Gosar celebrates House advancement of STREAM Act

U.S. Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-AZ) applauded the 235-188 House vote to advance the Supporting Transparent Regulatory and Environmental Actions in Mining (STREAM) Act, for which he is a co-sponsor.

“This important legislation will save mining jobs throughout the country and put an end to the Obama Administration’s secret science justification for the President’s war on coal,” Gosar said. “Obama’s continued efforts to implement his ideologically-driven coal regulations will kill hundreds of thousands of jobs and take billions of dollars out of the pockets of hard-working Americans.”

The STREAM Act, or H.R. 1644, seeks to block the Department of Interior’s (DOI) proposed Stream Buffer Zone Rule, and create new regulatory requirements to prevent the DOI from using the same methods, which Gosar describes as “deception and a lack of transparency,” in creating future rules.

“Shamefully, states — which have traditionally had primary jurisdiction on these matters regulating 97 percent of the nation’s coal mines — were not consulted in this process,” Gosar said. “To make matters worse, information leaked in 2011 when the agency was crafting this new mandate indicated the agency was trying to cover up job losses that would be associated with this new rule. The agency has even changed the technical name of this proposal in an attempt to further pull the wool over the American public’s eyes.”