The resolution, which was adopted by a vote of 20-2 after Republicans walked out of the committee in protest and is under the auspices of Section 204(e) of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), orders the Secretary to “immediately withdraw” 1,068,908 acres of federal land in Arizona “from all forms of location and entry under the United States mining laws . . . for a period not to exceed three years.” Resolution proponents argue that 1,100 uranium mining claims are within five miles of the Grand Canyon and past uranium mining operations had adverse environmental consequences.
Ranking Member of the House Committee Don Young (R-AK) and Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forest and Public Lands, Rob Bishop (R-UT), both oppose the resolution because of the resultant dependence on “foreign sources of uranium.” They also argue that the resolution “short circuits the Constitution, escapes review by both bodies of Congress and the American people, [and] is political grandstanding at its best on an unconstitutional resolution which will have no force of law.”
On the constitutional issue, Young and Bishop are right. In 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a federal law authorizing a “one House legislative veto” of decisions by the Attorney General violated the Constitution’s bicameralism and presentment requirements. The Court held that Congress may exercise its legislative authority only “in accord with a single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered procedure.” Even so, if the Supreme Court must strike down the House resolution, the nuclear revolution will continue, if at all, without Arizona uranium!