John Garamendi

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and honor the life of Dan L. Silva, whose lifelong commitment to Sutter County has left a lasting impact on the community. Born in Yuba City, Dan was a 3rd generation farmer and was a well- known figure within the agricultural community. He was an active community leader, who had a deep sense of civic duty. For 8 years, Dan served as Sutter County's 5th District County Supervisor and was involved with many boards and committees. He dedicated his career to serving others and was committed to protecting the environment through his various leadership roles on flood control, agriculture, and transportation projects. The boards and committees Dan participated in included the following: Feather River Air Quality, Sacramento Area Council of Governments, Sacramento Area Flood Control, Sierra-Sacramento Valley EMS, Sutter-Butte Flood Control Agency, Yuba City Unified School Government Liaison Committee, Yuba-Sutter Transit Authority, Sutter County Fish and Game Commissioner, Assistant State Chairman for Ducks Unlimited, CA State Reclamation Board, Yuba-Sutter Farm Bureau, Valley Vision, and the Natomas Basin Conservancy. Dan was known around the community for his welcoming smile and his dedication to helping others. He will be missed by all, and our thoughts are with his family at this time. He is survived by his children, Christopher and Stacey, and four grandchildren, Samantha, Jamie, Dylan, and Mason. Dan's commitment to his family and to his work made his life an example for all to emulate. I am honored to pay tribute to such an extraordinary member of our community.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, my colleague just finished a very good recitation of the problems of mental health. I am going to pick up another piece of this issue which has to do with dementia and Alzheimer's, which I believe the gentleman spoke to very briefly during his presentation. I thank him for his concern and for the work that he has been doing these many years on this profoundly important issue of brain health. My role tonight will be kind of working off the previous presentation and taking it just a little bit in a slightly different direction, and it has to do with dementia and Alzheimer's, which is obviously a rather important issue. I want to just put up a couple of placards here to try to demonstrate the overall nature of this problem. One way to look at it is just in terms of the numbers, and the numbers are staggering. The number of people: Right now in America, there are about 5.1 million Americans with Alzheimer's. We expect that number to grow not just because the baby boomers are moving into their older years, but also because of the growth of the population and the increasing incidence of Alzheimer's. If you look at this chart, you can see it growing over the years so that, in about 2050, we expect to have 13,800,000 Americans with Alzheimer's. It is not just an issue with individuals who are suffering, whose lives are seriously disrupted. It is a serious issue for the financing of this Nation. If you look at this, you can see this line of growth in the number of Americans with Alzheimer's and you can see the ever-rising cost. These are not inflated numbers. These are constant dollars over the years. So when we reach 2050, not too many years from now, we are going to see an extraordinary expense of nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars annually spent with the Medicare-Medicaid budget. Now, many, many people on this floor are concerned about deficits. We all are. The deficits are driven by many issues: the ever-increasing cost of programs, new programs, increasing military expenditures, the growth of Medicare, Social Security, and the like. Well, Alzheimer's is the single biggest budget issue within all of those programs. Under the Medicare-Medicaid programs, it is going to explode--you can see what we are looking at here--from $153 billion in 2015 to three-quarters of a trillion, $735 billion, in the year 2050. This will bust the budget. Many of the deficits that we are so concerned about, in fact, that are in play today, as this House has been unable with our Republican majority to fashion a budget and all of the disruptions that that creates and then the ongoing appropriation process, which is delayed and made rather confusing as a result of not having a budget--inherent in that debate is the ever-increasing cost of Medicare and Medicaid. Well, why is it increasing? Well, largely it is increasing because of these types of illness, such as Alzheimer's. You can see here what we are looking at, almost a $30 billion increase in just the next 4 years--or 3 years, actually. So no wonder we are unable to get control of our budgets and our appropriations here when we are faced with this inexorable increase in an illness that affects every family in America. It has affected my family. My mother-in-law spent the last 3 years of her life living with my wife Patty and I in our home where we took care of her. We were fortunate enough to be able to have a day nurse come in. But then in the early morning and on through the evening and night, my wife and I were responsible for caring for my mother-in-law. It was a duty that we found to be very worthwhile. It was a duty that brought our family together in close relationship as we watched this illness take hold of a lovely lady, a very smart, very capable woman who became ultimately an invalid and died of this disease. It is not unique. Millions of families across this Nation are taking care of their husband, wife, mother, father, and mother- or father-in- law as Alzheimer's creeps into their family's life. Now, this problem can be addressed. We know there is a solution. This is not a hopeless case. Five years ago, if I were standing here, I would probably say that this is simply hopeless and we are going to be faced with these costs no matter what happens. That is not the case today, not at all, because today research is having an effect. Let me show you what research has done on other illnesses that plague Americans and, indeed, humans around the world: Breast cancer: Well, we have had an enormous increase in breast cancer research. We have seen a 2 percent decline in the number of deaths from breast cancer. Similarly, we have looked at other cancers, like prostate cancer, and we have seen an 11 percent decline in the deaths from prostate cancer. Heart disease: There is an enormous amount of money going into heart disease, less than for cancer, but, nonetheless, an enormous amount of money. We have seen a 14 percent decrease in deaths from heart disease as a result of treatments that are now available. Research money led to those treatments. Stroke: There is a 23 percent decline in the number of deaths from strokes. Again, research money into heart disease, into diseases of the circulatory system, have resulted in very, very significant decreases in the deaths. HIV/AIDS: Dramatic. There has been an enormous amount of money spent into research of HIV/AIDS. The result? There has been a 52 percent decrease in the deaths from HIV/AIDS. So we know that, if we spend money on research, we will see a decline in the death rate from those illnesses. Alzheimer's disease: In 2015, we spent just over 20 percent of the amount of money on researching Alzheimer's disease as we did on heart disease and on cancer. So don't be surprised with this chart. There is a 71 percent increase in the death rate from Alzheimer's. There is a relationship here. There is a relationship between the investment that we make in research and the resultant increase or decrease in the disease. In the case of cancer of nearly all kinds, we have seen a significant and, in many cases, dramatic decline in the death rate from those cancers. In the case of heart disease, similarly, money spent on research, on more effective treatments, and on drug treatments has resulted in a very significant decrease in strokes and other heart disease issues. HIV/AIDS is the most dramatic where, again, research is leading to better lives, longer lives, less death and less cost. Alzheimer's? No. No. In 2015, we spent just over $500 million. Is there a lesson for us here? You bet there is. Here is the lesson: You invest up front. You invest up front with research. I want to thank the President. I want to thank the Members of Congress and the Senate, who, in this current year's appropriation, 2016, have added another $300 million to the Alzheimer's research program. Let me put another chart up here. Alzheimer's spending, research versus treatment: In 2015, Medicare and Medicaid will spend over 261 times as much on treatment as the NIH will spend on research toward a cure. So, in 2015, a year ago, we spent $153 billion on treating--this is Medicare and Medicaid, not private insurance, not money out of individual pockets--we spent $153 billion of your Federal tax money on caring for Alzheimer's. That was 261 times the amount of money spent on research. Now, let's see, let's be accurate here because we did have an increase, as I just said. We have actually spent $936 million in 2016 on Alzheimer's research. So this 261 times is significantly less now. But we are not at the goal. We are not at the goal that we want to have in place for the treatment and the care of Alzheimer's. The goal of the Alzheimer's Association is to raise the amount of research money to the level of about $1.5 billion. It is anticipated-- and I will explain why this is a sound anticipation--it is anticipated that if we were to be able to spend that amount of money in 2017, keeping in mind that we are now just under a billion dollars for research, but if we bring it up another $500 million to $1.5 billion, if we were to do that, it is anticipated that by 2025--that is just 9 years from now--we would see a dramatic change in the incidence of Alzheimer's. Many people would not be suffering from it, and those who do would see the onset of Alzheimer's pushed back into their later years so that they would be able to live a better, more sound, mentally sound life and more productive life and, for the taxpayers of this Nation, a significantly reduced amount of Federal support through Medicare and Medicaid. How much does it amount to? So if we spent that $936 million this year and in the next year ramp it up another 200 and in the following year another $300 million so that we get to the goal of $1.5 billion of research in the years between now and 2020, we would see a dramatic reduction and a dramatic improvement in the lives of Americans, much better lives. If this were available to my mother-in-law, perhaps she would have been able to live another 2, 3, 5 years without the onset of Alzheimer's. And what would that mean to the quality of her life as well as to her family's? So let's assume that the research pushes back the onset of Alzheimer's by 5 years, so that in 2025 what would we see? Well, for Medicare and Medicaid, we would see in the years 2025 to 2030 a 121-billion-dollar reduction in the cost to Medicare and Medicaid to your taxpayer dollars, and from 2025 to 2030--that is 10 years of the new treatments being in place--we would see a half- trillion-dollar reduction in the cost of Medicare and Medicaid. Now, this isn't pie in the sky. This isn't just wishful, hopeful thinking and a prayer and a song. This is a real possibility. Those of you who have been reading the press or listening to the television news programs over the last year, you will note a significant change from hopelessness to hope. Yes, hope. There is real hope that we will be able to attack this debilitating dementia Alzheimer's, that we will be able to delay the onset and quite possibly stop it, to cure it. Now, that may be off into the future, but we are now gaining an understanding because of the research that is being done on Alzheimer's and much of the research that was discussed earlier in the discussion of mental health programs and research that is going on by the United States military as they attack the problem of post-traumatic stress and brain damage from the men and women who have served in the recent wars. All of that research is coming together with an understanding of how the human brain works, what the elements are that cause the damage of mental health, schizophrenia, and post-traumatic stress, as well as brain damage, perhaps for the football players in the NFL and beyond. So here is what we are going to do. We are going to fight this year to increase this funding from beyond $236 million to just over $1 billion. We know it is a tough budget year. We know that the Republicans have been unable to even come to grips to put together a budget, let alone increase the appropriations. But where could money be better spent than on research that is actually moving forward toward an understanding of what Alzheimer's is and how the brain is attacked, how we can stall--not yet reverse, but stall the onset of the damage that occurs as a result of Alzheimer's. We have seen it. You have seen the stories. We know that drug treatments that were once thought to be ineffective, treatments that were done in the mid-1990s didn't work, or so they thought. Then some statisticians looked at those results of those drug trials and noticed something really important. They noticed that while the overall program didn't seem to work, they noticed that there was a subset of patients who were being treated by that drug, and they noticed that that subset was the early onset of Alzheimer's, and what they noticed was that that drug seemed to push back, seemed to hold steady that onset of Alzheimer's. Whoa, it was a eureka moment that maybe using drugs of that type applied early in the process would result in the delay, the arresting of the Alzheimer's onset. That is what we are talking about here. If we are able to invest this money in research, we can see the probability that there are a series of drugs that do have an effect on the onset of Alzheimer's and seem to delay that onset. Each year that goes by, what is the effect for the individual, for the family of the individual? It means their life will be better. It means that the kind of stress, strain, and financial cost that is put on a family with Alzheimer's will be arrested. It will be delayed. Not 1 year, maybe 2 years, maybe 3, maybe 5 years. And the cost is enormous. As I said before, if we are able to do this increased research over the next 3, 4, 5 years, working on those series of drugs that now seem to have an effect, we will be able in the years 2025 to 2030 to save you, the taxpayers, and us, the appropriators of your tax money, over $120 billion in the years 2025 to the year 2030. In 5 years beyond that, that 10-year period, a half trillion dollars. So if you are worried about the deficit--and we all are--if you are worried about how we are going to put together a 5-year budget, which is what we do, then look at this investment. If you are worried about the effect of Alzheimer's in your family or on yourself, there are 435 of us in this House and another 100 over in the Senate. Listen, one- third of us are likely to die of Alzheimer's in the years ahead. So if you don't care about the family, you don't care about Americans, care about yourself. One-third of us are destined. If you happen to be a female, the odds are even greater. So what is this all about? Well, we are somehow grappling with the budget, the 5-year budget. We can't seem to get it together. Enormous chaos on the side of my Republican colleagues about how to do it. The appropriation process is underway and totally stalled out until at least May 15. There is a solution. A small investment, a very small investment, and then we can look at the long-term deficit. Then we can be in a position to improve the lives of Americans. Oh, by the way, the money is available. The money is available. In the budget and in the appropriations we are putting together, we are ramping up so that over the next 20 years, 25 years, we are going to spend a trillion dollars--a trillion dollars--on a brand-new nuclear arms race. We are going to rebuild all of our nuclear bombs. We are going to develop new airplanes to deliver those bombs, new satellites, new rockets, new cruise missiles, new submarines. A trillion dollars. Well, I have got a better place to spend some of that money. I have got a better place to spend it, where the lives of Americans will be significantly improved, where the stress on families throughout this nation will be less, where the budgets of this country will not be busted, where this curve, where this curve will be flattened, where we will not in the year 2050 spend over a trillion dollars a year, a trillion dollars a year caring for people who have Alzheimer's. Three- quarters of that money is your tax money. You can go back here, 2020, and start spending a couple of hundred million dollars, a couple of hundred million dollars on research, on promising treatments for Alzheimer's, and then beginning in 2025, watch this curve begin to flatten out. Now, for me and for many of us in this room, we are not going to be out here in 2025, but our children and grandchildren will be, and they will be caring for us unless we begin to make these investments now in research. So in the next couple of weeks, the men and women in purple will be here in Washington, D.C., as they do every spring, advocating for Alzheimer's research, for the caregivers, and for the families, and we ought to be paying attention. The money is in the budget somewhere. All we need to do is to find it, move it from a few nuclear weapons over to research, delay the expenditure of a new ballistic missile or intercontinental ballistic missile, and spend it on something that affects every American every day of this year and every day of the years in the future, and that is Alzheimer's. It is a good investment. It is an investment in the quality of life. It is an investment in our effort to reduce the deficit, and it is an investment in America's future. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, this is Women's History Month, and it is only appropriate that we finally give a group of remarkable women who served this country an honor that they have been denied far too long-- the opportunity to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. I am referring to the Women Airforce Service Pilots, more commonly known as the WASPs. These women were remarkable, flying 78 different types of aircraft for the United States Army Air Force during World War II. They were stationed throughout the United States. They flew the very same missions as their male counterparts, over 60 million miles of operational flights. Despite their patriotism and selfless service, they did not receive veteran status until 1977, and yet, today, they cannot be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Thankfully, the House has already acted. They passed legislation--I was proud to cosponsor it--that would allow these WASPs to be laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. I am hopeful that the Senate will soon follow suit and send the bill to the President.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Women Airforce Service Pilots, known as WASPs. These women were remarkable, flying 78 different types of military aircraft for the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. They were stationed throughout the United States--281 WASPs served at 16 Army Air Bases in my home state of California. And of the 1,074 graduated pilots, 193 of them were Californians. WASPs contributed invaluably to the War effort, answering their nation's call when there was a shortage of male pilots. They flew over 60 million miles of operation flights, right alongside their male counterparts. But despite their patriotism and selfless service, they did not receive Veteran's Status until 1977. ``Service to country'' is the common thread that binds all who are remembered and honored at Arlington National Cemetery. Yet even today, these heroes are not afforded the tribute of being laid to rest there. I have cosponsored bipartisan legislation that would allow the Women Airforce Service Pilots to be inurned at Arlington. And I will continue to advocate for the rights of these pioneers. March is Women's History Month, and these women shaped our history in so many ways. They were fearless aviators, they proved that they were just as capable as male pilots, and they began to knock down gender barriers. They paved the way to opening up all combat roles to women in the military. It is my distinct honor to recognize these women, their accomplishments, and the impact they have had on our Nation's history.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, my daughter is a kindergarten teacher, and the children are listening. They are listening to our national debate. They are listening to the television. They are coming to class, and they are repeating. They are repeating the bullying that they hear on television, and they take it to the classroom. The children are listening. It is time for civility in our Presidential discourse.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, today is a different subject than I usually discuss in the course of these Special Order hours. Normally we come down here and we talk about how we are going to create jobs, how we are going to make better opportunities for people through education. We talk about making it in America, rebuilding our infrastructure, manufacturing, and the like. Yet, today, there is something else on my mind, and it happens to be an issue that I first came across in elementary school. On the school grounds at Mokelumne Hill Elementary School--a three- room school that was built in the late 1800s--there were not many kids, but there was always one kid who seemed to be picked on. I am not exactly sure why that young boy was the one to be picked on, but he was bullied. As the years go by, I suspect we forget about those things, but we know that the children are always listening. They are listening to each other on the school grounds and they are likely to join in this bullying and in picking on some kid on the grounds. That happened at Mokelumne Hill Elementary School many, many years ago. As our own kids were growing up, my wife would always say, ``Remember the children are listening. They are listening to what you have to say and they are going to copy what you say.'' In the year 2000, I was with my wife at a concert here in the Washington area, and Peter, Paul and Mary were performing that night. Towards the end of the performance, Peter Yarrow said, ``I have a new song, and I would like you to pay careful attention to this song. This song is really important to me.'' I suppose his other songs dealing with wars and peace were equally important, but he highlighted this particular song. The song was ``Don't Laugh At Me.'' Don't call me names. Don't make fun of me because I am short or tall or wear glasses. After the performance was over, we were invited to go out to dinner with Peter that night. He asked, ``What did you think of the song?'' I said, ``It reminded me of my school,'' because people were laughing at that kid. He said, ``I want you to do something.'' He said, ``I want you to take this song and make it into a national movement against bullying so as to try to teach our young children to stop bullying.'' I told him I didn't have time for that, as we were returning to California after the 2000 election. He said that doesn't make any sense because California has the same problem. I learned right away you don't say no to Peter Yarrow, so I began to work with him on a program that became known as Operation Respect. I worked with him for about 3 to 4 years, and then I moved on and Operation Respect moved on. It is now found in 22,000 schools across the United States. It is a simple program. You can find it online. It is Operation Respect. You can download the song. You can download the text. It is there. There are 22,000 schools across the United States that are trying to help our young children understand what bullying means. Bullying means that 160,000 American children do not go to school each day because they are afraid. They are afraid to endure another day of bullying--verbal, sometimes physical--from their peers. Twenty-two percent of teenagers in a National Study of Adolescents reported that they had been bullied or victimized. The reasons for bullying are many. Usually it is about looks, as 55 percent say it is about looks; it is about body shape--too big, too tall, too fat, too slender--at 37 percent; and race at 16 percent. Students who experience bullying are at an increased risk of experiencing poor adjustment at school, sleep difficulties, anxiety, depression. Also, students who engage in the bullying behavior are at risk of having academic problems, substance abuse, and violent behavior later in their adolescence and adulthood. In surveys, approximately 30 percent of young people admit to bullying others, and 70 percent of young people say that they have seen bullying in their schools. I did when I was growing up. Seventy percent of schools' staffs say that they see it. Eighty-one percent of students who identify as LGBT were bullied last year based on their sexual orientation. What does it mean? It means that certain lives are seriously disrupted and that there is unhappiness and depression in those lives, but it also means violence. Do you remember Columbine? The perpetrators were frequently harassed by athletes and other students before coming to school, and then they came to school with firearms and explosives, killing 13 and injuring 21. Do you remember Virginia Tech? Seung-Hui Cho was picked on and bullied by his peers before he killed 32 people in 2007. In Santa Barbara, California, the shooter wrote a 130-page manifesto about how he had been severely bullied in high school, and he killed six and injured 14. There are those who are violent to others and who are equally violent to themselves. 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick suffered from cyberbullying. She received messages over social media, and she killed herself. In Montana, an 18-year-old with learning disabilities committed suicide. Another shot himself in the chest after enduring bullying and hazing from the high school football team. He was pushed into lockers, punched in the head. He quit the football team after the first week, telling his dad, ``I am being picked on at school,'' in the suicide note he left that night. He shot himself. He blamed bullying. The children are listening. They listen to each other. They learn bullying and they carry it on. Operation Respect attempts to deal with this, as does Peter Yarrow's song from Peter, Paul and Mary, ``Don't Laugh At Me.'' Don't laugh at me because I am tall, short, Black, White, young, old, or because I wear glasses. Don't laugh at me. The children are listening. Across America, what are the children listening to today? What are they listening to today by our leaders, by the people who purport to lead the strongest nation in the world? What are they hearing? My daughter is a kindergarten teacher. Her kids come to class and are repeating what they hear on television. They are calling each other a desperate person. They are saying to each other: ``He's a desperate person,'' ``He's a sad person,'' ``He's a pathetic person.'' Kids come to class and are repeating what they heard on television: ``He doesn't even use his last name in his ads,'' ``He's a sad person,'' ``He's absolutely crazy,'' ``I mean, this guy is a nervous wreck.'' I have never seen anything like it. They repeat what they have heard on television. So what are our kids learning? What are they learning from people who want to be our national leader? Well, they are probably learning that you can say things like: ``He's the least talented. . . .'', ``He's done poorly,'' ``He goes away like a little sheep.'' Maybe our kids are talking to each other and they are repeating what they have heard on television: ``You could see the blood coming out of her eyes,'' ``She's a bimbo,'' ``Look at that face,'' ``Would anyone vote for that?'', ``Can you imagine that face on the next president?'', ``I mean, she's a woman and I'm not supposed to say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?'' The kids are listening, folks. The kids are listening to the national debate. For years, we have known bullying is a problem. We know it. We see it in the classrooms. We see the result of violence. We see the fact of disrespect. We know it leads to shootings. We know it leads to school shootings. We know it leads to suicides. Yet, on our national television every night people that want to lead this Nation are bullying each other. They are saying disrespectful things that are personal that don't have a thing to do with policy, just as though it was a kindergarten school ground: ``Now, I've watched a part of his little act and he's a desperate guy,'' ``He's not presidential material, I can tell you,'' ``He doesn't have the demeanor,'' ``He's a nervous Nellie,'' ``Putting on makeup with a trowel,'' ``He was so scared like a little puppy.'' That is bullying. That is bullying. And if you were in kindergarten, you would be at the principal's office. Our kids are listening. So what is the message? That it is okay to bully? It is okay to demean people? What is the message? 16,000 kids stay home from school each day because of bullying. And on national television? They purport to lead this Nation. So what are we to do? I guess we are going to have to take programs like Operation Respect, Operation Trevor, and other programs that try to help our children understand the result of bullying, what actually happens, not just to the children that are being bullied, but also to those who engage in bullying. So what are we teaching? What are we teaching our children? What Pandora's box are we opening across this Nation when demeaning each other is the national discourse in how we select the next President of the United States? That it is okay to call your rival names? It is not about their policies, not about what we are going to do with our national security, but, rather, what makeup you might be wearing or the nature of one's face. Calling each other unhinged, unstable, a liar, is this what we have come to? That night Peter Yarrow sang that song for the first time in concert: ``Don't laugh at me. Don't call me names. Don't make fun of me.'' There are consequences. There are consequences. You tear a person down far enough and maybe you will win an election, but every child across this Nation is listening. They are listening. What are they going to do when they go to school the next day? Well, it is okay. We could call each other names. I can make fun at you. I could laugh at you. After all, it is on television: ``Had one of those sweet little mustaches,'' ``Maybe to make sure his pants weren't wet,'' ``Maybe he should sue whoever did that to his face.'' Operation Respect. 22,000 schools across this Nation are trying to impart to our children that we all have value, that whether you are tall or short or fat, whether you are Black or White or whatever color, whatever you want to be in life, it is okay. It is okay. You are important. You have value. We are not going to demean each other. We are not going to bully each other. You are important. Whatever you are, whatever you may be, you are important. That is Operation Respect. Trying to teach the young children in 22,000 schools to respect each other, to respect the differences, to understand and to learn that we all share space on this planet and that each one of us, whatever we may be, whatever we may think about the solution to the world's problems, we have value. So tonight I will go from this Chamber. I will go back to my home and will turn the TV on. I will guarantee you that I will find a Presidential candidate bullying another candidate just as though it was a school ground. I know that the children are watching. I know that all that Operation Respect is trying to do and all of the other programs around this Nation that are trying to teach our children to respect each other, to not engage in bullying--I know that their work will be erased from the blackboard by tonight's television. After all, it is Super Tuesday. And leading up to Super Tuesday, you and I know what we have heard. Is our Nation better for it? I don't think so. Because I know that the children are watching, and I know somehow an awful message is going out across this Nation that it is okay to demean another person, it is okay to pick on somebody because of their makeup, because of the nature of their face, because they happen to be a woman. I fear the result of all of this. I don't fear the policies. The policies come and go. We debate here on the floor more military, less military; more education, less education; the environment is good, climate change is real, climate change is not. That is legitimate. That is the way America ought to be. But to call a woman a bimbo or to say you peed your pants, what in the world is this all about? It is about our children. It is about our future and about telling us what it is okay to do. Well, it is not okay because the children are listening. Thank God we have organizations--Operation Respect and others--that are somehow trying to push back. They are not going to stop every violent act. At least some kid isn't going to pick up a gun and walk into the school and start blasting away because he has been bullied. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, it is my highest honor to recognize Private First Class Joe R. Montes for his courageous service to our great country during World War II. On December 29, 1941, as a very young man, Private Montes answered our nation's call to defend our freedoms after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. He valiantly served in the United States Marine Corps enduring multiple battles in the South Pacific. During this time, Private Montes was awarded the Purple Heart for injuries sustained during the heroic American recapture of the Island of Guam in July 1944. In January 1946, after the formal end of World War II, Private First Class Montes separated from the Marine Corps after four triumphant years of service. His time in service was defined by extraordinary leadership and selfless acts of devotion to his company. On behalf of the men and women of California's 3rd Congressional District, please accept my sincerest gratitude for his dedicated service to our country.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the earlier discussion about one of America's most longstanding and most noted Justices. His passing is mourned by all of us. I do, however, today want to move to a different subject. I want to talk about, I think, one of the two most essential things that a human being needs to live. That is water and air. But today we are going to take the former of those two subjects and really talk about water. Two weeks ago I put this up for all to see. This is tap water from Flint, Michigan. There has been a lot of discussion over the last month, month and a half, almost 3 months now, about Flint, Michigan, about the water supply in Flint, Michigan, lead in the pipes, lead pipes, about the public health emergency that exists there, and about what we could and should do about dealing with Flint, Michigan. However, Flint, Michigan is not unique. This is how they get water in East Porterville. In the Central Valley of California, the San Joaquin Valley, just south of Fresno, California, the water supplies in the East Porterville area ran dry, in part, because of the drought, in part, because of inadequate water systems. So the residents of East Porterville were required to get water from a cattle water trough, pretty much like I have on my ranch, although, hopefully, this water is a whole lot cleaner. Porterville, California. Now we have two examples, one from the Midwest, another one from the Far West. Any other problems about water supply? Well, yes. There are other problems about water supply. This is a list of problems that we know exist in the United States-- or most recently existed: Flint, Michigan, we just saw that picture. Toledo, Ohio, you remember, had to shut down the water system because of problems from algae blooms. Sebring, Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland; Brick Township, New Jersey; Washington, D.C., lead release. Wayne County, North Carolina; Greenville, North Carolina; Lakehurst Acres, Maine; Chicago, Illinois. I decided not to put them all up there because it would take the rest of the evening to list all the communities in America that have water issues. And certainly we do in California. I could put up another--well, maybe I will. Let me just put up a map of California. This is the largest population in the United States, approaching 40 million people. And far north, the Pacific Coast, San Francisco Bay, Los Angeles, down here, Santa Barbara, and way down here, San Diego, and somewhere over here, Arizona and Nevada, the Sierra Nevada mountains, the coastal range, and the great Central Valley of California, where a whole lot of America's food and food exports come from. Down here in the Tulare Lake Basin, there are well over 100 communities who have contaminated water from nitrates and other harmful substances. So the issue of clean water, you know, shortage of water down here, and contaminated wells up and down--oh. The Salinas Valley. Monterey Bay and the great Salinas Valley, many, many of the wells in that area are also contaminated. So we have got a water quality problem really throughout the United States, and we certainly have one in California. We have another problem in California. Let me put this up, a little different map. The previous map, that one, nice and green. That is not California today. We may be and probably are in the fifth year of the great California drought. This is a picture of the California drought situation. The yellow is a little less than normal. The red, far less than normal. This brown is really the way California will be as soon as this summer comes on. And that is called exceptional drought. So the great Central Valley of California, the coastal range down into Los Angeles, even over to the east side of the Sierras, an exceptional drought. So the green California is really not so green. Today we are about halfway through the rainy season in California, and the current rain for the entire State is about 75 percent of normal. That is why you see this extreme drought occurring even as of February 18, 2016. The Sierra snowpack is less than normal but is still a whole lot better than last year, when it was zero, as in no snow. So what are we going to do? Well, we need to do something. Otherwise, we are going to have a whole lot more pain in California. So what Senator Feinstein and I have been doing over the last several months is trying to develop a solution for the immediate drought, to make the most of the water that is available, while still protecting the endangered species, the great salmon runs of the Central Valley of California, and the coastal rivers, as well as the species that live in the delta of California. So we have been working, trying to put together a piece of legislation that would provide as much flexibility as possible, while still protecting the fish species and the flora and fauna of the State. We think we have done it. We think we do have a piece of legislation that will do that. We call that the operational portion of the legislation. Senator Feinstein has already introduced that legislation. I intend to do so in the very near future here in the House of Representatives so that we can have a statement from the House of Representatives about how we can solve the drought problem--well, not solve it--do the very best we can in an extreme circumstance to deliver as much water as possible to the farms and the cities of all of California, while also protecting the endangered species. Let me just put this up. This is the essence of the legislation. I am going to start here at the bottom and work towards the top. This is the short-term provision of the bill. I will go into this in more detail in a few moments. The bill also has what we call long-term infrastructure needs. Those long-term infrastructure needs are storage reservoirs, aquifers beneath the surface of the earth, where we have groundwater--or we used to have groundwater, surface storage. There are several new and expanded reservoir opportunities available in the State, some of them on the streams and rivers--and, of course, those will be controversial--and one or two that are off-stream, in the valleys and the mountains where there are no active rivers, those being somewhat less controversial. So there is surface storage. There is underground aquifer storage. That is this one right here. Authorized $600 million for water storage projects, both aquifer as well as surface storage. We also have this thing called conservation. Conservation is where you can get the most water. For every gallon of water that you conserve, that is a gallon of water that would be available for other purposes or to extend what little you have available. So conservation plays a major role. In this legislation, there is money for conservation. There is also money for this recycling. Now, much of the Midwest recycles water. In fact, the entire Mississippi River system is recycled water, water that is used upstream by some city, cleaned, put back in the river, reused again as it flows down the Mississippi River and its tributaries. California doesn't do much recycling. I don't have a map here of the--no, I don't. But if one were to take a look at the whole Pacific Coast of California and the United States and Alaska and Central America and South America--so from Alaska all the way south to Chile on the West Coast, the Pacific Coast, of the Western Hemisphere--you would find that the fifth biggest river in all of that vast stretch--the great rivers of Alaska and Canada, the Columbia River, the Sacramento River, the Colorado River down here, and the rivers of Central and South America--the fifth biggest happens to be right here, here, here, and here. The fifth biggest rivers are the sanitation plants of California that take water from up and down the entire area and from the Colorado all the way from the Rockies, use it, clean it to a higher standard than the day it arrives in the great cities of California, clean it to a higher standard, and then they dump it in the ocean. This is utter foolishness. So in the Garamendi-Feinstein legislation, we have $200 million for water recycling so that we can recycle that water, reuse it, and make use of water that is already available. We know, for example, that in Los Angeles there are approximately 1 million acre-feet of water that is not now being used. In fact, it is being dumped into the ocean. With this recycling program, 1 million acre-feet of new water can be available in southern California. And, by the way, for those of you who are not familiar with California, we are talking about the Los Angeles basin here. So the recycling in this basin can deliver 1 million acre-feet of water over the next decade or so, and that water can be put back into the great aquifers of southern California and even down into the San Diego area. These aquifers are now largely contaminated with various contaminants, but they can be cleaned and the water recycled, put back in the aquifers, taken out, cleaned, and round and round it goes. One million acre-feet: What does that mean to northern California, to Colorado, our friends in Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada? It means that that is a million acre-feet that Los Angeles, the great basin down here, does not need to take from the Sacramento River in northern California or from the Colorado River, taking pressure off those rivers. And as you saw from the drought map, those rivers are in severe trouble. So that is kind of a strategy that we put in place. Now, we are not geniuses--well, maybe--no. We are not geniuses. But what we do know is that the State of California has already figured this out. So what our legislation does is to tie directly to, mirror, augment, and push forward what California did in the 2014 election, which is to pass proposition 1, an almost $7 billion proposition for the development of water supplies for California. So, look at this: Water conservation, storm water recapturing, increase local and regional supplies, $810 million. Our legislation would fit right in there with conservation and these other programs. Safe drinking water. Remember talking about Porterville and water troughs for cattle from which the kids were taking water? Here you have the Safe Drinking Water Program. And guess what. It is in the Feinstein-Garamendi legislation. Yes. There it is, money to help small communities through the Bureau of Reclamation expanding their WaterSMART and other programs so that we can mirror, augment, supplement, and advance what California already wants to do when proposition 1 goes into effect. Let's see. Water recycling. Didn't I just talk about that? Yes, I did. So in the legislation that Senator Feinstein has already introduced and what I will soon introduce here, we will be once again working with the water recycling. Not as much money, but still a major Federal effort to work with the State to maximize the water recycling. This is also not on this list, but also desalinization, which happens to work for some parts of California as well as other parts of the United States. I talked about groundwater. Yes. Our legislation mirrors the groundwater program that is in proposition 1, adds some additional money, and directs the Federal Government to work directly with the State on advancing the groundwater issues. Now, for those of you that have been following the drought in California over the last several years--actually, the last several decades--California has been excessively using its groundwater so much so that, in parts of the great Central Valley of California--maybe I will put that map back up here--in the great Central Valley of California, particularly in this part of the Central Valley and the Fresno area and south, we have seen a significant fall in the surface of the Earth. It is literally sinking as a result of the groundwater being pumped out. In many places, you can go down through this area and you will see wells that are way, way above the ground and the ground is down here maybe 10, 20 feet. You have seen subsidence in the area. So the over-drafting in this area and some in the Sacramento Valley as well as in the Salinas Valley is a serious problem. Part of what we want to do, mirroring what the State has already decided to do with proposition 1, is to have the Federal Government work with the State on addressing the aquifers in this region to find ways to recharge the aquifers. There are many different ways that that can be done. Some of it is simply pumping the water back into the ground rather than pumping it out. In other areas, the geology in various parts, particularly along the coastal mountains as well as along the Sierra Nevada mountains, there are gravel channels, old river channels that have historically recharged the groundwater basins in parts--actually, along most of the Central Valley. So it has to be done. This is what we are trying to do with this legislation: Desalination research, which I discussed earlier, $100 million; water storage, $600 million; water recycling, $200 million; and $55 million for specific protections for the fish and wildlife species. There is a whole series of projects that would fit into that. Once again, all of this infrastructure work is designed to coordinate specifically with what the State of California is doing with their multibillion-dollar proposition 1. This isn't in effect yet, but this money is now working its way through the various environmental studies and various levels of government so that very soon these projects will be underway. If we are able to pass the legislation that we want to introduce, we are going to see the Federal Government working very, very closely with the State government in addressing the California problem. Now, who cares about California? If you care about food, your fresh veggies, you had better care about California. Over here in the Salinas Valley where lettuce comes from? Drought problems. In the Central Valley, let's see. You name the crop, everything from rice to walnuts--oh, wine grapes are very, very important if you like your wine. In the central coast down here, the same thing. So what we are trying to do with the legislation is to provide a long-term fix to California so that we can increase the supply of water, increase the storage during the wet years, put the storage in reservoirs and in the aquifers so that, when the dry years come, then we will do it. There was a fellow by the name of Steinbeck. He wrote a book, ``East of Eden.'' In that book, he talked about the California droughts. This is not a new situation, although 5 years and 4 years is definitely new. Usually, the droughts would be 1 or 2 years. But now we are looking at quite possibly a 5-year drought. Steinbeck said this. It is not the exact quote, although I wish I had it. It was like this: In the dry years, they worried about where their water would come from. Then the wet years would come and they forgot about the dry years. That has been the story of California for too many--too many-- decades. Certainly Steinbeck saw that in the early part of the 20th century. We are now in the 21st century and we cannot--we cannot--relive that old adage that Steinbeck wrote about. So we need to build for the future. We need to be able to address this in the immediate as best we can and put in place the water systems. I am going to describe those water systems to you just very briefly. Here in the north we have the great Shasta Reservoir up here on the Upper Sacramento River. It could be raised. It could be increased. There are some environmental and certainly some cost issues associated with raising Shasta. That is one of the proposals of possibilities in our legislation. The other one sits right about in here off stream. The Sacramento River flows down through the middle of the valley here, but off-stream over here in my district actually is a potential reservoir that has been talked about for maybe 50 years now called Sites Reservoir. It stores about 1.8 million acre-feet of water. It could deliver annually 500,000 acre-feet of water. That is a lot of water. That is 1 foot of water across 5,000 acres. Did I say 5,000? It is 500,000 acres. So that is the Sites Reservoir over here. That reservoir also does something really unique. Since it is off- river, it will take the water flowing down the Sacramento River during the heavy storms, put that water into the reservoir, and then, when summer comes or the drought comes, that water can be released back into the Sacramento River, providing water quality issues here in the Delta of California--and I will come to that in just a few moments--creating flexibility on the great reservoirs--Shasta, the Yuba system, the Folsom Reservoir here in Sacramento, and the big California reservoir in Oroville--allowing the operations of those reservoirs to be modified in such a way that they are able to store water rather than releasing it down the river for fish and wildlife. It would then be able to release water from Sites Reservoir and keep that water back in these reservoirs. A major problem in Sacramento is that the Folsom Reservoir is at low tide. I will have tomorrow representatives from the east Sacramento area in my office, all of them saying: Oh, my goodness. We don't have enough water in Folsom Reservoir for our cities of Rancho Cordova, Roseville, and the like, east of Sacramento. So Sites Reservoir could provide more water in the Sacramento region by keeping that water in the Folsom Reservoir. Let's talk a little bit about the delta. I guess I had better finish the other reservoirs. Down here in the Fresno area on the San Joaquin River we have the big Friant Reservoir on the San Joaquin. There is a bit of a problem with Friant. It managed to dry up the San Joaquin River, creating a big, big problem for the salmon. They don't do very well in dry rivers. So there is an effort underway to try to restore some of the salmon on the rivers in the San Joaquin Valley, the Stanislaus, the Merced, and the other rivers as you move down towards the San Joaquin. There would be a new reservoir that is proposed here at Temperance Flat. Is it possible? Yes. Is it environmentally controversial? Oh, yeah. No doubt about that. And it is expensive. But, nonetheless, our legislation would authorize a continuation of the studies to see if it is worth doing. So that would be the Temperance Flat. Over here on the hills to the east of Oakland there is another storage reservoir off-stream, and that one is called Los Vaqueros. Los Vaqueros is a reservoir that is controlled by the Contra Costa Water District. They now have agreements with other water districts in the bay area to increase the size of that reservoir to store more water at that area. Again, that is off-stream. It would take the high winter flows and put that water in storage off-stream as with Sites Reservoir to the north of it, all very, very important. So these are the essential projects that would be long term for California. Again, they would be the surface storage reservoirs, two off-stream and three potentially on-stream. They would be recharging the aquifers and the various infrastructure needed to do that, recycling in the great cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, and in the bay area to recycle water and, also, dealing with the contamination that occurs in many of the cities in the Central Valley, the San Joaquin Valley particularly, a little bit up here in the Sacramento Valley, and a lot of problems in the Salinas Valley in this area. So those are the essential elements of the long term--I forgot conservation and desalination. So those are the long-term projects that are both in proposition 1 of the California water bond of 2014 and, also, in our legislation. The second piece of the legislation deals with the operation of the two great water projects. These are the largest water projects in the world, although China is building one that might actually be bigger. But, as of today, the largest water projects in the world are in California. What they basically do--maybe I will back up here a bit. It would be great if my colleagues here really had a sense of what is happening. The basic water projects of California take the water from the Sacramento Valley, the Sacramento River, Mount Shasta up here, and the Trinity River, bring that water in through the Shasta Reservoir, hold the water there, and then send the water down the Sacramento River to the delta. From the delta, that water is picked up in canals--two of them, one operated by the Federal Government, the other one operated by the State of California--and brings that water--the Federal Government--down into the San Joaquin Valley, where it provides hundreds of thousands of acres of irrigated agricultural production. The other part of that project is here on the San Joaquin. That takes water down the east side of the valley, all the way to Kern County, down here in the Bakersfield area, and north up into the Madera County area here. That is called the Friant-Kern system. That is the Federal water project. The State water project, like the Federal, takes the water out of the delta here and brings it down in the canal, all the way down here, providing water to Kern County, and then pumps that water 2,000 feet over the Tehachapi Mountains through tunnels and canals into southern California. It flows down through the western part of the Mohave Desert down here, and then flows into the Los Angeles area, and also into the Palm Springs area all the way over here. That is the California water project. Some of that water flowing into the Metropolitan Water District is then available for the cities and water districts of southern California, all the way down to San Diego and into the Coachella Valley over here in the Palm Springs area. It is one huge water project, all of it dependent on the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Western Hemisphere. There is no other estuary anywhere from Chile to Alaska as large and as important to the aquatic species and birds as the great delta of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system. Unlike many deltas, this is an inland delta. This is the beginning of San Francisco Bay here. It goes on out. The Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco are just further to the west. Once again, the water flows southward down the Sacramento River, past the city of Sacramento, and flows down through the delta, picked up by the great pumps here at Tracy into the canals, and down the canals to the San Joaquin Valley and on to southern California. Here is the problem: the pumping has significantly altered the ecology of the delta and, when coupled with the drought, has created a situation that has led to a very serious potential of the extinction of species in the delta, particularly the delta smelt. Because of the alteration of the Sacramento River system's normal flow, the salmon, which would normally migrate up the Sacramento River all the way to Mount Shasta and beyond or down the San Joaquin River system to Fresno, that migration pattern has been seriously altered. In normal years, the management of the river is such that the salmon are able to get along, not as well as they once did when it was said you could walk across the river on the back of salmon--you can't do that today for sure--but, nonetheless, in a normal year these river systems, excluding the Lower San Joaquin, are able to produce a significant salmon run. In the delta, the delta smelt have been under great pressure since the pumps were put in. The smelt is a little, tiny fish, but it happens to be like the foundation fish--all the bigger fish eat it. And it is also what we call the canary in the coal mine. If you remember what that is all about, you use canaries in a coal mine. When the canary keels over, you have got a serious problem because you are the next to keel over--bad air. Well, here these delta smelt are considered to be the canary in the water. When they are in deep trouble--and they are today--the question arises: Is the entire ecosystem of the delta going to collapse? We think not. But California is severely stressed. California is still in drought. Today, the rainfall in California is 75 percent of normal. That is for the entire State. For the Sacramento region, February is 22 percent of normal, and I think we are rapidly approaching the end of February. What that means for the delta is extraordinary stress--extraordinary stress--and a monumental California water fight. My great-grandfather came to California in the 1860s to mine for gold. During that time, there was a fellow out there by the name of Mark Twain, who was writing about the gold rush and other things that were going on in California. He said a couple of things that are really interesting. About San Francisco, he said that the coldest winter he ever spent was summer in San Francisco. I think he was referring to the fog. He also said that in California in the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s, he said: ``Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.'' So it has been. During the Gold Rush period, it was all about water. You couldn't mine for gold unless you had water, and people fought over water. They built incredible systems to get their hands on the water that came out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Today, it is the same. We still fight about water. What Senator Feinstein and I are trying to do is to reduce the friction, reduce the fighting that has been going on for the last decade, or last 5 years, about water as it flows through the delta. My San Joaquin Valley colleagues, Democrat and Republican, have put forth two pieces of legislation that they believe would solve the water problem for them. What they have managed to do with that legislation is to basically wipe out the environmental protection for the species-- salmon, smelt, and other species in the delta--and simply say: Turn the pumps on. We need the water. We have got the votes. We are going to get the water. Those two pieces of legislation have not become law, and they never should become law, because if they did, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Western Hemisphere would be in serious jeopardy. What we propose is to work within the environmental laws and the biological opinions that have been put forth by the Federal and State fish and wildlife agencies and the National Marine Fisheries Service-- the National Marine Fisheries Service concerned about the salmon; the fish and wildlife agencies concerned about the endemic species of the delta--to work within those biological opinions which are designed to protect those species and say the flexibility that is allowed under the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the biological opinions are sufficient to allow for the maximum amount of pumping to the south from the delta consistent with the protection of the species. In order to accomplish that, we need to use science. The biological opinions are based on about 13- to 15-year-old science. What we are saying in our legislation is ramp up the science. Senator Feinstein was able to deliver $100 million to California fish agencies to put in place realtime monitoring. She was not able to write how that could occur, so in the legislation we would direct the agencies to conduct real-time monitoring, daily monitoring. As the winter flows--and there have been winter flows thus far this year, not enough, but they are there. As those winter flows enter the delta from the north and the south, the fish agencies study where are the smelt, where are the salmon coming down the Sacramento River, and also from the San Joaquin River. If they are near the delta pumps, reduce the pumping, or don't pump at all, depending where those fish are. If they are not, if they have moved away from the pumps and there is water in the system, then turn the pumps on. Pretty simple: if the fish are endangered, reduce the pumping; if the fish are not endangered, then increase the pumping. That is essentially what our legislation would accomplish. There are other elements to it, for example, putting in fish screens at the Delta Cross Channel on the Georgiana Slough, and also to improve the levee system within the delta. We will see. We will see what happens here. We have a choice as Members of Congress and men and women that are supposed to solve problems. We can go the way of my San Joaquin Valley colleagues and simply push aside, negate, the environmental laws that provide for the protection of the salmon, the great fishing industry of California, the salmon runs up and down the coast. By the way, the salmon that come out of the Sacramento River provide salmon all the way to the Columbia River in Oregon. So it is not just about San Francisco Bay. It is about the salmon and the fishing industry for much of the West Coast, also south through Monterey Bay. Can we wipe out the environmental laws and simply turn the pumps on? Yes, if that legislation were to pass that has been offered by my colleagues from the San Joaquin Valley. Or we can work within the environmental laws, achieving maximum flexibility, understanding the science: Where are the salmon or the salmonoids? Those are the salmon that have hatched and are coming back down the river, little, tiny salmon. Where are they? Are they coming down the river and getting sucked to the pumps, or are they coming down the river and heading out to the bay? We don't know today. We are not doing real-time monitoring. If we did real-time monitoring, we would know where they are. We would know where the delta smelt are and other species, and we could adjust the pumping to protect the species and to take advantage of the high flows that occur during the normal winters and also this year, even though it is well below normal. I have confidence. I have confidence in the wisdom of the Californians who decided that they would pass a water bond to put in place long-range solutions for California--recycling, conservation, storage systems, underground aquifers--and to develop safe drinking water. I have confidence in the wisdom of California because they voted by over 60 percent for this project. I have confidence in the Congress. I have confidence in the Senate. Senator Feinstein has come up with a good bill. I had the honor to work with her on that bill, and I will soon introduce that bill here in the House. I have confidence that we have the wisdom and we have the understanding of the systems of California water to maximize over time the water potential of California. And in the near term, in the near term when California, this great State that we would like to see as green, when California is faced with this, I have got confidence that we are wise enough and we are smart enough politically to maneuver ourselves into a situation where we can address the current drought to the maximum extent possible, delivering water to the San Joaquin Valley and on into southern California without harming the fish, without destroying the salmon of California and the fishing, the multibillion- dollar fishing industry that goes with it, and without jeopardizing the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Western Hemisphere. That is our challenge. This is what we are going to try to accomplish. Senator Feinstein's bill has been introduced. That version will be introduced over here in the next several days as we develop a better understanding among my colleagues of what we are trying to accomplish here. I have confidence that the representatives of the southern California area will see the wisdom of putting aside what Mark Twain said we always do in California: Fighting over water and getting about drinking more whiskey. Probably a pretty good idea. I think we are going to get southern California support for this. I think the San Joaquin Valley folks will look at this and say: Well, we can continue fighting as we have for the last 5 years with no progress, none, nada, zero. Let's see if we can figure out how to do this in a way that protects the species, the salmon, the other fish, that protects the largest estuary on the west coast of the western hemisphere, and that provides the maximum amount of water that is available to California, which, by the way, has an economy that is ranked seventh in the world. So water is really important. I know we can do better. I know that this Nation doesn't have to have this kind of water in Flint, Michigan. I know that this Nation doesn't have to have children in the Central Valley of California getting their water out of a cattle water trough. I know that this Nation doesn't have to destroy the largest estuary and all of the fish, all of the salmon, and all of the industry that goes with that in its quest for water and that what little is available can be shared and maximized. That is what we are going to try to do with the Feinstein-Garamendi legislation. I know we can do it. I know we have to do it. I know, at the end of the day, we are not going to destroy. We are going to build, we are going to create, and we are going to solve the problem. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, thank you so very, very much. You brought to this issue enormous facts and passion. Your work as the ranking member on the subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee positions you in a very, very important place. Your passion and knowledge should help carry the day on this. Mr. Tonko, if you can stick around, we will come back to this one more time. I would like now to call on my colleague from California, Mr. Ted Lieu from Los Angeles.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank the gentlewoman from Texas. I know that your concerns are very real. You traveled to Flint, and you have been working on these issues for many, many years. Thank you for your participation. Tomorrow, the Democrats are holding their own committee hearing on this issue. I am certain that we will go through the issues that you talked about: what actually happened and who is actually responsible. So, that will be a discussion for tomorrow. Perhaps we will cover it on the floor tonight. Let me now turn to my colleague from New York, Mr. Paul Tonko, for the continuation of the East-West show.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Lieu, you said you are on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. You had the hearing last week and began the process of developing an understanding of what happened and who was responsible. Critically important. You also said you are on the Budget Committee. So if I might just lobby you for a moment--

Mr. GARAMENDI. Let me just lobby you. You are going to be taking up the budget--I think tomorrow, actually.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, I wasn't in Flint, Michigan when Representative Kildee spoke to that young child--I think he was probably 4 or 5--who had been drinking this lead contaminated water, and was aware that he had been drinking the water. When that young kid turned to Mr. Kildee and said: I am afraid I won't be smart enough, I visualize it. My question to you, to myself, and to my colleagues here in the House of Representatives and across the way in the Senate is: Will we be smart enough to protect our children? I think we must be smart enough to do that.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I appreciate the opportunity to lobby you. You are in a very important position, as are all of us; 435 of us are going to make choices about what is important and how we spend our constituents' tax money. And these are choices we are going to make. We often don't really look at it, but the budget that will be forthcoming, the President's budget, and then the response of this House to that budget, will allocate that $4 trillion across a whole variety of programs. We really do have the opportunity here, as we put together the budget and then the appropriations following, to take up the challenge that Mr. Tonko put before us in the State Revolving Fund. Mr. Lieu, thank you so very much for joining us.

Mr. GARAMENDI. It is poisonous. So we are going to make some choices. My plea to my colleagues here-- and it echoes what you said--you can talk about it in terms of jobs. Thousands and thousands of jobs would be created if we invested in our infrastructure, our public works, and the water systems. Is the money available to do it? If we make the right choice, it is. If we make the right choice to invest in ending the poisoning of our children, it is there. We can move $4 trillion around in one way or another and build modern infrastructure. We could do that. We are going to do it now. We are going to do it now. The issue of the budget begins today. In the United States Congress, 535 American citizens are brought to this Capitol to make decisions about the health and the safety of their children. We have been given that responsibility. God knows there is enough money around $4 trillion to find a way to spend the money to build the water systems to stop the poisoning of our children. It is just a matter of choices. What do we choose to do? Refurbish a nuclear bomb that, God willing, we would never ever even think about using? That is our choice. It is our choice. As your representatives, we can move money into providing the public works to meet the fundamental human need, in this case, drinkable, potable, safe water. It is fundamental. You cannot live but 3 days without water, and the last 2 days aren't worth living anyway because you are comatose. Water. Choices. Public works. Investment in the future. Jobs today. Engineers, as you talked about. Financial. All of that. It is disheartening. I hear my colleagues like Sheila Jackson Lee come in and talk about going to Flint, Michigan. I will never forget Mr. Kildee on the floor last Thursday. I asked him to talk to me about that young child that you saw in your community that you represent. He said the kid turned to him and said: I am not going to be smart enough. We make choices.

Mr. GARAMENDI. A pothole, maybe?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Can we talk about the California drought in this context?

Mr. GARAMENDI. I was just thinking about your community that you mentioned, Albany and the like. I represent the University of California, Davis, in Davis, California. I think they have got maybe 12 wells that provide most of the water. About half of those wells are contaminated. They are building a new water system, and it should go online in the next few months, or maybe a year, or maybe sooner. They are investing. Perhaps they got some of this money from the State revolving fund. It is an example of a community that wrestled with this for about a decade. They turned out to be smart enough to address it. They did it with their neighboring community of Woodland. A new water system is going into place. They will have safe drinking water. There are other communities spread throughout California that don't have the same opportunity. It is our task to address this. I think we are smart enough to do so. I think there is enough money in the system to do it. Mr. Tonko, would you like to do a quick 15 second wrap?

Mr. GARAMENDI. The art of the possible. The art of the possible is what we have here. Mr. Tonko, I don't know where you were when I brought this up. This is the drinking water in Flint, Michigan. That is a recent photo from a water tap in Flint, Michigan. Unacceptable. The bottom line is it is unacceptable. Not only is it dirty, it is poisonous.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Just double, if you would, just double the amount we are spending for the clean drinking water programs at the Federal level from about $1 billion to, let's say, $2 billion, or maybe even $3 billion, by squeezing some of the expenditures that we find in other accounts. My particular target is the nuclear weapons account, which will in the next 25 years cost the American taxpayers $1 trillion. So when you go to the hearing, keep that in mind.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Okay. Also, in the President's budget, he has $1.36 billion for the new Long Range Strike Bomber; $113 million for a ground-based strategic deterrence; $1.4 billion for the Ohio class submarine--those are nuclear submarines; the new long-range cruise missile, $995 million; to rebuild the B61 bomb, $137 million; and the total amount that the National Nuclear Security Administration is spending this new year, 2017, $9.24 billion. Now, it would seem to me that this is just in the nuclear enterprise. These are our nuclear weapons. So my lobbying is this: When you put together the budget, could you somehow squeeze out of the nuclear arms race that we are engaged in about a billion dollars so that we can stop poisoning our children?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about the cities of America--at least many of the cities of America. While I was waiting for the opportunity to speak to the House and people of America, I went into the cloakroom and pulled out today's Roll Call, one of what we call the Hill rags. These are one of the newspapers around the Hill. It says ``Lead in the Water, Way Beyond Flint,'' and it talks about the issue of contamination in our water supplies. Indeed, they are quite correct. This would be one of maybe 20 different slides I could put up here. What do these cities of America have in common: Flint, Michigan; Toledo, Ohio; Sebring, Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland; Brick Township, New Jersey; Washington, D.C.; Wayne County, North Carolina; Greenville, North Carolina; Lakehurst Acres, Maine; Chicago, Illinois; Porterville, California? The list goes on and on and on. These are cities that have or have had contaminated water in the last couple of years. Some of these are ongoing. We hear a lot of discussion about Flint, Michigan, and the tragedy of the water supply in Flint, Michigan, the lead contamination, the 8,000 or 9,000 children who have been inflicted with lead poisoning, and the incredible, awful effect that that will have on the development of their brain and of their future. This issue is one that we are becoming aware of. Actually, we have been aware of it for a long, long time. The problem is that we haven't done anything about it or we have done very, very little about it. Tonight we are going to talk about contaminated water in America, America's cities and towns that are providing water that is not fit to drink. So what to do? Well, we are going to have to deal with the realities of 8,000 to 9,000 children, their development, the potential problems that they face in their lives ahead. That will be basically dealing with the fact that we had contaminated water in Flint, Michigan, and in a host of other cities. We can't live without water. The human body requires it. If you don't get it, you are going to die very, very quickly. The fact of the matter is I am not at all sure you can live with contaminated water. That is the actual water that was available to residents of Flint, Michigan: yucky, yellow, contaminated, polluted water. Not just lead, but yuck. Why would you want to drink that? Well, it is all you have. So you don't want to, but you really don't have any choice. Contaminated water, what to do? Tonight we are going to discuss this issue. I guess one thing you can do is what California did. In Porterville, California, when the wells went dry, they brought a cattle water trough similar to what I have on my ranch to provide water for my cattle. This water trough provided water for the children of Porterville, California. Now, there is a solution to the water crisis in California. Porterville isn't the only city or town in the San Joaquin Valley. In fact, there are dozens of towns in the San Joaquin Valley of California, the largest State, the richest State. We like to think of California, my home State, as being ahead of everything. I guess we are ahead in providing cattle water troughs to provide water for children in California. We ought to be ashamed. What are we going to do about it? There are 435 people here in the House of Representatives, and I guess there is another 100 Senators across the way, a President, and all the administration. What are we going to do about it? I guess we can look at our report card. This is from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Let's see. The 2013 report card for America's infrastructure: Aviation, D; bridges, C plus; dams, D; down here, schools, D; roads, railroads, Cs; water--oh, here we are--water, a D. We asked them about this. We said: Why a D? They said: We would give them an F, but it is too much trouble to try to figure out how to do an F. So we just go to the lowest, which is D. You don't get any lower than a D from the American Society of Civil Engineers. That is our report card in America, folks. It is not just water. It is the entire infrastructure system. You are wondering why. Why does that happen? Take a look at this little chart. A sharp drop in government infrastructure spending. Let's see. That is 2002. In 2002, $330 billion spent on all infrastructure: roads, bridges, airports, water systems, sanitation systems. $325 billion in 2002. And in real 2014 dollars, nondefense spending on infrastructure, here we are in 2012, 2013. We are down to about $200 billion, about $125 billion less spent on infrastructure of all kinds. Oh. Back to water. What about water? Where did we go with water? Spending on clean water and drinking water infrastructure in 2014 deflated dollars, go back to 1973. In 1973, the Vietnam war was still going on. Let's see. That would be somewhere around $10 billion in 2014 dollars in 1973. In 2016, we are down to $2 billion. Don't be surprised when you see a list such as I put up a moment ago of cities in the United States that have water problems. Aging infrastructure, lead pipes. Here is a picture of a lead pipe. Corroded. You wonder why kids get lead poisoning. If you don't spend money on infrastructure, you are going to wind up with sick kids, you are going to wind up with bridges that collapse, you are going to wind up with a second-rate economy and a third-world water situation. By the way, that is the bridge on Interstate 5, the road from Canada to Mexico down the Pacific coast. The bridge collapsed. What happens when you don't spend money on infrastructure? Your economy fails, your kids get sick, and they are forced to drink water out of a water trough. This is not the America we want to live in. This is not the America the public sent us here to provide for them. We like to think of ourselves as the strongest, biggest, best country in the world, and we are in many respects, but when it comes to providing for the fundamentals of life--water--we get a D rating. We get kids getting their water supply out of a water trough. We get kids in Flint, Michigan, who are poisoned with lead. That is not the only city. It is across the United States, city after city. In the Central Valley of California, it is arsenic, it is lead, it is other contaminants. Huh-uh. We have got work to do here in the House of Representatives. It is our responsibility. It is our task. We can't toss it off to somebody else. So, yeah, Roll Call, you are correct: ``Lead in the Water, Way Beyond Flint.'' Arsenic in the water. Fecal contamination in the water. You name it. City after city, ancient systems, more than 100 years old, lead pipes which were put in the ground a century ago, leaching lead into the food supply. That is America. What would it cost? About $348 billion just for the water systems. How can we pay for it? Well, there is a way. Oh, America, are you aware that we are into a new nuclear arms race? We are. In the next 25 years, a trillion dollars of your tax money is going to be spent on a total rearmament of our nuclear weapons systems: intercontinental ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, submarines, stealth aircraft. A trillion dollars. City after city in America limps along, poisoning its children with 100-year-old water systems. We have got some choices to make here. What are we going to spend your tax money on? New nuclear bombs or new water pipes? Choices. Joining me tonight to discuss these sets of issues are some of my dear friends. Paul Tonko and I have been working on this infrastructure issue for 5 years now, what we call the East Coast-West Coast. I am going to ask Paul if he would wait just a few moments. Sheila Jackson Lee, you were in Flint, Michigan, last week--I guess yesterday, actually, for a discussion in Flint, Michigan. Share with us briefly, if you would, your reflections on what you saw there.

Mr. GARAMENDI. As you were talking, I think back when I was growing up, and we used to call this, not infrastructure, we used to call this ``public works.'' Public works. This is for the public. It is infrastructure, but this is the public investment in the things that an individual, even a private company, cannot do. This is something that we do as a community in the public domain. It is work. We are talking, if we were to invest $2 billion this coming year in these community water systems, we would actually generate thousands of jobs, and we would increase the economic growth immediately. It has been estimated that for every dollar you put into public works, infrastructure, you immediately increase the economy by $1.3, $1.4. So this is a way of investing immediately, putting people to work in good, middle class jobs, and laying in the public works for future economic growth and, as you just said so eloquently, protecting our health, our children's health. So this is absolutely essential. We are at a very propitious moment. The President proposed today the budget for the United States of America's next fiscal year, beginning October 1, 2016. It is his proposal on how to spend about $4 trillion of taxpayer money and debt. We, as the representatives of the people of the United States, will take that and modify it. What if we just made one modification in that $4 trillion and said: We are going to spend an additional billion dollars or an additional $2 billion on public works water systems? What would it mean? The 140-year-old pipes that you talked about, could they be replaced? Could the 250,000 water main breaks across the United States be reduced to maybe just 200,000? People going to work, engineers designing the system, financiers figuring out how to put together the local money, the State money, and the Federal money, generating jobs, growing our economy, and stopping the poisoning of our children. The President proposed his budget today. Tomorrow our colleagues take up the budget and begin to decide how to move that money to things that are a priority. Here we are.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Okay. So the budget is going to be coming up, and that is the allocation of the $4 trillion that the Federal Government will spend. We will be spending it on education. We will be spending it on roads, on the military and the like. Let me just toss you some numbers for your consideration. Now, these are adjusted 2015 dollars, so we are keeping equal-value dollars. In 2007, the State Revolving Fund for Drinking Water, which Mr. Tonko talked about, had $957 million for that program. That goes to the States to repair their water systems. And it stayed around $900 million the next year. And then we had the stimulus bill in 2009, and we spent $3 billion. Then we went back down, $1.5 billion, $1 billion, $947 million, and we stayed somewhere in the range of $900 million through 2016. So that is the current year. And that is $863 million that we are spending this year on the State Revolving Fund. Keep in mind that it is estimated that we need $328 billion to repair all the pipes. Now, the President's budget has $1.2 billion for the coming year. He just introduced that today.