gives our mining companies, including foreign-owned companies, the right to extract on our publicly-owned lands. They can also do so without having to pay even one cent in royalties. That includes companies that are controlled by governments of adversarial nations.

This is not only a shameful giveaway, but a huge national security vulnerability for the United States. This bill is not about clarifying a court decision, it is about giving more minerals away to those who would like unfettered access to our public lands. It would give opportunities for multinational corporations and adversarial nations to control even more of our resources without having to pay royalties to the U.S. Government, and to tie up claims on our public lands, whether or not there are minerals actually present there.

This would make it impossible to invalidate a mining claim, even if their real intent was other things, maybe to lock up development on other uses or buying them for other uses, including construction of transmission lines or other things that they would want to do.

This should be of deep concern to anyone who does not want adversarial nations or the companies that operate in them to control our public lands or minerals.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle argue that it is either mine here or mine abroad and create a false equivalency, but it is not that simple. Some of the countries that are trying to expand their mining operations here in the United States, in fact, many of these multinational corporations are owned as subsidiaries under countries like China and other countries that we have adversarial relationships with.

They also engage in practices that we know cause human rights abuses, things like slave labor elsewhere in the world. While my friends across the aisle have tried to claim that this is really about mining on American lands, it is about granting unfettered access to these corporations.

In fact, these entities can ship the minerals that they take from American lands anywhere in the world and smelt those materials on the cheap, often relying on human rights abuses abroad to cut costs.

As I said, we already had this debate last week. The outcome was the entire House, right here on this floor, voted to send this toxic bill back to the Natural Resources Committee. In fact, that hasn't happened in years because this bill was so flawed and such a giveaway to foreign national owned companies and a threat to our national security that it was agreed that it wasn't ready for prime time and shouldn't be passed on the floor.

My colleague from New Mexico, Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez, offered to send the bill back to committee so that we could discuss amending the bill to ban these adversarial corporations operating in adversarial nations from mining and locking up our public lands.

I have to say, I was heartened. We had six Republicans join the Democrats to do just that. They said they were not going to vote for that bill. Well, it was about time. We need some bipartisan support to double down on protecting U.S. interests.

In fact, as I said, it has been decades since the House sent a bill back to committee like that, but as we see today, here we are. Republican leadership is trying once again to get the bill passed through brute force without addressing serious concerns, without sending it back to committee, without going through due process. Here we are, debating it and about to take a vote again.

These concerns aren't new. Last year, the bill was included in H.R. 1. At that time, one of my Republican colleagues offered a very similar amendment banning mining on our public lands by foreign companies with records of human rights violations. We are literally talking about companies that have child slave labor records. That amendment passed through committee on a bipartisan basis, yet they stripped it out and are trying to pass the bill without it here today on the floor.

I find it absolutely jaw-dropping and extremely telling that this was the amendment that was stripped out of the bill and that we are back here a week later after this bill failed on the floor.

I think it is very clear what is going on here. This is really about advancing the interests of corporations, interests on our public lands, and opening them up for exploitation.

I think it is important that we talk about how outrageous this is. We have to ensure that our public lands are not open to our adversaries, to these multinational corporations that will exploit our minerals for free. We need some bipartisan action to make sure that that cannot happen.

We should be back in committee discussing the vulnerabilities, discussing the national security implications, discussing American competitiveness, discussing energy policy, not trying to jam through a bill that will violate human rights and international trade.

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Ms. STANSBURY. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Porter).

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Ms. STANSBURY. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Kamlager-Dove).
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Ms. STANSBURY. Madam Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez).

Ms. LEGER FERNANDEZ. Madam Speaker, last week, House Republicans tried to pass H.R. 2925 to make it easier for the biggest mining corporations to take our public lands and mineral resources without giving the American people a dime.

I filed a motion to send the bill back to the committee to consider my amendment, which would have prevented companies owned or controlled by our adversaries from taking our gold, copper, and precious rare earth minerals to use against us in the market or in national security.

Fortunately, last week, a bipartisan majority, including six Republicans, passed my motion. We stood up together for our national security. However, the Republican leadership ignored last week's bipartisan vote, and here we are again.

What is worse, the Rules Committee Republicans rejected Chairman Moolenaar's amendment to ban foreign entities of concern from conducting mining operations on our public lands.

Let me remind everybody, Chairman Moolenaar heads the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. It is his job to know how dangerous China's mining of our precious minerals is to our economy and national security.

The Republicans blocked their own Republican chair's amendment. I believe in bipartisanship, so when I see an amendment I like and recognize is good, I support it.

Madam Speaker, at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to committee once again. If House rules permitted, I would offer the motion with Chairman Moolenaar's amendment, which would block foreign entities of concern from mining our public lands.

When Republicans block even consideration of an amendment which would ban China from taking away the precious metals that belong to the American people, Republicans are putting the interests of wealthy foreign corporations over the American people.

I hope the six Republicans who were courageous enough to stand up for American security interests last week stand for America today.

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Ms. STANSBURY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 2925, which rolls out the welcome mat to our foreign adversaries to exploit our minerals and violate human rights as well as national security.

We must defeat this bill. We did last week. We debated the merits. It is bad for America. It is bad for national security. It is bad for our economy. It is bad for American mining. It is bad for the environment, and that is why we must send it back.

Madam Speaker, I support the gentlewoman's motion to recommit. I yield back the balance of my time.

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