GOP Targets Oil and Gas Fees, Civilian Corps Ahead of Markup

September 02, 2021

The House Natural Resources Committee begins work Thursday on the first portion of Democrats’ $3.5 trillion economic and social spending plan, with Republicans set to offer a slew of amendments to a measure they say punishes fossil fuel companies at the expense of domestic energy security and production.

The panel’s $31 billion measure to boost climate resilience, drought relief, and conservation programs is just one plank in a legislative package that Democrats aim to pass in both chambers this fall, using the budget reconciliation process to advance the measure without the need for Republican support in the Senate.

Democrats are likely to advance today’s measure, but not before Republicans make their opposition clear.

“There are so many bad things about the bill, I really can’t find anything good in it,” said the committee’s ranking member, Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), during a Wednesday briefing with reporters.

But Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), chairman of the panel’s Waters, Oceans, and Wildlife Subcommittee, said the bill “will really do a lot of good on the ground” for climate resiliency, public lands and waters, and national parks. “This funding is very important,” he said in an interview.

Among the Republican amendments expected at Thursday’s markup are measures that would strike language withdrawing federal lands in Arizona from copper mining and another ensuring the U.S. doesn’t increase imports from China, Russia, or Afghanistan of critical minerals for renewable energy projects.

Westerman said he doesn’t expect the panel to adopt any GOP amendments during the markup, but nevertheless he wants to “expose” that the majority is pushing a partisan bill through Congress.

Another Republican amendment would strip out or redirect $200 million that would be provided through fiscal 2026 for the Presidio Trust, which oversees thePresidio of San Francisco, a national park in Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s (D-Calif.) district. The park and the trust are longtime priorities for Pelosi.

Partisan Differences

“They are hellbent on marking up a piece of partisan legislation that, I think the more people that understand it, the more people will be opposed to it,” Westerman said.

The Natural Resources Committee had a topline number of $25.6 billion over a decade under the budget resolution (S. Con. Res. 14), but included several revenue raisers in the legislative text related to fossil fuel activities, including higher fees and penalties on oil and gas companies operating on federal lands and waters. Those offsets allowed the committee to propose approximately $31 billion in spending while staying within the deficit amount allowed by the budget blueprint.

Westerman said Natural Resources Democrats’ approach to combating climate change by levying increased penalties and fees on fossil fuel operators lacks logic.

“They are trying to save the planet from climate change,” he said. “Well, they don’t seem to have a problem with fossil fuels, it’s just domestically produced fossil fuels,” Westerman said, referring to President Joe Biden’s request to OPEC in August to increase its oil production in response to rising gas prices. “And when we shut down U.S. production of energy, we’re just going to be importing that energy from other countries, which is actually going to be worse for the climate.”

That Republican opposition could make a long day for the committee. Huffman said he is “bracing for endless bloviation and obstruction” from Republicans during a “long” markup.

“What I have learned is that every time you touch one of their nerves—and oil and gas and mining are like the most sensitive nerves in their nervous system—they just launch into this different mode,” Huffman said.

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

The Natural Resources bill contains language that would repeal oil and gas leasing and drilling in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge under Republicans’ 2017 tax law (Public Law 115-97).

Huffman has sponsored stand-alone legislation to roll back the ANWR language, which he said Republicans “jammed into the reconciliation process in 2017” and “invites an undoing by reconciliation.”

Huffman said opening ANWR’s coastal plain “was deeply unpopular” a few years ago, but even more so now after disappointing lease sales. “We know now that the auction was a bust, and that this myth of huge federal revenues coming from drilling in the Arctic Refuge is a joke,” he said.

Civilian Climate Corps

Committee Democrats also have included $3 billion to create a Civilian Climate Corps at the Interior Department, as well as $500 million for a special Tribal Civilian Climate Corps. The proposal is modeled on the 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps created during the Great Depression to put young men back to work in environment jobs.

But Westerman questioned the need for taxpayer money for a new federal jobs program at a time when the private sector is struggling to find workers to fill jobs across the country. “They want all these federal jobs, but what good are they going to do? Could those people be better employed in the private sector?”

Westerman, who is a forester and engineer by training, said his grandfather was in the original CCC and “didn’t have too many good things to say” about the program.

He said the 21st century Corps proposal is outdated and doesn’t meet the moment’s economic or environment needs. “It’s back to the same idea that Democrats think you can fix the problem on federal lands with shovels, and axes and hoes, when we need a broad, well-planned approach using modern technology to go in and actually reduce the fuel loads in these forests.”

Committees are working to draft their parts of the $3.5 trillion tax and spending bill by Sept. 15, then the Budget Committee will prepare a bill for floor action. The House Natural Resources and the Oversight and Reform committee, which also meets Thursday, are the first two House committees to hold markups on their portions of the package.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kellie Lunney in Washington at klunney@bloombergindustry.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Zachary Sherwood at zsherwood@bgov.com; Loren Duggan at lduggan@bgov.com


By:  Kellie Lunney
Source: Bloomberg Government