McCollum, Betty Rep
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see wounded knee medals
119th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 3609
To rescind each Medal of Honor awarded for acts at Wounded Knee Creek
on December 29, 1890, and for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
May 23, 2025
Ms. Tokuda (for herself, Mr. Huffman, Ms. McCollum, Mr. Khanna, Ms.
Davids of Kansas, Mr. Quigley, and Ms. Stansbury) introduced the
following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Armed Services
A BILL
To rescind each Medal of Honor awarded for acts at Wounded Knee Creek
on December 29, 1890, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,...
H.R. 3609 | Congressional Chronicle | C-SPAN.org
Actions
| May 23, 2025 | Referred to the House Committee on Armed Services. |
|---|---|
| May 23, 2025 | Introduced in House |
Cosponsors
- Jared Huffman, D-CA 2nd
- Betty McCollum, DFL-MN 4th
- Ro Khanna, D-CA 17th
- Sharice Davids, D-KS 3rd
- Mike Quigley, D-IL 5th
- Melanie Stansbury, D-NM 1st
off
https://mccollum.house.gov/
Resources on H.R. 2407, Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian ...
https://mccollum.house.gov/palestinianchildrensrights
===hmmnhttps://jstreet.org/about-us/about-jstreetpac/betty-mccollum/==
http://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/betty-mccollum
94/97%
5/19
The House passed the Interior-EPA spending bill out of committee and it's now barreling toward a floor vote. This could be the biggest environmental vote this year.
But now, we're hearing that Republicans will attempt to jam the bill with awful anti-environment riders.
As it currently stands, the Interior-Environment bill could be the biggest environmental vote of the year. But we HAVE to swing the vote our way and make sure no anti-environment riders make it in.
Our policy team is on Capitol Hill fighting back and LCV members are flooding House offices with calls. We need your help.
If we do nothing now, funding for the EPA's efforts to hold polluters accountable could be slashed. Clean water funding could be decimated. Funding for America's top parks program could be eliminated. Endangered wildlife protections could be gutted. Trump's cronies in the House will pull every maneuver possible to torpedo this bill.
Right now, anti-environment members of the House think they will get away with this. Last year, there were at least 80 amendments to this bill. We cannot sit by quietly and let anti-environment riders into the bill, Padraic.
But you should also know that Trump and GOP leaders are just getting started — we're expecting a massive effort to gut more environmental protections this summer. We need to keep the pressure on Congress to stop these attacks and pass a clean and pro-environment budget bil
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https://thehill.com/homenews/house/445083-house-panel-votes-to-boost-interior-epa-budget-by-17b
A key House committee on Wednesday advanced the 2020 budgets for the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), voting to increase their funding by $1.73 billion over last year.
The Democratic-led House Appropriations Committee voted 30-21 along party lines to push forward $37.28 billion in funds for the two agencies. It was an increase of $7.24 billion over President Trump’s 2020 requests, which included deep proposed cuts for both agencies.
“This Interior-Environment funding bill rejects cuts proposed by the Trump administration that would have put the interests of polluters over people,” said Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), who chairs the subcommittee with jurisdiction over interior and the environment.
Trump originally proposed gutting the EPA’s budget by 31 percent and cutting Interior's by 14 percent. It was the third year in a row that the White House had proposed dramatic cuts to both departments, which appropriators have resoundingly rejected.
The president and some conservative Republican lawmakers have championed cuts to several departments, arguing they are necessary to rein in spending and reduce the national debt, which stands at $22 trillion.
Republicans on the committee complained that Democrats were moving ahead with bills while the House, Senate and White House have not yet agreed to overall spending levels, despite some progress in a Tuesday meeting.
“No doubt there are critical programs in this legislation that need more funding, but that does not give the Federal Government the right to borrow and spend without any over-arching plan for fiscal responsibility,” said Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio), the interior and environment subcommittee’s ranking member.
Democratic lawmakers have blasted the White House’s budget requests, arguing the billions in proposed cuts would harm the departments’ ability to run efficiently and complete their public health and environmental mandates.
The committee’s appropriations bill instead aims to increase the EPA’s budget by more than $700 million, to $9.5 billion, compared to the bill passed last year by Congress.
Democratic lawmakers also removed nearly all the riders added in past years by Republicans that aimed to block Obama-era environmental regulations. In addition, they added language to the bills that would limit oil and gas drilling on public land.
Lines in the bill could also make it harder for the government to engage in new oil and gas lease sales. A part of the bill would deny fossil fuel leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) if bidding doesn't generate at least $500 million, half of the expected revenue. A GOP amendment to strip out the provisions was voted down.
Another measure Democrats floated in the bill would block any efforts to expand offshore drilling in the Atlantic and elsewhere until Interior makes public a final comprehensive plan. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt recently told Congress the draft plan is on hold for an indeterminate amount of time following ongoing legal challenges to ANWR drilling.
Additional amendments dealing with wild horses and sage grouse were not adopted.
The Interior portion of the bill also flew in the face of Trump’s budget request, which called for eliminating arts programs such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The bill increased funding for both by $12.5 million, bringing their budgets to $167.5 million apiece.
It also upped programs such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, for which Trump had requested funding cuts.
The Interior portion of the bill allocated funding for ecological services, land management, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service, and came out $2.4 billion above Trump’s request.
The bill is the eight of 12 appropriation bills that the committee has sent to the full House, which is expected to take them up in June. Two more bills are scheduled to advance through subcommittee this week.
The Senate has refrained from releasing appropriations bills until an agreement is reached on spending caps.
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The House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to cut funding from key climate protection rules and rejected an attempt to save regional offices of the Environmental Protection Agency from being closed.
But lawmakers voted against an amendment to cut $1.9 billion from the EPA's budget, which would have dealt a devastating blow to the beleaguered agency.
Offered by Rep. Ralph Norman, a Republican from South Carolina, the amendment's cuts would have come close to the 31 percent reduction sought by President Donald Trump. The House bill does cut more than $530 million from the agency's $8 billion budget, slashing it to less than the agency was spending in 2006.
The votes came as lawmakers worked their way through a broad spending package for the 2018 fiscal year, which begins in October. Final passage by the House will likely come Thursday, but any differences with a Senate version will need to be reconciled.
The bill contained hundreds of amendments, many of them "riders" of the kind attached to appropriations bills to score policy points. Dozens of these proposals have drawn criticism from environmental groups.
Hewing closely to party lines, Republicans backed two amendments sponsored by Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.). One would prevent funds from being used to enforce an Obama-era rule that limits methane pollution from new oil and gas facilities. The other effectively prohibits the EPA from factoring in future damages from climate change—a calculation known as the social cost of carbon—in weighing the costs and benefits of its rules.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to weaken the social cost of carbon requirements, and the administration has also attempted to stall or block rules limiting methane emissions. Republican support on the must-pass appropriations package backs up the administration, and, at least for the coming fiscal year, complicates any efforts by green advocacy groups to challenge the administration's rollbacks.
Lawmakers on Wednesday also voted down an amendment by Rep. Jared Polis, (D-Colo.), that sought to block the administration from closing or consolidating any of the regional offices of EPA.
Debate began on the package last week, but House leadership delayed some votes until this week so that some lawmakers could cope with the hurricane emergencies in their home districts.
Last week, during debate over these riders, lawmakers expressed their ongoing frustration that policy-related amendments are being tucked into must-pass spending legislation.
"These riders are best done in the policy committee, not on the appropriations bill," said Rep. Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat, saying that Congress ought to hear from scientists and public health experts as well as the fossil fuel industry when making decisions. "I support science and I believe we should not abandon science while trying to tackle climate change."
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