Hearings to examine the President's proposed budget request for fiscal year 2026 for the Department of the Interior.

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

2025-06-11

Source: Congress.gov

Summary

This meeting focuses on the U.S. Department of the Interior's Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposal and the department's priorities under Secretary Doug Burgum. The Chairman emphasizes fiscal responsibility, while the Ranking Member and other senators express significant concerns about proposed budget cuts and their potential impact on public services.[ 00:23:45-00:23:55 ]

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 Secretary Burgum outlines the department's strategy to align with the President's agenda, focusing on energy production, critical minerals, and operational efficiencies.

Themes

Budget and Fiscal Responsibility

Chairman Barrasso highlighted the importance of fiscal responsibility, praising President Trump's budget for addressing decades of unchecked federal spending and threatening structural deficits. Secretary Burgum presented a budget request of $14.4 billion, which he stated would provide significant savings to American taxpayers.[ 00:34:48 ]

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 Conversely, Senator Heinrich strongly criticized the proposed 30% cut across programs, arguing it would severely cripple the department and negatively impact national parks, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Bureau of Reclamation, and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).[ 00:23:45-00:23:55 ]

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 Senator King echoed these concerns, calling the 37% reduction to the National Park Service budget an "insult to the Congress" and questioning the minimal deficit reduction gained versus the damage to public lands. Secretary Burgum defended the cuts, emphasizing that greater efficiency, reduced overhead, and reallocating resources could improve services and operations without increased spending.

Energy Dominance and Critical Minerals

Secretary Burgum emphasized the budget's strategic investments in achieving energy dominance, aiming to increase the production of affordable, reliable energy on federal lands and streamline regulatory processes. He cited increased oil production in the Gulf of America and the promotion of American coal for electricity, steel, and critical minerals as key initiatives. The department is also focused on positioning the U.S. as a leader in critical and rare earth mineral production to secure domestic supply chains and reduce reliance on adversarial nations. Several senators, including Hoeven and Cassidy, expressed strong support for these efforts, highlighting the importance of predictable lease sales and exploring deep-sea mining for critical minerals.[ 01:14:43-01:14:57 ]

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 Senator Wyden, however, raised concerns that the administration's current approach might hinder the growth of clean energy sources.

Public Land Management and Housing

The discussion included efforts to address the Western housing crisis by making underutilized federal land available, with Chairman Barrasso and Secretary Burgum citing the Southern Nevada Lands Act as a successful model for this approach.[ 00:35:16-00:36:21 ]

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 Secretary Burgum clarified that these efforts focus on low-value federal land adjacent to urban areas, not national parks or valuable recreational sites. Senator Cortez Masto expressed significant alarm over a potential reconciliation package that could allow the sale of up to 2 million acres of federal land without adequate stakeholder consultation, especially if the funds are diverted from local land management. She questioned the Secretary's involvement in such proposals and underscored the need for local engagement, particularly given the large proportion of federal land in Western states like Nevada.

Wildfire Management

Secretary Burgum proposed a significant reform to federal wildland fire management by consolidating all wildland fire responsibilities into a new U.S. Wildland Fire Service within the Department of Interior. He highlighted the current system's duplicative and ineffective structure, advocating for streamlined operations, quicker response times, and enhanced technology to protect communities and save lives. Senators King and Murkowski expressed bipartisan support for this unification effort, recognizing its potential to improve efficiency and coordination in battling wildfires.[ 02:15:33-02:15:49 ]

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Departmental Staffing and Operations

Senator Heinrich raised concerns about substantial staff vacancies across the Department of Interior, including critical leadership positions and a shortfall in seasonal park hires. Senator King presented data illustrating a widening gap between national park visitation and staffing levels, deeming the proposed budget cuts irresponsible amidst existing underfunding. Secretary Burgum asserted that improved visitor experiences could be achieved by reducing overhead and redeploying staff to parks. Senator Hrbuna also expressed concerns about federal employee reductions and demanded transparency regarding specific positions and justifications for their elimination, particularly in Hawaii. The Secretary committed to providing this information, noting that current reductions primarily stemmed from early retirement options and the centralization of finance, HR, and IT functions.[ 01:22:38-01:22:58 ]

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[ 02:05:43-02:05:47 ]

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 Chairman Barrasso urged swift confirmation of senior nominees to address the department's personnel needs.

Tone of the Meeting

The meeting's tone was notably contentious and critical, particularly from Democratic senators, who voiced strong objections to the proposed budget cuts and their perceived negative impact on public lands and services.[ 00:23:45-00:23:55 ]

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 Conversely, Republican senators largely supported Secretary Burgum's agenda, emphasizing fiscal conservatism, energy independence, and operational streamlining.[ 01:12:08-01:13:11 ]

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 Secretary Burgum maintained a confident and pragmatic stance, defending his department's budget and strategies as essential for efficiency and alignment with presidential priorities. Despite these tensions, there were moments of bipartisan consensus, especially regarding the importance of effective wildfire management and collaboration on specific initiatives.[ 02:15:33-02:15:49 ]

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 Overall, the discussion revealed underlying disagreements about how to balance fiscal responsibility with the preservation and management of national resources and public services.

Participants

Transcript

Thank you.   Thank you.
Good morning.  The committee will come to order.  We'll be hearing today from Secretary Doug Burgum as we discuss the fiscal year 2026 budget for the U.S.  Department of the Interior.  Welcome, Mr. Secretary, and to the Secretary's team.  Thanks for being here today.  When we last heard from you as a committee back in January, you were President Trump's nominee to lead the department at that time.   You've since been confirmed and have now taken the reins at the Department of the Interior.  And this committee, and ultimately the full Senate, has since considered and confirmed Kate McGregor to be your deputy secretary.  This committee has already favorably reported several additional nominees for senior positions within your department who are now pending on the Senate floor.   We encourage Senate leadership to bring those nominees to the floor quickly so that we can provide you with the personnel, the people you need to help you lead the department in carrying out the important work that you do there on behalf of the American people, for which we're very grateful.  I just add that very honored to have supported you and thrilled with the work that you're doing so far.  Last year, the Department of the Interior had a budget of $16 billion.   But our nation simply cannot fund on the scale that we have for decades.  We've spent money that we don't have, and so we must borrow it, often from our adversaries and saddle our children and even our grandchildren with that debt, much of which has been accumulated before some of the people who have to pay it back were even born or were old enough to vote.  It's a form of taxation without representation.  We generally frown on that in this country.   President Trump knows that, and it shows in the budget that he sent to Congress.
By acknowledging limits on what can be spent, a reality that every family, every business, every other organization in America deals with on a daily basis, the budget that the President sent to Congress is a long overdue step in the right direction.  Decades of unchecked federal spending have created structural deficits that now threaten our   economic security, and our ability to respond to real emergencies.  President Trump's budget begins the challenging but essential work of turning that gargantuan ship around.  That work falls in part to your department, Secretary Burgum, from land and water management to energy and mineral development to partnerships with states, territories, and local governments.  The decisions made at Interior affect millions of Americans and shape the future.   of our public lands, of our economy, and, of course, our national security.  The department has a hand in many things, in everything from infrastructure projects to mineral policies that either enable or block our ability to compete effectively with China.  It's responsible for stewarding   vast tracts of land while supporting rural communities that depend on access to those same lands for jobs, for housing, for growth, for energy, for water, and many, many other things.  In the best case, the Department of the Interior can serve as a partner to the states and an enabler of prosperity.  In the worst case, it can become a   bureaucratic gatekeeper that shuts out the voices of local communities.  This administration is committed, of course, to the former.  President Trump's budget sets clear expectations.  Get results, streamline operations, and stay focused on core responsibilities.
That means resisting mission creep, reining in regulatory overreach, and prioritizing the needs of working Americans over Washington's special interests.  I want to commend   the recent opinion by the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, which affirms what many of us have long argued, that the president has legal authority to consider monument designations that are overbroad, duplicative, or disconnected from the statute's stated purpose.  For nearly essentially, the federal government has often operated under a flawed interpretation of the Antiquities Act.   one that allowed presidents to unilaterally lock up millions of acres of land, but denied future presidents the authority to undo or even revise those designations.  But as OLC's recent opinion discusses at length, there is actually a long history spanning decades of presidents reducing the size of previously designated national monuments or even de-designating them altogether.  With this new legal clarity,   We hope the Department of the Interior will work with us to ensure that public lands are managed in a way that reflects the needs of those who live closest to them.  Today's hearing is about the kind of government we want to have and what it may take to achieve that.  It's about whether the Department is prepared to implement the President's agenda with the urgency and discipline that this particular moment in history requires.   So we look forward to hearing from you and intend to align the department's operations with the president's budget, hearing how you intend to do those things and how you'll ensure that the Department of the Interior may plan to deliver on President Trump's agenda.  So again, Mr. Secretary, welcome.  And I'd now like to recognize my friend and colleague, the ranking member on the committee, Senator Heinrich, for his opening statement.
Thank you, Chairman.

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