Steve Knight

Mr. KNIGHT

Mr. KNIGHT. Madam Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Culberson putting this together and allowing us time to talk about our heroes on the street. During your shift as a police officer or as a sheriff's deputy, you go into roll call or you go into briefing and start your day with info or assignments. You check out your equipment. You go over and you get in your car. You go to the gas pumps and you fill up the gas. And you might talk to some of the other officers or the other deputies about what is happening on the street or what happened the night before, and you start your day. Your day might start off with talking to your partner and trying to find out a little bit more about them if you don't know them, because that happens on a day-to-day basis--new officers are put in with officers every day--just trying to find out what your thoughts are, what your tactics are, what your training is, and how you feel like you are going to feel out these situations. This is the start of a police officer's day. For 18 years I was a Los Angeles police officer, and I served on the front lines in a police car for 17 of those 18 years. So, as they say, I was out pushing the sled around for 12 hours a day, snooping and pooping, looking for bad guys, and protecting and serving. On the side of my car, that is exactly what it said, ``to protect and to serve.'' That is what a police officer does. It is not like the shows that you see on TV. Some of it is boring time, some of it is high adrenalin, but all of it is service to the community. Every second, every minute of your shift is service to the community. So if we are out there enforcing the law, making a traffic stop, making an arrest, or just, as 1-Adam-12 used to do, go and respond to a ``see the man,'' ``see the woman,'' and help and just serve, that is a day-to-day. I didn't know Deputy Goforth, but I feel like he was a brother in arms because he was. He was someone who went out and served his community, served them with honor, served them with integrity. And I am sure that the community is better for his years of service. I am sure over the next decade or generations that they won't forget Deputy Goforth's commitment to the community. There will be a memorial. There will be a yearly service. People will talk about what he meant to the community. I was in the 990 class in LAPD. The very first female officer who died in the line of duty for LAPD was in the 590 class. Our class was taken out of its normal duty of going and learning how to be a professional law enforcement officer, and we went to the service for that officer. Tina Kerbrat was the very first female officer who died in LAPD, and it was very similar to Deputy Goforth. It was basically a shooting, an assassination. This will always stay with you when you go to a law enforcement officer's funeral. You will never forget it. You will see the thousands of people. Just like many of the Members said today, the thousands of people that came from other departments all over the country, all over the world, come to pay their respects to the law enforcement professional who did everything that they could to protect their community. My squadron leader in my academy class died in Afghanistan. He was a law enforcement officer with LAPD who was a SWAT officer. He did his duty, went to Afghanistan to fight for our ideals and for our morals with the United States Marine Corps. He died in Afghanistan doing the same thing that he would do on a 24-hour-a-day basis, protecting what we believe here in America. I am honored to be able to stand and talk about our heroes on the street, talk about the people who protect our community on a day-to-day basis, put their lives on the line so that we can live the life that we choose.

Mr. KNIGHT

Mr. KNIGHT. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of H.R. 2898, the Western Water and American Food Security Act. And I will give just a couple of examples. I live in the desert of southern California. I am not a northern California person, and I am not a Central Valley person, but I am a desert rat in California who understands water is imperative to all of our needs. What is happening in my district right now is a 35 percent reduction in water. That is what they are requesting. All of our water companies have come forward and have said that they are raising the rates between 30 and 40 percent. Now, let me tell you that you cannot reduce your water by 35 percent. You just cannot do it in a single family house. You can reduce. You can get down to about 10 or 15 percent. But when you are talking 35 percent, it just doesn't happen. That is the life we are living in today. I have been sitting here for about an hour, and I have taken a few notes about what might happen if we pass this. One of the things that hit me was reignite the environmental wars, reignite the problems that we are having with water in California. Let me tell you that I don't believe there is a State in the Union that is going through as many adjudications of water than is happening in California right now. If we are talking about reigniting the water wars or about reigniting the environmental wars, they are happening today, right now. In my district alone, we have water adjudication that has been going on for 17 years. If we are talking about reigniting the environmental wars, it is happening right now, today. It is not just the delta smelt. It is the environmental impacts that we are putting on fish above people. In my district, again, we have an issue where the Department of Water and Power from L.A. cannot release water down a canyon to help the people in the canyon because we have the stickleback fish in there. They are afraid that it is going to harm that fish; so they have reduced the water from 1,200 acre-feet a year to 300 acre-feet. The environmental wars are happening in California today.

Mr. KNIGHT. If we do not do something today, then when? When do we do something? When do we go back to our constituents and say that we are actually working on the number one priority in California? A State without water is dead. I did a tele-town hall 2 weeks ago. I took 18 phone calls in 1 hour. There were 17 phone calls that were on water, and on one phone call, he had no idea what he was talking about. But 17 phone calls out of 18 were on water. This is the number one priority. If not today, when?

Mr. KNIGHT

Mr. KNIGHT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2499, the Veterans Entrepreneurship Act of 2015. This will expand opportunities for veterans who return home and want to apply their skills and disciplines in starting businesses. What we are doing today is talking about letting our leaders who are out in the field and are defending our Nation come home and do the same thing here, bring their entrepreneurial skills and bring their leadership skills to small business, to the business industry, and to do it in the way they have done when protecting the Nation. Our fighting men and women are uniquely inclined to succeed in business ventures. They are hard workers and natural leaders and are trained to build teams and to think critically in high-pressure environments. Veteran-owned small businesses make up about 9 percent of all small firms and nearly 4 million businesses, with average annual revenues of almost $500,000. These are people who know how to succeed. These are people who know how to lead. This bill is just taking away some of the obstacles, making it a little bit easier for our leaders to come back into the entrepreneurship of America and succeed. While the economic environment is improving generally, some of our vets are having a tough time getting access to the funds they need to put their skills into action. Particularly, female veterans are dealing with outsized obstacles in transitioning to the private sector. The unemployment rate for women warfighters who have come home from Iraq and Afghanistan is 11.4 percent, more than twice that of what our male veterans' national average is. It is time we turned our attention to addressing the problems faced by our veteran entrepreneurs, who have made such tremendous sacrifices and who want to continue to pursue the American Dream. This bill takes a prudent, responsible step in harnessing their skills and expertise in order to add value to the economy and in lowering the barriers for these trained leaders to get their ideas off the ground.

Mr. KNIGHT

Mr. KNIGHT. Mr. Speaker, I want to first thank the House Appropriations Committee for fully funding the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, program. The SOFIA program is something that is stationed in my district. It is a 747 airplane with a 100-inch telescope in the back. Some people ask why we would need this or why this is something that NASA is so excited about. It is because we have certain programs that are in the atmosphere, and on the ground today, many of them have restrictions, but SOFIA doesn't. SOFIA does things that other telescopes just can't do. First, it flies at 40,000 feet, so it gets above the water vapor. That is something that we just can't do from the ground. We can't do that type of science, those observations--we just can't do it--yet SOFIA does something that many other telescopes can't do. It does something that the Hubble can't do. It does something that our beloved James Webb Space Telescope, which is going to be launched in the next couple of years, cannot do. It lands, and we can upgrade it. If there is something new in 2015, we can put it on SOFIA. SOFIA can take off. We can do our projects, and we can do our experiments. It can land. If we have something new in 2016, we can do the same thing and so on and so forth. For the next 20 years, we will be flying SOFIA if this Congress continues to fund it. Last year, SOFIA was on the chopping block, and without the good leadership of our majority leader, it might have gone away. What I wanted to bring to everyone's attention is, if we are going to fund NASA, if we are going to fund projects for our new generation, if we are going to explore, if we are going to do all of the things that make America great and that make America the exploration country that we have been for the last 100-plus years, then we have to invest a little bit. When the administration threatened to shut down SOFIA in fiscal year 2015, Congress showed strong support to make sure that SOFIA would continue; but, as we move forward, we understand what these types of projects bring. As I look into the crowd, I see an awful lot of young folks who have either visited Washington, D.C., or they are on a tour, or they are doing something. That is what SOFIA brings. Every year, we put fifth and sixth and seventh grade teachers in SOFIA for a 9- or 10-hour mission. They get to work with NASA. They get to work with scientists from America and from Germany because this is a joint project, and they get to see what projects and what experiments NASA is doing. They also get to work with NASA hand in hand. They get to bring that back to the classroom, and they get to teach their fifth through seventh grade students about astronomy, about learning, about new planets, about new stars, about dying stars, about new solar systems. They take that at a practical level not just what is in the book, but what they learn, what they see, and what they do with NASA itself. Also, I greatly appreciate the language that the committee included in the report accompanying the fiscal year 2016 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill, which reaffirms our support for SOFIA and rejects NASA's plan to conduct a senior review of the mission at such a premature stage. If we are going to look at what SOFIA and other projects from NASA do, we have to allow them to bring us some real data. That data takes time. If we are going to do that on a 1- or 2-year status and then, maybe, cancel a project, then all of the money that we have injected into this project will be for naught. Given that SOFIA achieved full operating status just this last year, in 2014, it has been designed for a lifespan of up to, like I said, 20 years. A senior review should not be at a 2-year stand, but it should go to a 5- or an 8-year stand so that we can collect the data and make sure that this program is worth the money the taxpayers spend on it. I would like to thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle because they have supported this project just like they have supported many projects for NASA and for our experiment community. Without the support from both sides of the aisle, it is really going to be difficult for America to continue to be the leader in space exploration and exploration abroad.

Mr. KNIGHT

Mr. KNIGHT. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the majority leader for bringing this forward. This is a vital piece of legislation. The majority leader brings up a subject that is always very important to me. It happened on December 17, 1903. It happened in a little bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. Two innovators took their invention across part of the country out to a little place in North Carolina in Kitty Hawk, and they flew a man-powered controllable aircraft for the first time. Now, why is that important? It is because the government had thrown a $50,000 grant to get this done, and they couldn't get it done, but two innovators could get it done by nothing other than the brains that they had, the energy, and their two hands. America needs to ensure that it will continue to be the leader in the space industry. Business and innovation want stability, and this bill does just that, by extending the FAA learning period and duration of indemnification to 10 years. When I speak to fifth graders--and I think we all do at least a couple times a year; I try to speak to at least 50 schools a year--but when I talk to the fifth graders, I ask them how long it takes to fly from LA to Tokyo. There is always a 2-hour or a 20-hour or anything like that. I tell them it takes about 10\1/2\ hours. I said: But in your lifetime, it is going to take about an hour and a half. They said: Well, that is great. That is great. I would love to be in an airplane for just an hour and a half or a spacecraft when, today, we have to do 10\1/2\ hours. Well, do you know what, that will happen if we let it happen. Right now, it is happening. Innovation is flourishing. These things are happening. We are doing jousting programs that is dispersing the supersonic wave which means, at some point, we will be able to fly over the continent at more than Mach 1. That means we will be able to fly home to California in an hour and a half. Now, I know all of us Californians would love to do that instead of the 5\1/2\ hours it takes today, just like it took in 1970. This bill allows the FAA to gather sufficient data to ensure the regulations will help foster growth in the industry. I support this bill.

Mr. KNIGHT

Mr. KNIGHT. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the America COMPETES Act, and I would like to thank the chair for his leadership in this field. Mr. Chairman, today the Federal Government spends about $3 billion across STEM education efforts. This bill creates a new STEM education advisory panel to provide feedback and advise the President and Federal agencies with STEM programs to better inform plans and budgets. The bill directs that STEM education efforts are to be coordinated across the Federal Government to limit duplication. Industry also recognizes the benefits of STEM. This is evidenced by its support of various STEM programs with equipment, facilities, and volunteers. In my district alone, aerospace thrives with high-technical, high- paying jobs. Without STEM, without reaching out with STEM education, we don't get those folks to jump in there. We have to talk about other things like visas and bringing people in for these types of jobs instead of working with our kids to get them educated and moving toward a good career. This bill provides for grants for research on STEM programming that engages underrepresented students. Again, in my district, we have the Lancaster Robotics Team. It started more than 10 years ago. When it started, it was about 2 percent women, or 2 percent girls; today it is over 40 percent. Forty percent of the Lancaster Robotics Team is girls working towards a STEM degree, working towards an engineering degree, a mathematics degree, and a computer science degree. Again, aerospace brings many of the highest paying and most technical jobs not just to my district, but to this country. Mr. Chairman, STEM education is not just a buzzword; it is something that actually works. STEM education is the lifeblood for what we do in a high technical society. If we don't do it, someone else will. We should do it right here in America. I ask for an ``aye'' vote.

Mr. KNIGHT

Mr. KNIGHT. Mr. Speaker, this is California Aerospace Week. California is rich in our history of flight. In my district alone, we have seen the sound barrier broken for the first time and the ultimate airspeed record set, and many other flights from the F-80 through our beloved F-22. We have also seen my district build all of the space shuttles, all of the B-1s, all of the B-2s, and most of the fighters that fly over our friendly skies. Our State has had an over 100-year history in flight, and Aerospace Week culminates that production and that test. Our State and my district have continued to put America in the lead over the skies, and we will continue to do so in the future.

Mr. KNIGHT

Mr. KNIGHT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of the loss of a true American hero. Colonel Fitz Fulton lost his life on February 4 of this year, and we lost the true ``Dean of Flight Test.'' The aerospace community mourns his passing. He had 23 years of service in the Air Force as a colonel and 20 years with NASA. Colonel Fulton was responsible for flying the YF-12 or, as some people would know, the SR-71, the XB-70, the B-52, and many other aircraft in his 16,000 hours in the air. Where I got my connection to Colonel Fulton was he was the B-52 pilot for dropping my father in the X-15 in the middle 1960s during the record flights. I will always remember Colonel Fulton as honorable and one of those people that you just looked at those steely eyes and you knew that he had a true sense of commitment to this country and what we believe in, and this country will mourn his passing.

Mr. KNIGHT

Mr. KNIGHT. Mr. Speaker, I have gotten to sit during this debate, and for the last hour or more I got to listen to nobody arguing, nobody wondering that this is a bad idea, nobody saying that this is something we shouldn't do. When you walk around your district--and me being a freshman, I get to hear all my friends. You know, you never ask your friend whether you are a liberal or a conservative or a Democrat or Republican. You just talk to your friends. Friends always ask me: Why don't you get something done? As a State legislator in California, it was difficult for us to get some things done. I was always frustrated about that. I never liked to hear the term ``ABC''--Anywhere but California. But the reason that term came up was because of certainty, was because businesses didn't know what we were going to do from year to year. That is exactly what we are talking about today--certainty. ``Certainty'' is just not a word that we throw around. ``Certainty'' is something that has meaning. If we are going to extend this for, now, 7, 8 years in a row, it is obviously a good idea. Going back and forth and volleying back and forth saying that this is a great idea, we all agree, we just want to do it on a 1-year basis, doesn't give certainty, doesn't give that reliability that this is good policy, we all believe in it, and we can get what we desire out of it. When we go back to our districts and we go to our food pantries or we go to places that are helping the needy and helping the people that need it, feed people that need to be fed, wouldn't you like to go back there and say: ``You know what? This is not something we are going to kick back and forth next year or the next year. This is something that is going to be on the books. We have sheer certainty about this''? So listening to this debate and listening to what is happening of these four measures is what I draw out of this. What I draw, what we can get today: bipartisan, moving this forward, getting certainty for these measures that we seem to all agree upon.

Mr. KNIGHT

Mr. KNIGHT. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of H.R. 527, to grant long-overdue relief from Federal regulations for small business owners. This issue is especially important to me as a Representative from California. As of 2012, California had more small businesses and employees than any other State, according to the Small Business Association. As I understand it, this act does not stop regulation. It just asks for some common sense. When we are looking at small business, all we want is for them to make money, morally and ethically, so that they can expand, so that they can hire, so that they can produce for our country. Well, this is a step in the right direction. Analyzing direct and indirect impacts is something that we should want from our government, federally and statewide. Many Americans just want to work. The best way Congress can help is cutting some of the burdensome red tape and letting job creators do what they do best--and maybe letting us get out of the way. Instead of making small businesses spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours trying to understand and comply with regulations that might not help, we should let them focus on getting Americans back to work.