Source: United States Senator for New Mexico Martin Heinrich
WASHINGTON — In his opening statement, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ranking Member on the U.S. Energy and Natural Resources Committee, grilled the U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum over the Trump Administration’s budget request for the Department of the Interior, which will further gut the Department already reeling from chaos and mismanagement by the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE.
VIDEO: Ranking Member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) delivers opening remarks on the Department of Interior’s Fiscal 2026 budget request before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, June 11, 2025.
“Mr. Secretary, when you were going through the confirmation process, I believed that you would be a responsible steward of our public lands, conservative, of course, but responsible. And with your experience in the private sector and as a governor, I believed that you could rein in the sometimes reckless tendencies of DOGE, at least within the Department of Interior,” said Heinrich in his opening statement. “We’re never going to agree on everything, but I thought we could agree that our public lands are the greatest heritage of our nation, and we have a responsibility to hand them down to the next generation, well-stewarded.
Heinrich continued, “This budget request will not resource your department to responsibly steward our lands and waters. The proposal for the Interior Department operations next year includes a 30 percent cut across programs. It’s no exaggeration to say that this would cripple the Department as we know it.”
A video of Heinrich’s opening remarks is here.
A transcript of Heinrich’s remarks as delivered is below:
We are here today to talk about the budget proposal of a department that is, quite frankly, not resourced to meet its mission.
Parks are cutting hours and services for visitors. Ranger tours are cancelled. Toilets are overflowing and trashcans sit unemptied.
Permits are languishing on empty desks. Energy projects are delayed or cancelled.
Contracts slowly wind their way through a byzantine bureaucracy that was invented overnight.
The senior leadership positions at the department are mostly vacant.
Roughly 100 park superintendent positions are vacant. Five of the seven regional director positions for the National Park Service sit empty.
At the Bureau of Land Management, about a third of senior leadership positions are vacant, including both deputy directors and the director position itself.
And the front-line staff is in no better shape.
After promising to hire 7,700 seasonal employees to serve Americans visiting their national parks this summer, the Park Service has managed, at least according to public reports, to hire only half that. Memorial Day is gone. The 4th of July just around the corner.
And all of this has occurred before this budget request is put place.
Mr. Secretary, when you were going through the confirmation process, I believed that you would be a responsible steward of our public lands, conservative, of course, but responsible. And with your experience in the private sector and as a governor, I believed that you could rein in the sometimes reckless tendencies of DOGE, at least within the Department of Interior.
We’re never going to agree on everything, but I thought we could agree that our public lands are the greatest heritage of our nation, and we have a responsibility to hand them down to the next generation, well-stewarded.
This budget request will not resource your department to responsibly steward our lands and waters.
The proposal for the Interior Department operations next year includes a 30 percent cut across programs.
It’s no exaggeration to say that this would cripple the department as we know it.
The cut to the Park Service is paid for by getting rid of most park system units.
The National Park System would have to lose more than 350 of its 433 units to swallow that kind of a proposed cut.
And yet, the Department has still not told us which units those might be.
Any hope for a speedier permitting system from the BLM is gone, with a proposed 35 percent cut to that agency.
Anyone who needs a recreation permit, a right-of-way, or a grazing lease will be left waiting. That is not efficiency.
The 35 percent cut to the Bureau of Reclamation puts critical water infrastructure at risk of failing to safely deliver water to farmers, fish, and people.
The proposal completely eliminates the WaterSMART program that provides resources to local, often rural communities and water users to conserve water and to make efficiency improvements to their water infrastructure, thereby reducing conflicts over this scarce resource.
The nearly 40 percent cut to the U.S. Geological Survey would kneecap the scientific research we need to understand how our natural world is changing in the face of a changing climate
And the major reduction to the Natural Hazards program would leave communities more vulnerable to earthquakes, volcanos, and landslides.
The proposal also completely eliminates the biological resources program at USGS, which could mean abandoning bird flu monitoring, closing the most advanced wildlife disease lab in the United States, and discontinuing research efforts for climate adaptation.
The USGS migratory bird research also directly informs the Fish and Wildlife Service’s bag limits for migratory bird hunting seasons. Eliminating this research would hobble the management of migratory bird hunting seasons.
One of the seven pillars of the North American model of wildlife conservation, the foundation of wildlife management in the United States, is scientific management. We cannot manage wildlife without wildlife science.
The budget proposal also overturns the bipartisan work of this committee in 2020 to pass the Great American Outdoors Act signed into law by this president.
Instead of supporting reauthorization of this great accomplishment, this budget robs the Land and Water Conservation Fund in order to pay for deferred maintenance projects.
And lastly, but most importantly, this budget request, if implemented, would cause irreparable harm to Indian Country.
With 30-plus percent cuts to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education, this budget represents a dereliction of every treaty obligation this country has to tribes and their members.
This proposal even cuts the BIA’s Public Safety account, belying any claim that this administration might try to make that it cares for the safety of people of Indian Country.
Mr. Secretary, you promised to prioritize the needs of Indian country in your time leading this department, but this budget simply doesn’t give you the resources to be able to effectively accomplish that.
I think we need to do better, which I say out of respect for you and our shared values.
It is often said a president’s budget requests that they’re “dead on arrival” on Capitol Hill.
For the sake of the shared landscapes that we hold in trust for our grandchildren. I hope that’s the case for this budget.
I yield back my time.