Today, House Committee on Natural Resources Republicans, led by Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), issued their first oversight letter for the 118th Congress. In part, the members wrote:

"Natural Resources Committee Democrats conducted little to no scrutiny of public offices in the 117th Congress, despite our repeated requests. Between 2021 and 2022, Committee Republicans transmitted more than 230 collective document or information requests to your offices. To date, we’ve received responses to a mere 61 of those requests. Nearly 75 percent of our requests for transparency went ignored or unsatisfactorily answered... As the duly elected majority party of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 118th Congress, we expect your full compliance with our oversight and investigatory requests.

"While we hope to conduct essential oversight in a cooperative manner with your departments and agencies, we will maintain our ability to employ transcribed interviews, depositions, and other compulsory processes as necessary to obtain requested documents and information. Many programs like the 30x30 initiative, the administration’s Great American Outdoors Act funding priorities, the unaddressed crisis at the southern border and the humanitarian and environmental harms it creates, extreme policies that limit our ability to address the western drought, efforts to address health and economic security in tribal and insular communities, and administration policies that stifle American energy production, such as the delayed offshore leasing plan, remain a black box to us and to the American people. We intend to pull back the curtain and show how each taxpayer dollar is being spent by this administration and how this administration’s failing policies are impacting American families."