Doug LaMalfa

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and pay a heartfelt tribute to Sergeant Cesar Sandoval of Willows, California. Sergeant Sandoval's sudden and unexpected passing in April was a devastating blow not only to his family but also to the communities of Willows and Chico and all who knew him where he faithfully served as a law enforcement officer for 29 years. His loss reverberated through the hearts of all those who knew him, leaving an indelible mark on his town, his neighbors, and the countless lives he touched. Throughout his career, he displayed an unwavering dedication to the safety and well-being of the citizens he swore to protect. His commitment to service was outstanding, and his love for his people shone through every action he took as an officer and as an individual. He worked diligently with Chico officials to tackle the issue of homelessness in northern California, helping lead the Chico Police Department's TARGET TEAM that worked closely with local resources to assist those with mental illness, drug, and alcohol issues. While Sergeant Sandoval's life was tragically cut short, his legacy lives on in the hearts of his family, friends, colleagues, and the countless lives he touched in his years of service. As we mark his 51st birthday today, June 14, Flag Day, we honor his memory and celebrate the legacy he left for the people in northern California with his service. God bless him and his family.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, in California and in the Western States, we see massive wildfires year in and year out due to the nonmanagement or mismanagement of our forests. The result here lately has shown that, in California, you are seeing major insurers pulling out of the State. They are either no longer offering new insurance policies to homeowners or are even withdrawing old ones upon their expiration, which means costs go up for the remaining companies, fewer choices for consumers, and even more disaster in the fact that insurance will no longer be affordable at all for any of them as they have seen skyrocketing costs. What do we do about this? What should government do? Well, it probably shouldn't be getting into the insurance business. Indeed, the California one called FAIR is already expensive and hard to get, beyond what the private ones are. It comes down to forestry, having positive forestry that makes the level of risk in line, as well as not fees and mandates on top of what it takes to build a home already too costly in California, and making land available instead of getting sued over using the land in order to build new housing. Now, you are going to hear the regulators say: It is all due to climate change. No, it is other government actions that are doing this.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, we are 1 week away from Secretary Yellen's hard default date, the June 1 deadline. House Republicans have been calling on our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and the President to be negotiating on this debt since January. It is now May 25. In the past 140 days, we have been hearing a lot of name-calling and little bipartisan negotiation. While this impasse has dragged on, House Republicans passed legislation, the Limit, Save, Grow Act, that averts a default and reduces wasteful spending. Let's negotiate from that point. We have a plan to avert default and are eager to work with the President to work out a suitable compromise, but we would rather hear a lot of stuff and name-calling, and keep on printing and spending more money. Indeed, it was pointed out that if our plan goes through, it would mean a 20 percent cut in discretionary spending over just 5 months, so that must mean we increase spending by 20 percent in 1 fiscal year of discretionary spending. Madam Speaker, how many years can you keep increasing spending by 20 percent? Not 1, 2, 3, or 5, but a 20 percent increase. How do we afford that going forward? It is incredibly amazing we think that should be the route we should go and keep adding to our debt.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, the Endangered Species Act was put into law over 50 years ago. Of course, its purpose was to protect and recover vulnerable species to save them from population decline and extinction. That act has, to date, only recovered a couple dozen species, as there are over 1,300 listed species in the United States. The ratio of recovery indeed is a failure. The ESA must be reformed to refocus the efforts of the Federal Government to recover animal species in a timely manner without also making it difficult for people to coexist in their habitat, as well. We have the law now that is more likely to be used as a back door to regulate economic activity than a pro-conservation piece of legislation. There are numerous examples of activist groups weaponizing the ESA to use it as a business model. Indeed, they make money from the lawsuits. For example, in my part of the State in the Central Valley, the valley elderberry longhorn beetle has had a very negative effect on the ability of Central Valley residents to maintain flood controls in the form of levees. The residents cannot upgrade and improve the levees in this area because the ESA prevents them from doing so without very costly long- held permits. This is despite the fact that it has been recommended by Fish and Wildlife that the longhorn beetle be delisted for many years now. However, the environmental groups keep litigating on that and the Fish and Wildlife organization has pulled back from delisting the beetle. So why do they do this? It is obvious. If the beetle is delisted, it loses the ESA protections that make levee upgrades so difficult, expensive, and time-consuming in order to obtain the permits. The beetle has been delisted in some areas of California, such as the southern parts, but in my district, it is still listed as endangered, making it difficult to do needed flood-control projects. Another example that has devastated the forest industry, in the West especially, is the spotted owl. It was listed many years ago. We find that the ESA has made that a weapon against forest management, and we have seen the results of that with million-acre fires. Year after year, hundreds of thousands of acres of fire have been wreaking havoc on so much of the West because we can't manage the lands because they believe there might be a spotted owl nearby, even though it isn't really the management of forests that is the problem. It is another larger owl nearby that actually devastates the spotted owl, known as the barred owl. Also the spotted owl seems to like foresting a little closer to human activity because it is seen as a protection from the barred owl, which devastates their population. What is the end result? Over 100 sawmills in California have shut down due to these protections that indeed make timber supply unavailable to the sawmills, so they go away, and instead, we have to import timber. Now the activists themselves that sue over this, they don't live in these conditions. They live in cities far away. They don't have to live with the conditions of their economy being devastated in a small town in northern California or Oregon or other western States. So it is really easy to regulate other people somewhere else and say they have an idea about what a forest should look like when their own homes aren't subject to the threat of fire; indeed, places like Greenville, California, Canyondam, California, and a few years ago, a lot of us around the country heard about Paradise, California, as well. If they don't have to experience it, it is really easy for urban legislators to make regulations that continue to devastate these areas. It is actually the local people that know best how to fight fires, how to manage the lands, and how to generate an economy that helps those communities take care of themselves and keep the people supplied with paper products and wood products that the country still wants. So why in the world are we the number two importer of wood in the United States? We have so much that we could be utilizing. We could have managed forests that have the right ratio of trees per acre that is actually sustainable, instead of this horrific overpopulation of trees that really creates its own drought and creates a situation where they become tinderboxes, million-acre fires, ruining the habitat and killing the wildlife. Indeed, the opposite of what the Endangered Species Act is trying to do. Also, why do we have such high food prices in this country? Why do we even encounter food shortages in the United States of America? Because it is hard to have a water supply in California that is a steady, stable supply. They take away the ability to build dams and enhance our water storage, and all the water flows down the river and out to the sea. The Endangered Species Act needs to be restored to put things back on track for human needs.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I am a farmer in my real life. I hope I talk plainly enough to get my thoughts across.

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, it is really a pleasure to serve with Chairman Newhouse on the Western Caucus as well as in other capacities here in the U.S. House. Indeed, he has really invigorated the effort that the caucus is making on having these key issues on all manner of things, not just western but really, for the whole country, having so much to do with resources and such. As we contemplate here tonight what the Endangered Species Act's original intention 50 years ago was when passed by Congress, and really, for those of us in production, agriculture, energy, minerals, just about anything that uses the basic building blocks of the economy and the things that our modern society needs, the Endangered Species Act has been weaponized against that. What it has turned into now due to activism in the courts, the endless lawsuits and the way the courts reinterpret things is nothing close to what Congress would have passed back in the early 1970s. Had they passed that, I think they would have been ridden out of town on a rail because it was so destructive toward the cornerstones of our economy and what has made America strong and independent in so many areas. We agree with the purpose originally. It is to protect and recover vulnerable species. I think the focus at the time, really, was on the bald eagle with expansion from there to many other species that we deem valuable. The world has well over a million species in it, and they are discovering more all the time; a lot of it in the insect world and such. To think that we are going to just completely move all human beings, especially Americans, into caves or something like that and say we can't affect the environment or touch it in any way is really unrealistic. Mankind has a piece in the world as well. That is even a biblical truth. The Endangered Species Act, what it has turned into, is really harming the ability for people to get what they need. Also, the focus hasn't really been on recovering species, which I think was well intended, because we have heard my colleagues talk about the ratio here of recovery. It is extremely low, especially if you put a ratio of dollars spent and pain inflicted on agriculture, on mining, on domestically produced products versus the number of species recovered. It is way out of whack. You heard my colleague from Minnesota a minute ago talking about the recovery of the wolves. They have an incredible number of wolves in the upper Midwest, but the ESA can be misinterpreted and misused and abused to say we need to have wolves everywhere: in Oregon, in California, in Washington. For that matter, should we introduce them into the Golden Gate Park and the Santa Monica Pier to make sure they have their share as well? If you want to see a wolf, you are still going to be able to see a wolf in the areas where they have been more indigenous for a long time, and they have successfully recovered. This is what we put up with. They introduce them in areas where now livestock and people making a living in rural areas in Wyoming, Montana, northeast California, and Oregon have to suffer with the ideology of just introducing them everywhere and saying this is now going to make them not on the list anymore. In my northern California area, for example, we had very important levee projects needed to be done for flood control around the north central area of Sacramento Valley, places like Hamilton City, Yuba City, Marysville, Sacramento, areas like that. Well, they seemed to shop for a species du jour to stop projects, and what they settled on was the valley elderberry longhorn beetle, which not that many years ago U.S. Fish and Wildlife actually recommended for it to be delisted. In the meantime, however, they won't make a decision and take it off the list. Now, mind you, you don't even find the beetle in some of these areas, but because the habitat for it exists in some of these areas, the law has been interpreted to be, well, if there is habitat there, if there is an elderberry bush and a beetle might come along and land in it or dwell in it, we have to leave that bush there. If you take that bush out in order to redo a levee, then we have to plant 50 or 70 more bushes somewhere else. In one case here, we had to take out a couple hundred acres of orchard land to have this mitigation area because they wanted to fix the dang levee that was already in existence and keep a town from flooding at the next rain because they are not maintaining the river in between the levee banks from all the siltation and such going on there. But that starts another whole narrative. The beetle doesn't get delisted, and the levee work doesn't get done farther south in the Yuba City-Marysville area. This was going on 20, 30 years ago. A lot of great work has been done since then, but it has been made much more expensive and much more arduous because of the threat of lawsuit and the ESA. I will remind you that years ago lives were lost and hundreds of millions of dollars of damage were done by a levee blowing out in that southern area of my district in Yuba City-Marysville on the Marysville side. With all that damage, three lives were lost, and finally the State of California lost a lawsuit for, I think, $400 million because they were derelict in doing the work to maintain the levees, all because of this. What I am talking about here as well is the ability to keep food on the table. This chart I have shows that California is responsible for, in some of these crops, 100 percent, well above 90 percent of the crops that Americans consume that come primarily from California. We have the ESA stopping us from keeping farmland safe from floods but, also, at the same time building the water storage projects that are important to store water. Now, we were blessed this year with a tremendous amount of rain and snowpack, and we are really happy about it, but that doesn't happen every year. That is why we build these long-term water projects that store water for 5 years of drought, like Shasta Lake, Lake Oroville, and others. If we don't have those projects, we don't ride through that time. They try to stop those projects from being further built, and they also seek to tear down projects like the Klamath dams, make hydroelectric green power with no CO2. Much work needs to be done to keep crops on the table, to keep the electricity and the wires, keep the minerals coming to produce all the things we need to keep energy, all of that. The ESA needs to be revisited and actually focused on truly recovering species but not used as a weapon to stop things people need, our economies need, rural economies especially. That is some of the work we do in the Western Caucus. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate, again, Chairman Newhouse's leadership on this and the opportunity to speak on it here tonight. There is much more that I could say; you know me.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 228.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, our government was founded on the principle of rule by the people's elected Representatives, indeed, a Republic. The principle guided our Nation for many years and allowed the United States to become first among nations. Sadly, the uncontrolled growth of the Federal bureaucracy has usurped our constitutional foundation. Instead of rule by elected Representatives, Americans are mostly ruled by bureaucrats. Federal bureaucrats and agencies, with the aid of activist judges, have successfully subverted many of our freedoms and the God-given rights of Americans found in the Constitution. Almost every bill in the Bill of Rights has been successfully curtailed or subordinated to the wishes and desires of unelected, faceless bureaucrats. Our Founders did not intend for the citizens of the Nation to be ruled by rubber-stamped decrees from agencies like the EPA or the ATF. To add insult to injury, although we do have a mix of good people that are there, they are often outstripped by those that don't seem to care about what real people deal with. Their decrees often make no sense and do nothing more than make a headache for people trying to do basic, everyday things. The Endangered Species Act, I remind you, does not trump the Bill of Rights or the U.S. Constitution. We need to take our powers back.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, our ally in the Middle East, Israel, has suffered from even more rocket attacks from Hamas terrorists. Hamas, as usual, is launching rockets from civilian population centers and using those civilians as human shields. We hear a lot of talk these days about 15-minute cities. Israelis live 15-seconds from a shelter. That is how they have to live their life if they are within the range of the rockets which are becoming more and more wide- ranging over the territory of Israel. If a terror organization in Mexico, for example, were firing rockets into cities in Texas and Arizona, the United States would certainly be expected to retaliate with military force. This is the case with Israel, it must protect its citizens from indiscriminate rocket attacks. Israel is not to blame for the civilian casualties caused in this conflict. Indeed, the blame lies squarely at the feet of Hamas and other terror organizations who believe in the use of violence to achieve their goals. Israel, in good faith, gave over the Gaza in a land-for-peace deal. Yet, the ink wasn't even dry, and they started stacking rockets in Gaza and launching them at Israel. The United States must continue to support Israel's right to exist and defend itself from aggression. As our most powerful partner in the Middle East, we owe it to them.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I rise to highlight a great injustice happening to constituents of mine in Siskiyou County, California. Against their wishes and interests, the hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River are in line to be demolished and removed. These removals will have a very negative effect on the economy for the residents of Siskiyou County as much of their tax base relies on those dams and the power and energy they produce. It will devalue their property. The hydroelectric power--everyone wants green power--carbon- free power will be eliminated and have to be found some other way. These property owners are going to be hurt drastically by this, but they are supposed to be compensated by what is called the Klamath Mitigation Fund. It seems that the parent agency of this fund, the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, a shell corporation created to take over the ownership of the dams and have no liability, has used extremely subjective criteria when evaluating which property owners will get compensation, which won't even be close to the amount that they lose in their water wells and their property values as the lakefront will no longer be a lake from the Copco Reservoir. They should really be compensated for this, but on top of that, we really shouldn't be tearing out dams when we already have a shortage of electric power, especially green hydroelectric power that renews every time it rains.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson) for leading us once again as we get out the good word of our optimism for Congress and for the people of the United States. This being National Police Week, I start off my portion by extending my gratitude to all those officers who bravely wear the badge and uphold our laws. As my colleagues before me have emphasized, crime rates, indeed, are rising exponentially due to soft-on-crime attitudes, early-release policies, district attorneys that will not prosecute crimes that people really care about, and even calls to defund police departments, though some of the cities that have done that are now seeing the fruits of that labor and are backtracking on that, embarrassingly for them. In 2021, a record number of officers were killed in the line of duty. Many more have been injured by dangerous criminals while on the job. We pray for the safety of our law enforcement personnel as they continue carrying out their mission to uphold the law for us. My heart goes out to all the families who have lost a loved one in the line of duty. Indeed, the price has been too high as there have been too many lost. This week, we are honoring all who lost their lives while in the line of duty. I highlight one from Arbuckle, California, a native of northern California. Natalie Corona was a rising star of the Davis Police Department. One of her colleagues recalled the time when she went out of her way to aid a victim of the Camp fire in Paradise, California, in response to a call. Her father, a 26-year veteran of the Colusa County Sheriff's Department said there was no question that Natalie Corona would one day work in law enforcement. In 2019, though, when Natalie was only 22 years old, she was ambushed while responding to a minor three-vehicle collision. Natalie was randomly shot and killed without warning for doing her job and helping others. Ultimately, I don't think it is fair that our law enforcement personnel are expected to put their lives on the line to protect law and order, meanwhile, Democrat lawmakers here in D.C. and Sacramento and our State capital continuously fuel crime and put officers like this needlessly in danger for what they do and lack of prosecution and lack of making them see through their terms in our prisons. These policies and hateful rhetoric really make their job that much harder. There are plenty of those lawmakers in our California State capital and this Capitol right here right now trying to still make it harder for the police while simultaneously spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on their own private security for themselves. That is amazing. The names of 54 fallen law enforcement officers in California's First District are inscribed at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. Indeed, once again, that is far too many. Lawmakers in D.C. and in blue States such as my own, California, need to get serious about locking up criminals and leaving them there for their full term. Do not let them out for sorry excuses such as, oh, COVID releases or, oh, we don't want the death penalty in California for heinous crimes that they commit. We need to give our law enforcement personnel the encouragement that their work will not be made trivial by these release programs, these lack of prosecutions and that we are going to have the resources for them to stop crime and to help hold up the law that we ask them to do as Americans. Indeed, it is a somber occasion when we memorialize those that we have lost, but we are very grateful that they are willing to serve in what is a really tough business at a time when they seem more and more persecuted than ever. We want them to know that still the very vast majority of Americans appreciate them, that they answer the call, that they are willing to line up and do this work for us in order to help keep our streets in a way that we can be normal and do normal things and not have to worry about endless break-ins or thuggery taking advantage of innocent people just going along trying to do normal things in their day-to-day lives. We are eternally grateful for our law enforcement officers as we recognize them this week. To my colleague, Mr. Johnson, I thank him once again for hosting this Special Order.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, today the Durham report finally came out. As suspected, the FBI and the DOJ acted vastly improperly with raw and uncorroborated so-called evidence that they used to hound President Trump for well over 2 years and try to influence the 2016 election as well as make the administration untenable following that. So who is going to go to jail for this? It is hard to tell. It is pretty difficult to prosecute these sorts of things when the insiders at the Department of Justice and FBI are going to be trying to make sure it doesn't happen. So what do we do to put, at least, the confidence of the American people back into the upper echelons of the Department of Justice and the FBI so that we don't have to think that they are going to be doing this sort of thing to anybody they disagree with politically on top of what we just saw? Indeed, how do we regain trust? It has been blown up in the name of influencing an election in 2016 and harming the Trump administration.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I would like to highlight a potential catastrophe that may befall the Western United States in this upcoming 2023 fire season. Indeed, it is underway. A total of 196 fires have already burned a total of over 50 acres so far, and it is going to be much, much more than that since it is on the heels of wintertime when they are easier to contain. The worst wildfires in the West are due to overgrowth and neglect of our Federal lands that are overpopulated with trees. They get too hot for conventional firefighting methods. When this occurs, fire retardant dropped from aircraft is our best and sometimes only option. Dropping retardant from aircraft ahead of advancing wildfire helps our firefighters who are on the ground in harm's way to maybe not get enveloped in fire and be able to do their jobs. It allows us time to organize evacuations and eventually contain and put the fire out. A radical environmental organization is suing to have an injunction put on the use of fire retardants until firefighting agencies complete a yearslong permit process to use fire retardants. It is ridiculous and amazing how out of touch they are to take away the tool of fire retardant dropped from aircraft to help put fires out in the West. Congressman Panetta and I are working on a bill that we are introducing called the Forest Protection and Wildland Firefighter Safety Act. We need this sort of thing. We need that protection.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, President Biden will be removing a critical border enforcement mechanism from our Border Patrol agents' arsenal. Title 42 is a Trump-era public health order that allows us to quickly deport illegal immigrants that are abusing our asylum system. Without this order in place, the crisis at our southern and northern border would be even worse than it is now. This impending end of title 42 is public knowledge. Already, border towns are experiencing yet another surge of illegal immigrants as the end gets closer. Allowing title 42 to expire is allowing an already catastrophic situation to get even worse. It is unconscionable that neither the President nor Secretary Mayorkas is treating the border crisis with anything close to seriousness. Thousands of people violate our Nation's laws and our sovereignty every day by illegally entering the United States. Drug smuggling and human trafficking are rampant, and Mexican drug cartels are growing richer and more powerful. Only America's foes benefit from the utter chaos at our border. It is time for the administration to get busy and do the work that needs to be done. Finish building the border fence. Sending your press agents out to tell us this is fine? Well, we are not falling for the Jedi mind trick.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson) yielding me time and for having this event on a very special day for our great ally and friend, the nation of Israel. Of course, as acknowledged, this is the 75th anniversary of its reformation back in 1948, but we know Israel's history goes much, much further into the past than those 75 years, to the early times in the Biblical days, and how important that is to all of us. Indeed, God's chosen people. They have overcome a lot in their 75 years of existence currently, including the day after they were formed, to be attacked in war by five neighboring Arab countries trying to eradicate them. They fought them off. Allies around the world came in to help, with their own fierce determination to exist is what prevailed. Then in 1967, the 6-day war, as they were attacked, once again, while trying to peacefully exist. Six years later, 1973--I remember that one--attacked once again. They are constantly under threat from hostile territory. Thank goodness under the leadership of Israel and surrounding countries, with a lot of help from President Trump, we have the Abraham Accords in order to help promote more understanding and partnerships in that world with their neighbors, building upon that, a more positive relationship with Saudi Arabia, and a good relationship with their neighbor, Jordan. Israel has bent over backwards to be that positive force in the area. They wish to peacefully coexist. When I had the chance to visit Israel, three times now, and visit with the people and listen to their testimony, all they seek is solutions for peace to exist with their neighbors. When you get a chance to get feedback from Arab Israelis, people of Arabic descent that live in Israel, they don't want to leave. They know it is better there under that style of government and that kind of freedom than any other that they could live in. That speaks a lot to who the people of Israel are and what their goals are as a nation. Of course, they are constantly under threat. Indeed, when they have bent over backwards with Land For Peace, giving back the Sinai and then giving back the Gaza Strip, what did they meet up with? Immediately after deeding over the Gaza Strip, rockets were installed there. Rockets rained down on Israel constantly. If you talk to the people there in Israel, many of them that were in the zones of those rockets, know they have 15 seconds from alert to take cover. What an existence. Our alliance with them is very important because they are indeed a neighbor and a friend for all of us in the United States. Their innovation in areas of agriculture and water and drip irrigation, in the medical field, in aerospace, in missile defense, they are an important partner for us as they are an extremely industrial and innovative people. So we benefit greatly from that partnership. I think those that would criticize what we do to help them, are in error for looking at it that way. It is still the only truly free nation in the Middle East. It is the most tolerant and religious minority in the region by far; indeed a beacon of hope in the Middle East. When political and economic freedom are possible, it can produce lasting success even in the most unlikely of places, but they always have that feeling of being attacked. Hamas attacking Israel. Iran nearby wants to continue to sponsor terror groups while it pursues its own nuclear weapons program. Hamas has, on many occasions, fired rockets into Israel, as I mentioned, with the aim of targeting civilian populations. When Israel strikes back, it is very focused on being sure it hits only military targets and does not harm civilians. So there is a big difference between how they operate and what their neighbors, their hostile neighbors are trying to do to them. It is important we have this alliance and that we maintain that and be strong for them because they are indeed the beacon of hope for the Middle East. They seek peaceful coexistence with their neighbors, and we should reward that with our continued backing and our continued friendship, because the United States benefits from it as well, as well as those that believe that we have a longstanding tie that goes back to our founding in Israel's first existence on this Earth. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this time here to commemorate not only the 75th, but the greatness of Israel and the partnership we have. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson) for allowing me the time tonight.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, today, over 187 million Americans use natural gas, as well as another approximately 50 million who use propane, because it is affordable and available right here in North America. Over half the country uses this product. Over 45 million stoves and ovens, 61 million water heaters, and 73 million space heaters use natural gas across the country, which provides consistent, reliable energy for heating and cooking, et cetera. Our Nation is the largest consumer of natural gas and one of the largest producers of natural gas due to the miracle of hydraulic fracturing. It has become an integral and reliable part of our energy arsenal over the decades. Yet, States like California--and now the Biden administration--can't seem to admit the unreliable alternatives that they are trying to force upon all of us are not the be-all and end-all. They can't seem to admit that these technologies have not advanced to the point where they can rely on solar or wind, a tiny part of our grid, for all of our needs. Democrats are content to source foreign energy to fill in the gaps where their green energy falls way short. Republicans and other commonsense Americans know we need an all-of-the-above energy approach to fill our energy needs. Natural gas, oil, hydropower, geothermal, nuclear, and biomass are all important parts of the grid, not just windmills, not just solar panels. We need all of the above.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, more than a year after it happened, Americans still have not heard the truth about President Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. It seems this administration would rather pretend the whole affair never happened. The disastrous, ill-executed withdrawal cost the lives of 13 American servicemen. Despite this horrific failure, not one person in the State Department, military, or any Federal agency that planned and executed the withdrawal from Afghanistan has resigned in disgrace. No one has apologized. No one has owned up to their mistake. Now, the State Department is ignoring a congressional subpoena from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The American people sacrificed blood and treasure in Afghanistan for almost two decades. They deserve the truth about what happened, but trying to hide requested information by the State Department is preventing the accountability that we should demand. Mr. Speaker, we have to get to the bottom of how the withdrawal from Afghanistan went off the rails, so our Nation does not repeat such things in the future.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time this evening. Thank you to my colleague from Michigan for leading us on this and for being a fighter in the trenches on what we are talking about. Indeed, we are talking about the Nation's debt issues, the necessary measure we have of having to extend the debt limit as the dollars have already been committed. They have already been spent. We have to pay for them. The Limit, Save, Grow Act is, indeed, a responsible way to try and turn the tide on what had been much spending over the last few years that has extended our national debt to just unthought of numbers; over $31 trillion. In this measure that we are speaking of this evening here--really, since January, the Democrats and the President have tried to claim falsely that Republicans have no plan. We have been talking about a plan the whole time. The difference is they don't want to sit down and talk with us about how to meld their ideas with ours. This week we released our plan, and today we passed it. As always, House Republicans have consistently argued for reasonable, responsible debt limit increases, coupled with spending reductions in order to move toward eventually balancing this budget. It is absurd that the Democrats now demand unilateral increases to our Nation's debt and balk at Republicans for asking for something in a negotiation. Our plan, the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023, saves American taxpayers $4.5 trillion over the next decade. It will limit Federal spending to fiscal year 2022 levels, which our government operated on just 4 months ago. It does allow for 1 percent annual growth in Federal spending over the next 10 years. For those that want to spend more, it is still built in but at a flatter rate, flattening the curve on spending. If we had been able to hold that for the last 10 years, we would be really close to a balanced budget. Also included in the bill are important clawbacks for $60 billion in unspent COVID funds. When people see that these unspent COVID funds are sitting there, then they covet them. You get everybody coming in asking if they can shift these COVID relief funds to some other pet project. That is not what was intended at the time we had a crisis, however much of that crisis might have been exacerbated by false information or what have you, but indeed, the opportunity to take $60 billion of unspent funds and pull them back, and indeed, have better conversations in a budget and appropriation process, not an emergency as was COVID, it would be much better for all of us. As we know, the pandemic is over. This money has not been spent, and it should be rescinded without delay. That is what we did today in this piece of legislation, the Limit, Save, Grow Act. Also included in the bill is our Lower Energy Costs Act, which has already passed this Chamber with bipartisan support previously. It lowers energy costs for American families and modernizes our outdated permitting process. The House Republicans' plan is economically sound, financially wise, and allows for a debt limit increase of $1.5 trillion to pay our bills. It is a reasonable, responsible plan that will benefit all Americans. This body deliberated on the merits of this legislation and has passed this legislation. The U.S. responsibly did its job on a debt ceiling to pay its already incurred bills. The profligate spending of the past years cannot become the permanent way of business of this House or of Washington, D.C. We cannot afford even more high-speed debt on bills pretending to be COVID fixes about infrastructure that actually isn't infrastructure, or masquerading as a fix for inflation. It is now on the Democrats in the Senate and the White House to meet with House Republicans at the negotiation table to actually come to a solution. The stall tactics by Senate Leader Schumer and President Biden to run out the clock and do a last-minute crisis debt limit bill with a Christmas tree of goodies that will only cause more crushing debt cannot be the way of doing business here. Never before in our Nation's history has a debt ceiling been raised without spending reductions to go along with it. It is a negotiation. This time should be no different. We must demand that the Senate come to the table and the White House negotiate. By us getting legislation out of this body here now, the ball is in their corner. It is time for them to look at our document and come up with their ideas and sit down and do as these bodies are supposed to do in front of the American people, not on Zoom, not behind masks, not remotely, but in front of everybody and make a product that we can all be proud of and at least live with and move towards balancing our budget longer term. This is what House Republicans are trying to do, not all the caterwauling we heard about, how it is going take away from this and that and the poor and every other group you can name here. It doesn't even touch all that. We have already spent the money. We have to have the debt ceiling increased and be responsible with the spending reductions as we go along. What could be wrong with that? I appreciate the effort of my colleagues, our leadership, and Speaker McCarthy to get this thing through and get everybody at the table on our side and hopefully be successful with the Senate and the White House to see the logic of what we are trying to do here. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Bergman for leading us here, and I am actually fairly excited and optimistic that we can get this document out.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, since January, Democrats and the President have tried to falsely claim that House Republicans have no plan regarding the Nation's debt ceiling crisis. This week, we released our plan. As always, House Republicans have consistently argued for reasonable, responsible debt limit increases coupled with spending cuts. Every debt limit debate in this body has been achieved via compromise. It is absurd to think that our Democrat colleagues now demand unilateral increases to our Nation's debt and balk at Republicans for asking for something in return. Our plan, the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023, will save the American taxpayers $4.5 trillion over the next decade. We will limit Federal spending to fiscal year 2022 levels, which our government operated on just 4 months ago. In exchange, we will allow for a 1 percent annual growth in Federal spending over the next 10 years, which is a compromise. Included in the bill are clawbacks for around $60 billion in unspent COVID funds. The pandemic is over, and this money that has not been spent should be rescinded without delay. Also included in the bill is our Lower Energy Costs Act, which has already passed this Chamber with bipartisan support, lowering energy costs for American families. House Republicans' plan is economically sound, financially wise, and still allows for a debt limit increase of $1.5 trillion. This is a reasonable and responsible plan that will benefit all Americans.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I am glad to rise today in support of Congressman Steube's H.R. 734. It is amazing how contorted this argument has become. This is simply about protecting women and girls in sports. We have seen what has happened when we don't. We have seen in women's cage fighting, where you have a biological male cracking the heads of the women in there. It is so uncompetitive. Girls in college sports or women's sports when they step up to the starting line in track meets feel already defeated because there are two biological males running against them. Are we going to protect women and girls in sports and the rest of life or not? This legislation simply goes in the direction of allowing sports to be competitive once again for women and girls. This legislation is not about all the other things that the folks on the other side of the aisle are trying to turn it into. It is simple and it is really essential if we want to have our women and our girls not feel defeated right out of the chute. I don't know where the feminists are, but there are a lot of us men that feel strongly about this, supporting this, and supporting Title IX, and the whole concept that men and women are different. Girls and women deserve the same chance as everybody else.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, during a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing yesterday, former Director of National Intelligence Ratcliffe testified that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science, and by common sense. On Monday morning, a new Senate report concluded there were two leaks from the Wuhan lab in 2019 and this Nation had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. At the same Tuesday hearing, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Feith revealed that the State Department tried hiding evidence of U.S. funded gain-of-function research, arguing it could open a Pandora's box. In other words, they concluded it would be easier to lie, therefore, endanger the American people and the world because telling the truth would expose a lot of difficult questions. These revelations are further proof of what many Americans already know to be true: Dr. Anthony Fauci misled the public continuously during the pandemic about the origins of this virus and the risk of gain-of-function research. People in our own government aided this for various reasons, selfishly wanting to defraud and endanger the public while they pursued their own goals. Director Ratcliffe's and Mr. Feith's testimony, as well as the Senate report, should disturb every lawmaker in this Chamber.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Thank you, again, to my colleague from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson), for leading this time for us to further inform the American people on these key matters. Really, this is what House Republicans have demonstrated so far in this majority here in the last 3 months or so. The priorities of the American people are our priorities for their well-being, their prosperity, and we are achieving that in the legislation we are pushing through. Unfortunately, that priority is not shared by our President, and a lot of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are focused on a lot of other things that are very destructive to our economy, destructive to the well-being of what has really made this country strong economically and morally. Our economic base pivots mainly on energy, continued development of it, developing newer, better technologies which in this country, when we have the entrepreneurship, the freedom and means to continue to innovate instead of getting railroaded into things that don't work. A lot of that is this massive bent toward electrifying all of our energy-consuming devices, whether they be automobiles or appliances, things that we use for manufacturing, industry, what have you. I just have to tell you, remind you, that our power grid, our electricity grid, especially in my home State, is this close, especially on a hot summer day, toward collapsing. It is not enough, certainly, to take into account the big ideas there are to electrify cars, trucks, leaf blowers, stoves, and this is over the protests of the very people who are going to be expected to buy them and replace them. Have you seen cities and municipalities moving in the direction of banning all new gas stoves? Well, gas stoves work awfully well for people, for homeowners that wish to have that choice. When we see government continuing to take choices away from people, you are not seeing it from House Republicans. You are seeing it from the left. You are seeing it from this White House. You are seeing it from the policies that come from the Democrat leadership. People need to realize where this comes from. Legislation that was passed in the seventies, NEPA as part of Endangered Species Act, as part of the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, those are good things, were good things at the time. They have been weaponized over the last 30 or 40 years to stop projects that people want from getting done, whether it is widening their highways to have better transportation infrastructure; whether it is agriculture. You know, incredibly, we are seeing that in this country, we might have empty store shelves of certain products that people come to expect; certainly we are seeing much higher prices for food. What is the key to this? Energy. We don't have low-cost energy, reasonable energy, and we have stopped exploring for new oil and gas. We stopped building power plants. Indeed, in my district, they are trying to tear down hydroelectric plants that make CO2-free power. We all love CO2-free stuff, and they want to tear out this infrastructure. Our only nuclear power plant left in California, Diablo Canyon, got a 5-year reprieve by the legislature recently. There are people already trying to put a stop to that 5-year reprieve of it being shut down--more CO2-free power, 9 percent of the grid. So the weaponization of the environment has been pretty successful so far in stopping important projects. Instead, we get red tape, bloat, all sorts of things from the government instead of the projects people need in order to continue. Western civilization is defined by our ability to produce not only what we need but to help others around the world. We are unable to do that effectively if we keep going in this direction. A bill we passed last week, H.R. 1, was critical toward moving back this 2\1/2\ to 3-year funk we had under President Biden and also pivoting off of COVID shutting down our lives, largely. I can even extend that to the importance of forest management because the smoke plume from that affects the whole country when you have a million-acre fire like I had in my district. H.R. 1 has these key components toward helping with energy. One key component to help with forest management is to be able to do the types of thinning and work that is going to make the forests healthy. When you are talking about the Forest Service lands, they are an asset of the American people and they need to be saved. The lunacy we have seen with the extremists manipulating environmental laws and, of course, court decisions that aren't really based so much on what the intent of the law was 50 years ago is really harming our country. It is really harming the people, causing unnecessarily high costs of everything, and taking choices off your table, taking choices out of your garage, et cetera, et cetera. H.R. 1 is a good start on that. We need our colleagues in the Senate to pass that and get it to the White House and, hopefully, convince the President to do the right thing; not just shut down more energy. Folks, we have got to have you pay attention to this stuff and be on our side on this because we are actually on your side and not trying to take away your choices, your livelihoods, and harm you economically.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, today, I honor the memory of Miles Isbell. Today would have been Miles' 12th birthday. At the age of 9, Miles was diagnosed with brain cancer. While undergoing treatment, he refused to stop living his life to the fullest extent possible. He stayed active in school while undergoing treatment. He became a real-life trouper and outspoken candidate for cancer research while, in one night, raising $3 million for a brain cancer research facility. Last September, the players on the San Francisco Giants baseball team wore pediatric cancer bracelets in Miles' honor. They brought him to several games, and he was able to meet several of the team's star players. Miles had a tenacity that few of us could match. Despite the difficulty of his diagnosis and treatments, he never once uttered the word ``cancer.'' Indeed, this hat says: ``Smiles for Miles.'' Sadly, he passed away on October 21, 2022. The mark he left behind is indelible. He touched many lives. He showed everyone around him what courage and strength in the face of darkness looks like. May we honor his memory and remember his bravery. Miles is now resting peacefully in the arms of the Lord. We in northern California mourn his passing. He will be missed every day. I can think of no better person to honor on this floor.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, today, the House will vote to decide whether to overturn another bad decision by President Biden. His veto of H.J. Res. 27, which overturned the EPA's and Army Corps of Engineers' overreaching definition of ``waters of the United States,'' in yet another rule change to that law, keeps the new expanded definition of WOTUS in place. This change to one of most abused and litigated Federal statutes on the books allows the EPA to regulate every single ditch, every little puddle, every ephemeral stream in America, as if they were somehow the Mississippi River or the Sacramento River, in my home State. Of course, this is ludicrous, as our Nation's commerce, agriculture, and natural beauty are not dependent on a farmer's self-made ditch or irrigation canal or these ephemeral streams. With the expanded WOTUS rule, the Federal Government can now regulate almost any activity, from farming to landscaping, which occurs on private property. Treating Americans' private property as sacrosanct has been a core principle of this Nation for over two centuries. Our Founders would be horrified to see a United States Government agency, headquartered here in Washington, D.C., granting itself broad power to regulate every single American on their own land. We have seen the EPA abuse WOTUS before to regulate everything from farming to home building. Ridiculous interpretations on whether you can even plant a fallow field back to a wheat crop that previously had one without a permit can often take 3 years because there is no motivation from the Army Corps or other regulators to get the job done and tell the farmer: Yes, you may farm your ground the way you did it once before. They sued them for it, they fined them, and basically put them out of business over a farming activity that has occurred. Another example is the couple that are being sued over WOTUS, and it is being used as a weapon to prevent a married couple from building their dream home near the shore of a lake, all within the rules. I guarantee you, when the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Act were passed in the early seventies by this Congress, they did not have the intent, nor would they have gotten away with, passing legislation that would have been so far-reaching as this. These are about, yes, clean water. They are about protecting species and some of the habitat for them, not every possible piece of ground in the world that might host one, even though they don't currently. They would not have been able to pass that through Congress because people would have run them out of here on a rail. Yet, through court interpretations over time, rulemaking, and guidance, this is where we have gotten to. The administration, and the previous Democratic administration, have been hyperaggressive in putting waters of the United States rules in place that have little to do with what the measurement used to be, that it was a navigable stream. Well, ``navigable'' used to mean you could actually drive a boat up and down that particular river or what have you. Now, if you can float a rubber duck in it for a half hour after a rain in a pond or a stream or what have you, then they seem to believe that should be a good enough definition for ``navigable waterways.'' It is ridiculous. With the increasing cost of food to Americans and fewer food choices on our shelves, and even empty shelves in this country, this is the move they make, to restore to previous aggressive limits of waters of the United States and take away the ability to farm our products, already safely, already reliably, already ecologically sound. This is not needed under the Biden interpretation or the previous Obama interpretation. These are property rights, and these are land rights that are a cornerstone of our country's founding. Indeed, it is a way to take more control and put Washington, D.C., and put bureaucrats in greater charge of things that used to be good rural issues, rural values, which are keeping food on the table for Americans, thereby positioning us to be independent of having to import food, which keeps us strong. Food is strategic. Food is a security issue. We are seeing our security dissipate rapidly under the weight of crazy regulations like this and others that are so negatively affecting our ability to produce energy in this country. WOTUS is used to stop that, too. If we don't produce our own energy, are we going to import more from the Saudis or other areas? We have seen these embargoes twice in our past. It doesn't work very well. Energy is the core for everything in a civilized society. As we see our energy dissipating along domestic production, we are seeing the high cost of everything. WOTUS needs to be repealed, and I hope the House does that today.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, California has gotten a heck of a lot of rain and snow this year. We are very grateful for that. After several dry years, Mother Nature and God have been good to us. Billions of gallons of water have flooded California in some areas, including the newly created Tulare Lake, as in previous decades. Our snowpack is indeed at near-record levels, but so much of this water is being lost out to the ocean. California's water infrastructure hasn't been really added to in over 40 years. Now, we have a 1.5 million acre-foot project called Sites Reservoir that has been talked about for about 40 years. Endless environmental studies and other hang- ups have kept the permitting process from being completed. All Californians--indeed all Americans--suffer because the food crops that we are growing in our State feed 90 percent of our country in certain types of crops. In 2014, Californians voted in favor of a bond to increase our water storage if the money gets spent on tearing down dams and taking away hydroelectric power. If Sites Reservoir was in place this year, it would be half full in just one season with 750,000 acre-feet of water. That opportunity has been lost. Madam Speaker, we need to get these projects done.