Doug LaMalfa

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Graves) for the time. Here we have again another triumph of legislation coming together that can be beneficial at no great new cost to the process. The Stafford Act has needed updating, certain aspects, for a long time. When you look at some of the difficulties when you are in a postdisaster situation of having to deal with some arcane legislation and laws, it just makes much more suffering than is necessary for people who have been victims, in my case, from many wildfires in northern California. In adhering to the approximate 95 percent of projects being under the new threshold, that still keeps with what had been set in place way back in 1988. H.R. 5641 is a triumph in that. Also, with it at 10 percent of total funding for disasters, we are not blowing the budget on this either. It is, indeed, very important because when you are talking about my rural district or rural America, you don't have the wherewithal to be hassling your way through some of these processes in order to get things going again postdisaster. In my area, for example, towns like Whiskeytown, Happy Camp, Hornbrook, Concow, Yankee Hill, Magalia, Paradise, Doyle, Canyondam, Greenville, Indian Falls, and others I couldn't possibly all list here today, they are all going to be beneficiaries and appreciative of this effort because they don't have the ability, small counties like Plumas County and Lassen County, to have to deal with some of the restrictions previously under the Stafford Act. This would be a big win for anybody facing disaster, a small town, or even large, around this country. This is another win for us legislatively, and I appreciate the effort of the committee.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of talk about energy and energy costs in this country and, of course, in my home State of California, where you can easily find fuel over 6 bucks a gallon. Let me translate this conversation into what it means for farmers and what farmers mean for food supply. Now, we know the United States farmer provides the best, the cleanest, the most efficient process, more grown per acre per unit than anywhere else in the world. So, it is amazing to me that, just a few days ago, President Biden announced that we are going to have food shortages in the world and even here. We are already seeing the empty shelves. We are already seeing the high prices--supply and demand for everything. In the United States of America, food shortages make me ask: What are our priorities as a country and as a government here or in my home State, the government of California? We are looking at energy costs. Everything requires energy when we have a product that goes from a field, from a mine, or from a manufacturer to your home, Mr. Speaker. The fuel costs to operate a tractor, a combine, the trucks that bring you fertilizer and that bring you seed, the trucks that take away the grown product to the processor, to the mill, and finally bringing it to your store shelf or even if you have it delivered to your house, Mr. Speaker. All those energy costs ripple through everything we do and have as citizens of this country. What is being done about energy costs? Well, I just saw a blurb a minute ago that the President wants to tap into our energy reserve, the stored oil that we have someplace that always seems to be a political football around here to solve some problem when it is really supposed to be a reserve for very acute times of danger for our country. Now, they are using it as an economic flattener or what have you. We have reserves in the ground in this country that we are not tapping, but our tone-deaf government here and our State of California won't do anything about that. Instead, let's export it from Venezuela, and let's export it from the Middle East. Maybe we will do something about Russia. We will see if that takes effect. We are not doing anything to help our own people with the energy crisis and energy costs here. We are dancing around that collectively as a government in this administration. Why? What is their priority? When John Kerry says he hopes this thing Putin is doing in Ukraine doesn't stop our ability to reach our climate change goals, how tone- deaf are these people? Are you kidding me? We are going to continue to enjoy even emptier shelves for our food, tires, and everything else because of high energy costs and a government in Washington and in Sacramento unwilling to do anything about it other than half measures or zero measures. What does this do to our food supply, as we talked about? My colleagues in the State legislature proposed a sales tax holiday, a fuel tax holiday, which would knock about 51 cents off of a gallon of fuel. It is not the be-all or fix-all, but it can do something temporarily to help while we get our energy going again, supposedly. It would help. They turned that down. Instead, they proposed a tax increase on production of fuel in California. Unbelievable. Damn, who are you guys working for? Amazing. In my home State, as we try to produce food, tens of millions of acre-feet of water and snow fall upon our State each year. We hear drought, drought, drought, record drought. Yes, it is lower than normal, but we are not capturing the water we can. We could raise Shasta Dam, a Federal project, which Federal dollars were put toward. We could build Sites Reservoir in northern California and add 1.5 million-acre feet of stored water. But no. They are letting the water get away out through the delta for salinity and for fish populations that don't even exist. The delta smelt is gone. The Klamath Basin up in the north, zero allocation for agriculture last year and this year. Statewide, we are looking at probably 70 percent of irrigated acres by the time it is all added up. They are going to be idle this year. What does that mean to the American people? That is California's problem; you guys don't know what you are doing out there anyway. Well, tomato production is going to be down quite a bit, so that means less tomato sauce for New York, less olives and olive oil for New York. This is what we are doing to our food production. Fertilizer costs are going to drive costs even more, and we will not be farming in California much longer.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, President Biden has been promising recently empty shelves, food shortages in the United States of America. American farmers are the most efficient and the best in the world at what they do, but they can't do it very well with these high energy costs. Fertilizer takes energy to produce. It takes oil to produce. When you see the cost increasing 51 percent, this isn't just going to hit the farmers; it is going to hit all consumers. Energy costs ripple through everything: planting, harvesting, delivering, everything. So what are we doing? What is our focus going to be? In my home State of California, water is being taken away from agriculture. We need the Bureau of Reclamation and our own State water resources to be focused on producing food for people. In Ukraine, those farmers are trying to plant amidst bombs from Putin and Russia. In our own country, in my own home State, the bombs are being dropped by the government on farmers, having their water taken away, having their energy costs go through the roof. We have to focus on producing energy and food for Americans that is affordable instead of this direction that the Federal and my own State government are doing to the people and not for them.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, with Americans facing higher prices everywhere--at the gas pump, the grocery store, car dealership, clothing stores, and even at hotels--Americans are paying more everywhere, thanks to incredible inflation brought on by President Biden's plan for spending. Well, with the new budget now coming out, we are going to see an even bigger amount of deficit. American families are facing a $3,500 yearly inflation tax, the Biden administration wants to spend $73 trillion over the next 10 years--just in the budget year, not new spending, not COVID spending. This is what normal budgets will start to look like, which was $8 trillion more than what the CBO is predicting for the same period of time. Under this budget, Biden can easily add $15 trillion more to the national debt, which would make it $45-$46 trillion by the year 2032. We can't manage this. If the price of interest goes up much more, it will completely eviscerate our ability to do anything besides mandatory spending in our budget. More families are going to suffer and the things we care about in the budget that we can't control will suffer as well.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago, I went to the southern border, and I was shocked and appalled to hear about the humanitarian crisis, the violence, and the drug smuggling firsthand, on-site. President Biden's and the Democrats' open border policies have allowed a record number of illegal immigrants and illegal drugs to enter our country. There are staggering numbers of encounters at the border each month, and more illegal immigrants are, unfortunately, slipping past in areas without a fence or enough Border Patrol. Now, the Biden administration is thinking about repealing one of the more effective methods of deporting illegal immigrants, title 42. Title 42 is a public health law that authorizes U.S. border agents to promptly send back migrants and illegal immigrants if they pose a health risk to Americans and are from a country with a communicable disease outbreak. During the height of the COVID crisis, they want to let them in by repealing title 42. It will mean even more illegal immigration into this country and eliminate one of the few tools that the administration has used to expel illegal immigrants. The audacity of this administration that has tried to force vaccine mandates on Americans, force them to still wear masks on airplanes and at airports, and at the same time allowing unlimited illegal immigration. We must preserve title 42.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Louisiana for leading this tonight. I really appreciate it. There is so much that could be said about that. I think the really personal things about Don Young are what I would like to reflect around this place. When I first got here almost 10 years ago, we had kind of a common kinship in that we are both actually from northern California. He was born in a town near Meridian, California, not far from Yuba City, which is my back yard too, part of a rice farming outfit there. I knew his brother Doug from Woodland, part of Republican politics there. Both these guys are obviously characters. So, for Don, though, you could tell he was just a pillar, just being around him. Of course, his portrait is on the wall in the committee room and such, his work on transportation, but it is the small things that really make a difference; his warmth, him and his wife Anne, for me and my staff that would be around him at various events going on around the district. We talk a lot about that chair over there, right. And so I sat in the chair, not because I didn't know, because I did know, and I wanted to see what would happen. So I am sitting there, and he walks in. I got this thumb on my ear here. He grabbed it, and I said oh, I guess it is time for me to go. Sir, I am just warming the chair up because you are from Alaska. You need the chair warm for you. He bought that, but I got right out of there too. Now, just recently, I think it was last Wednesday, you know, he was in a wheelchair recently due to issues and such. And so we were heading to the elevator over here. And most of the time you might yield to that and let somebody with that issue going on have the elevator to themselves. Not this group. Me and about four other guys, we all piled in there with him because we all wanted to be with Don Young, even just for a short elevator ride and see what he was going to say and what kind of things were going to go on. That is the man we all love and are going to miss terribly and whose sweet wife, Anne, God bless you. It has just been a pleasure knowing and being with you here.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I rise today to talk about the situation we have with agriculture and water in California and the President's acknowledgment just a couple of days ago that we are going to see a food shortage in the world but partially even in the United States of America. That is unbelievable to me. How could we, the United States of America, be facing possible food shortages? Indeed, already on the store shelves is empty space. I remember a story just a few years ago where Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia, of all places, came over and was visiting. They took him to a grocery store in the United States, and he was amazed and blown away and even emotional by the variety we have here. Yet, the priorities don't seem to be producing for Americans or even producing for those we help around the world. It seems to be based more on environmental needs, like in my home State of California where they are releasing more water out to the ocean than what is going to go to agriculture this year. Why does this affect all Americans? Why does this affect you? Because so many of the crops that we grow in California supply somewhere between 90 and 98 percent of what Americans eat of those crops, and we are still doing this environmental stuff in California.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson) for faithfully helping us get the message out, facilitating that because what is really important is that we are talking to the American public about this situation that we don't have to be in. Indeed, we have seen with the fairly new Biden administration that inflation has risen tremendously. Now, I don't get pleasure out of bagging on the President or anybody else in this, but we just have to go to the core of the issue. The policies that have been put into place have harmed the U.S. economy, harmed regular families. The cost of fuel has been an especially noticeable part of this. In my home State of California, we always enjoy--enjoy--extra costs because of the way things are done there. If it is $4 for a gallon of gas in the rest of the country, it is $5.50 in my home State because of the dumb things we do out there. So this recent surge, indeed, is affecting everybody, but it is an even greater burden on rural residents that have to drive longer distances. Maybe their jobs in agriculture or timber or mining are more based on the usage of fuel and other inputs that are fuel related. So that means that there are fewer exports of things that are produced in rural America, fewer services, there is going to be less employment as a result of this, too, because of the high cost of everything. We are talking to some truckers. We are seeing there is a point where they can't deliver anymore because they can't afford the fuel and that will be soon. Imagine that, when you go to the retail level, and you can't get the normal things off the shelf you are used to. We are already seeing that. There are fewer food choices, fewer choices. You are waiting longer for parts to come to repair vehicles or do anything else. When rural residents, especially, have to drive longer to do anything, whether it is to take kids to school, get to health services, pick up goods they need to do their job, it is just that much greater of a burden at these prices. Take law enforcement, for example. Now, cops, especially rural ones, they have got a lot of driving to do to cover those rural areas, and their costs are going through the roof. That means counties, small cities are bearing a greater burden just to try and keep patrols out there. So that is indeed a detrimental effect on basic public safety. Farmers, too. We are getting ready to plant our crop on our farm here. I don't even want to know what the fuel price is to top off my tanks, but I have to because it is so high. That is going to be passed on to the shelves for people to buy food all across the country or the farmer is going to go out of business if he can't get the price he needs to at the store. Rural jobs are extremely important for our economy. They are producing things that people eat, the fiber they use to make clothes that people wear, the wood and paper products we use for our homes and our business. It is really, really high time we take action and produce energy in this country because we can, we should, and we can affect the world market and make it where Russia is not making a killing off their energy because it is a supply-and-demand issue. If we fill the marketplace with low-cost energy, it will bring all this back in line. We will be in a better position as a Nation to help our colleagues, our neighbors in the western part of Europe, and cripple Putin's ability to make a killing off what he is doing.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, last week, I joined several of my Republican colleagues on an official trip to view the southern border in Arizona. We received an operational briefing from the Border Patrol stationed in Yuma and toured their processing center. We also went on field tours to see the halted construction of the border wall and a staging site used by cartels for smuggling children across the border. I was horrified by what I saw. When President Biden halted construction of the border wall, he left giant strips of the border wide open for cartels to smuggle illegal drugs and even human trafficking victims into our country, women and children being abused in ways that are unimaginable. I was appalled to learn how the cartel recycles the child victims so that they are basically the conduit to bring adults across. Then, when they are done with that child inside this country, they take them back and recycle them again through the process. They prey on families by telling them what they think they owe to the cartel and use their children in such a way. The filth, the trash left behind, the containers of drugs and pills you find there in the arroyos, in the washes, it is horrific all the way around. We must control our border.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I am still trying to figure out what the priorities of this Biden administration are. When you look at the different world events going on--when John Kerry comes out and says: Oh, we hope this Ukraine intervention does not interfere with the progress the U.S. is making with Mr. Putin on climate change--you wonder what are the priorities? Indeed, I would have to remind you that if CO2 is a priority of this administration, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it represents only .04 percent of our atmosphere. You see all the other gases in our atmosphere are represented by much larger percentages. If indeed John Kerry and this administration's big priority is CO2, what are they doing to help remedy that for the energy this country needs? Well, my home State of California it shutting down both nuclear power plants that we had at one time in the State, Santa Onofre first and Diablo Canyon coming up pretty soon. It is tearing up hydroelectric dams, like up in my district, on the Klamath River; both of those provide CO2-free electricity, if CO2 indeed is the big priority. No, it is something else. It is some other agenda. They are not doing much to help. If we had more nuclear power plants in this country, we wouldn't have the fuel for them. We produce only 9,000 pounds of uranium, yet our needs in this country for our power plants, military ships, and even medical is about 45 million pounds. That is 9,000 versus 45 million. It doesn't seem to be the priority of this administration to have America's needs, the people of this country's needs, our energy independence when you look at just the production of electricity, let alone oil and gas, which are so critical for everyday needs for everyday Americans. We need to really focus on what this country needs and we need to help steer this administration into that focus instead of the fruitless direction we are going.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, it is time to focus on our energy crisis and our energy costs, but that also relates to food. In our country, we are already seeing bare shelves of food items. You might recall years ago when Boris Yeltsin visited this country. They took him to a supermarket, and he was amazed by what was on American shelves. Now, we are moving in the direction of having shelves like in Russia. In my home State of California, as they cut off the water supply, the Klamath Basin got zero water last year to farm crops, and in the San Joaquin Valley and part of the Sacramento Valley, zero water allocations. As we look at conditions around the world, Russia is deciding to cut off some of the imports of fertilizer, which will make it harder to plant crops. Hungary has decided they are not going to export grain anymore this coming year. This is going to have a ripple effect through all food supplies and certainly on prices. The price of wheat is way up, maybe 100 percent--wheat futures. We are going to feel this at the stores if we are not planting our own food in this country. We have the water to do it in California, but it is all going out in the ocean in order to support fish that no longer live there. And the salinity issue is misused. We have to focus once again.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, today, the national average for a gallon of gas is a little over $4--$4.06 to be exact. Meanwhile, in my home State of California, the average gas price per gallon all across our State is $5.34. For the first time ever, the average gas price per gallon is over $5 in every single California county. Now, I know California brings a lot of pain upon itself, self- inflicted, but I have seen a lot of the mainstream media try to claim that these price increases are due to Russia's attack on Ukraine, not the Biden administration's anti-energy agenda. If that were true, how has the gas price per gallon increased by $1.60 over the last year, not just the last two weeks of the Ukraine conflict. Since taking office, the Biden administration has frozen all new oil and gas projects on Federal lands and implemented extreme financial barriers on domestic oil and gas production. On day one, of course, we all know he killed the Keystone pipeline, which could be supplying 830,000 barrels of oil from Canada to U.S. refineries, more than what Russia imports to us. In his first week, we had an executive order stopping new leases on Federal lands, so we need to replace Russian energy with our own production.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, this country faces an energy crisis of all types: fuel, gas, electricity. But what is the issue we are pursuing? It seems to be all about this little sliver right here on this chart: carbon dioxide. Most people are surprised when told 0.04 percent composes the carbon dioxide part of our atmosphere. You see 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, trace gases. I had to break this out of trace gases so you can see it on the chart. Yet, in my home State of California--where we had CO2-free power plants, two nuclear plants; the second one will be gone in 3 years--they want to remove hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River in my district that make zero CO2. So, is this really about CO2, or is it about some other political agenda? Because in my district, when the wind blows, they have to shut the power off because the trees the Forest Service are not managing might blow into the power lines coming from a hydroelectric dam. I do not understand what the energy policy of this country is because I don't think there is one anymore. We need to get back to doing what we do well and not pursue this fruitless agenda.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I would like to point out to the Members here tonight once again that California had a very devastating fire season last year. The whole Western States of America have. The Dixie fire alone was nearly 1 million acres in my district. Several other fires add up into the six-digit figures. What we really need to do is have the United States Forest Service identify a fire within the first 24 hours of when a fire occurs and then pounce on it and put the fire out--no more monitoring fire. Some other colleagues and I will be looking at legislation to put that in place. We were promised by the Forest Service that would be their policy. We need to enforce that. We need to have that be the dedication they have toward taking care of these Federal lands. Indeed, there are multi-uses for people, for timber, for preservation. But when they go up in smoke, it just becomes a horrific environmental problem: first, air quality, and then the ash, the silt that is going to wash into our streams and oceans and water storage. The Forest Service needs to get on the job.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I rise during this Special Order to offer thoughts on the real State of the Union. Last night, the President addressed the Nation and attempted to rewrite the history of his first 14 months in office. The speech was short on solutions to our everyday challenges: record inflation, skyrocketing price of gas, and supply chain disruptions that are affecting everything from food to consumer goods. This administration owns this energy crisis, which is a direct result of its crippling domestic production. When we don't produce our own energy, it makes us more vulnerable to global market fluctuations such as those caused by the Russian aggressions at Ukraine. The Biden administration continues to ignore the national emergency at our southern border with unprecedented illegal immigration, millions of apprehensions, and limited deportations. It is a serious situation that continues to threaten our national security. Let's focus for a moment here on U.S. energy. America's been feeling the ripple of skyrocketing energy prices. The average gallon of gas in my home State of California is up 70 percent from this time last year, and heating our homes is over 30 percent more expensive than winter last year. Economic sanctions on Russia and the halting of the Nord Stream pipeline are sure to help increase the costs of energy, but they are necessary in order for to us to have independence. This reality will be a wake-up call for the Biden administration to reverse their current course and understand that American-produced energy is the best path forward. After the President announced further sanctions on Russia due to the unprovoked attack on Ukraine, he promised to supply energy to our European allies that depend on Russian natural gas. Since his first day in office, he has repeatedly stifled U.S. gas and oil production, increasing our dependence on all things Russian oil. I am an adamant supporter of domestic oil and gas production, including building new pipelines. Right under our feet lies the largest untapped oil supply in the world, more than enough to drive down costs for American consumers and export liquefied natural gas to our European allies, removing our adversaries like Russia from their supply chain. In last night's State of the Union, the President called to make Russia suffer economic consequences for their unprovoked attack. He glossed over that he has repeatedly stifled U.S. energy production, halting the Keystone pipeline and suffocating domestic oil and gas leases. Unfortunately, he did the opposite. Just this week, he announced he is once again halting all new leases for drilling on our vast Federal lands, which we know how to do well and ecologically soundly. His solution? Import more gas from other adversaries such as China and the Middle East. Our Nation imports 7 percent of our oil from Russia. Although that may seem like not much, if they shut it off when we are not ready for it, that will cause a big ripple. We can't just flip a switch and turn on our domestic energy supply. It will take time to do it. We know what we need to do. We need to get at it, to start now. The American people are being crushed under the weight of these economic consequences from failed policies. We know what we need to do. Let's get after it.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, last week, Federal officials announced California water allocations for water year 2022--this one--this spring right now where growers are getting ready to plant--or would be. Despite their hard work as growers, their productivity and responsibility of feeding the rest of the Nation being on their shoulders, they were put dead last in line for water allocations. That is right. Behind even the mindless dumping of freshwater into our oceans to save nonexistent fish. Even though California farmers produce most of the Nation's fruit, nut, and vegetable crops, many received zero percent of their allocation--this at a time of many bare store shelves in the grocery stores, this time of crisis of an international proportion where we should be making our own energy and our own food crops. We are going to become more reliant on imported food if we don't grow this 2022 crop year because we are growing next year's crop right now-- including on my rice farm at home. These water allocations will indeed have drastic consequences for the farmers, their employees, and the small towns that they populate all up and down California and indeed other States as well. So growers are at their wit's end. We need President Biden and others to reallocate and prioritize water for farmers, not for fish.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, California's high-speed rail has issued a new draft business plan for the year 2022 that was released yesterday. It shows now a new price tag of $105 billion, which is an increase of $5 billion over the last plan we just received not too long ago. Now, the original price that voters agreed to back in 2008 when it was placed on the ballot in front of them was a $33 billion, not $105 billion, plan. Notably, it will now install a second rail between the towns of Merced and Bakersfield. Two tracks; two tracks that won't actually travel at high speeds because they can't get up to speed in that amount of distance. Two tracks that will be calling, I guess, ghost passengers for people that aren't going to be using this project anyway between Bakersfield and Merced. Every transit agency in the country ought to be looking at this plan to see how it works. We need to be building water storage; we need to be spending money on forestry, because our forests burn every year, instead of this boondoggle, which continues to be a rat hole of good money for a project that isn't helping anybody.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana for hosting this Special Order tonight and continuing to keep the effort up to put this in front of the American people and the Congress and the White House. We have talked a couple times here this evening so far, and this is a statistic that I don't know if it is reaching across to enough people. The leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45 is fentanyl. It isn't car wrecks, it is not gun violence--which is usually people violence it takes people to run a gun, to clear up a term--it is not cancer, not some other form, it is a drug. So what is this? It really boils down to it is a border problem. So when the Biden administration decided to have a much more open, hands-off policy on our borders, the opposite of what the Trump Administration had been attempting to do, this problem has been exacerbated. The number of people coming across, some for asylum reasons, others for economic reasons, but the ones that are mixing in, that are coming with them are bringing this stuff with them. Now, as a Californian we have prime examples of what that looks like on our streets, what it looks like for homelessness and for people literally dying on the street; San Francisco being a shining example of what most cities don't want to be with the problems they have on their streets with homelessness, with drug use, people dying on our streets. Needle programs. We call it clean needle exchange programs. They are not even exchange programs. Even one of my district towns, Chico, California, a nice town, people bring these needles in. And they don't exchange them, as I mentioned, they just give them out until finally the city council changed, and they have moved in a direction to try and stop this sort of thing. It was killing a small valley town like Chico. And yet our administration is promoting an open border policy that is allowing in this fentanyl. You heard some of my colleagues tonight talking about how small of an amount it takes to not only negatively affect people, but kill them. It is extremely potent. It doesn't take much of this stuff to cause a death. And it is coming across, pounds and pounds at a time, over our border. Why are we allowing this to happen? It's coming freely over our borders, distributors without consequence putting it out, harming our people, harming this country. If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, if the Democrats, if the White House really cared about the health and safety of the American citizens, they would implement commonsense policies to combat this epidemic, increasing search and seizures at our border, prosecuting traffickers instead of letting them go. It is just so unbelievable. People come up to me all the time as their Representative ``We just can't believe what is going on in our country lately.'' The prosecution letting people out of prison, right back to offend once again. And this wide-open border that is just an open conduit to so much harm from terrorism. They picked up five Syrians the other day. It isn't just people coming from Central America wanting a better life or reuniting families when you have single young men coming across the border. This is a fraud that is being committed against the American people here, and fentanyl is just one example of harming not just economically but our open border, and so many people with an illegal drug because we have a terrible policy. Our border control folks are so demoralized by what is going on here, and so are the people of this country. We have many crises these days, but this is one of the worst because we are losing the identity of our country with what has been going on. President Biden's team needs to get on the job here and enforce our border and not allow this poison to keep coming across.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, in 2021, U.S. drug overdoses due to fentanyl skyrocketed, and it is now reported to be the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45. The leading cause of death for Americans between 18 and 45 is imported fentanyl, mostly coming across our open southern border. Instead of combating this epidemic by prosecuting drug traffickers or banning molecularly altered fentanyl substances, the Biden administration is making America's drug problem worse by actually putting crack pipes into the hands of users--crack pipes distributed by the U.S. Government into the hands of drug users. Yes. This has been already modeled in San Francisco, so I guess we want to do the Californication of the rest of the country with these crazy ideas coming from the Biden administration. Boy, we have gone from just don't do it to, hey, just hand it all out. It is unbelievable that this is a policy at a time of drug problems in this country skyrocketing, harm coming to people, and the Biden administration wants to hand out free crack pipes in the name, I guess, of racial equity. Unbelievable.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, this last week, a 13-year-old young man was verbally berated in his school classroom in Grass Valley, California, in my district, by a substitute math teacher, all because he was wearing a mask that had the thin blue line on it, which is known all over the country and internationally as being the one symbol that supports law enforcement. The flag--it is an American flag adapted to that--is a sign that just shows support for our law enforcement, who we know protect us from chaos and anarchy, and they help uphold ideals of justice, freedom, bravery, and solidarity. The boy's father and stepmother are members of law enforcement, so it is natural that he would be wearing that mask, not only in general for law enforcement but for his parents. Then we have a grown adult in a classroom setting who attacks this boy because he says he wants to compare this to the new Confederate flag. It is ridiculous. He berated a child. We are all raised to respect law enforcement, and this is what is going on in the classroom. I commend the school district for not bringing that substitute teacher back anymore. Hang in there young man and your parents.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) for being a stalwart leader on this ever since I have been involved in this. I appreciate him for being courageous and strong on defending life. Mr. Speaker, as we know, in the 49 years since the Supreme Court codified Roe v. Wade, the science behind pregnancy and its diagnosis, so to speak, has advanced exponentially. We know this year the Supreme Court will rule on a case called Dobbs v. Jackson to decide on limiting abortion access to 15 weeks of pregnancy. As if there has been any doubt, really, of what a pregnancy means commonsense-wise, that it is a child developing--not a blob, a tissue mass, a clump of cells, or a baby giraffe. No, it is a human being. Medical advancements like ultrasounds since that decision 49 years ago, prenatal surgeries, all these have shown the humanity of the unborn, which points to the value of life from the moment of conception, from that flash of light. By 15 weeks in the womb, babies have fully developed hearts, can taste, can make facial expressions, and can feel pain. With today's medical advancements, a baby can survive outside the womb, incredibly, at 22 weeks and, in some cases, even earlier with aggressive care and maybe a little bit of luck and God's blessing. Roe v. Wade allows a baby to be born as late as 28 weeks. At 28 weeks, a baby is a living, breathing, developed person with thoughts and a future. We need revisions to Roe v. Wade. The future of our Nation, its morality, its outlook, it depends on it. Abortion is a gruesome act that destroys families, harms women's health, mentally and physically, and takes the life of the innocent. I will always fight for the unborn, the sanctity of life, and our traditional family values this country is founded upon. It is truly a cornerstone, and it is abhorrent that lives like this can be taken needlessly when we have so many remedies.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, under recent comments President Biden made about his first year, he talked about under-promising and over- delivering. Given what the year looks like, please, Mr. President, under-deliver. Mr. Speaker, our country has seen unprecedented crisis and record inflation, supply chain disruptions, price surges, gas and energy costs going through the roof, food supply shortages, empty shelves everywhere, higher prices. Unfortunately, the failures of Biden's first year in office isn't limited to just the United States alone. No, he hastily evacuated our troops from Afghanistan, leaving behind as many as 14,000 U.S. citizens and legal residents and friends, as well as billions of dollars of countless weapons of ours that have fallen into the hands of the Taliban. So over 20 years of a record of Taliban and they get all these weapons to use against us or our friends in the neighborhood. If this is not bad enough, the administration is now proposing to send over $300 million in foreign aid, basically, to the Taliban regime to do all the great things they have been doing. People in Afghanistan do need help, but we know the funds or food we send over there will go straight into the wrong hands. We need to have a better chain of supply to help them than what the Biden administration is proposing. The nonprofit rescue group known as Save Our Allies has been working tirelessly to rescue those left behind by President Biden's disaster over there. They warn that the funds and supplies will not go into the hands of the average Afghan but, instead, straight into the hands of the Taliban. We need to rethink this.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, concerned parents have a God-given right to make decisions for their child's best interests, not the Federal Government, the Biden administration, or teachers' unions. Yet, Education Secretary Cardona colluded with private parties to get the FBI to investigate concerned parents and worked with the National School Boards Association to brand the concerned parents involved as domestic terrorists. In the infamous letter which the Secretary solicited from the National School Boards Association, he suggested using the PATRIOT Act and that the FBI should begin investigating concerned parents at school board meetings. The letter had nothing to do with curriculum. The topic was how to vilify and target parents that disagreed with the narrative. Secretary Cardona has repeatedly denied involvement in the letter, but recently released documents have exposed the truth. These actions show a clear pattern that puts politics over the interests of the parents and especially their children and their education. Parents are right to be concerned about their kids being taught radical ideologies or being exposed to inappropriate materials. Every parent in the Nation, regardless of ideology, should be alarmed that the Federal Government is trying to strip away their rights and use these underhanded methods to try to silence them.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, Mr. Johnson. I appreciate this Special Order. Of course, this week does mark the first year of the Biden administration. Unfortunately, it was one of unprecedented crisis. Indeed, it is a target-rich environment for us to talk about here tonight. Democrats have controlled the executive branch and both Chambers of Congress, allowing them to pass, so far, $2 trillion out of their $9 trillion plans. This act has also caused the highest inflation in decades, hitting the middle-class and lower income class hardest in this country. This year, under Democrat leadership, Americans are paying more for just about everything, from housing, clothes, food, and gas--especially in energy. On the way to the airport in California, it was $5-plus, $5.39 at one place. Incredible. In the dead of winter, people are seeing the cost of heating their homes skyrocket. When you stop all sorts of development of energy in this country, you are not going to have the supply. That sends a signal to the whole market to raise prices, including the Biden administration telling OPEC overseas to go ahead and send us more while cutting off our own pipelines and further development on Federal lands. This, of course, ripples through everything else in costs. In my real life as a farmer, we are going to see our costs of energy--whether it is diesel fuel, gasoline, fertilizer--skyrocket. That is either going to have to be passed along to the consumer at the store or farmers go broke in this country. Small business owners face the same thing. Everything is going up--more in costs, vaccine mandates, less employees. I mean, I wish we could paint a brighter picture and not have it appear to be a partisan one. It really isn't partisan. It is about having success as a country. Unfortunately, the Biden administration doesn't seem to have a clue what that success would look like. Indeed, they are chasing their own mandates, putting us in a terrible position as a people and for the economy going forward. They need to change their thinking, or the voters need to change them out.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, we have a lot of lofty goals in this country about green energy, renewable energy, and such. But we are not providing the ways in order to get there. One of the important components is the mined products that we need to go into various equipment and vehicles, et cetera. We are not able to mine the critical minerals, the rare earths in this country. For example, to get a permit to open a type of mine or expand a mine, it could be 15, 16, 18 years in this country while our neighbors just north of the border, a 2- or 3-year process to secure the permits to mine products that are desperately needed in this country if we are ever going to talk about meeting the goals you would have for renewable energy, electric cars, and all that in order to lower the carbon footprint. So what is the hypocrisy here? In my home State of California, you can hardly get mining done. You can hardly even keep electricity flowing because of taking away power plants due to--those are power plants that would be zero CO2. I don't understand the hypocrisy. So we have to get smart about this.