{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.heinrich.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/icymi-heinrich-blasts-congressional-republicans-for-doubling-down-on-legislation-that-threatens-public-lands", "ICYMI: Heinrich Blasts Congressional Republicans for Doubling Down on Legislation that Threatens Public Lands", "2025-11-21", "2025", "2025-11", "Democrat", "Senate", "NM", "Martin Heinrich", "H001046", "www.heinrich.senate.gov", "heinrich", "https://www.heinrich.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, delivered remarks on the Senate floor, blasting Republicans for their latest effort to use a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval to upend Resource Management Plans (RMPs).\n\nIf signed into law, this Congressional Review Act (CRA) will rescind a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Resource Management Plan in northeastern Wyoming. Along with the resolutions disapproving of other RMPs previously passed by Congress, this resolution would erase years of public input, jeopardize legal standing of permits and leases issued since 1996, and sow chaos and uncertainty on how public lands are used.\n\nVIDEO: U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, delivers floor speech on Congressional Republicans\u2019 Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution of disapproval undoing Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Resource Management Plans (RMPs) in Wyoming, November 19, 2025.\n\n\u201cJust last month, I stood here on this floor to speak about the dangers of using a Congressional Resolution of Disapproval to change Resource Management Plans for public lands around the country. I described how using Congressional Resolutions to circumvent public input would upend decades of public land planning practice,\u201d started Heinrich. \u201cSince then, Congress has passed three separate Congressional Resolutions of Disapproval to amend Resource Management Plans. One in central and northern Alaska, one in eastern Montana, and one in North Dakota. And now, this week, the Senate will vote on a new Resolution of Disapproval under the Congressional Review Act. This time for northeastern Wyoming.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo put it bluntly, Senate Republicans found a way to rewrite the rules of the game because they didn\u2019t like its outcome,\u201d Heinrich continued. \u201cWhen we vote for CRAs as a way to manage our public lands, we vote against including communities in the process. We shut them out from the decision-making process, when we should be inviting them in. And third, today\u2019s vote doesn\u2019t account for the hundreds of millions of dollars per day that are generated for local economies by public land recreation and recreators.\u201d\n\nA video of Heinrich\u2019s floor speech can be found here.\n\nA transcript of Heinrich\u2019s remarks as delivered is below:\n\nThank you, Mr. President.\n\nJust last month, I stood here on this floor to speak about the dangers of using a Congressional Resolution of Disapproval to change Resource Management Plans for public lands around the country.\n\nI described how using Congressional Resolutions to circumvent public input would upend decades of public land planning practice.\n\nHow it would put our entire public lands management processes at risk.\n\nSince then, Congress has passed three separate Congressional Resolutions of Disapproval to amend Resource Management Plans.\n\nOne in central and northern Alaska, one in eastern Montana, and one in North Dakota.\n\nAnd now, this week, the Senate will vote on a new Resolution of Disapproval under the Congressional Review Act.\n\nThis time for northeastern Wyoming.\n\nWhile none of those first three have been signed by the President yet, I stand here today \u2013 as we prepare to vote on this new Congressional Resolution of Disapproval \u2013 to reiterate the message I shared weeks ago.\n\nWe cannot, and we should not, manage our public lands through Congressional Review Act Resolutions.\n\nFirst, there are real consequences of reversing decades old Resource Management Plans.\n\nAnd those consequences could be devastating: to communities, to businesses, to jobs, and to our public lands.\n\nUntil this year, Congress had never used a Congressional Resolution of Disapproval to change or overturn a land use plan.\n\nThat\u2019s because no administration ever considered land use plans to be, quote-un-quote, \u201crules\u201d.\n\nLet me say that again: No administration, Republican or Democratic, since the Congressional Review Act was passed in 1996, has ever treated land use plans as \u201crules\u201d.\n\nHere's what that means: No land use plan has been submitted to Congress, as is required for rules.\n\nSo what does that mean? Because the Congressional Review Act prohibits rules from going into effect until 60 days after they\u2019re submitted to Congress...\n\n...and no administration has ever submitted a land use plan to Congress, ever...\n\n...then, if these plans are rules, every land use plan after 1996 never went into effect.\n\nIf they never went into effect, then all of the leases and permits and rights-of-way that were issued under them may not be legally valid, throwing us effectively into chaos on our public lands.\n\nWe\u2019re talking about every grazing permit, every energy right-of-way, recreational permit, timber sale, or \u2013 yes \u2013 oil and gas lease \u2013 issued under a plan finalized after 1996.\n\nAll of them are now open to litigation.\n\nEvery. Single. One.\n\nAnd the actual impacts on real Americans could be devastating.\n\nFor the country, it means potential chaos and uncertainty about what areas are protected on our public lands.\n\nThe damage will be irreparable \u2013 to the landscape, to our American birthright in these public lands, and to the communities that depend on these places to make a living.\n\nSecondly, we know that CRAs cut the public out of land use planning.\n\nThis vote and all the votes like it sweep away years and years of public input and conversations, both about the public lands on a particular landscape and public lands nationally.\n\nTo put it bluntly, Senate Republicans found a way to rewrite the rules of the game because they didn\u2019t like its outcome.\n\nAnd every vote they take to do it is insulting to the public.\n\nResource Management Plans are meant to include communities in the process of deciding how to use our public lands \u2013 not exclude them.\n\nDoes that mean everyone agrees with what is in these plans? No. Of course not.\n\nI know I don\u2019t necessarily agree with every piece of every Resource Management Plan I\u2019ve read.\n\nBut there\u2019s a process to address that. It takes work. It takes conversations. It takes advocacy.\n\nBut that process cannot and should not be replaced by one that involves Senators in Washington, D.C. deciding that they know better.\n\nFrom coming together to decide where to prioritize recreation and where to protect wild game habitat, to identifying what lands should be used for grazing or which cultural sites should be protected, Resource Management Plans take time because they incorporate input from the folks who own our public lands \u2013 Americans across this country.\n\nAnd when these plans are amended, that takes time, too.\n\nResource Management Plans aren\u2019t meant to be \u201cone and done\u201d.\n\nThey are meant to evolve.\n\nAnd here\u2019s how that works when it\u2019s done the right way:\n\nFirst, the public gets a say about what in the plan needs updating.\n\nBased on those comments, the Bureau of Land Management drafts a plan that includes alternatives.\n\nThose alternatives capture the range of public comments \u2013 making space for all of the voices that have weighed in to the process so far.\n\nVoices calling for more energy development.\n\nVoices calling for more conservation.\n\nVoices identifying important areas for recreation, for the benefit of locals and businesses alike.\n\nOnce that draft is completed, the public gets another chance to engage.\n\nIn person and with written comments, the public gets to say what they think the agency got right, and what should be considered moving forward.\n\nAnd based on that, BLM prepares a final product.\n\nAnd when BLM releases that final product, the public has ANOTHER chance to engage.\n\nThis time through a formal protest period, where individuals can register their objections.\n\nThroughout the entire process, the BLM meets with public land users, with tribes, with community members, with the leaders and elected officials in these communities.\n\nThe common theme here is clear:\n\nWhen it\u2019s done right, the public shapes how public lands are managed.\n\nThat is not the process being proposed here on the Senate floor.\n\nIt isn\u2019t one that invites the American public in.\n\nIt\u2019s one that shuts them out.\n\nAnd by undoing Resource Management Plans through Congressional Resolutions of Disapproval, Congress is telling Tribal communities that their opinions don\u2019t matter about their ancestral lands.\n\nThey\u2019re telling hunters that their opinions don\u2019t matter about the lands they just happen to use to fill their families' freezers.\n\nThey\u2019re telling hikers that their opinions don\u2019t matter about the routes they know like the back of their hand.\n\nTelling local communities that the way their land is used is no longer of importance.\n\nTelling all of us that our voices do not matter when it comes to the very lands that make up our American birthright.\n\nWhen we vote for CRAs as a way to manage our public lands, we vote against including communities in the process.\n\nWe shut them out from the decision-making process, when we should be inviting them in.\n\nAnd third, today\u2019s vote doesn\u2019t account for the hundreds of millions of dollars per day that are generated for local economies by public land recreation and recreators.\n\nRecreation on public lands is an economic powerhouse.\n\nThe recreation industry generates $128 billion in economic activity from public land every single year.\n\nIt drives $6 billion in federal tax revenue.\n\nIt creates jobs.\n\nFrom the Bureau of Land Management land alone, recreation supports 76,000 jobs and contributes more than $12 billion, billion with a b, in economic output.\n\nThese numbers are big, and they matter.\n\nThey matter to the outfitters. They matter to the small businesses. They matter to local communities.\n\nThey tell the story of just how valuable these lands are to Americans.\n\nValuable both as a birthright and in dollars-and-cents.\n\nAnd that rings true in Wyoming, where the plan we\u2019re voting on today is located.\n\nFor example, in 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, outdoor recreation contributed $2.2 billion to Wyoming\u2019s economy.\n\nThat\u2019s over four percent of Wyoming\u2019s GDP \u2013 the fifth highest rate in the nation.\n\nAnd the industry supported almost 16,000 jobs that same year.\n\nThat\u2019s over five percent of the state\u2019s total employment.\n\nNow, imagine that all of that is put at risk through Congressional actions that leave no room for public comment to voice your concerns.\n\nThere's no planning process.\n\nJust unilateral decisions made in Washington, D.C.\n\nSo instead of amending the plan and allowing for more public voices to be heard, more communities to weigh-in, as we\u2019ve done for decades before\u2014they just decide to override the whole process.\n\nBox the public out.\n\nWell, you don\u2019t have to imagine it.\n\nBecause that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing right now.\n\nAnd you deserve to know.\n\nNo land management plan is perfect\n\nAll of them need to be reviewed, updated, and improved.\n\nBut we have a process for that and it includes listening to our constituents -- letting them drive the decisions.\n\nCRAs don\u2019t do that. They are a blunt instrument.\n\nThey do the opposite \u2013 shutting out the public and rigging a process to guarantee an outcome of Senate Republicans\u2019 choosing.\n\nSo I stand here today and urge all of you to vote against this CRA.\n\nPublic lands belong in public lands, they belong to all of us.\n\nAnd that means that every single person deserves a chance to provide input on how they\u2019re managed.\n\nSo I urge my colleagues to vote no on this resolution of disapproval.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:52:45Z"]], "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://www.heinrich.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/icymi-heinrich-blasts-congressional-republicans-for-doubling-down-on-legislation-that-threatens-public-lands"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.0104728862643242, "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"}