Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. CULBERSON. Madam Chair, I hope to provide some clarity to this by quoting directly from the guidance that the agency has given us. Now, it's important to remember that this is guidance, not a rule. The Obama administration, President Obama has repeatedly and proudly said that if Congress won't act, he will. Last week he said he was going to stand up and, through executive order, do all that he can to try to bring carbon emissions under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government and try to restrict CO

2 by executive order.

Here the Obama administration is doing what the law says it can't do, and that is expand the jurisdiction of the EPA and the Army Corps by guidance, not by using a rule. The law says they have to issue a rule, get public input, have hearings. Here they simply got a bunch of their lawyers together and issued guidance to their agencies around the country. And to quote directly from the guidance, the Obama administration directs:

The agencies to interpret waters in the region to be the watershed boundary defined by the geographic area that drains to the nearest downstream traditional navigable water or interstate water through a single point of entry.

The geographic boundary, every stream, every rivulet, no matter how vertical it is, the Supreme Court and the statute said the EPA is limited to regulating navigable waters. The way this reads, literally, the EPA and the Army Corps now, through this guidance, have the authority to regulate every single stream of water that drains in the geographic area, in the watershed boundary, that drains to the nearest traditional navigable water.

That is an incredible expansion of Federal power. As the gentleman from Idaho quite correctly said, this was done outside of the normal rulemaking process because the Obama administration knew that the public would overwhelmingly disapprove of this, that the Congress would disapprove of this, that this goes beyond what the Supreme Court intended, that this goes beyond what the law allows, so they did it through the back door using lawyers and bureaucrats to write a 33-page document that you literally have to go to the back end of to learn that they are attempting to exercise jurisdiction over every stream of water in the geographic area that drains to the nearest navigable waterway.

That's why Chairman Frelinghuysen and Chairman Rogers included this language to cut off funding for the implementation of this rule, because we've discovered that the Obama administration will do whatever they want, regardless of the Constitution. They ignore subpoenas. They ignore congressional hearings. They ignore letters from Congress. They ignore everything except when you cut off the money. That's the only way to make the Obama administration follow the law.

Vote against this amendment to ensure that the Obama administration follows the law and that we protect private property rights and keep the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers off of people's private property across America. I urge Members to oppose the gentleman's amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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