Doug LaMalfa

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, yesterday the House included two of my amendments into H.R. 1. Both amendments are important fire prevention measures that make northern California and rural America safer. While we can't prevent the outbreak of every fire, we can certainly take steps to reduce the likelihood and severity of wildfire outbreaks. The first of the amendments was called the CARR Act, which would allow the Forest Service, National Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management to thin forests and manage vegetation within 300 feet of roadways along these Federal lands. This amendment is in response to the 2018 Carr fire, which happened near Redding, California. It spread rapidly due to overgrown vegetation near the road on Park Service land. Even the term ``firenado'' came from that fire. The second amendment, the CLEAR Zones Act, allows us to easily clear unhealthy or hazardous trees within 50 feet of power lines. It is especially important for my district, as several fires in the past, most notably the devastating 2018 Camp Fire which devoured Paradise, California, started near power lines--in these cases either by trees falling into power lines or by equipment that is faulty. Both of these amendments are prudent fire prevention measures that reduce the risk of fire outbreaks. They will help keep our air and water clean, our wildlife safe, and our forests green. This is good reform to help keep our forests as we would see them.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Chair, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman).

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Chair, I conclude by asking that we not have more scenes that look like this--similar to this--that happened in Redding, and that we be allowed to do the work effectively along our roadways, which are risk zones with traffic, et cetera. Madam Chair, I ask for an ``aye'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Chair, I thank our chairman for his diligent work on H.R. 1 and the amendments that are going with it. I appreciate it. Madam Chair, I rise today not only to support H.R. 1, that will make long overdue changes to our permitting system and allow time-sensitive projects to be considered and approved in a reasonable timeframe, but I am also in support of two amendments that I am very pleased to see included. The first amendment is No. 23, otherwise known as the Combustion Avoidance along Rural Roads Act, or the CARR Act. The CARR Act is named after the 2018 devastating wildfire that occurred in Redding, California, that started from a flat trailer tire igniting roadside vegetation. This fire coined the term ``firenado'' as it occurred there with the deadly winds that whipped that fire into what became a 230,000-acre blaze that also took eight lives. This bill would waive time-consuming requirements under NEPA and the ESA for wildfire mitigation activities conducted within 300 feet of a roadway. These wildfire mitigation activities would include thinning, hazardous fuels reduction, prescribed burning, and vegetation management, and be overseen by the Department of the Interior or USDA, and be conducted on Federal land as administered by the National Park system, the Bureau of Land Management, or the Forest Service. Roadways, of course, can be a higher risk area for combustion. It only makes sense to do the type of thinning and management along roadways to vastly reduce that risk. Had this been in practice already, the Carr fire likely would not have happened. I hope we can have this kind of common sense be applied toward our roadsides under the CARR Act. Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Chair, I ask that people really stop and think about what we are asking here. This is not unreasonable where power lines interface with forested areas. Precautions like we are talking about would have directly, in these two cases, saved three towns, over 1.1 million acres, and at least 85 lives had they had the ability to thin properly around power lines. It is that basic. As long as we are going to have electricity come from rural areas, we are going to have these needs to be able to have safety around our power lines by doing commonsense management around them. Madam Chair, I ask Members to vote ``aye'' on amendment No. 24, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Chair, I am disappointed that this would be deemed a wish list item, indeed, when the eight lives lost and the families affected in the Redding area would look at this as something critical. The categorical exclusions do not go far enough, obviously, or they would have been utilized in a fashion that would be making a wide enough swath around our roadways to make them safe from fire and our forests safe from fire. Madam Chair, I urge, please, an ``aye'' vote on this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Chair, amendment No. 24, also known also the CLEAR Zones Act, is an enhancement of the Electricity Reliability and Forest Protection Act. This amendment would extend the hazard zone around power lines to allow utility companies to clear trees that pose a danger to transmission infrastructure. It also gives automatic approval of vegetation management plans after 60 days, which keeps these plans moving forward while still giving adequate time for reasonable review instead of needless delays in these critical fire risk zones. During debate, I have heard some of my colleagues refer to this amendment and other proposals in H.R. 1 as a giveaway, in this case, to utility companies, or a trashing of the environment. That is offensively untrue. Indeed, the environment suffers much more by the massive amount of fire we are talking about. Both of my amendments are a direct response to wildfires that have already occurred in my district. Had they been in place, largely, the Camp fire that destroyed the town of Paradise, 153,000 acres and took 85 lives, would not have happened, as a fire caught from foliage that was underneath a power line. Also, the million-acre Dixie fire that occurred in my district from what looked like a healthy tree falling into a power line, destroyed two towns additionally, Greenville and Canyondam. I was there at Canyondam 5 minutes before it was lost completely. Unlike most environmental regulations, this policy is not just about potential future effects, it is also about the fires that have already happened. They have already destroyed homes, already taken lives. This is a message to those folks that your suffering was not needless. It is about stopping these wildfires from happening again by having wise management around our power lines so that the odds of fire occurring from these power lines existing in our rural areas is reduced greatly. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Chair, I ask unanimous consent to reclaim my time.

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Chair, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman).

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, on Sunday, ESPN celebrated Women's History Month by putting out a tweet celebrating swimmer Lia Thomas. The only problem, Lia Thomas is not a woman. Lia, whose real name is William, is a man pretending to be a woman, ranked about 400 in men's swimming, but now about number 1 in women's. This individual identifying as a woman was allowed to compete in women's swimming for the University of Pennsylvania. Consequently, this person won a national title that should have gone to a female athlete. Instead of denouncing this farcical nonsense, ESPN decided to celebrate it. It is a sad day for women's sports when our Nation's premier sports broadcaster chooses to celebrate biological males competing in women's sports. The evidence is overwhelming that males have competitive athletic advantage over females. It, therefore, makes zero sense to allow men to compete in women's sports. Do you call this progress? Certainly not for women athletes.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, recently the California Department of Water Resources announced that water deliveries throughout the State Water Project would be increased to 75 percent of requested amounts. Also, the Bureau of Reclamation made a similar announcement on 100 percent in certain districts in northern California. The State levels have increased from an announced 35 percent earlier on. These increases are possible due to the massive amount of rain and snowpack California has received from a series of winter storms. Many of our State's reservoirs, once teetering on the brink of being empty, are rapidly filling. While these increased water allocations are good news, there is still a pressing need for more water storage in California. Sites Reservoir in my district, a project that should already have been built, would already have 1\1/2\ million acre-feet of water in it. Raising Shasta Dam farther north only 18 feet would result in 630,000 more acre-feet. One acre-foot of water, for example, is enough to sustain two California families for a whole year. Improving the flood controls and modernizing some of our water infrastructure would allow us to keep more stormwater. Storage is key for California's ability to weather droughts for more than 1 year. Store the water we get in the winter and we will have it when we need it in the summer.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for hosting tonight and for his great work on mining in this country that we need so desperately, especially with some of the ideas that are being pushed forward in the name of climate change. I appreciate Chairman Newhouse, as well, for organizing this. What do we know about H.R. 1, the bill that was discussed here all afternoon, known as the Lower Energy Costs Act? It will reform the permitting process across industries, cut down on needless red tape, and help drive down energy costs for Americans. We heard all afternoon, though, that it is going to be a handout to oil and gas companies--no, it is not; it is going to strip away environmental laws--no, it is not; it will give companies free rein to poison rivers and streams--yes, that is really what we are about here-- no, it doesn't do that either. It is a monumental win for any American who wants to produce energy, use energy, have their costs lowered, have a secure energy supply long term instead of importing it from OPEC, China, or Russia. The legislation we are talking about, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, these were signed in the early 1970s by a Republican, Richard Nixon. Republicans know how to do things ecologically soundly, as well. You wouldn't know it from the other side of the aisle, or even the press, but, yes, we are interested in doing things correctly. Also, there is the reality that people need things. People need energy. People need to stay warm. We need to produce crops in this country instead of importing everything and exporting environmental problems, if they are that, to other countries that do things much dirtier than we ever thought about doing--to the Pacific Rim, China, where have you. Our natural gas that we produce in this country is extracted during a cleaner process that is even cleaner fuel than what comes out of Russia. That is why it is good if we were partners with Western Europe, exporting natural gas to them instead of them getting it from a pipeline from the Russian bear. Despite this critical need for an increase in energy supply--the need for the world is going to continue to go up. You may have seen the chart earlier we were using where it keeps going higher and higher. Oil and gas in the rest of the world are going to be part of that. They are trying to clamp it down in this country. We are the only ones that are going to be economically disadvantaged, compared to other countries around the world, by doing so. They yell at us about NEPA being untouchable and what we are talking about in H.R. 1 being a heyday for polluters. It is not that at all. What it does point out is it takes more than a decade to permit a mine, more than a decade to get a new mine going in America, for all these batteries they are going to want, for all this electrical they are going to want. Canada and Australia can do one in less than 3 years, and they are not ecologically unsound. These delays and litigation make domestic energy production unprofitable and time consuming, and it is just not going to happen here, okay? Critical minerals found in our mines are essential for renewable energy infrastructure. Solar panels, vehicle batteries, and charging stations are built with the minerals that are going to have to be either mined in China or, with the help of Mr. Stauber, maybe they can be mined in this country. America always has some of the strongest environmental standards. We are not going to shake those. We are just going to make a NEPA process that is cleaner and smoother. I haven't even got to talk about our forests in California and the West yet. You have to have a NEPA to do the smallest thing, to have access to the forests so you can tend to them, thin them, make them safe, make them long-term healthy, or be able to get at them when fires do start, which they will. The current process is so cumbersome that it is a barrier to proper management. That is why the smoke plumes that start in my State on a million-acre fire end up on the East Coast, where people have to have health days where they can't go outdoors. We saw that million-acre Dixie fire in my district. We have seen 70,000 wildfires per year. NEPA does not help the process of thinning timber or even putting a culvert in a forest road without having to do this long study that doesn't tell anybody anything, other than a way to stall things. I am encouraging my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to break away from the status quo. Don't buy into all these scare tactics that it is going to poison the river, the air, and everything else. It doesn't do that. The regulations are still in place. It just streamlines the process so you can reasonably get something done still with oversight from the Federal agencies, as well as the industries themselves that understand that, these days, it is a really bad idea to go polluting like we did 150 years ago. I appreciate the time here tonight and the effort everybody is making on H.R. 1.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Chair, I appreciate the time here tonight to talk about this key issue. I think, just as a reminder as we start, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are trying to make this bill into something that it isn't. The atmosphere is made up of only 0.04 percent carbon dioxide, so the hysteria, since it is raised from 0.03 for the last couple of decades, is really misplaced as we try to have an energy source that is reasonable and secure for the American people. The Energy Information Administration predicts a 50 percent increase in global energy consumption by the year 2050. Currently, America is the world's leading producer of natural gas. Petroleum and other fuels remain the largest energy source for Americans, and natural gas consumption increases globally are expected, as well. We have, over time, the reality that no matter what the U.S. is doing, the rest of the world is going to be increasing its energy consumption. You see on top here that all the renewables are great. They are only going to remain a tiny part around the world while we are contorting our economy to try to put our own selves out of business by meeting these ridiculous goals. We must promote more domestic energy production and open more Federal lands for exploration and drilling. H.R. 1 is a tiny piece of legislation that will do that. Give the American people what they want. Yes, they want clean air and clean water, but they also want reasonable energy. We know how to do it cleanly and efficiently. We must not forget that, in the clean energy conversation, America's energy is cleaner than other top producers that will keep producing, like China and Russia. American energy is clean energy. I am glad to see this bill making the reforms that are necessary to help on energy, as well as forestry, with the burdensome NEPA process that is delaying the U.S. Forest Service doing needed thinning projects, like in my district where they have had the Camp fire that burned down most of the town of Paradise and a million-acre fire known as the Dixie fire. NEPA reform will make it where we can save our forests, have them be cleaner, have them not put so much pollution in the air that it even reaches the East Coast with smoke plumes, and, instead, have our wood and paper products coming from our forests instead of having to import them. It makes a heck of a lot more sense to have a process to work through NEPA and others that still is accountable ecologically but is something you can get done so you can get ahead of the curve with better forest management and energy that is cleaner and that comes from our country. I am glad to be part of this bill. I thank the chairman for running it.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, American families are faced with historically high inflation and energy prices. Energy demand is expected to increase by 50 percent by 2050. Gas and oil needs will increase, and they will be met whether it is in this country or other countries around the world that haven't gone all- electric or aren't being forced into doing so. America's needs for minerals necessary for the defense and tech sectors are projected to grow exponentially. To meet these crises, an all-of-the-above approach is needed for American energy. Unfortunately, the NEPA permitting process hinders American domestic energy expansion. For example, it can take a decade to open a new mine in the U.S., while other countries such as Canada and Australia take only 3 years to do the same. There is nothing new under the Sun on what needs to be permitted. Get it done. The NEPA permitting process is filled with repetitive assessments, lengthy and expensive litigation, and bureaucratic hurdles. It is almost impossible for new energy and infrastructure projects to ever see the light of day, but I think they want it that way. What? Are we supposed to all live in caves and eat mealworms? That seems to be the direction we are going.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, this week is National Ag Week. It is a time where America honors and gives thanks to her farmers, ranchers, and ag workers. Without their hard work, dedication, and ingenuity, our Nation would not enjoy the rich bounty of food they grow. However, there are daunting issues that face our agricultural sector: Fuel, water supply--especially in my home State of California; although right now, we are very grateful for the massive rain--market conditions, and the trade commitments being enforced, such as the deficit we have with China. Agriculture is essential to the economic well-being of my district, northern California, and the West. California farmers rely on an abundance of water and low fuel prices to grow the crops we eat. The last several years have seen fields go fallow because California's broken water management system has not been able to deliver the water that was needed. Indeed, if we don't have the water supply, these crops that America receives so much of from California would not be grown, they would need to be imported or not have them at all. It is in America's best interest to pursue permitting reform and unleash our domestic energy potential. We celebrate National Ag Week in order to keep Americans working, fed, and our farmers in the fields.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak about an extremely important topic that is very current and very disturbing in our Nation, in our Nation's schools, and the relationship of parents and their kids. Mr. Speaker, during the COVID lockdowns, schools were closed, and much of the learning was conducted online, except for those courageous schools that did manage to stay open and teach their kids the normal way. During this time, parents gained a valuable opportunity to see firsthand what their children were being taught in public schools, and in some cases, what is in their libraries. What they found was very shocking to them. We heard a conversation a bit earlier about, Oh, this is banning books. If you see the content that is in some of the books, some of the so- called educational materials, it is really nothing short of pornography that is being allowed to be in there. Mr. Speaker, when did it become okay for kids to be subject to that kind of material or the performances that are being brought to their libraries under the guise of openness where it wouldn't be really any different than what is going on in a strip club? You would get in big trouble should you take your kid to one of those. How is that allowed to be normalized these days? Rather than teaching children the skills that they need and the knowledge to become successful adults, these activists, whether it is teachers, counselors, superintendents, they are filling their heads with this woke far-left propaganda and pushing radical gender ideology on children as young as elementary age. In response to the backlash, teachers and public school administrators have attempted to keep this indoctrination and these agendas secret from their parents. Unbelievable. This included helping encourage students to keep secrets from their parents, hiding their lesson plans and curriculums, trying to ban recording in the classroom, obfuscating what materials are being shown to students, and shutting down parents who spoke out at public school meetings when they heard about this, even so far as having the U.S. Department of Justice refer to them as terrorists. They asserted time and again that parents did not have the right to be involved in their children's education. They claimed that once children walked through the schoolhouse door, those children belonged to the State. What is that? Where are the echoes of that coming from? In 2021, parents across the country revolted at school board meetings and gathered to make their concerns heard in free assembly, a First Amendment protection. In Loudoun County, Virginia, a father of a young girl who had been assaulted by a biological male was arrested for speaking out against the school board's decision to hide the perpetrator's history of assault against young girls. That decision put his innocent daughter and countless other students at risk. In my own district in Northern California, a school district was caught secretly changing a young girl's name and pronouns and even encouraging that something was wrong with her body--she was in the wrong body--filling her head with falsehoods. The counselor who encouraged this activity allegedly manipulated the young girl to keep her transitioning secret from her own mother. In both cases, parents rightfully pushed back against these assiduous attempts of public schools to force woke gender ideology on their children. Unfortunately, parents across the country have been met with State force when they have tried to assert their rightful place as the supreme authority in their children's lives. The Department of Justice infamously circulated a memo calling parents who exercise these rights as ``domestic terrorists.'' As Americans gradually become aware of the rotten corruption that permeates so much of our public school system, it became clear that Congressional Republicans needed to take action to support parents across the Nation and enshrine protections against government retaliation. Last Congress, I introduced two bills: one that prohibits doctors from performing gender reassignment surgeries on minors and another allowed victims of these life-altering procedures to sue those who pushed these surgeries on them as minors. These permanent, life-altering surgeries are being forced onto vulnerable children by radical activists. Mutilating a child's body is not medicine. It is not science. It is not affirming, nor is it care. As we have seen in the recent exposure of the inside workings of a Missouri clinic, children manipulated into undertaking these surgeries are not informed about the life-altering damage being done to their bodies. They are being rushed through the process, and in the worst cases are outright lied to by the people who are somehow going to make their lives better or more in order, and that they know better who should be taking care of them instead of their parents when this harm is being caused. Doing this to a child is immoral, and it should be punished with the full force of the law. Children whose lives are permanently altered due to these surgeries should be allowed to sue for damages and put parents back at their rightful place, their God-given right to oversee their children's education, their well-being, their health, and their bodies.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, yesterday, the President's budget proposal was announced. It contains some of the largest tax hikes in American history. If enacted, it would set the corporate tax rate at 28 percent, a higher level than even Communist China. Combined State and Federal taxes would amount to 32 percent. This tax burden will primarily fall where? On American workers and consumers. It is broadly accepted by economists on the left and right that corporate taxes hurt wage growth, with labor bearing as much as 25 percent of the cost of corporate taxes. Some estimates even place that burden as high as 70 percent. Raising the corporate tax will hurt American workers, depress their wages, and lower their purchasing power. This is not a progrowth or proworker budget proposal. It is not even serious. The President must meet with House Republicans and negotiate in good faith for spending reductions and work toward an actual balanced budget like everyday Americans do in their homes and their businesses.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time. My colleagues again are here to talk about something that has been over and over again changed with the whim of every administration it seems. I have been here 10 years, and every new Congress there is a different enforcement. The law keeps getting changed. There is no certainty. So how are we supposed to farm and grow the crops that people depend on in this country? I am glad I got to follow Mr. Duarte because his operation is actually in my district up there where that went on. We tried to convince them at EPA and Army Corps of Engineers that farming is a normal activity. I get my colleagues on the other side of the aisle when they start talking about rivers on fire and things like that. This is normal farming. The way we are going here, we will not have these crops that Americans depend on, especially coming from California. So the definition that is being put forward by the Biden administration is something that is undoing what the Trump administration had trying to bring it back to reasonable. The Clean Water Act was passed in 1972 and signed by President Nixon with bipartisan effort. Every 50 years or so we have to go back and see what is going on with oversight, and this isn't working. It is not working at all because it was never intended by Congress to limit farming and to take away the farming of food, which is what is going on with this act.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, the Federal excise tax is a 12 percent surcharge on the price of new heavy duty trucks, truck chassis, trailers, and semitrailers used for highway haulage. It was first instituted more than a century ago to pay for World War I for the wartime mobilization. The FET is the highest percentage excise tax on anything in this country. The tax has really outlived its original purpose, unless you like spending. It disincentivizes truckers and trucking companies from purchasing new up-to-date rigs because the tax can add as many as $20,000 to even $30,000 on a high-end rig by itself, just for the tax. Ever-increasing Federal and State emissions regulations often make it necessary for truckers to buy new trucks, especially in my home State of California. This burdensome tax hinders the ability of our truck drivers to acquire the most modern, safest, highest tech equipment. Repealing this tax would make it easier to ship goods across the country at lower prices for consumers, saving businesses and consumers money. It will also allow our trucking fleet to modernize at a lower cost to the poor folks who are just trying to do their job. At a time when our economy is reeling from inflation and high prices, Congress must do all it can to lower costs for small businesses and consumers.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Johnson for leading these opportunities for us to communicate with the American people openly and freely in a more casual, unhurried way of doing so. It is good to be able to talk about these issues. Hopefully, folks are paying attention. We are just trying to get the truth out and call out the issues that are extremely important to them that we are working on in Congress. When I get up here, a lot of times I am talking about our food supply and the farmers who grow it--as a Californian, we grow a lot of different crops--the water it takes to grow those crops, our energy, the condition of our energy in this country. Tonight, I will talk more about our fiscal condition in this Nation and of this government. It is troubling because a recent report issued by the Congressional Budget Office found that the net interest of our national debt--Mr. Johnson was talking about that a little bit ago on spending--just the interest payment on our national debt will amount to a $10.5 trillion burden for our taxpayers over the next decade. We talk in these 10-year numbers. If you average that out, that is $1.05 trillion per year just in interest service. For comparison, those interest costs over the previous decade amounted to only $3 trillion, again, versus $10.5 trillion for the coming decade. That is crushing on our national budget and crushing on the discretionary portion that we have over that budget. That is not to take away from the fact that the Federal Government already is taxing and extracts more in taxes from American families than at any point in history. This kind of payment on interest will devour a lot of our budget if we don't get a handle on this. I shudder to think if interest rates go up much more, the service on that debt becomes that much more extensive. Of course, Federal spending coupled with that is rising at an even higher rate. The increased spending has pushed our national debt over that magic $31 trillion number, again, that we were speaking about. As high as this is, it pales in comparison to the United States' unfunded liabilities, which amount to about $182 trillion. Unfunded liabilities, meaning the debt obligations that do not have sufficient funds set aside to pay them, include Social Security, Medicare, Federal debt held by the public, and Federal employee and veteran benefits. Social Security and Medicare's liabilities add up to $57 trillion. These numbers clearly show the United States Federal Government is living beyond its means. Social Security and Medicare are called entitlement programs. Let me stop on that for a moment. Sometimes that word ``entitlement'' is thought of as a dirty word, right? It gets used pretty freely around here. However, when you are talking about the entitlement as applied to Social Security and Medicare, it is not necessarily a dirty word because the people that paid into them are entitled to draw out from them. That is not a bad word in that sense. They are entitled to what they paid in and the amount that it grew during the time, hopefully, while it was being held for them more or less in trust by the Federal Government. The CBO, Congressional Budget Office, predicts that Social Security will run out of money in 2033 and Medicare in 2026. The fund will be depleted. We need to have an honest conversation about these funds, about these programs going forward. No one wants to take away Social Security. Nobody wants to deplete Medicare, but if they are going to be on the rocks in the year 2033 for Social Security, for example, then we better be doing something now. There needs to be an honest, bipartisan discussion about doing so. What are we going to do to head that off and have the numbers not crunch badly by the time that time comes? There are ways we can do that, but it is going to take an honest bipartisan discussion, not scaring people saying, oh, Republicans are going to take away Social Security. The President stood right up there and tried to claim that until he had to walk it back just a few weeks ago. There needs to be an honest discussion, not one used as a talking point or a political weapon. What we have is 47 million retirees in America today, and 40 percent of the 47 million live entirely off Social Security. For these Americans, their benefits being reduced in the future could be disastrous. That is why we have to figure out how to make the fund go beyond 2033 and be sustainable, well, permanently. If we are going to save these programs for the current and future generations, Congress must act swiftly, honestly with a real debate and set these finances in order and return to the fiscal responsibility that we should have had all along. As stewards of the public's dollars, it is important that Congress spend the public's money wisely and respectfully. The House must use its powers to allocate government funds in a reasonable, responsible way. There is a lot of room for debate on how that is, but if we are having an interaction, instead of hurrying through or doing a last minute patch-up at the end of the fiscal year, it is going to be a lot better in the light of day doing so. The current D.C. model of taxing, borrowing, and spending money that we don't have will saddle our grandchildren with the burden of paying off today's debts. We don't even have to wait for our grandchildren. It is our children. It is us that are still in the work world. We are stuck with this. We have to do better. Failure to fix Washington, D.C.'s, spending today will mean our children will have to live at lesser standards. We have always aspired that our children should always do a little better than us, to leave something a little better off. Why should they have to live under a worse standard only because we are spending like crazy? They will be saddled with a higher debt, higher taxes, and less opportunity. America's strength on the world's stage depends on a strong American economy at home. We must get to getting it actually balanced and not take so long to truly balance our budget. It is our responsibility.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, parents have a God-given right and role in the raising of their children. When they send their kids to the public schools, they expect the schools to deliver a quality education to their children in order to prepare them for success in the future. Unfortunately, government schools have abused this trust and have been indoctrinating children with far-left lies and poisoning their minds with woke gender ideology. School administrators and teachers unions seem to think they own America's children, that they alone have the right to decide what these children think and believe, and that they alone should be the sole authority in a child's life. Schools across this country have been caught trying to convince vulnerable teenagers that their bodies are wrong, filling their heads with lies and convincing them to see their parents as enemies. This line of thinking is morally wrong. In my own district, a school district is being sued by a parent for secretly changing her daughter's pronouns and identity without her parent's knowledge or consent. Woke administrators have no moral authority to experiment with children's minds in this way. Parents have a moral right to be involved in their children's education and should never be kept in the dark about issues that their child is going through at school. Congress must take action to enshrine parental rights over their children.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, for over 2 years, many institutions, Federal agencies, and the mainstream media demonized anyone who suggested that COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Senator Tom Cotton was ridiculed for simply suggesting that the lab leak was a possibility. Leading scientists, doctors, and pundits were censored for questioning the natural origins theory promoted by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the NIH, and CDC. Now, FBI Director Chris Wray and the Department of Energy are reporting that the pandemic most likely originated from a lab leak in Wuhan. Big Tech and the media worked to actively suppress this theory and ridiculed anyone who promoted it. At a time when accurate information was vital to saving lives, the people and institutions who we trusted to tell the truth lied to the American people and worked to hide important information. House Republicans have been demanding transparency on the origins of COVID since the pandemic began. We must get to the truth of how this pandemic started so that we can protect ourselves from future possible outbreaks. Americans deserve to know the truth about their government, what it knew, and when it knew it. We must restore faith and trust in government and institutions, and that starts with transparency and accountability.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the time to stand before the House here this afternoon and talk about some issues that are not only important to my district in northern California to a couple of our key industries but really, they are important to all Americans because this is a life-sustaining topic we are talking about, and that is food, energy, and shelter. We had that in abundance in California when we were allowed to produce the things that cause those to happen. In my northern California district we have much agriculture. We have also an amazing natural water supply and the opportunities that come with that by harnessing that water supply for food for people, for agriculture, for hydroelectric power to make electricity and keep the lights on in places like this and all over America, and to mine the minerals that we need to produce all manner of things. These come from the natural resources we have in northern California, Minnesota, and all over this country. So we have been successful in developing them and making them real since the founding of this country. We have fallen on hard times more recently, though, with regulations that although may be well-founded and well-minded 50 years ago have been turned on their ear and work against good management of our forestlands, the extraction of minerals we need to sustain some of the ideals we have going forward for the future, for water supply, for agriculture, and for this country that has always known plenty. These days we are actually seeing at some points empty shelves in our grocery stores in the United States. It reminds me of a story about the time when former Russian President Boris Yeltsin was visiting this country with President Bush 41. They had gone to Houston, I believe, to the Space Center. They had left and were driving down the road. He saw a supermarket. He hadn't been in an American supermarket before. So he wanted to just pop in randomly with the President, the then-President of Russia, to see what it looked like. President Yeltsin was amazed by the products that we have on the shelves in American stores. Not only that, but that people were freely and casually purchasing them, not in a frenzy like oh, this is the day the food comes in and everybody has to rush in and stand in line and rush out before it is all gone. No. People were easily coming and going and taking what they needed. They were purchasing it at the register and walking out. There was all variety of the same kind. All of it was fresh and of high quality. That is what the United States has been able to bring itself to over all these years, and now that seems to be in peril. A key part of that in my home State of California is that water supply. So I will touch about upon that here in a little bit. We have in the northern California district that I represent and also on the Oregon side, which my colleague, Mr. Bentz, represents, above this line here in Oregon is the Klamath Basin, the Klamath River. Now, that is a natural lake that was formed at the beginning of the creation of this planet, but also it had been enhanced about 110 years ago through a Federal project. It yielded an additional 7 feet of elevation and approximately 400,000 new acre-feet of water supply that was intended when that Federal project was built to be agricultural water. So back in 1906 when they created it, it made possible 1,400 farms and 200,000 acres of prime ag land. Under Federal law under the Reclamation Act and State law, all the stored water--the newly created water is called stored water--in the Upper Klamath Lake which was above the natural level of the existing lake was the stored water. Again, there are 400,000 acre-feet of new water, but despite the clear law of the Federal Government, they have been taking advantage of the farmers year after year by mismanaging the lake and shifting that clear water right as adjudicated by Oregon courts to environmental purpose, to other purpose. The water would not exist had not that project been built and paid for over the years by the farmers in that basin. So what do we have, Madam Speaker? In 2022, the Federal Government even cut off water that could have gone to finish the crop year. They eliminated 50,000 acre-feet of legal and available water to farmers. The really maddening thing is that at the end of the season, there was a surplus of water in the lake above what was needed to sustain what is known as a biological opinion to sustain the fish needs in the lake as well as what had been sent down the river for salmon needs. There was extra water. We saw it ahead of time, yet they would not yield that additional water so we could finish the crop year on some of the needed crops that are planted up there. They plant all sorts of things up in that basin. One of them would be the potatoes that they grow up there. They needed just a couple more weeks of water supply that was available, and instead they were allowed to die off. A normal, healthy potato ended up being the size of my pinky and obviously unharvestable and unusable all because they wouldn't listen to the projections that there would have been extra water. No. They wanted to start their new water year of 2023 in 2022 on the backs of a water supply that doesn't belong to the Federal Government. It is clearly for the farmers in the basin created after World War I and World War II for returning veterans to be able to set up shop and do that. The Federal Government made this choice. They did this during a time when prices of food were skyrocketing around the country. Consumers are seeing these prices going up and shelves becoming more bare more often than we should ever see in this country. So what else do we see? They are depriving the farms of water. Here is another view of the basin here. It is a little more close-up of the various sumps and wildlife areas and the farmed land there. It is kind of hard to see from this distance, but indeed it is comprehensive, and it is rather complicated. But smart people have made that work over the years. Indeed, when the farms thrive, also the refuges thrive. So negative effects have been such that when the farms don't get the water, the wildlife refuges in the area also lose access to the water that comes through that ag system and gets to them. In 2020, over 60,000 ducks died in the basin in that Klamath refuge due to avian botulism. I paid a visit up there to folks who were working voluntarily and through fish and wildlife to help try and bridge the gap from the water supply that wasn't there and recovering ducks. It is pretty terrible. Here we are fishing out dead ducks from the refuge. Down here on the bottom is one that we rescued that was really sick but that we took back to a center there where they were helping the ducks that were recoverable to recover and turn them back loose. The picture up here shows just how ugly it is. A thriving basin is a key part of the flyway all through the Western States, including from northern California on south. The flyway is so key toward having the type of diversity of wildlife that is enjoyed all through the Sacramento Valley, the San Joaquin Valley, and other areas of northern and southern California and Oregon for sportsmen and for everybody. It doesn't happen when this is the policy of the Federal Government to basically take the water away from farms and the refuges. As I mentioned, as affirmed by the courts in Oregon where the lake lies, also a portion of the basis is on my side which Mr. Bentz and I both represent, the stored water is, indeed, owned by the farmers solely for the use of the Klamath project. They have paid for it. They continue to pay for its ongoing upkeep and improvement even when they don't get the water delivered to them. Isn't that something? It is one thing to get a bill for the maintenance and upkeep if you are getting to use the supply, getting to use the asset. They don't even get to use the asset half the time now, but they still get the bill for it. It would not exist other than for that 7-foot enhancement that created the 400,000 acre-feet. In 2022, they were initially going to get zero water. They did find a way to increase it to 50,000 acre-feet after some late storms, which is 12\1/2\ percent of the allocation of their water right. There was extra water, as I mentioned, in the lake to be used in the basin at the end of the year above an amount that the environmental biological opinion said had to be remaining in the lake. They chose not to give it up. In 2021, they were given 6 percent, or 33,000 acre-feet. In 2020, after some battling, they tried to pull the pin on them early in the spring after the farmers had planted. They did end up getting 140,000 acre-feet, which is about a third of their allocation. In 2019, which was an amazing water year in northern California and other areas, they still received 92 percent of their allocation. Pretty good by these standards, but it still wasn't 100 percent. Downstream of that, on the complex Klamath River situation, are also four hydroelectric dams that California, Oregon, environmental groups, and others have all been conspiring for a long time to have removed. Think about that for a minute. There is a big push in the whole country, especially in my home State of California, to convert everything to electricity for its energy source--automobiles. You are hearing the big controversy over stoves right now, kitchen stoves. In my home State and some cities, they are really pushing getting rid of those. Now, most of the people I know who have gas stoves in their houses really like them. It is really handy to regulate the temperature, the rate with which the heat comes up on what you are cooking. You can see the flame. There is a photograph of First Lady Jill Biden using one in her own kitchen in the White House, but they want to take this away. It is going to have to be replaced by electrical appliances, electric automobiles, electric yard tools such as leaf blowers and lawnmowers. I still chuckle at the idea that they are trying to ban gas generators in California. Think about that for a minute. A generator is something you use a lot of times in an emergency for a home or business. There are a lot of other purposes as well for them, but a lot of people use them in an emergency when the power goes out. If you don't have a gas- or diesel-powered generator, what are you supposed to go to when the power goes out if you need to turn it on? Many hospitals, rest homes, things like that will have a diesel-powered backup generator. They are now constantly under the gun by an air quality group, even though they rarely have to use it: This is not compliant. You have to replace it or get rid of it. When we keep banning fuel-sourced appliances like this and turn to more electrification, where are you going to get the electricity, especially in my home State of California in which the grid on any given hot day might be on the edge of shutting down? They have arrangements with the power companies that large manufacturers have pre-agreed agreements, I will say, that they should shut down when the grid gets tough on a really hot day when the electrical load that everybody is pulling is about to break the grid. If that happens, you will have people having to shut down their businesses, shut down manufacturing, shut down a cement plant, whatever it might be due to a prearrangement because we can't keep the power supply up where it needs to be. They don't really have replacements. That is expensive for jobs. It is expensive to stop your business. It is going to be expensive for the ratepayers to have to bear the brunt of that as well that use electricity other than those businesses. We want to convert everything to electricity, huh? I mean, we had a last-minute intervention in the California State Legislature to extend the life of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant by an additional 5 years. They were slated to shut it down, two reactors, one in 2024, one in 2025. That plant alone is 9 percent of the power grid. How do you take a 9 percent chunk out of something that is already teetering on the edge of failing? There is a similar case up here on the Klamath River with the four hydroelectric dams. One is on the Oregon side in Mr. Bentz' district. The other three are on my side in California in Siskiyou County. They are hell-bent on getting them out. They think they have it done. We are here to say no because we need the power supply and many other aspects of those dams that are important for the area. Indeed, the local folks have had two different measures in the county on the Oregon side and in Siskiyou County on the California side by well over 70 percent, an advisory vote saying to please keep the dams in place, that they are important. Siskiyou County voted 79 percent for that. This course of action, of course, was based on one single study that supposedly showed that the dams are contributing to high water temperatures and reduced flows, which are causing fish populations in the river to decline, especially the salmon. This is at the same time-- you have dams so deep water in them, right?--on Lake Shasta and others, Lake Almanor, I think soon Lake Oroville, they are requiring Lake Shasta to be kept deeper so the water stays colder longer into the year so they can release colder water for the fish in the fall and early winter. It is all about cold water by keeping the lake deep. If you take these dams out that have water stored behind them, you no longer have that deeper pool of water. They are trying to blame the dams with deeper pools of water for somehow raising the temperature. I mean, both sides of the mouth on these arguments here. This all came from a master's thesis by a government employee, not peer-reviewed. It contained no in-field research. A former EPA science integrity officer, actually during the Obama era, a man named Paul Houser, was tasked with reviewing all of these efforts for the Klamath dam possible removal. His conclusion--again, the EPA science integrity officer--said it would be the worst of all outcomes to remove these hydroelectric dams--worst outcome for a lot of reasons, including environmental. The three hydroelectric dams are the biggest taxpayers in the county on the Siskiyou County, California, side. Removing them will cause a huge hole in the budget of an already struggling county, which has had its timber business decimated, the mining business decimated. These large landholders, these large assets, are pretty fairly lucrative for the county. When you couple that with already expensive energy in California, and probably in a lot of the country, this doesn't make any sense because this is, you know, green renewable power. When the rain falls behind a dam, that is renewable. It doesn't require a fuel source. That is the fuel source. Yet, of course, in my crazy State, it is not recognized as renewable if the size of the power plant is above 30 megawatts. It doesn't mean anything. We all hear about, well, we need green power. I guess that can only mean windmills and solar panels. Try to get a permit. One environmental group says, ``Hey, we want these solar panels. They are the greatest thing,'' or the windmills. The other groups, maybe rightly so, say, ``Well, if we are going to cover a thousand acres with solar panels, we can't stand by and allow that to happen.'' It might affect the desert tortoise. We know the windmills chop up birds, sometimes falcons, sometimes endangered hawks, even eagles, stuff people care about. In addition, they are not really very reliable sources of power. Indeed, some days in California, because of an anomaly where there might be too much power coming off those grids due to the way the load is managed, they will find themselves having to pay people to take that power because they can't just easily shut it off. It is strange, strange thinking. I am appalled that this is where we have allowed ourselves in California to be forced into by the ideal of green power. What does that mean? Everything else becomes a peaker plant. Peaker plants got talked about a lot 20, 25 years ago in California when we had other energy crises. A peaker plant was supposed to help supplement what the grid might not be fulfilling normally. Indeed, the peaker plants are going to become the hydroelectric plants and the natural gas plants because they want to go so far and wide with solar and wind that you know you can't count on them at night or when the wind isn't blowing, or, funny enough, if the wind is blowing too fast, they have to shut the windmills down. Our electrical situation in the State is already in peril. Removing these hydroelectric dams means about 70,000 homes' worth of power goes off the grid and a whole host of other things. It will destroy the current ecosystem habitat, including some endangered species' spawning grounds, by releasing 20 million cubic yards of toxic, some of it possibly toxic, material--indeed, silt. These dams have a lot of silt behind them that has accumulated over the years. They don't really have an explanation for what is going to happen with it or how it is going to be disposed of. They are just going to release it into the river. If you ever hear anybody talk about turbidity from a slight action going on in the river, you have to get a permit to do the slightest thing in the river, whether it is a gravel plant or doing something to clean up the river, having to move some material because of flooding, because of silt, and other situations. It takes months and months or years to get a permit just to move a little bit of material out. They say this is okay that we are going to unleash 20 million cubic yards down the Klamath River. The turbidity makes it hard for spawning. It is hypocrisy. One of the other effects will be lowering the water table underneath the ground or near the dams. They have helped to build up the water table. The underground water table will be negatively affected by their removal. It will remove flood control capability that is important for the communities nearby. The dams are a good way to absorb that water supply. If too much should happen to come from a heavy rainfall, they provide flexibility. They remove the ability to control the river and have a flush flow if you need it in order to move some material or should it be for a fish need or other things downriver. That flexibility is taken away by removal of the dams. Of course, as I mentioned, it takes hydroelectric power capacity away from the users of the power and those that benefit from the income from it, including the County of Siskiyou. It will possibly cost the taxpayers of California, who, in a water bond, put forward $250 million for the tearing down of dams. This is a water bond that builds water supply, builds water storage, but had that provision in there: $250 million of California taxpayer money to help tear down the dams. The ratepayers from the utility, mostly on the Oregon side, also had to front $200 million through a surcharge on their electricity, for a total of about $450 million raised. Magically, when they were putting forth the proposal to FERC on what it will cost to remove the dams, it came in at just under $450 million. Well, they have already wasted about $40 million, maybe up to $50 million, talking about it, so they are down to an amount of somewhere around $400 million left of that fund. When they remove a dam, they find a lot of things that they didn't count on, including much more silt. Up in Washington, I think it was, they found triple the amount of silt that they had expected. Instead of 20 million, it could be 60 million cubic yards of silt polluting the river for how long? Who knows how long it will take. The one in Washington, I think, was only about 12 or 13 miles from where the dam is to the sea, where you would have to push the silt. On the Klamath, it is somewhere 120 to 150 miles, depending on the meander of the silt going all through that. The life cycle of the salmon is 3 years. Will there be enough salmon to make it back through this turbid water over that 3-year period to actually have the species that all the fuss is over? This removal will diminish the value of Siskiyou County property owners by about $1.5 billion, thereby lowering the tax rolls to the county. The electrical rates will have to go up, and the power supply will be even more uncertain. Now, speaking about Mr. Houser a moment ago and the study he made on removing the dams being the worst option, for putting out that truth, he was fired by EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy at the time. I guess they didn't really want the truth out there. They just wanted one paper that they had hinged all this on since that time. The 20 million cubic yards--which might be triple of that, who knows--it is about the equivalent of one dump truck of material every minute of every day for 6 years being dumped in the river. Now, imagine the fine if you accidentally put a little bit of silt in the river or a stream, like under Waters of the United States, for example, which we will talk about here in a minute. Imagine how you would be fined otherwise as a private party doing that. The salmon hatcheries downstream will be destroyed as part of the removal. The salmon hatcheries that we are talking about are responsible for more smolts being raised than actually what the river has ever made. There is a ridge under one of the dams, a natural ridge that was there that is much higher than the river level that no fish would have ever gotten over to begin with. They don't want to talk about that because they believe the fish were getting all the way up the additional 60, 70, 80 miles to Klamath Lake. Bad information. Now they are trying to somehow cover over that in the dam destruction that they can maybe get rid of that ridge and have it act like it would have been a fish passage from the beginning of time. So it would do a lot to hurt the economy of the county, local agriculture, the flood control, many things up in that area. There would be uncertainty when the river system would ever return to normal. It would result in, at the mouth of the river, at the ocean, underwater contamination at the Humboldt County estuary, which means basically loss of seabed life with all that material now being released with who knows what is in it. This removal would even cause a violation of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Siskiyou County's governance over water would be lost. What are they going to do to replace the salmon with the hatchery gone? The actual hatchery is down below the lowest dam. Of course, there is the loss of recreation, land value, the lake time, use on those lakes, again, tax revenue to the county. And the replacement water, where are the farmers and ranchers going to get that replacement water due to the lower groundwater status? So there is not a whole lot of good that comes from tearing down these dams that were there for a good economic purpose and actually do have ecological pluses, as well. So moving farther south from the Klamath Basin, our water supply in California has been enhanced in the last century by some very forward- thinking projects. The State Water Project in the 1950s and 1960s and the Federal water, known as the Central Valley Projects, in the 1930s and 1940s. Joining me here is my colleague from central California, Mr. John Duarte, who is a farmer down there, as well as a nursery operator of many of the nursery crops that we use to grow many tree crops, vines, et cetera. So the importance of the water supply to agriculture and to the people of California from these projects is incredible. Madam Speaker, I recognize my colleague, Mr. Duarte, to offer whatever comments he would like to on the water supply and on how he has been treated by government in his agricultural operations down in his direction in the Central Valley, as well as the portion in my district in Tehama County. Indeed, we have a mass amount of excellent and very valuable crops that are grown in California. Some of them Mr. Duarte is responsible for helping other farmers to have and even grows himself. I happen to be a farmer in my real life, too. So we see the value of what is grown in California and that is imperiled by government action. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Duarte).