mr. tyler o'connor, partner at crowell and moring llp. mr. brigham mccown, a senior fellow and director of initiative on american energy security at the hudson institute. i want to thank you all for being here. and before we recognize our first witness this little housekeeping with the box in front of you, you'll see the light will be green. at 1 minute it'll go yellow, and when your time expires after 5 minutes it will go red. if you could finish up, we'd appreciate it. what we'd like you to do is pull that mic up close and turn it on and we're ready to go. the chair recognizes ms. eversole for five minutes for the opening statement. ms. eversole: good morning. thank you very much, mr. chairman, chairman lotta, chairman guthrie, ranking member castor, ranking member, and members of the subcommittee. my name is amanda eversole and , i'm the executive vice president and chief advocacy officer at the american petroleum institute. i'm honored to be invited by this committee to discuss the profound opportunities that we have by working together t

mr. o'connor there's a discussion underway mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent the quorum be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: now, mr. president, yesterday leader jeffries and i announced legislation to stop unlawful meddling by doge or other entities in the treasury department's payment system. our bill will deny access to the payment system by anyone designated as a, quote, special government employee. in other words, people who aren't required to disclose conflicts of interest. our bill will deny access to anyone with conflicts of interest or lack of appropriate clearance. imagine, where all the federal funds are going out and someone has a conflict of interest and has access to those funds and can do something with them? that's a formula for waste. that's a formula that makes sure that money isn't spent wisely but is spent to accommodate the needs of a special few. and our bill will ensure that treasury payments can only be accessed by those with proper clearance. everyone should agree th