{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://gosar.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2335", "Western Caucus Denounces Fish and Wildlife Services Overreaching Compensatory Mitigation Policy", "2016-12-23", "2016", "2016-12", "Republican", "House", "AZ", "Paul A. Gosar", "G000565", "gosar.house.gov", "gosar", "https://gosar.house.gov/news/documentquery.aspx", "scraper", "Congressional Western Caucus Chairman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-04) and Executive Vice-Chairman Scott Tipton (CO-03) issued the following statements in response to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) announcing the agency\u2019s final Endangered Species Act (ESA) Compensatory Mitigation Policy (CMP):\n\n\u201cDespite losing control of the House, Senate and White House on his watch, President Obama still doesn\u2019t seem to get the message that the American people have rejected his extremist environmental agenda. By desperately seeking to enact almost 100 midnight regulations during the last few weeks of a lame duck presidency, Obama has selfishly put his own legacy ahead of the well-being of hard-working Americans,\u201d said Chairman Gosar. \u201cThe Service\u2019s final CMP is the direct result of a lawless directive issued by President Obama in November 2015. With help from his extremist environmental allies, the president has blatantly abused his executive power to instruct federal agencies to unilaterally rewrite environmental laws originally passed by Congress. The Service\u2019s new CPM will have devastating consequences for local communities and job creators while causing significant regulatory confusion. You can add this misguided policy to the growing list of midnight regulations that Congress and the Trump Administration will expunge early in the 115th Congress.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis final rule further muddies the regulatory waters, creating unnecessary burdens, confusion and delays in the permitting process for everything from responsible, job-creating energy development projects to important environmental conservation projects,\u201d said Vice-Chairman Tipton. \u201cIt's consistent with the Administration\u2019s final push to do everything possible to make life difficult for rural Americans to earn a living.\u201d\n\nBackground:\n\nThe \u201cPresidential Memorandum\u201d on mitigation seeks to provide new instructions and guidance for all federal agencies within the Executive Branch. The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed changes to the agency\u2019s mitigation policy on March 7, 2016 as a result of this memo.\n\nIn June of 2016, Chairman Gosar and Vice-Chairman Tipton joined nine of his colleagues in contacting Dan Ashe, Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to raise serious concerns and request an extension of the comment period for proposed revisions to the Service Mitigation Policy. That letter can be found HERE.\n\n(Courtesy of the House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations):\n\nLast November 3, 2015 President Obama issued another significant Memorandum to the Departments of Agriculture, Defense and Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) requiring sweeping changes to their policies regarding mitigation of natural resource impacts from approved projects and activities. Specifically, the new policy requires agencies considering permitting of projects to incorporate a standard of ensuring a \u201cnet benefit\u201d or at minimum \u201cno net loss\u201d of important, scarce, or sensitive natural resources before a permit can be issued.\n\nThe Memorandum mandates federal agencies to design policies to require more compensatory mitigation, including advance compensation prior to project approval and mitigation banking methods facilitated by environmental groups and other non-governmental entities that participate in the banking business.\n\nThe Memorandum appears to create sweeping new statutory authority through unilateral executive action, and represents a substantial re-write of public land use and water policy by the Obama Administration. The new \u201cnet benefit\u201d standard exceeds statutory standards set in law by Congress, and represents a substantial raising of the threshold that will likely result in the rejection of a host of economic and energy-related projects that would otherwise have been approved under the law, and potentially increase the cost and regulatory burden for those projects that are already permitted.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T21:09:43Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://gosar.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2335"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.0055853053927422, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}