Nominations of Tracy Stone-Manning and David Chipman

Floor Speech

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Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss two troubling nominations by President Biden for positions that have very real impacts on my State of Wyoming and the people who live there.

One of the simplest yet truest rules of governance is that personnel is policy. We have seen this rule play out over and over under President Biden.

During last year's election, the media created a narrative that a Biden Presidency would unite the country with bipartisanship. That has not happened. Many of the President's policies have been extreme appeals to the far left and decidedly hostile to our way of life in Wyoming and the West.

I believe much of this can be traced to the people with whom he has surrounded himself and to those he has appointed. That is why I am so concerned about two of the President's nominees that the Senate is considering.

First, there is Tracy Stone-Manning, President Biden's nominee to serve as Director of the Bureau of Land Management. I am particularly interested in this nomination because the BLM manages about 18 million acres in Wyoming and huge tracts of land throughout the West. In fact, 90 percent of Federal and public land is west of the Mississippi.

We need a land manager who understands, respects, and implements multiple use of public lands with which Americans in the West are particularly accustomed.

The BLM has historically managed for multiple use, which is, in many cases, required by law. Under Ms. Stone-Manning, I am very concerned that multiple-use principles will change. The reason is quite simple. This nominee is a radical. She has been involved with ecoterrorists in the past, including a tree-spiking incident in Idaho.

Her extremist ties and past activism have even led a former Obama BLM Director to withdraw his support for her. Wyoming and other States in the West would be completely hamstrung if BLM land policy changed. Given Ms. Stone-Manning's militant history, I am not sure she would care.

Then there is David Chipman, President Biden's nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. One would be hard- pressed to identify a worse candidate for the job.

According to reports, Chipman may have lost his own gun while serving as an ATF agent. He also failed twice to define the term ``assault weapon'' during his confirmation hearing. This level of irresponsibility and lack of basic firearms knowledge is hardly an endorsement for someone tasked with overseeing gun use in the United States.

Chipman has also reportedly accused Black Americans who were successful on an ATF test of cheating because, in his opinion, too many were passing the test.

Let's be real. This kind of discrimination would tank a Republican candidate.

Mr. Chipman has also endorsed efforts to defund the police and has supported the science fiction-sounding notion of precrime arrests. His idea of effective law enforcement would be to arrest people before they commit crimes.

I came to Washington to solve real problems and get things done. I don't care if the solutions come from the right or the left. I am here to support good legislation and good policy. That is why I have backed President Biden's decision to bring our troops home from Afghanistan. That is why I have supported many of his nominees with whom I may disagree on some policy points, but they are nonetheless qualified for the roles--nominees including Janet Yellen, Pete Buttigieg, and Gary Gensler.

But based on their past experience and expressed behavior, Tracy Stone-Manning and David Chipman have disqualified themselves and are direct contradictions to the bipartisanship and unity that President Biden called for and promised in his inaugural address.

If these extremist nominees are confirmed, they will direct their respective agencies toward ends that are actively and openly hostile to the Wyoming way of life that I am here in Washington to support and defend.

I call on President Biden to withdraw these names and, instead, send us nominees for these positions who better reflect the bipartisan reputation the President spent decades cultivating in this Senate. If the President does not withdraw these nominees, I strongly urge my colleagues to vote to reject them.

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