Issue: H.R. 761 National Strategic and Critical Minerals Production Act of 2013. Sponsor: Mark Amodei (R-NV2).

Result: Passed in House, 246 to 178, 8 not voting. Democrats scored.

Bill Summary:  Title 1 strives to speed up the approval process for responsible domestic mining permits, particularly for the mining of strategic and critical minerals, by streamlining paths through federal and environmentalist red tape. Title 2 seeks to limit the ability of environmentalist civil actions to tie up mining and exploration for long periods in court and to limit any judgments or relief granted in such actions.

Analysis: This roll call is one of several similar GOP posturing votes addressing a serious national concern — the subversive and unconstitutional federal overreach preventing the development of America’s abundant natural resources. This overreach has undermined U.S. prosperity and made the U.S. unnecessarily dependent on foreign suppliers for those resources.

The environmentalist movement, spawned with the financial help of Establishment Insiders, conducted the extensive campaign to tie up those resources in the first place.   However, leaders from both major parties responded to the orchestrated public pressure by supporting environmentalist legislation and regulation. It is unlikely that if the GOP in its current form were to regain control of the White House and Senate that the subversive policies would be effectively reversed, since the Internationalist Insiders dictate the real tune to which both parties currently march.

While respecting that common agenda when it counts, the parties do seek to position themselves differently to their respective constituencies. Accordingly, many of the votes cast in this Congress are designed to aid members on the campaign trail rather than to make real change. Yet uninformed voters are regularly betrayed, because real change in Washington will not come from purely partisan politics.

Instead, real change will require change in a substantial number of districts. What is needed in those districts is an electorate driven by opinion molders who understand the subversive agenda behind the counterproductive policies in Washington. Only then will we have sufficient representatives in Congress who will stand firm for the Constitution.

This House roll call does not identify which GOP representatives would act tough when it counts, so we do not score the GOP on this roll call. However, we can give kudos to those 15 Democrats who stood up to their party leaders and voted yea, whether out of commitment to principle or a recognition of what would play best in their districts.

We have assigned (good vote) to the Ayes and (bad vote) to the Noes. (P = voted present; ? = not voting; blank = not listed on roll call.)