United States Congresswoman Harriet Hageman called into SVI Radio’s Weekday Wake-Up morning show on Thursday, July 17 with her monthly report. Hageman discussed a variety of topics including funding for public broadcasting, passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, public lands and an act that would delist the Grizzly Bear from the Endangered Species List.

A full transcript of the interview can be heard below.

 

(0:00) Heading into our guest interview segment and joining us live over the phone right now with (0:04) her monthly report is U.S. Congresswoman Harriet Hageman today from Wyoming. Congresswoman, (0:09) good morning. Thanks for your time.

How are you today? Good morning, and I’m doing absolutely (0:14) wonderful. Thank you. Hey, thanks for hopping on the air this morning.

I wanted to start with (0:19) one of the topics of discussion. Part of a bill that passed the House now is in the Senate being (0:24) discussed and potentially going back to the House, and funding cuts in the discussion, (0:29) if you will, for public broadcasting across the nation. I want to get your thoughts on this and (0:35) why you think this is an issue right now.

So what you’re referring to is the rescissions package, (0:42) and that’s about a $9 billion package to rescind spending that had previously been approved by (0:48) Congress. One aspect of that is defunding federal funds from NPR, public broadcasting, (0:56) that sort of thing. I support it for a variety of reasons, and one of them is we’re $37 trillion (1:02) in debt.

And I think probably NPR and public radio and public TV might have made sense at (1:11) one time when we had very few options and very, very little access to national and international (1:17) news. But clearly that has changed. That circumstance has changed.

There are more (1:22) radio stations than you can even count. We have access to the internet, news sources that way, TV, (1:29) streaming, Netflix, Prime, stations that are dedicated solely to the arts, solely to news, (1:37) that sort of thing. I just don’t think that it’s necessary.

I know that there’s been discussion (1:43) about whether NPR and these stations are biased, which I think that they are, but that isn’t the (1:49) biggest issue for me. I think one thing as government that we need to get better at is (1:54) once we’ve solved the problem, we shouldn’t continue with the programs that were created (1:59) to solve that problem. So this is an example of that.

We don’t need public radio and public TV, (2:06) and to the extent that people want to support the programming for PBS or NPR, they can sure (2:13) donate their own money to do that. As I’ve often said, I really like the radio station KFBC, (2:19) but I don’t believe other people ought to subsidize my listening to that. And that’s (2:25) how I feel about this as well.

People can donate money if they want to keep this programming in (2:30) existence. You mentioned this being part of that rescissions package or rescissions bill. What else (2:35) is in that bill that is worth highlighting? Well, I think some of the most important things that (2:40) are in that bill relate to USAID funding.

Now, in the interest of being fully transparent, (2:46) I actually voted a year and a half ago to defund USAID because I had a pretty good idea of what it (2:52) was and what it was doing. It’s truly an insidious organization that also has outlived its usefulness (2:59) for many reasons, including the fact that it obviously was deflecting its resources to things (3:05) it never should have been spending money on. An example was sending $500,000 to advance (3:11) atheism in Tibet.

That’s just one example of the kind of spending that we know USAID was engaged (3:18) in. There are many, many others as well. It was really, really crazy what we were spending on.

(3:26) $1 million for voter ID in Haiti, $6 million for net zero cities in Mexico, $3 million for Iraqi (3:35) Sesame Street, $2.1 million for climate resilience in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and East Africa, (3:42) $500,000 for electric buses in Rwanda. We don’t need to be spending our hard-earned tax money (3:48) on these kinds of programs. And so, much of this rescission package centers around (3:54) the wasteful spending and the absolute ridiculous spending of USAID.

(4:01) U.S. Congresswoman Harriet Hageman on the Weekday Wakeup this morning. (4:03) Since we last talked, Congresswoman, the One Big Beautiful Bill was passed. Your thoughts on that? (4:10) Maybe go back a week or two when that took place and some of the highlights of that bill.

(4:15) Well, sure. And again, the three areas that I have been talking the most about relate to the tax (4:21) policy, keeping the 2017 Trump tax cuts in place to avoid a 22% increase in taxes at the end of (4:30) this year, and making those tax rates permanent, taking less money away from our hardworking (4:36) citizens and stockpiling it or laundering it through Washington, D.C. So, the tax package (4:43) that came out of the House remained largely intact in the Senate, and I think we did some (4:48) really good work there. The other one, it relates to immigration.

And that, again, (4:54) came out largely from the House of Representatives and the Judiciary Committee that I am on, (5:00) providing funding for an additional 10,000 ICE agents, funding for the border wall, (5:06) an additional 705 miles to complete the border wall. The other thing that we put in place in (5:12) the Judiciary Committee with regard to immigration reform is putting more of a fee-based structure (5:18) in place so that the people who are actually using our immigration system are the ones that (5:23) are going to be paying for it rather than the American taxpaying public. So, if you want to (5:28) apply for a green card or you’re seeking asylum or you’re seeking other types of services, (5:34) just like we have with our court fees, you will then need to pay the fees to be able to (5:40) use those services in our immigration system.

So, there’s some very good things there in (5:46) immigration. And then from the standpoint of Wyoming, we worked very, very hard to get some (5:51) good energy policy into that bill, including reducing royalty rates for our coal mines and (5:58) our oil and gas producers, thereby putting additional money in their pocket to reinvest (6:03) in the state of Wyoming. And just one coal company in Wyoming, and not even one of our larger ones, (6:08) they said that change alone will save them $15 million that they can then reinvest in that mine (6:14) as well as in their workers.

We also have mandatory leasing for 4 million acres for coal (6:21) and mandatory oil and gas leases. We also are trying to do more in the space of affordable (6:29) and reliable energy. And then finally, getting rid of, at least phasing out over time, (6:36) some of the subsidies associated with unreliable and unaffordable energy so that we can get back (6:43) to focusing on and directing our assets towards affordable and reliable energy, which is what (6:49) Wyoming is so good at producing.

So, those are just some of the things that I think are important (6:53) for the state of Wyoming. One of the big aspects that was, we talked about this at length last (6:59) time you were on the air with us, Mike Lee put in that provision when it was in the Senate side (7:04) to potentially sell off parcels of public land, if you will. And we know what happened there, (7:10) and it eventually was taken out from at least what I understand.

But maybe expand more on (7:15) your overall thought with public lands after how that all transpired and public access to those (7:22) lands. And then there’s also that side discussion is, should the states take over control and (7:28) management of those federal public lands? So, one of the things that I think was (7:34) kind of a sad situation with regard to what Mike Lee was doing was that there was so much (7:39) misinformation surrounding it. In fact, there was more misinformation than accurate information put (7:46) out there.

I think that the Wilderness Society was one of the worst offenders in that regard. (7:52) And ironically enough, the Wilderness Society, the head of that is now a woman by the name of (7:57) Tracy Stone Manning. She was the head of BLM under Joe Biden.

And while their hyperbolic (8:06) news releases and efforts to raise money on the Mike Lee proposal went out far and wide, (8:12) kind of a hair on fire screaming, they’re going to be selling millions and millions of acres and (8:18) all of this just incredible nonsense that they knew was untrue, but they didn’t care. (8:23) It’s ironic to me because Tracy Stone Manning was the head of BLM when they issued the Rock Springs (8:29) RMP. And in that Rock Springs RMP that just covers the Rock Springs district, she was proposing to (8:36) dispose of 48,000 acres of BLM land.

So, it’s funny to me, Mike Lee’s bill would have been (8:44) substantially less than that. It would have covered 11 Western states, the 11 Western states (8:51) that have the majority of federal land. So, even in her official role as the head of BLM, she was (8:57) advocating for the disposal of 48,000 acres of land.

What Mike Lee was proposing was something (9:03) that was very narrow and very focused and very community driven. And it didn’t go through the (9:08) house. I didn’t vote on it.

I wasn’t involved in writing it, but I did try to correct some of the (9:13) misinformation. It really is to help us to try to address housing needs, especially in landlocked (9:21) like Wyoming and Utah and Idaho and Arizona and New Mexico, where we have such a huge federal (9:29) footprint. Kemmerer is right there, is a very good example of that.

We’re getting more jobs (9:35) in the Kemmerer area. Those jobs are hopefully going to be increasing over time. And we don’t (9:41) have sufficient housing there, but Kemmerer’s landlocked with BLM lands.

So, what Mike Lee’s (9:46) bill would have done is allowed that local community to work with the BLM to identify (9:51) parcels contiguous to Kemmerer that could have then been used and developed for purposes of (9:57) housing. Right now, we have a shortage of about 2.8 million units in the Western United States. (10:03) That’s why housing is so expensive, why young people are not able to afford houses, because (10:08) we just don’t have sufficient supply.

Mike Lee’s bill focusing on approximately 1 million acres (10:14) in 11 Western states would have been sufficient to provide for about a million homes. (10:20) And also keep in mind, the federal government owns 645 million acres. So, you’re talking about (10:27) between 0.25 and 0.5% of one percentage point of federal land is all that he was targeting.

So, (10:36) again, there was a lot of misinformation claiming that it was going to cover 15 million acres here (10:41) and 45 million acres over there, and the bighorns were up for sale, and none of that was true. That (10:48) was just a mechanism by which these radical environmental groups could raise money into (10:53) their coffers and scare people. Well, Congresswoman, appreciate your time.

Anything else you’d like to (10:58) mention that you’re working on or being involved in right now in Washington, D.C.? So, just this (11:04) week, we got the Grizzly Bear State Recovery Plan Act out of the Natural Resources Committee to (11:13) delist the greater Yellowstone ecosystem grizzly bear. The grizzly bear was listed as threatened (11:18) in 1975. It has now been recovered for well over 25 years, going on 30 years, three decades that (11:28) we have met and exceeded the recovery goals.

Recovery goals were around 500. We have over (11:33) 1,100 grizzlies in Wyoming in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The Fish and Wildlife (11:40) Service also admits that the Yellowstone area is saturated, to use their word, with grizzly bears.

(11:47) They need to be delisted. This is an Endangered Species Act success story. Wyoming has invested (11:53) over $1 million in grizzly recovery.

We have nine full-time employees in the Game and Fish (11:59) Department dedicated to grizzly recovery. But because of an activist judge out of Montana, (12:06) they keep blocking the delisting. So, this is the congressional delisting.

We’ve done this before (12:12) with the gray wolves in Idaho and Montana. It works very, very well, and we got that bill out (12:17) of committee this week, and hopefully we’ll get it to the floor, and maybe we can move forward with (12:22) grizzly delisting in the near-distant future. Certainly something worth watching.

Absolutely (12:30) well. Congresswoman, again, as always, thank you so much for your time. Look forward to speaking (12:34) again next week.

Thank you. Bye. It’s all part of the weekday wake-up this morning on the SBI (12:40) Radio Network.