Doug LaMalfa

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, in the D.C. newsroom for National Public Radio, which is a central hub for NPR's coverage of political news, it just came out that they have amongst their staff 87 registered Democrats in editorial positions and zero Republicans--87-0. Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak was amazing at 56 games in a row, and Pete Rose in the seventies had 44 games in a row--87-0. Should it matter what the political makeup of people are in these positions? You know, not really, I guess, in any real sense. We are not talking reality in Washington, D.C., are we? We are not talking about a nonbiased media that covers this place, that covers what politicians do and the slant that people are going to hear when they are out there in their cars, their homes, or wherever, picking this up in the various forms of media. What do we know about NPR? It receives funding from the taxpayer and tries at the same time to claim to be objective. It receives this funding via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which the CBP receives about $525 million of taxpayer dollars--about 50 percent of their funding. The other half comes from corporate donations, the same corporations that Democrats love to say evil things about, but oftentimes these days are doing bad things. It is pretty hard to figure out where they are coming from. What we have seen in recent years in reporting is a strong bias against Republicans and conservatives coming out of NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting when they cover the political front here. The bias against anything that is not a far-left view is clear. In fact, the bias of NPR is so clear that even a left-leaning editor in their organization--which is where this came out--is raising the alarm about the clear and consistent bias. This person is very concerned about it and is now being dismissed. NPR has already issued many statements and articles dismissing the critique, including this morning, without any admission by NPR or acknowledgment of any wrongdoing or bias, and certainly they have no intent to reform or even reflect upon what this looks like and sounds like. Let us remember that NPR embraced the Russiagate conspiracy theory without question, and they dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story without proper scrutiny. All these things have been proven otherwise, haven't they? They also have NPR actively working to dismiss and attack information about the true origins of the COVID-19 virus as well as the early treatments that could have probably helped or saved many lives. They dismissed ivermectin and other treatments, instead, calling it ``horse paste'' when as recently as 2015, it won a Nobel Prize for the amazing work that has been done with ivermectin. In the last decade, NPR's own audience has shrunk and become more intensely leftwing, gradually pushing out conservative listeners with nonstop ideological programming, bias in reporting, and injecting far- left ideas into previously nonpolitical programs. So it is not just that quirky little radio station you hear in a musty bookstore or at a used record store or something like that. It has taken a really hard twist to the left. They claim to be neutral in a public platform to consider all things and consider all perspectives, but unfortunately, it isn't that way anymore. They are desperately burning up their own credibility to try and keep up with the demands of the far left and its ranks that continue to shift farther and farther left. That is what this person from their organization came out and said, for 25 years they have lost the American people with this shift. It is pretty sad. So perhaps instead of calling it National Public Radio it should be called national progressive radio, the term Democrats on the far left use for themselves, although I have never really seen where the word ``progress'' fits in with some of the programs and ideals coming from the so-called progressives. NPR being funded by taxpayer dollars is a serious betrayal of the public trust. The American taxpayer should no longer be subsidizing this propaganda which fails to even pretend to be unbiased anymore and is appealing to a smaller and smaller group of people, unfortunately. It is too bad because the idealism of it years ago when it was created looked a heck of a lot different and was indeed something everybody could find enjoyment in.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, we need to be unequivocally clear about one thing: Hamas is responsible for every single loss of life in Israel and Gaza since their barbaric attack on October 7. Hamas, conducting a war from beneath the homes and kitchens of citizens, is putting civilians in danger, not this ridiculous assertion made against Israel, which is merely defending itself against these sources of attack. There can be no cease-fire until Hamas surrenders, releases every hostage, and ceases firing at Israel and its innocent citizens. It is shameful that the Biden White House and Senate majority Leader Schumer are walking back support of one of our greatest allies. Meanwhile, there are increasingly concerning pro-Iran/Muslim Brotherhood influences inside our own State Department. Israel has an undeniable right to defend themselves from their attackers. The U.S. must continue to support military armaments, including the Iron Dome missile defense system, and never encourage our ally to surrender to the terrorists who want them dead and to not exist.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time and the opportunity to expound upon very important topics that we face across the board, whether it is today's legislation, or ongoing discussions. Mr. Speaker, I want to touch a little bit this afternoon on the situation with Secretary Mayorkas and the Biden administration, who are willfully and systematically ignoring our Nation's laws, which are diminishing our national security. Of course, I am talking about the border situation. How the President and the administration continue to get away with ignoring the sieve that our border is, the hundreds of thousands coming across. My colleagues could put the number at over 7 million over the full time, over 3 years. It is probably hard to really estimate what it is, the people coming into this country. Under the terminology, let's say migrants, or even in some cases by the administration, newcomers. Why these euphemisms? People are breaking and entering into this country illegally and undermining its security, undermining our systems of services, et cetera. Early on in this session, House Republicans passed the bill known as H.R. 2, which is one of the strongest border security packages ever in the history of the House. H.R. 2 holds the administration accountable for this colossal failure we see every day in Eagle Pass, all along Texas, all along Arizona, New Mexico, and California. What is the outcome from Secretary Mayorkas? Well, the House, in its wisdom, decided to move forward with an impeachment. Now, that hasn't been delivered to the Senate yet. I think timing is everything, and the Speaker, in his wisdom, decided a little more time was needed before those documents are delivered and the Senate is looking at taking it up. Hopefully, they will. Hopefully, Leader Schumer doesn't just try and brush it under the rug. There are serious charges here, and the track record of the Secretary and the whole Biden administration on this certainly bears the discussion, certainly bears the information that has come out and will continue to come out in an impeachment process. Therefore, as well, whatever happens with that impeachment, whatever the timeline is, we still have H.R. 2 sitting over in the Senate waiting for action as well. Again, in order to tighten up our own border and properly handle the laws we already have on the books, we don't need a lot of new legislation. We just need it defined better, it looks like, on what asylum really means, on the policies that had been in place before that were working reasonably well. However, under Mayorkas' leadership, we would have over 9 million illegal immigrant encounters nationwide, 7.4 million encounters at our southern border, and then 1.8 million known as got-aways that have gotten away from our Border Patrol. Those are the ones that we know about. Immigration judges have thrown out approximately 200,000 cases because the DHS did not properly file the required notice-to-appear paperwork by the time of the scheduled hearing. Did they purposely blow that at DHS so that they could say 200,000 of them didn't have the proper paperwork to appear and that those are now permanent getaways? It is a pretty wild coincidence for 200,000. In my personal opinion, on top of that, do they have the same rights on this type of legal question, where the timeline expired and they didn't get the right paperwork? They are still illegally in this country. Again, they are not migrants. They are illegal aliens that have broken into this country. The Biden administration's far-left open-border policies are what is to blame for this historic crisis. There are over 60 instances of the Biden administration taking actions that have undermined our Nation's security, including halting the construction of the border wall. That is what I said, 60 different actions. Was it just to unwind what Trump did because he doesn't like Trump? I had a recent visit south of the Tucson area near a place called Naco, Arizona. My colleagues can still see what looked like probably a mile in either direction of the metal material there that was being used at the time to construct the border fence. There were piles and piles of giant girders of steel there, and I could look at it up close. I could show pictures where it is marked on there, October 2020. The date of it is still marked there on the material laying there. President Biden, about 1\1/2\ years ago, made some mention: Well, maybe we will start putting that back up and fill in some of the gaps. On a different trip to Arizona, closer to a dam, all these different gaps were seen. There were miles of fence, but there were gaps in it. The people coming in since they are being welcomed by our government can just find any one of the gaps in the fence and be picked up. Actually, we are sending vans to go pick them up so we can get them processed sooner and cut them loose with the idea that they might come back within 2 years or whenever the court date would be except that DHS screwed up the date and lost 200,000 of them because they didn't give the required notice to appear. In the meantime, we are trying to hustle them into the country as fast as possible through the actions of Biden's directives with border personnel. They announced on May 10 of last year that it would allow for some release of migrants in the U.S. with no way to actually track them. The Department of Homeland Security has now admitted that 40 percent of catch and release migrants have just disappeared into the country. The Senate must hold the trial for Secretary Mayorkas' impeachment because he needs to be held accountable. You can't just ignore our laws like that and make a joke out of it. This is, again, our security. Fentanyl is coming in. We have people coming in that will be part of known terror cells. The people they have caught and turned away are from very questionable, very dangerous associations. This is no joke. This is not just shouting in the wilderness. This is very real, and how this administration continues to get away with it blows my mind and a lot of the minds of the American people out there. How can this be happening? Lately, President Biden is talk about, well, does he have the authority to make a move on further enforcing the border? It is an executive action. The laws are on the books. We have legislated on that. We have put forward funding on that. The President in his action is to execute and to enforce the laws that are on the books. If we would execute and enforce them properly to the fullest extent we could, as a country, we wouldn't have nearly the problem that we are seeing right now. In the meantime, we legislate here. H.R. 2 is sitting over in the Senate. I urge the Senators to take that up and move in the direction that will further define and tighten our laws so we will have a much more secure border. With that, I suggest that the American people call your United States Senators and have them move H.R. 2.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, among the many issues we have, the problem at our border and the illegal immigrant invasion we have in this country is the effect on our elections and the apportionment of how votes are distributed around this country. What a lot of people don't know or understand or are aware of is that when the Census is taken, the ideals of the Constitution of voting are flouted in that they have to count everybody supposedly that is here illegally in the population. That is how House Members and votes and power is distributed across our States and across our country. It is estimated--because of illegal immigrants basically squatting in this country--that somewhere between 13 and 20 House seats are in the wrong States or in the wrong area due to a disproportionate amount of people being counted in primarily urban areas, and to the Democrat's benefit, in blue States. We have a distortion of the true amount of votes because of illegal immigration and inaction done at the Federal level.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the life and career of James Clyde Flurry of Marysville who recently passed away peacefully at the age of 79 years old. James was an exceptional member of our community, where he spent more than 40 years working for the Marysville Joint Unified School District serving in many different capacities. James started his career at the young age of 18, where he drove his peers to school, parked the bus, and joined them in class. He always recounted his time as a bus driver very fondly. He went on to work as a teacher, vice principal, and later as a school board member. James originally hailed from Ukiah, California, and moved to Marysville early in life where he attended Marysville High School and Chapman University. In addition to working for the Marysville Joint Unified School District, James also spent more than three decades working summers as a field representative for Del Monte Foods. James loved helping his students, especially those who had a rough home life and needed additional support. He greatly valued community service and was a member of the Crossroads Community Church for over 20 years. He was also an active member of the Linda Lyons Club and Marysville Exchange, where he enjoyed selflessly volunteering in the community. James is survived by the mother of his children, Randi Flurry; his children, Jennifer and Greg; two stepsons, Jon and Scott: several grandchildren; and his many family members and friends. He will be greatly missed by our community. May he rest in peace.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, many Americans are wondering: Why are food prices so high? What causes this? Why, even on occasions in the land of plenty, do we see food shortages of certain types on our shelves? It really boils down to several factors. Energy independence is one of them. Food security and energy independence go hand-in-hand. It is certainly time for President Biden and his administration to take action to renew our economic vitality. Instead of supporting our farmers and ensuring a stable food supply, it appears agriculture and the industry itself have been turned into a partisan issue, leaving farmers to fend for themselves in a really hostile regulatory environment. As we navigate these challenges facing our ag sector, it is crucial to recognize the far-reaching implications of the Biden administration's anti-American energy policy. The push to have everything convert to electric vehicles, whether it is our cars, pickups, tractors, trucks, let alone our appliances at home, is going to be, indeed, very costly and probably not even possible with the energy grid we currently have, especially with anti-energy policies. They really play heck trying to get a new power plant sited, even a nuclear power plant. In my district right now, they are tearing down hydroelectric dams, which is clean, reliable, CO2-free power. If that is not enough, what we are looking at is, on the other side of the scale for farmers trying to provide food, water is not allocated, especially in my home State, that is due them for their water rights. We had almost record rain and snowpack last year, and it is pretty good this year. Yet, there are areas in the San Joaquin Valley that are only going to receive 15 percent of their normal allocated water rights. Mr. Speaker, I remind my colleagues that my home State of California grows all of these crops here, somewhere between 100 percent or a little less, that the U.S. relies on. Otherwise, these would be imported crops. So many of them come from my home State of California, yet we can't get the water supply, even though we could store it. We are watching so much of it be washed out to the ocean through the delta for no good reason. The Army Corps of Engineers uses 50-year-old manuals to decide how much water they should keep in their reservoirs up to that point where they stop their conservation mode for flood control. I get it. Flood control is needed, but we have 500,000 acre-feet of space still left in Lake Oroville, 600,000 acre-feet of space left in Shasta Lake, and it is not coming up fast enough to meet an April 1 mark, let alone get full by May or June. What does that mean? Several hundred thousand acre-feet of water probably left on the table that aren't going to grow these crops right here--and people are wondering why their food is expensive. Energy policy is driving up the cost of diesel. It doubled fuel for me and my farm and everybody else a couple of years ago, and it tripled the cost of fertilizer for farmers across the country, all because of bad energy policy. When my colleagues on the other side of the aisle shut down pipelines, shut down exploration, shut down the ability to make our own energy in this country and have to rely on importing it from, a lot of times, adversarial countries, what do citizens expect is going to happen to the cost of anything since everything is so energy dependent and energy based in our economy? Indeed, if we are going to grow this food in California or in our own country, we are going to have a much more secure situation with our food supply and stability across the board. As we know, food security is national security, so Americans feel the cost of high energy, high food costs, high just about everything, and a lot of this has happened in the last 3 years. We had a lot more stability under the previous administration. COVID was weaponized to try to shut down a lot of our country, a lot of our economy, and make people stay at home. Indeed, that had an effect we are still feeling. Even our kids in school are feeling that still because of an overbearing COVID policy that has also added trillions to our national debt. What are we going to do? Are we going to have an energy policy that makes sense, or do we want to rely on China for imported food and other products and the Middle East for imported oil? I personally think we are going to get a heck of a lot better product growing these crops in California or elsewhere in the United States than by relying upon others to send it to us because, when the chips are down, America is always there for other people, but they aren't necessarily going to be there for us if we have our own crisis. We are the last bastion. We are the last beacon many times in the world. We have to hold our leaders accountable for an energy policy and putting our food policy up front as well. We need to pass a farm bill soon.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, when people earn their paycheck, their wages, money off of stocks, whatever it is, they are going to spend their money on things that are a good value for them. Why isn't government, when they take their tax dollars involuntarily, getting a good value for them? I am speaking, in California, of the high-speed rail system. I call it high-cost rail. The price has quadrupled over what the voters were sold back about 15 years ago when they were told a high-speed train from Los Angeles to San Francisco could be built for $33 billion. The price tag is well over $125 billion, and it is many years behind as well. They are still about $100 billion short of the funding it would take to complete this project. They don't even have the route mapped out. Instead, why don't we invest tax dollars that are taken from the people involuntarily in things that can really benefit them, such as a water supply, a stable water supply, better communication systems, more rural broadband, things that can help people be connected in more ways besides a silly train, which is deemed the biggest boondoggle in a long time, connecting L.A. to San Francisco? Instead, it is connecting an orchard in Bakersfield to a place called Merced--not a good deal for taxpayers.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I have spoken often here about California's water situation and how that directly relates to agriculture and why California agriculture is important to the whole country. There are many, many crops California grows. Between 90 and 100 percent of them come from California that U.S. consumers use and enjoy. If they are not grown in California, they are going to have to come from some other country because they are not really found in other parts of this country. Do we want to be an importer of even more things that we depend on? We are already dependent enough on China and others for 90 percent of our pharmaceuticals. We are becoming more and more dependent on foreign energy, foreign oil, and gas. Why? Why are we doing this? I will narrow it back down to the water situation. Last year, we had near-record rainfall and snowpack. It hadn't been better in many decades, and we were blessed by that. This year is a pretty good water and snowpack year as well, but at the same time that that is happening, they are releasing water out to the ocean and telling certain water districts in the San Joaquin Valley you are only going to get 15 percent of your allocation. Imagine having any kind of business where you only get 15 percent of your inputs to operate at the same time when there is plenty of water. Now, in northern California where my district is, we have Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville. Today is March 20. We are getting to the end of the winter precipitation season, and they are still dumping water over the spillways at these facilities at a time when Lake Shasta still has 600,000 acre-feet of space. Lake Oroville has 500,000 acre-feet of space. For those that don't know, an acre-foot is enough to sustain about two households for a year or about three acres of crops. That is a lot of water that is being lost, I think, due to shortsightedness on planning what the flood season would look like. Indeed, in many cases, they are still using 50-year-old manuals to dictate how they should manage the lake for flood control. I get that. We need to have that aspect. You save the top percentage of the lake for unplanned water influxes due to a heavy rain or a massive snowmelt. However, as we get closer and closer to this April 1 deadline or we get to the spring season, they still have wide gaps of available space for water on top of Shasta and Oroville and other reservoirs around the State. Do we really expect we are going to get this massive influx of rain and snow that is going to top those off? Time and again, they over dump and under plan and, therefore, these lake levels are not topped off at 100 percent. That to me should be the goal every year; flood control and, obviously, have the water for the uses that we want up and down the State. However, if you are not topping off every lake at 100 percent at one point in the offseason, then you leave water on the table. They say that we got within 5 percent. That ain't bad, right? Well, 5 percent of a combined 8 million acre-feet on just those two lakes I mentioned is 400,000 acre-feet. That is enough to do one heck of a lot of crops that are being left on the table, especially when you are telling people down in the valley you are only going to get 15 percent of what used to be your normal allocation. Why is it that the government cannot plan with our assets, with our resources better than that? Why are we using 50-year-old manuals to tell people they might have to be curtailed? They are actually moving forward with this, 42 gallons per day per person in your households. They are not just ripping agriculture; it is going to be a dictation to people in their households in the urban areas. I am really greatly concerned that not enough people are paying attention to this because if urban users, in-town users find out you only get 42 gallons per day--and it is surprising how many gallons per person is used when you do bathing and laundry, yes, you can wash your car, and yes, you can have a yard; they are trying to dictate you can't have those things either--all because we are not managing the water supply. We are not short of water. We are just short of imagination on how to properly manage it, and, yes, store more. We have opportunities to build Sites Reservoir, which has been hanging out there for decades. Fortunately, we were able to get another $200 million for planning and moving the ball forward on building Sites Reservoir, which should hold 1\1/2\ million acre-feet. If we had that reservoir already, even in dry years, we would be saving water. We would probably have over a million acre-feet in it right now this year--a million acre-feet that could be useable for something--environmental water, ag water, urban water. People aren't used to being cut down to 42 gallons per person in a household. They are used to a number more like, maybe, 100 a day. Imagine what that is going to be like when folks are trying to do their normal business, and because we can't plan in government, we can't manage our supply. We can't manage to store more, so we just are going to make everybody conserve. There is nothing wrong with conservation, but you can't conserve what you don't have. We have to count on record rainfall. We have to count on 125 percent every year and we can't do that every year. We have to plan, and we can plan. We don't have to be shortsighted.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, the Biden administration has released yet another round of extreme regulations that are going to hurt consumers and the American economy. This one is an extreme climate regulation plan that will mandate auto manufacturers to transition to electric vehicles, all in order to get rid of carbon dioxide, which I remind you is only 0.04 percent of our atmosphere, the little skinny piece right there. Its increase is a rounding error. In many rural areas, like I have in northern California, the power grid already isn't that strong. We suffer with what is called public safety power shutoffs where when the wind blows, they shut the power off because they are afraid it might blow a tree or a branch into a power line and cause another million-acre fire from our unmanaged forests that the Forest Service is not taking care of. What do we have? People are told not to charge their EVs during peak times, yet the Biden administration is pushing forward. By 2032, 67 percent of vehicles sold have to be electric, and 46 percent of medium trucks have to be electric, just by a stroke of a pen. These guys are not on your side.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Moore for yielding. Mr. Speaker, energy really is the cornerstone of a modern economy and a modern country, and the United States has been able to be a great innovator for so many decades on improving our lot with energy, and, indeed, exporting civilization to the rest of the world. Energy modernizes us and makes people more easily able to feed themselves, clothe themselves, withstand disaster and not have to have every heat wave or cold wave be a disastrous loss of life due to our ability to harness and produce energy that works for us. Energy independence is something that just a few short years ago we were largely achieving finally under President Trump. Over the last 3 years, that has unraveled. That independence along with our food security is, indeed, what makes us strong so we can withstand outside threats. Those two items really go hand in hand. I wish President Biden would realize that and not have the cabal behind him that is doing everything it can to unwind all the progress and all the good things that have been made in recent decades to make the country so strong previously. We need to have decisive action to renew our economic vitality instead of more damage. Instead of supporting our farmers and ensuring a stable food supply, it appears agriculture and its industry of feeding our Nation has turned into a partisan issue somehow leaving farmers and ranchers to fend for themselves in an increasingly hostile business and regulatory atmosphere. Costs of inputs--just a couple of years ago, we saw the cost of fertilizer triple and the cost of fuel triple. In my real life, I am a farmer at home. I saw it firsthand. That has to be passed along. Otherwise, there is no longer a farmer there to produce those items if they do not make at least some level of profit. As we work through these challenges to the agriculture sector, hopefully with a farm bill here that we can get heard next month and passed along to the Senate, we need to understand the far-reaching implications of Biden anti-American energy policies because that ties right back in. Agriculture in this country is really dependent on a good source of energy: diesel for our tractors and trucks and the ability to dry and process our products with electricity that is readily available at reasonable prices. What do we get out of this lately? A brand-new push for more electric vehicles, a stroke of the pen by the President and his administration. We are going to be forced--if these things stand, in just 8 short years, the fleet will have to be two-thirds electric for our cars and pickups and about 46 percent on more medium-duty trucks, just by whim. What are we finding? That our electricity supply in this country is already sometimes in peril, like in my home district. I was mentioning earlier that sometimes the power gets shut off in northern California because the wind blows and maybe they are afraid that a tree or a branch will blow into a power line and cause an outage and a massive forest fire like we see. How are you supposed to charge your vehicle at night when they have a 2- or 3-day power shutoff? Even more so, we are going backward on energy production. They are tearing out the dams on the Klamath River that make CO2- free, reliable, 24-7 hydroelectric power. Instead, they want more solar panels. They want more windmills. Windmills are extremely inefficient for the amount of energy and effort it takes to put one up versus what their output is. Solar is fine and dandy, but it is only a tiny percent, a niche of production currently in this country. We need the mainstays. We need hydroelectric. We need to expand nuclear power because that is a good 24-7 baseload power supply. A small plant can produce a mass amount of power. You don't need thousands of acres of solar fields covering up good land, like they are trying to do. Even in the San Joaquin Valley, some of the most productive farmland in the world right there in central California, their big idea is to have solar farms cover up this good land instead of the concentrated power plants that you have with nuclear, hydro, natural gas--yes--and the other forms. I also want to talk about biomass. We don't get to talk about that a lot around here. Our forests are already way undermanaged. They have way too much material out there in them. We need to take more biomass and put it to work in power plants on a controlled basis. That is a 24- 7 fuel also. It is baseload power that is available. You don't have to rely on the wind to blow, the Sun to come up, the clouds to blow away, or the rain to stop. You have the ability to run that 24-7 whenever you want. Additionally, putting forest products to work means it is not going to be out there burning in the woods. You are going to have a 99.9 percent cleaner output burning that material in a power plant. One of the other side effects of ignoring our forests and the dead trees is that they are still going to give off carbon dioxide as trees decay, so you could either control it in a power plant more efficiently or have it just release out there. A tree grows, dies, and gives off the CO2 it absorbed. One of the by-products not talked about much is methane gas released from a decomposing tree or other plant matter. My colleagues will talk about methane gas being much more volatile in the upper atmosphere than CO2 by manyfold, so why don't we take this methane gas that is contained in this dead tree, put it in this power plant, and actually make it be a plus on making energy and control that and not release it in the atmosphere? We need to talk more about that. That is a highlight that hasn't been exposed much, what good forestry means to the energy grid and also to cleaning up the forests, making them less fire-prone with all of that ash and all of that particulate matter that gets into the air and fogs out hundreds of square miles of a region there with really foul air. The pluses on biomass just outstrip any of the negatives, other than it is not cheap to move the material. That is something we need to assess. The Forest Service is going to have to do more with their lands, and this is a way of harnessing power to the good. It means jobs in those communities. It means safer, healthier forests. It means electricity you can depend on 24-7 with what is burning in those power plants. We see so many implications of high costs of energy, with groceries, with what it means for normal families, and this doesn't have to be happening. These high costs of electricity and fuel do not need to be happening to the American people. We need the Biden administration to go in the right direction, help farmers, ranchers, consumers, and the producers of energy to actually produce in this country and not rely on imports from somewhere else. Let's get cracking on that and do the right thing. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, today in the United States it is National Agriculture Day. This is a day that we recognize that the food on your table came from somewhere, Mr. Speaker, and it isn't just a supermarket, or a truck, or maybe even a taco truck like in California. No. It came from the hard work of a farmer or a rancher producing for all of us. One of my goals here as a member of the Agriculture Committee is to make sure they can keep producing and keep the food on the table. American grown products are of the highest quality and the highest responsibility as far as labor, environment, and the whole works. Nonetheless, do you know what, Mr. Speaker? They still need the tools to be able to do that into the future. We need to pass, more immediately, another 5-year farm bill like in my home State of California. We also need to have the input. We need to have a water supply that is steady and growing. As the population grows, we need to increase the State's water supply because more and more of it is going to other things than sustaining agriculture which has been so strong in the Sacramento Valley, the San Joaquin Valley, and the whole State. As we celebrate National Ag Day, Mr. Speaker, if there is food on your plate, remember it came from a farmer. If you are going to complain about the farmer, Mr. Speaker, just don't do it with your mouth full.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, the Forest Service has in its charge just under 200 million acres across this country. We need the Forest Service to engage with private industry to help take care of those lands. There is not enough money, even after the massive influx when they bragged at the hearing the other day that they have more money now than they ever had before, but they still need another $20 million to move one particular project. How is there enough money for them to do their job when they can't even do it now. We need the private sector to be able to access forest lands, to be able to harvest, because right now the U.S. is the number two importer of wood products. Why are we the number two importer of wood products when we have so much over-inventory, especially our western States, where we burn millions of acres every year, including the 1 million-acre fire in my district just a couple years ago, as well as the Camp fire that killed 86 people 5 years ago. We need to put the Forest Service to work or we need to move them out of the way. The private sector is an important part of that. We need industry because the Forest Service is not and will never keep up with that. They need to get out permits, contracts, and allow this wood to be harvested in a sustainable good way as the industry knows how to do.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, folks at home are wondering about their utility rates, why they are going up so high, and it isn't always the fault of the utility. I look around and see what government does to make things cost so much more, whether it is stopping the exploration for oil and gas in order to run some power plants or tearing down dams because they don't like dams, because it might impede fish passage, so we don't have hydroelectric power. Sometimes the government demands that in order to give them a permit to operate once again, like they have been doing for 50 or 100 years, they demand things like building a road and maintaining it, even though the utility doesn't necessarily actually use that road or at least a big chunk of that road, and they don't have a partnership with the Forest Service saying we will do half and you do half. No, they just make demands. The demands the government makes of people to operate are like Don Fanucci walking around in ``The Godfather Part II'' collecting a little bit from everybody. It has no nexus on the operation of the utility in order to deliver electricity to the people. Government needs to be reined in on its demands, on the thuggery it is, in order to just do business. When people are wondering why their utility bill is so high, it isn't just because of evil utilities. It is the government operating permits, permits to trim around trees so we don't burn down all of northern California, one thing after another. The government needs to be reeled in.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, the CDC, which stands for the Centers for Disease Control, based in Atlanta, Georgia, recently released a 148- page study on myocarditis being possibly linked to the COVID vaccines-- whether it is by Pfizer or Moderna or what have you. In order to have good science, you would want these studies to get information out there so people can understand what the link may or may not be with myocarditis. What is CDC's approach to that? Of that 148-page report, they edited out, they redacted not just some of the names, but every one of the 148 pages. What is that as far as having openness, having clarity? That sounds pretty corrupt to me. Certainly, this body is going to be taking a better look at that. The CDC needs to be held accountable to all of us--directly to us in Congress and the American people, because the truth still needs to get out there on how the injections work and what effects they cause to the public.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I am going to speak to you, once again, about our atmosphere, climate, and, most specifically, carbon dioxide, which has been weaponized in the argument around here, with government agencies against the people, as a tool, I think, to take more control of the economy and people's personal property. Carbon dioxide, I will remind you, is 0.04 percent of the entire pie of our atmosphere; oxygen, 21 percent; nitrogen, 78 percent; trace gases other than that, 0.03. Argon is much bigger in our atmosphere than CO2. Yet, you would think, with the CO2 numbers creeping up slowly, it is the end of the world. Everything around here has to be run through a CO2 filter, a climate change filter, and it is much to the detriment of our economy and the U.S. position in the world. Most recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission has adopted rules on their own to decide that people are going to have to start disclosing their climate impact of how they operate their businesses. You are going to have to start accounting for your CO2 production and report that to a Federal entity. This is pretty much going to mean everybody if they are connected to a certain size of business and what have you. Small suppliers to larger corporations that are caught in the snare of this will have to account for that. For food production, let's say you have ingredients that are placed into a larger recipe for food products that you could buy from maybe a larger conglomerate. There are also individual small growers--say, a carrot farmer, a bean farmer. He is now going to have to disclose his CO2 production on his farm because he might be selling to a larger entity that is caught in the snare of the SEC. Where does this all end? How much time does an individual like that have to chase around and figure out what his CO2 impact is going to be, especially since it is only 0.04 percent of our atmosphere? There is much debate about what amount of the CO2 is caused by human activity. Some want to say, oh, it is 50 percent. Others believe it is very small, a tiny percentage, like maybe 3 percent. There are those that want to say, well, the science is settled, merely because they want to move on and take control over so many aspects of our economy. What are some of the issues that we have seen grow out of that? We have what is known as ESG, environmental, social, and governance. The country of Sri Lanka, just a few short years ago, decided to adopt and try to meet these ESG goals, much to the great harm of their economy. It almost collapsed good portions of their economy because they went whole hog as a whole country on that to try to adopt ESG goals. On the environmental side of the E, they forced farmers to completely convert to organic materials for their fertilizer and whatever pesticide products they were able to use organically. What immediately happened? Rice yields in the country dropped 20 percent. The price of rice went up 50 percent for consumers. We saw that that blew a great big hole in the ag economy in that small country. Their country had to come in and start doing bailouts, basically, to help keep those farmers afloat until they finally got their senses and abandoned a lot of those ESG goals. They are also an important tea exporter, which caused their exports to fall. They lost hundreds of millions of dollars on that as well. Their economy collapsed by trying to meet some arbitrary ESG goal brought on by outsiders that really have this idealistic, elite whim of what people should be doing instead of what actually works. I run this all by you here because the Biden administration has been causing this kind of harm on our own economy in this country. The focus of every agency seems to be climate, climate, climate all the time because of a tiny increase in CO2. CO2 is a rounding error in the overall atmospheric chart here, and the increase of that is minute. How much can we blame on human activity versus what might be happening with other naturally occurring issues? What do we have? Our economy is being outclassed by China and others in the Pacific Rim that can produce at will, and they are the much larger so-called polluters than we are of CO2. Do you want to have a situation where we can actually have better control and reasonable regulations on how things are produced in this country, or do we want to export it all to China and places like that and have basically almost no control on how they are doing that? What we are going to hear tonight when the President is going to be in this room, he is probably going to talk a whole bunch about climate and some new initiatives on that. Instead, why doesn't he focus on something that could have immediate help for the devastating things going on on our border in this country, eight steps he could take with the swing of a pen to clean up our border problems instead of blaming Republicans for his mess?

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, President Biden is going to be in this Chamber in just a few hours. I am going to hope for a positive outcome on this in that up to this point the border policy that he and his administration have put in place has been disastrous. Of late, he has been blaming Republicans for that, for not passing a really bad idea that has come out of the Senate. Well, we have taken responsibility. We passed H.R. 2 very early in this session and sent it over to the Senate where Mr. Schumer has ignored it. I hope the President will call on Mr. Schumer and the Democratic Senators to take that bill up over there and have the really strong reform on border strengthening that we need. If they don't, there are still eight actions right here the President could be doing: end catch and release, reinstate remain in Mexico, and six other ideas that actually were in place when President Trump was in charge that he rescinded on day one. He could do this with the stroke of a pen, without Congress having to fight over a partisan deal about how to figure this out with legislation. President Biden could do this. I hope that tonight instead of blaming Republicans, he will take action and use his pen to put these constitutional pieces back in place.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, let me talk a little bit more about California water and what it means to the whole country. Now, we see here President Biden enjoying some ice cream there, as he is known to do. Mr. Speaker, ice cream comes from where? It comes from dairy products. So, we need cows in order to make the dairy products to make cream, milk, butter, and things like that, part of which you would use to produce ice cream, which almost everybody enjoys. Our dairies in this country need to be supported, and they need not be exported to some other place to make basic things like milk and cream. California is home to very happy cows, it has been said. Nonetheless, they are less happy having to move to Arizona and places like that due to our own State's horrific regulations. Still, there are many strong dairies in the upper Midwest, Northeast, and all over the country, really. So we need cows for ice cream and milk. It is pretty basic. We have to remind people of that sometimes. Mr. Speaker, what do cows need? They need feed. We need to grow the feed in our agricultural places, in our fields in every State and all around the country. Without feed and forage, we can't feed the cows, and we don't get ice cream. Where do we get the feed, Mr. Speaker? We have to have land, and we have to have a water supply like this lake here. This depicts San Luis Reservoir in central California, which right now is about 68 or 70 percent full. It should be taking advantage of all this massive rainfall and snowpack that might be melting already in some areas, flowing downhill out through the delta. They have a couple of sets of pumps there that could be running and filling this lake and topping it off. It is not easy to top this reservoir off every single year. We were fortunate that we got it done last year, despite the water management that we have in government. There was so much water available that they were actually able to run the pumps long enough to fill the reservoir up to about its 2 million acre-feet capacity. We have a ways to go to fill this reservoir in order to have the strongest possible position for agriculture going into this year so we have dairy, grain, and many other ag products that California is famous for growing. Let's top off San Luis Reservoir. Let's get these pumps turned on to full blast while we have all this rain and runoff coming down the hill. Instead, we have millions of acre-feet of water escaping into the oceans--millions. We don't have a water shortage in California. We have a management intelligence shortage. That is the problem. I have Lake Oroville and Lake Shasta in my district, and they are both about 600 to 700 acre-feet short of being full, as we watch them run the spillways pretty strongly and let water out. Yes, Mr. Speaker, I know they have to keep a gap at the top for flood control, but they are not using modern thinking on doing that. They need to be able to bring that. Every day between now and April 1 is one less day of possible rain and possible inflow. They are looking at it as if we are going to overtop, perhaps, but if they don't get these lakes full by June 1 or so, then we are going to leave water on the table, so to speak, and leave agriculture out to dry. Mr. Speaker, what do we do in order to increase water supply in California? A couple of things are going on. Thankfully, this appropriations package coming up has $200 million of Federal money for Sites Reservoir in northern California, which would, once finally built, add 1.5 million acre-feet to the State's water supply. We could have been filling it right now. With all the runoff, we would probably be 80 percent full if we had that facility there already. We could have been filling it out several times over the last few years. We lose the opportunity because they are hemming and hawing in Sacramento, and lawsuits keep coming, and, oh, we have to talk about it and study it more. When I took a tour of that 15 years ago, they said that if you can't build it here environmentally, then you can't build one anywhere. This is Shasta Dam near Redding in northern California's Shasta County. This is part of the Federal CVP project that was built many years ago. This holds 4.5 million acre-feet when full. Right now, it is down about 700,000 to 800,000 acre-feet from capacity. Yes, Mr. Speaker, I understand that you have to leave some room for flood capacity before the end of the season. Nonetheless, they are actually letting the water go down until the last day or so. Are they guaranteeing that this lake is going to be full with that last 700,000 acre-feet by the end of the rainy season? I am not sure. We also have an opportunity on top of that. Including building Sites Reservoir, we can also raise Shasta Dam about 18\1/2\ feet and add 640,000 acre-feet or so of new space. If that space was there right now, even if it doesn't fill, would mean they are not having to dump the water right now because you would have that extra capacity, that gap, for flood control. We would not be dumping and wasting this water. On top of that, there are people in the Central Valley watching this water being dumped who are going to get only 15 percent of the requested water right of what they asked for. We need to build these. Please follow facebook.com/groups/CaliforniaWaterForFoodMovement if you want to follow up, Mr. Speaker, and learn in plain language on social media how this works. It is a really good source that anybody can understand.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 64.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Moore's efforts to help communicate the message the American people need to see, not just tomorrow night from one side, but as best as we can maybe looking at the other side of the issues. If you could look around the room here, you would see some of the special equipment for the event that is starting to be set up, extra cameras, lighting on the House floor so that it is illuminated in a way that shows up well on TV. Unfortunately, what is not illuminated well enough is the record of this White House in supporting the needs of our Nation. With the State of the Union tomorrow night, these 3-plus years have been, indeed, chaotic, and you could even say a full-fledged crisis in the making or being made. Over the last few years, President Biden has made a lot of decisions and implemented a lot of policies that have ultimately led to a 17.9 percent rise in inflation since he took office. The cost of rent, electricity, and household goods are actually becoming out of reach for many Americans. How can these things become out of reach? I grow food. I am a farmer in my real life in northern California at home. Food has always been for many, many decades for Americans such a low-cost item, they didn't even have to think about it. Why is it reverting to a situation where we are more like a third world country and food is hard to afford? Energy, driving our cars around, the whole works, housing--housing is becoming almost unaffordable. What has changed? Our Nation is less safe than before, with rising rates of carjackings and attacks on law enforcement officers. You are not safe in your home. Right here in this town, in D.C., is an example of a carjacking affecting one of our colleagues in this body, attacked in what may seem like a fairly safe neighborhood. What is going on here? Our country has been weakened on the world stage as well. President Biden caters to oil oligarchs in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, and even Russia. He hastily removed U.S. troops from Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to take over after all those years of our side fighting for freedom in those areas and to have at least a modicum of a government that would work for people over there. On top of that, we needlessly lost the lives of over a dozen soldiers on that hasty, poorly planned withdrawal. One of our other allies, one of our strongest allies in the whole world, Israel, he is walking back support for that great country, that great ally. His Vice President, Kamala Harris, basically threw Israel under the bus with her comments recently. What is this all about? What are we going to hear in the State of the Union that you could actually point to as a positive? I hate to be negative. I hate to be, like, oh, partisan stuff that you can't find agreement on this or that, but it is really difficult with the state of things, from what the United States was 3 years ago, even amidst that COVID mess, to what we have now. Unfortunately, the President has been chipping away even at our Nation's sovereignty. He has taken dozens of well-documented and concrete actions that have opened our borders and undermined our laws. Our laws aren't broken. Immigration isn't broken. The enforcement, the action of the executive branch, to maintain them is the part that is broken. We did pass H.R. 2 early on in this session to help fortify some of these laws, to help define better what asylum means, since they are defining it in the most loose possible ways. For the past 3 years, the Biden administration has ignored the crisis. You can't get him or Kamala Harris hardly to go to the border at all. When they do, it is not the part of the border that we could easily document that has been the problem, and he is directly responsible for it. I have to ask the question as I do occasionally: President Biden, whose side are you on with these actions you take? He canceled the remain in Mexico program, which was working fairly well. He revoked title 42 for health concerns. He revoked it. He stopped construction of the border wall. I had a chance to visit that most recently down in the Tucson area, on farther south. Stacks and stacks of the metal that would be used to build that fence were just laying there, dated October 2020 on some of that material. He even promised a little over a year ago, well, maybe we will start filling in some of the gaps. There has been no action on that. He has reprimanded border agents, making up bogus claims that the agents riding their horses with their reins were somehow whipping immigrants with that. That was finally dispelled, but not before the lie had spread all around the world from the administration and some of their cronies. They were just trying to do their jobs, and they are being impaired by this White House in doing so. He allowed for the release of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants into this country with no way to track them--actually, millions. Biden's Department of Homeland Security has now admitted that 40 percent of catch and release migrants have disappeared. Last week, it was revealed that he never once spoke to his chief of the Border Patrol about any of this. Border security isn't even a priority for this administration, though they may want to put the dressing on it as we come down to an election here soon. The Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, is leading an effort to ban his Department from doing something politically incorrect by saying the words ``illegal immigrant.'' That is what they are focused on, not the actual immigration. That is their concern. I have to ask again: President Biden, Secretary Mayorkas, whose side are you on? Is it the American people, or is it some other agenda? We can't tell. Tons of fentanyl are being smuggled into our country, killing our youth. The price of fentanyl is coming down. It is so cheap now because there is such a massive supply--you know, supply and demand. It is getting cheap because it is so frequently available coming across our border illegally. Deadly chemicals and people are being trafficked to work on the illegal marijuana grows, like we have so many of in northern California, just taking over the land. Criminal aliens repeatedly broke the law, like the Venezuelan national who recently killed Laken Riley in broad daylight. House Republicans know that border security is, indeed, national security for our whole country. Every State, as we have said time and again, is now feeling like a border State. We did pass the strongest border security bill in history in H.R. 2. Now, about a hundred yards that direction, Senator Schumer and the gang over there have refused to bring it up for a vote. Instead, they proposed a watered-down immigration bill that would allow--get this-- 1.8 illegal immigrants a year in our country. It codifies that. Go ahead, 1.8 million, come on in. Once we reach that threshold, then we will start enforcing something. How can you take a law or a bill idea like that even seriously? They would be rewarded with immediate work permits and an ability to stay longer once they are identified. I mean, calling that a border security package is an unfunny joke. President Biden's open border policies are putting Americans in true danger. This border crisis is responsible for the deaths of countless Americans and the destruction of countless American families. I just saw a video back from 1995 when President Clinton stood right up there and gave a State of the Union Address and outlined the problem that illegal immigration is in displacing jobs and providing more danger for the American public. That was in 1995 when President Clinton, a Democrat, said that. What has changed politically in that timeframe that now the Democrats are all for what is happening on our border or, at the very least, doing nothing about it? They had a period of time when they controlled both Houses and the White House with President Biden just a little over a year ago. They had a 2-year window to do something about that. They had all the ability to line up the votes and the signatures they needed to do that. They did nothing. Instead, they are saying it is Republicans that are blocking it. We have been for solid border policy since day one. President Trump led the charge for 4 years on that, and they pushed back. They thwarted him. They thwarted funding for the border. They want to send billions and billions overseas for other things when a fraction of that would secure our own southern border. Come on. One more time: The President will be here tomorrow night, and that side of the room is going to be applauding everything. Our side? Some good, maybe some bad. It will be a mixed bag on this side of the room. I have to ask the President: As you address us, remember, ask yourself, whose side are you on?

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, maybe soon we will actually get serious about enforcing our border and the immigration mess we have down there. We see what is happening with sanctuary cities, and certainly, Mayor Adams from New York City is feeling the heat on that, as well, and actually starting to talk the right language. On top of that we have San Francisco that is not only fully embracing illegal alien sanctuary but starting this November--get this--they will let illegal aliens vote in their local school board elections. Right. So how can we even think that that is constitutional? How is that going to make San Francisco elections and the legislators they would send to Washington, D.C., or Sacramento in the eyes of the voters in the rest of the country, how do they have confidence in that? Texas can't enforce their laws on illegal immigration invasions into their State, but San Francisco can ignore Federal law and allow illegal aliens to vote in their local elections and set up ultimately to legitimize them in their eyes to vote in Federal elections? That will lead to this body having to invalidate their elections for Congress and Senate and for the White House.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I am fascinated by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle being so fixated on Ukraine when our porous southern border, our U.S. borders, are causing so much harm to our American economy and losing American lives such as Laken Riley here most recently. We have been fairly generous to Ukraine since their problems have started with Russia. Indeed, the amount of money they received is at least 20-fold more than what we are even talking about that would secure our own southern border. Now we see President Biden will be chasing former President Trump down to the border--in reality, a desperate attempt to stabilize his plummeting poll numbers on the issue, but let's not be kidded by that. Today's visit, much like Biden's first and only other visit to our southern border, will be basically a photo op. He will be visiting Brownsville, Texas, an area of the southern border that, according to reports, has had virtually nonexistent activity in recent days, weeks, and months compared to all the other places along the border where you can see plenty of footage of tens of thousands of people coming across. Create a distraction here by going over there. This is nothing more than a smokescreen and an attempt to distract American people from his disastrous policies and the chaos he has unleashed at our southern border. For the past 3 years, President Biden has not only ignored the crisis at the southern border, he is directly responsible for it. Since his first day in office, he has worked to implement his own far-left failed policies which have basically turned every town in the whole country into a border town and destroyed countless American families. We then talk about this issue here on the floor since the media doesn't seem to want to cover that very well. There are over 60 instances of President Biden and his administration taking actions that undermine our Nation's border security. The first thing he did when he came into office was to get rid of the procedures and the policies that President Trump had put into place. Yet, recently in the press, he is yelling at Republicans, saying: You need to back some of our border policies we are working on. Really? Put back in place the policies that already worked. These eight items, he could do all of these without having Congress fund or come to agreement on a bipartisan fashion on any of them: end catch and release, reinstate the remain in Mexico policy, enter into an asylum cooperation agreement, end parole abuses, detain inadmissible aliens--wow, wouldn't that be something--use expedited removal process, rein in taxpayer-funded benefits for all illegal aliens--wouldn't that be a relief for families who are struggling--issue a proclamation to suspend or restrict entry in the United States. Those are actions he could take on his own without having to battle through both sides of the aisle in both the House and Senate. We would be happy to do that as Republicans. Republicans have been standing for these types of policies all along. It all changed under the Biden administration. That is why we have suffered these last 3 years with the mass amounts of people coming across our border illegally and invading our country. We know border security is national security. That is why the bill we passed, H.R. 2, earlier on is the right policy. Yet, it is sitting there languishing under Senator Schumer and the Senate Democrats who won't bring it up for a vote or discussion. Instead, they gave us a watered-down immigration bill that would allow 1.8 million illegal immigrants a year into our country with immediate work permits, benefits, and the ability to stay even longer, thereby codifying illegal immigration. We are going to automatically concede 1.8 million can come in illegally without process, and we are going to give you stuff. Calling that a border security package and then reaming Republicans for not being for that, it is not even a funny joke. Let's look at the numbers. Since Biden took office, there have been 7.2 million illegal crossings of our southern border; 8.7 million entries nationwide. The total number of illegal immigrants who have entered through our southern border is greater than the population of 36 of our individual States. Let's not forget about the terrorists. Mr. Speaker, 340 individuals whose names appear on the terrorist watch list have been stopped trying to cross the southern border. So far in 2024, there have been 58 individuals whose names appear on the list who have been stopped trying to enter the border. How many haven't been stopped? The total is more than the encounters in all fiscal years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 combined. That is how bad it has gotten to this point. It is not just terrorists crossing our border. It is also Chinese Communist Party nationals. Mr. Speaker, 20,000 Chinese nationals have illegally crossed the southern border since fiscal year 2024 began in October. Just last week, 22-year-old Georgia nursing student Laken Riley's life was taken. How many more examples like that have to happen because of Biden's wide-open policy and today's photo op? We must do better.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, what is it going to take to get people in this country on both sides of the aisle to understand that the Biden border crisis is killing people? Laken Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student whose life was taken by an illegal immigrant, not a migrant. I hear this word ``migrant'' used all the time. This is a misnomer, trying to brush it under the rug. These aren't migrants; there is an illegal immigrant invasion of this country. Earlier this week, another 2-year-old boy in Maryland was murdered by an illegal immigrant, not a migrant. President Biden is down there in Texas pretending to do something about the border now in Brownsville. This is not a problem area like Eagle Pass, but a quieter area currently. He is yelling at Republicans and saying: Well, you are not doing anything about the border. Well, his first day in office, he reversed all of President Trump's policies that were helping keep the border in check. All these eight items on this list he could do by executive order. He could sign with a pen and do a legal constitutional executive action immediately. Instead, he wants to blame Republicans or somebody else for the policies he invoked on day one that have put us where we are. Instead, he wants to sue the State of Texas because they say their State is being invaded, and they have laws at the State level to stop invasions. He is suing them to get rid of their razor wire measures along the border. What a joke.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, indeed, a very somber thought is that we have three young ladies who are direct victims of the wide-open Biden border policy. They are not getting much notoriety for that. They are not getting talked about a whole lot. Kayla Hamilton, 1\1/2\ years ago, was taken by an illegal immigrant in this country. Lizbeth Medina, just this last December, was taken by somebody who had overstayed their visa and was here illegally. Now, most recently, Laken Riley, who we are starting to hear about a little bit, was taken by an illegal immigrant just a few days ago. All of this is at the hands of the Biden border policy, which is endangering our citizens and causing them to lose their lives. What are we going to do about this? What are people doing? Are there protests out there? Are there marches? Is there national outrage? Is there national media coverage? I guess we are trying to do that here a little bit tonight because the media seems to not want to report this. They want to report other things. They don't seem to care about this issue that is affecting Americans so negatively. Laken, Lizbeth, and Kayla are not forgotten. We are going to fix this border. These are not migrants. This is an illegal immigrant invasion hurting Americans.

Mr. LaMALFA

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

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and service of Tehama County resident, Burton Miles Bundy, my good friend who passed peacefully at home, on January 25, 2024, after a lengthy battle with Parkinson's Disease. Burt was born on October 2nd, 1941, in Santa Maria, California. In 1946 his family moved to a ranch in Los Molinos, California, where he lived until his last day. He was a graduate of Los Molinos High School in the class of 1959 before attending University of California, Davis. Burt enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1960 and specialized as a jet aircraft mechanic on F102's, F105's and F106's. He was stationed at McCord Air Force Base in Tacoma, Washington where he met and married his wife Joyce McGinn in 1962. Afterwards, he deployed to Thule, Greenland before being discharged in 1963. In 1968, Burt and Joyce opened the Los Molinos Feed and Supply Store. They owned the business until Burt was elected to the Tehama County Board of Supervisors in 1981. Burt was a leader in water, land, and fish issues throughout the North State. Burt not only served as County Supervisor for five terms, but he also served as a board member on the California Bureau of Reclamation, the California State Farm Bureau, the Tehama County Farm Bureau, the Regional Council for Rural Counties, the Northern California Land Trust, the Mill Creek Conservancy, and the Los Molinos Mutual Water Company. In 1998 he developed and led the Sacramento River Conservation Forum until his retirement in 2010. His outstanding service and dedication to his community was instrumental in the development of the area and his contributions will live long past his time of service. Burt was a husband, father, grandfather, brother, uncle, and a friend to so many. He and his wife Joyce have attended nearly every Tehama County event. They were always willing to volunteer and lend a hand when anyone needed help. He coached his sons for years with Little League, was a lifetime member of the Central Tehama Kiwanis and played cards with a group of friends for over 35 years. He was a dedicated husband and father as well as a public servant, volunteer, and businessman who spent hours working for the betterment of the community around him. An avid hunter, Burt's special place was a cabin located on Mill Creek where he enjoyed hunting and fishing with family and friends. He loved the San Francisco Giants and listened to all the games on the radio. He loved to fix up old cars and raised cattle his entire life. Burt not only traveled with Joyce but traveled around the world representing his lifelong passion for farming and ranching as a graduate of the 1998 AG Leadership Class 29. He will take a seat at the poker table with his buddies in heaven who are waiting for him. Burt is survived by his wife Joyce of 61 years, sons Lance and Justin, his grandchildren Britta, Carson, Angus, Abbey, and Axel, and his sister Ruthe. Burt leaves a legacy and example to follow. He will be missed dearly.