Fiscal Year 2026 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Bill
House Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies
2025-07-15
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Source: Congress.gov
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The Committee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies will come to order. I'm pleased to be here marking up the fiscal year 2026 Interior Appropriations Bill with Chairman Cole, Ranking Member DeLauro, Subcommittee Ranking Member Pingree, and the members of the subcommittee. Those members that aren't here will be here before long.
And so they'll be wandering in here before long. Better be before long, or we'll get outvoted. I'd like to thank, yeah, I was going to say, that might shorten your opening statements. Let's go straight to the vote. I'd like to thank Chairman Cole for his leadership of the committee and getting us to this point in what is an unusual fiscal year with the new administration coming in and all the things that have been done. It has been a difficult appropriation season in Chairman Cole. And Ranking Member DeLauro have done a good job of getting us to where we are. I want to recognize Ranking Member DeLauro and Ranking Member Pingree. Ranking Member Pingree has consistently been a wonderful partner. And I appreciate her commitment to the subcommittee's issues. I look forward to continuing our work together to move this interior bill forward. Lastly, I want to thank members of the staff on both sides of the aisle. They are truly the people that do the hard work of putting these appropriation bills together. And they do a fantastic job without their Without their dedication, we would never get as far as we do. And so both the ranking and majority members of the staff are truly appreciated. The fiscal year 2026 Interior Bill provides $37.97 billion, which is $2.5 billion or 6.2% below the enacted level. I've consistently said that I refuse to balance the budget on the backs of the tribes, so I'm proud that this bill makes strong investments to further the federal government's trust and treaty responsibilities. It doesn't meet it, but it furthers it in the direction that this committee has been working on for the last decade under both Republican and Democratic leadership. The bill provides $8.4 billion for Indian health services, $1.5 billion for the Bureau of Indian Education, $2.9 billion for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, including $771.84 million for public safety and justice programs to support law enforcement in Indian country,
This includes $31 million for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Initiative, an issue that is very important to me and members of this committee. We've had a hearing on this when we discovered. And most people don't know that we lose 6,000 murdered and missing indigenous people every year off reservations and stuff. And this is something that is a huge issue that we've got to address. This moves us in that direction. This bill also fully funds must-pay costs for our tribes. including contract support costs and 105L leases. The total funding for Indian Country reflects the same level overall that we provided in our 2025 House Interior Bill last year. The bill again fully funds the payment in lieu of taxes program, which provides payments to nearly every state in the country for certain tax-exempt federal lands. Most of our states received their 25PL PILT payments last month, and this bill ensures that This bipartisan program continues to be fully funded.
To meet our obligations while prioritizing these critical programs, the bill right-sizes funding for most other appropriations. For example, The EPA has cut by nearly $350 million, or 23% below the enacted level. This cut is deeper than the cut in last year's 25 House Interior Bill, with reductions targeted to internal operating programs and regulatory activities. The bill continues to fund grants that go directly to states and tribes for water infrastructure projects and to help fulfill their delegated authority under federal laws like the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. These programs are important for issuing permits for continued development and economic growth. The bill also contains community project funding for EPA clean and drinking water infrastructure projects. While requests greatly exceed the funding available for the projects, we did our best to provide some funding for all eligible projects given the impact these dollars will have in communities across the country. Lastly, in terms of policy, the bill echoes this administration's efforts to roll back costly regulatory overreach from the prior administration and promote domestic energy production by one, halting heavy-handed job-killing EPA Biden-era regulations, limiting the prior administration's attempts to abuse the Endangered Species Act and ensure continued access to our public lands, and expanding access to hard rock and critical minerals. In closing, I'm pleased that this bill focuses spending where it is needed most and makes great strides to address critical needs across the Indian country. The bill doubles down on rolling back burdensome and costly regulations from the prior administration, and it helps unleash American energy and domestic mineral development. I look forward to working with Ranking Member Pingree and other members to move this bill, this interior bill, towards enactment.
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