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While the Government Shutdown dominates the news channels and occupies the pundits, the U.S. Congress continues to conduct business with potentially far-reaching impact on the U.S. economy and national security.

Case in point: Debate concerning H.R. 687, the Southeast Arizona Land Exchange and Conservation Act – a meticulously crafted bill that would allow a proposed Arizona copper mine to proceed, with the mining company donating 5,000 acres of high-quality conservation land to the federal government. Anti-mining activists are using the Great Shutdown as cover to float an amendment to the land swap bill that, if adopted, in the words of one Capitol Hill reporter, “…would become the environmentalists’ most powerful tool to kill economic development throughout the nation.”

The proposed amendment “would empower the Secretary of Interior to override existing laws that protect tribal sacred sites and designate land as an Indian ‘cultural site’” – authority anti-mine activists would use to press for a decision derailing the copper mine. The amendment’s backers “argue that any land where Native Americans have prayed and gathered is enough to trigger the designation. Is there any land in the United States that does not meet that threshold?”

But, the report goes on, that’s not what “has environmentalists’ mouths watering:”

“Many observers believe that this precedent-setting amendment is a dry run to kill the Keystone Pipeline project specifically and set up a new paradigm for development in America. Can anyone say with a straight face that somewhere along the thousands of miles of pipes, there will not be a parcel of land where Native Americans once slept, gathered or ate?”

This sweeping new Executive Branch authority comes as anti-mining advocates continue their campaign to have the EPA “discover” in legislative language written 40 years ago a pre-emptive veto power over mining projects that have not even presented a mine plan for permitting. Witness the recent decision by one of the partners in Alaska’s proposed Pebble copper and multi-metal mine to pull out of the project — now claimed as a victory by groups like Earthworks, who have never found a single mine that meets their standards.

As our own Daniel McGroarty has noted, these efforts typically begin with a single mine and a single metal, but the chilling effect is felt across the entire U.S. resource development sector, derailing projects that could produce the metals and minerals that feed American manufacturing – and perpetuating foreign metal dependencies to the detriment to the U.S. economy and, in many cases, our national security.

One day the Great Government Shutdown will end. Here’s hoping that when the Federal Government gears up again, the country won’t find that Congress has created a federal Economic Development Czar with the ultimate power over projects that affect our economic strength and technological progress.

ARPN readers know the vehemence of anti-mining activists in the U.S., including groups like Earthworks, whose director admitted during Congressional testimony earlier this year that the group couldn’t identify a single mine that had ever met with its approval.

But the cynical tactics on display in the debate taking place around a U.S. House bill to allow development of an Arizona copper mine have reached new heights.

The Daily Caller reports that the lobbying firm retained by an Arizona tribe to fight the Resolution Copper project – Washington-based Mapetsi Policy Group – is sending emails to House lawmakers alleging that the mine would destroy a “sacred site”, in spite of the fact that, according to the Daily Caller, “the U.S. Forest Service… reviewed the proposed mining area in 2010 and found that it did not conflict with any of the sacred tribal lands in the area.”

But this is more than a case of a lobby group spinning for its client. The Daily Caller reports that the same firm “has been involved in this issue before. That time, the firm’s client was the one building on sacred lands.”

Writes the Daily Caller Foundation’s Michael Bastasch:

Last year, the Muscogee Creek Nation filed a lawsuit to prevent the Poarch Band of Creek Indians from building a casino on Muscogee ceremonial burial grounds. According to the lawsuit, the Poarch Band even moved about 57 sets of human burials last April to build a $246 million casino in the area known as Hickory Ground.

Indian Country Today Media Network reports that: “Hickory Ground was the last capitol of the National Council of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. The sacred place includes a ceremonial ground, a tribal burial ground and individual graves. The current day Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s ancestors lived and were buried there before the tribe was forced from its Alabama homeland on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. The sacred site is now held in trust by the Interior Department for the Poarch Band of Creek Indians.”

The Poarch Band is one of Mapetsi’s biggest clients, spending $570,000 on lobbying throughout 2012, according to Influence Explorer.

The Poarch Band acquired the land in 1984 with help from the state of Alabama and a grant the U.S. Interior Department. However, the Poarch tribe promised that “Acquisition will prevent development on the property” in applying for the federal grant. Just a few years after the land was taken into trust, the Poarch unveiled plans to build a casino there.

But a few years after Hickory Ground was taken into trust, the Poarch Band unveiled plans to develop a gaming facility there.

The Mapetsi group did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment about the Poarch Band’s sacred ground troubles.

And little wonder. What can be said to explain why it is fine to destroy a sacred site in order to build a casino, but not to build a mine – and how the same group can take both positions at once? The question mark only gets bigger in the Arizona instance when the federal agency overseeing the mining proposal has found no sacred site to be at risk.

Like any tribe near a mining project, the Arizona tribe in this case deserves to have its views heard. But tribal leaders may want to do better due diligence when shopping with scarce dollars for high-priced lobbying help. Hiring a firm on both sides of the sacred sites issue is probably not the best way to encourage dialogue and inspire confidence.

The protection of sacred sites is a serious policy issue. It shouldn’t be dragged into the debate when it doesn’t exist – especially when those raising the matter have cynically treated sacred sites as expendable elsewhere.

Whatever happens in the House today, let’s debate new mining projects on the basis of facts, not false claims. Resource development in the U.S. is too critical to do otherwise.

Having just passed and sent Rep. Amodei’s (R-Nev.) H.R. 761, the “National Strategic and Critical Minerals Production Act of 2013,” to the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives may vote on a second important piece of legislation with wide-reaching implications for our mineral resource supply issues this week. After outlining the strategic importance of [...]

The U.S. House of Representatives may take up Congressman Mark Amodei’s (R, Nev.) H.R. 761, the “National Strategic and Critical Minerals Production Act of 2013,” this week. The bill ties into the overall context of mineral resource security and our growing minerals deficit, an issue that is of critical importance to our nation’s manufacturing base, [...]

While China has taken steps to position itself in a “resource war that will increasingly define economic growth and national security in the 21st century,” the United States has subjected itself to a dangerous degree of import dependency for critical minerals – that’s the bottom line of American Resources Principal Daniel McGroarty’s new piece for [...]

The following post was originally published on InvestorIntel.com on August 16, 2013. It is reprinted with permission below. August 16, 2013 — Tracy Weslosky, Publisher of InvestorIntel interviews Daniel (Dan) McGroarty, Founder and President of Carmot Strategic Consultants in Washington, DC, and Founder and President of the American Resources Policy Network; an expert-led organization focused [...]

As Commodities Now reports, a new Bloomberg New Energy Finance report anticipates that China’s power sector will go through substantial changes through 2030. As part of these expected changes, the country will “add 88 GW of new power plants annually from now until 2030, which is equivalent to building the UK’s total generating capacity every [...]

In a recent op-ed for the Pueblo Chieftain, National Mining Association president and CEO Hal Quinn and Colorado Mining Association president Stuart Sanderson discuss the U.S. Administration’s recent decision to take more than 300,000 acres of federal public lands in six Western states, including Colorado, off limits for mineral exploration. Embedding it into the context [...]

With August generally being the slower part of the news cycle, one of the bigger stories last week was that the installation of solar panels on the roof of the White House had begun. Administration officials say in retrofitting the White House building to make it more energy efficient, the President is delivering on a [...]

Testimony presented by Daniel McGroarty – Oversight Hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space & Technology Subcommittee, August 1, 2013 Chairman Broun, Ranking Member Maffei, Members of the Committee: Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Daniel McGroarty, and I am president of the American Resources Policy [...]