Murkowski Looking at Cuts to Interior’s Budget After Repeated, Unlawful Resource Restrictions in Alaska
“If Interior is going to use its funding to make these types of decisions, then we need to find ways to cut your budget, until the Department gets the point…”
Washington, DC—U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) today suggested she would seek to cut the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) budget, unless and until the Department stops targeting responsible resource development in Alaska and returns to following federal law and the balanced management it provides for the state’s federal lands.
Haaland appeared at a hearing held by the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, where Murkowski is Ranking Member, to testify about the Biden administration’s budget request for DOI for Fiscal Year 2025.
Murkowski began her opening comments by recapping decisions from DOI to close off 13 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve (NPR-A), in direct defiance of the law and without adequate consultation with Alaska Natives and tribal entities on the North Slope; reject the Ambler Access Project, which is guaranteed by federal law and would provide a crucial domestic supply of critical minerals necessary for clean energy and defense; and issue a major federal land plan that closes down millions more federal acres in Alaska while ignoring the directives of a law that Murkowski wrote to lift Public Land Orders in the state. Interior announced all three actions on a single day, April 19, earlier this year.
“I see a Department ignoring the law with regard to Ambler, our petroleum reserve, our land management plans, our Coastal Plain, and the prioritization of conservation above all else,” Murkowski said. “A few months ago, I wrote language directing you to go back and consult with Alaska Natives on the North Slope before finalizing the NPR-A rule. If the Department had done that, you would have learned they didn’t support that rule. You’d know they don’t want Interior to ‘protect’ them from the economic development that has done more to increase their life expectancies than anything else. But you ignored that direction, and them, and the law, and Alaska’s congressional delegation, and Alaska’s state legislature, and issued a bad rule.
“Why are we treated like one big National Park and Wildlife Refuge, instead of a state that has balanced the need for development and the desire for conservation? When one end of that bargain is lost, the whole thing is lost, and I don’t think any of it can stand. It took decades to settle Alaska lands matters, but less than four years for this administration to turn it upside down,” Murkowski continued. “I can’t sit here and talk about your budget request—all I can think is, if Interior is going to use its funding to make these types of decisions, then we need to find ways to cut your budget, until the Department gets the point, and returns to following the law and the balances reflected in it.”
You can view Murkowski’s full remarks here.
To watch Murkowski’s exchange with Haaland on DOI’s decision to reject the Ambler Access Project—where she showed Haaland the plain text of the law and asked her to explain what part allows Interior to choose a “no action” alternative—please click here.
To watch Murkowski’s exchange with Haaland on the Department’s rule closing off Alaska’s petroleum reserve—where she asked Haaland to explain her claims about the rule’s scientific backing—please click here.
To watch Murkowski’s exchange with Haaland on DOI’s lack of adequate consultation—where she detailed the failed attempts from Alaska’s Congressional Delegation to arrange meetings for the Secretary with visiting stakeholders from Alaska—please click here.
