Doug LaMalfa

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, historically, under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, covered employers were required to maintain an annual log of all work-related illnesses and injuries. An illness or injury is recordable if it is work-related, a new case, and the incident involves days away from work or medical treatment beyond first aid, among other things. On May 21, OSHA changed these requirements. This new OSHA policy effectively removes legal liability from employers that require a vaccine at least through May 2022. Now, if a worker decides to get a vaccine to keep their job and experiences an adverse reaction, the employer is not responsible for this injury. OSHA stated it changed this requirement only because they do not want to give any suggestion of discouraging workers from receiving the COVID-19 vaccinations or to disincentivize employers' vaccination efforts. Why are they trying to hide statistics related to the vaccine? While this policy change appears to be a mere sidenote for OSHA's lengthy guidelines, we have to ask President Biden and OSHA: Why is the ethical burden on the workers and not on the government?

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, today marks exactly 9 months in of the Biden administration. The motto was Build Back Better. So, where do we stand? What have we built back better on behalf of the real American people out there? He talked about unity in his inauguration speech. It only seems to be that he has unified the American people in anger at the cost of doing business. Everything has gone up for American families, as you see from this chart here. In my home State of California, everything is going up. We see fuel. We heard the national average is $3.30. In my home State, it is anywhere from $4.20 to $5. Now, it is not the rest of the country's problem how the State runs itself, but it kind of underlines that we have big problems. What is the focus going to be? The Biden administration is going to make it where farming in California is even more difficult. We are going to have fewer of the crops California grows, therefore driving inflation even more on everything when these crops have to be replaced with foreign imports. I mean, come on. The inflation is being caused by this government, when you pull just $4 trillion or $5 trillion of spending out of midair. Now they are threatening to have tax increases on certain people, whether it is corporations or the rich or whoever. But then they back off on that, and they say no tax increases on those under $400,000. It is going to be impossible to pay for this without doing that. Show us how you are going to do it. The inflation is going to kill the American worker, especially middle- and lower-income folks. It is irresponsible what is going on. Just throwing these terms, trillions of spending--stimulus spending is basically what it is because it isn't infrastructure. Trying to sneak it through in budget reconciliation by getting a mere 50 votes over in the Senate is really a sleight of hand that is going to hurt this country. This country is already hurting compared to a year, year and a half ago, the way our economy is right now, our energy reliability, our food reliability. You want to talk supply chain? All the ships are sitting off California, waiting to be unloaded. There is one thing about it: If we were building it here, if we were producing it here, manufacturing it here, we wouldn't have to be worried about unloading ships. But when you chase the jobs out of the country with horrendous regulations and the taxation that is going to be upon business, farmers, timber fallers, you don't get a good result. The Biden administration needs to take a real good hard look at how economics actually work and quit doing this to the American people because, I will tell you what, we are not going to have much left after 4 years of all this. I appreciate my friend here from Louisiana trying to bring this to the American people with the time here tonight on seeing how this 9 months in of the Biden administration is costing and hurting regular Americans.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, this debt ceiling increase being contemplated isn't just about paying off things we have already committed for. It is actually a blank check for unlimited spending until December of 2022. Our collective national debt is somewhere around $28 trillion now, or about $85,000 per person. Every American. Now, in 2013 the lie of the year was named, ``If you like your health plan, you can keep it.'' In the Biden campaign, it was, ``Nobody making under $400,000 would have their taxes raised, period.'' That is setting up to be the next lie of the year. The effects we see of this legislation will be 5 percent of taxpayers earning between $40,000 and $50,000 and 59 percent of those earning between $200,000 and $500,000 would be affected greatly by increased taxes. Let that sink in. The President's plan will raise taxes on people making as low as $40,000, not the $400,000 he promised. We should be talking about hard caps on spending and getting our fiscal house in order instead of spending on the Green New Deal that is coming up.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I just want to point out to the American public and my colleagues in this Chamber and the U.S. Forest Service, the extreme importance of all the fire devastation we have had in Northern California and the need to immediately get upon the effort to cover up the erosion that we are going to have there. We need to mitigate the erosion that has a great potential to be there. This fire here, the Dixie fire--currently almost put out--has reached, finally, nearly a million acres, on top of the fire last year and another 2 years before that. We have over 1.5 million acres that have burned and are now a repository for ash and erosion that is going to affect what is known as the Feather River watershed, an extremely important watershed to the California State Water Project whose customers number about 25 million people in California, as well as much of agriculture. We need that erosion control to happen immediately, especially on the heels of the Beckwourth fire, the Dixie fire, so that we don't have our streams, our rivers, our lakes, plugged up with ash, with soil that makes it impossible for our water supply this coming year to be delivered to people in agriculture.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, the other day, we saw the press secretary for President Biden, Jen Psaki. She was complaining and tired of Republicans talking about the border and not having any ideas. Well, we have ideas. They don't always get publicized. Here are some of them right here: enforce our laws; enforce our laws as written; complete the border fence and complete all border construction; the remain in Mexico policy, why don't we reinstate that? It worked pretty well without people rushing the border before. Require negative COVID tests before entering our country. Wouldn't that be something since we are telling all of our citizens we have to do the same to go to a simple thing like a restaurant or a ballpark? Maybe we could shut off the green light inviting people and sending people the message, incentivizing the dangerous trek to come to America. Lastly, stop the benefits from hardworking U.S. taxpayers. Stop promising amnesty, tax remittances, healthcare, and sanctuary cities to illegal immigrants. These are the messages Republicans have been conveying all along, so I invite Jen Psaki to listen up.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, while climate catastrophists claim that our climate is less livable than ever because of fossil fuels, it is actually more livable than ever, thanks to our fossil fuel powered climate protection systems. When you hear the scary claims about a climate crisis, keep in mind that climate catastrophists, or alarmists as they are now known, have been claiming climate crisis for about 40 years. If America tries to rapidly eliminate fossil fuel use through a Green New Deal or Biden climate plan, we will not prevent a crisis. We will cause a crisis by making energy completely unreliable and unaffordable for American industry and American consumers, especially the middle- income and lower income folks. Now, what isn't pointed out very often in all this talk about carbon dioxide being a pollutant is that carbon dioxide is 0.04 percent of our atmosphere. Most people think it is some big number like 20, 30, 40, 50 percent of our atmosphere. Nitrogen, number one, is 78 percent; oxygen, number two, 21 percent. CO2 is not even in third place. Argon is, 0.93 of 1 percent. Some of these pie charts you would look at on the internet would have carbon dioxide mixed in with other trace gases--other, okay? So, we are at 0.04 percent. It is an extremely small amount of our atmosphere. Now, you would think, again, with the alarmism going on, that it is a high percentage that is poisoning all of us. Carbon is a building block of most of what we have on this planet, carbon life forms, right? We are chasing down this path, I think, because of an agenda that is a lot different than the climate itself, especially when you see the folks that are pushing it the hardest still flying to all their Paris rallies and this and that in private jets, not living their lives any different, other than what normal people do. Coming back to the fossil fuel portion of it, it would be worth it, so the alarmists say, to lower CO2 levels and avoid a crisis. But the U.S. causes less than one-sixth of all global emissions, and that number is even going lower. President Trump pulled us out of the Paris accord, yet the United States is still leading the way on lowering its CO2 production anyway. It has a lower net number than before, without an accord. The other countries in the developing world, in the Third World, in the Eastern Bloc, whatever, are still increasing their numbers, building new coal-powered plants in China--one a week, some crazy number like that. We are supposed to adhere to that in this country and curb our production and curb our economy, even though we are leading the way in cleaner technology, cleaner-burning automobiles and trucks, cleaner- burning power plants. It is so crazy that in my home State of California, for example, when we look at the type of electricity production that comes from green power sources, the environmentalists are trying to get rid of them. We had two nuclear-powered plants in California. They already closed one, San Onofre, down by San Diego, and then one in San Luis Obispo. Those two themselves are responsible, at their peak production, for somewhere around 16, 18, even 20 percent of the whole grid of California. Imagine knocking out 20 percent of the grid in that short amount of time and trying to replace it with more politically correct green power. It is hard to get the permits to do the politically correct green power, such as making tens of thousands of acres covered with solar cells or windmills, but nonetheless, we are hellbent on that direction. At the same time, they want to get rid of the use of natural gas and propane to power people's stoves, power people's water heaters, things like that, and have them go electric. They are hellbent on changing cars into being electric powered by 2035, no more combustion engine cars, all because of this 0.04 percent. What are we doing here? It is a political agenda. Indeed, every committee in this new Congress has to spend a good portion of their time not talking about whether it is childcare, agriculture, or finance. They have to run it all through a climate change filter before we can move on to the work that needs to be done. Coming back to California, we sometimes have public safety power shutoffs, they call it, because we have an issue of trees that might fall onto power lines or branches that the wind might catch and blow into power lines. Right here is an example of three fires that have happened in northern California in the last couple of years. This one here is the current Dixie fire. I am using an older poster, because I am cheap, but this is now, instead of 100,000 acres, a million acres. It would come all the way up here past Mount Lassen. What is the CO2 equation here of unmanaged forests? We need to manage forests, so we don't make all the CO2 and have all the fire and soot and ash that blows all the way back to the East Coast. This CO2 this is deceptive, and we need to think differently.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. ``Ladies and gentlemen, no great country can say it is secure without being able to control its borders. Period. What I would do about it is what I proposed to do about it almost 13 years ago. I would radically ramp up the number of border security guards we have and increase the use of electronic surveillance material we have to guard the border.'' Now, which politician said those words back on the campaign trail back in 2007? Here is another quote for you: ``We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.'' That wasn't President Trump. That wasn't even a Republican. Those commonsense border policy quotes you heard came from none other than President Biden and President Obama. Those words reveal the Democrats do know what is needed to fix our border crisis, but they are too afraid of what the liberal media and the progressive left would do in order to act. So I call on President Biden to listen to his own advice and do what needs to be done because ``no great country can say it is secure without being able to control its own borders. Period.''

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Missouri for yielding. I would like to use this time to highlight a concern that pops up when we are debating bills that pay for water storage and conveyance in the Western United States, especially given the severity of the drought we face. Often my colleagues, understandably, wonder why the Federal Government is still helping fund the California water system. Why California water? It is rather simple. Our 77,000 farms and ranches top the production charts in at least 77 different goods, from dairy to fruits to vegetables. California is actually the only producer of almonds, artichokes, celery, figs, garlic, raisins, kiwis, honeydew, nectarines, olives, cling peaches, pistachios, plums, sweet rice, and walnuts in the United States. If it isn't made there, you are not going to get it from this country; it will be imported. This incredible system was set up as a partnership between the Federal and State governments. Although $1 billion in this program is a decent start, when we are talking $100 billion to keep supporting the high-speed rail boondoggle in California, we see our priorities are misplaced. More money needs to be put in for water storage to help all Americans and less for all these other things that do not help.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, the $3.5 trillion spending plan by the Democrats is the most expensive single piece of legislation in the history of this country. If passed, the Democrats will have added $13 trillion in new spending since they took control of the House in 2019. When combined with annual government funding and the $1.9 trillion Biden bailout bill, the $3.5 trillion socialist tax and spending plan would increase yearly government spending by over 73 percent each year for the next 10 years. To pay for these expensive and ill-advised policies, we would see the largest tax increase in American history, with two-thirds of employer tax increases being borne by lower and middle-income Americans. This unprecedented spending spree is fueling inflation right now and hurting low-income and middle-income families the most, the very populations these policies purport to be helping. Inflation is a tax on the poor, running at 7 percent on an annualized basis since the Biden administration came in, the highest since the Carter era. Gas prices are up 41 percent. Used car prices are up 41 percent. Fish prices are up 8.5 percent. Steak prices are up 10 percent. Inflation is hurting the purchasing power of everyday Americans.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, this past week, I was appalled to see the massive illegal immigration camp in Del Rio, Texas. This single camp, which has garnered so much attention, has been shut off from even being monitored by the media, yet it does not represent even 10 percent of the total border violations this month. The United States is currently recording the highest number of border arrests in over 20 years. We hit 1 million arrests by June of this year, and at least 420,000 more have arrived since then. The problem is not exclusively about immigrants being forced from their homes. Illegal immigration fuels the drug trade and human trafficking. To stop this, we need to hire more immigration officers, build better infrastructure along the border, and create a more secure immigration process. Unfortunately, in this Chamber, we are more willing to throw billions at high-speed rail projects and environmental mandates, even build better fences around the Capitol than we have on some portions of the border. We can't muster the courage to roll even a single dime toward the southern border and its improved security. If the priorities of this House and the rhetoric of the Biden administration officials continue down this path, then the wave of illegal immigration will only get worse.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, Israel is arguably our most reliable ally in the world; indeed, a beacon of light and a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. So I don't understand how we could not work earlier this week to help them, to support them. Well, I am glad today we could come together on both sides of the aisle and come to an agreement on this with strong support via this resolution. I visited Israel several times. And when you visit with the people there and talk with them, there are people that live their lives under a 15-second warning for when rockets may come in at random from anywhere in the zones that are near where the rockets are launched from, whether it is Gaza, or whether it is up north in Lebanon. What a way to live a life. For us to not be able to come to an agreement because of politics earlier this week, is really sad. So I am glad for our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come to an agreement today and get strong votes for this to support Iron Dome, which is a defensive mechanism, technology that both us in the United States and Israel benefit from in making all of our interests stronger. I am glad we can have the support today and get it right.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I speak tonight about the advocacy and the positives we have of hydroelectric dams in my home State and in our country. They provide hydroelectric power, which is green power, which is renewable power. Yet, that seems to be forgotten these days when they are more and more trying to remove hydroelectric dams from our grid. It is clean power; it is available 24 hours a day. You don't have to wait for the sun to come up or wind to blow. Hydroelectric dams have several multiple use purposes, such as storing water for people or for agriculture. That water is available for dipping out of when you have aircraft that need to get water supply for fighting forest fires like we have over a million acres of in my home State, in Northern California. Water transfers can help with the wildlife; with helping to have switches so that they can have water for aquatic species, for swapping during the year. So why are we wanting to remove hydroelectric dams? In California, we even have issues with having to shut off power usage, what is called flex alerts. What is even funnier is that you have shut them off from 3 to 9 p.m. on charging your electric car. So we should utilize our hydroelectric dams and all the multiple positive uses they have, and not tear them out, like on the Klamath Basin.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, it is interesting when President Trump was in office that the name-calling in this place about him occurred often during the President's time in office. In California, we currently have a special election about to be underway here. Just the other day, 300 mail-in ballots were found in the car of a guy passed out in a 7-Eleven parking lot, 300 ballots. And we don't think there is an issue sometimes with the way mail-in ballots are distributed. I get anecdotes all the time from folks like this current special election. Oh, I received three ballots for people that haven't lived at my apartment for a long time, or relatives that have long since passed away, because you just mail them out willy-nilly everywhere. H.R. 4 is not about voting rights, it is about election control and manipulation. It is about political appointees at the Department of Justice overturning State and legislative process, and controlling from D.C. local election decisions. We know that Americans of the right age and legal status have the right to vote, and no one here is trying to take that away from them. Voter suppression hype is just a big lie. It is absurd what is trying to be perpetrated in this legislation.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, first of all, to all those who served in Afghanistan, we thank you. God bless you. You did everything you were asked to do. You did your duty with honor. But like most Americans, I watched with disgust as the Taliban retook Kabul last Sunday. Any shame of that operation lies here in D.C. with the suits, not with the boots, who allowed this to happen. Yet, what are we hearing? Rhetoric. White House communications director Jen Psaki says: Now, it is irresponsible for those to be talking about Americans that are stranded in Afghanistan. We see the word ``stranded'' on the front page of the newspaper. We see the word ``hostage.'' We see the words--all sorts of things-- showing what a debacle this has been, including ``debacle'' right on the front page. So what do we get from the White House? We are not getting transparency, as promised by the Biden administration, unless you want to define ``transparency'' as invisible, which they have been. We have to do much better to get our people out of this country, and all that material that was left behind is now in the hands of our enemies.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Westerman for his work on the Natural Resources Committee where I was for several years, as well as working with the Western Caucus on this, as well. Obviously, it has been underlined during this time tonight that we are in a severe drought situation. The darker the color on the map the more severe that area is. So my part of California is the portion right here at the border here. Oregon is in that corner. So you see the dark brown is the Klamath Basin. My colleague, Cliff Bentz, spoke about that a little bit also on how dire that situation is. You see all over the map here that the whole West, much of it is in that brown color, called exceptional drought, and the orange area is called extreme drought. So what do we do about these situations? We must be proactive. In California--and I will talk a lot about California--but also that is of interest to the whole country because so much of the crops that so many of the people in this country use come from California. We have had leadership in the past that produced the Federal water project known as the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project that California did. Two of the biggest dams there are 4\1/2\-million and 3\1/2\-million acre feet by themselves. Now, an acre foot is 326,000 gallons. An acre foot is enough to take care of two households or approximately 10 people for a year. And so we used to build these projects because we were forward thinkers then. And that water benefited so many of us. But when we talk about the drought situation, it also affects not just people and food supply and the water supply, but also as my colleague and I, Mr. Bentz, we share that area on the Oregon border where is the Klamath Basin is. So what does that mean for wildlife when we don't keep track of our water supply, we don't put it where it is the most beneficial? You get a situation like this. This is a refuge for ducks and other waterfowl that is going to be dry this year. Last year I was up there on a trip and during the year they had the deaths of 60,000 ducks and other waterfowl due to botulism because the water is so low, and it gets that disease in there and wipes out the flock which affects the whole Pacific Flyway. So this isn't just about farms and food and money and this and that. This is also about habitat. But the only habitat you hear about in California is such that might help the fish, the salmon or the sucker fish in Klamath Lake. The sucker fish do not sustain themselves by a full lake on that lake; indeed, it needs to be lower. And they have been trying to run water down the Klamath River in order to wipe out a virus--it is kind of a mold--by keeping it wet in order to help the salmon. And we see this also in the delta that flows through the bay area from those great watering sources that come through the Sacramento Valley and the San Joaquin Valley. They are wasting so much water running it through there trying to help the delta smelt. So much water is gone, and the smelt, when they do a trawl, a survey, they can't even find any more with the extra water that has been run through there for 30 years. So what are we going to do? Why does this matter to all Americans? Well, certain crops, 99 percent, come from California, such as almonds, artichokes, celery, figs, garlic, raisins, kiwi, honeydew, nectarines, olives, cling peaches, pistachios, plums, sweet rice, and walnuts. You are not going find those easily imported from somewhere else--or at least of the quality that Americans are used to--if we don't fix our water situation in the State of California, either due to environmental and regulatory concerns or building more storage. We should be doing both. We need to be fixing the regulatory problems because the Endangered Species Act has been weaponized against things that work for people. We need to pause for a minute and see if these things that we are doing are even helping environmentally, even helping the fish populations, and they are not. This year the lakes will finally run out. In 2022, all bets are off because Lake Oroville is so low. Lake Shasta is pretty low. We won't have the water supply. You can forget agriculture. We know that they will. Agriculture seems to be the last in line for anything in California. But the urban areas are going run out before too long. Can you imagine trucking water into the urban areas? Can you imagine trying to set up temporary desal plants along L.A.? They have been trying to build a desal plant in Huntington Beach for 20 years, and the environmental groups put the brakes on that all the time. It is amazing. They are cutting their own throat. So when are we going to get focused on what works for people and their food supply and the domestic wells? Thousands of domestic wells are going dry around California, and we haven't even seen the full effect of this year when many thousands more will go dry. What do you do for those folks? Hey, forget agriculture, it isn't important. We will just import the food. Like imported oil was so great and imported electricity. No. We have to be thinking a lot more because the environmental movement has decimated this. Let's talk about forestry for a moment, all those overcrowded forests create their own drought, and they also don't let the water supply that would normally come down through the system and hit our lakes, it doesn't get there anymore because we have an inventory of 10 to one what we should be having in our forests So we have got a lot of work to do. We have to reform the Endangered Species Act. We have to reform the NEPA process to be able to get projects done and still take into account what we can do positively for the environment. We will still do that. Fish benefit from dams, yet all you hear about is tear the dams out. Whether it is up in Washington for Mr. Newhouse or my district and Mr. Bentz's district, that seems to be the big push. Where are we going to get this water supply? How are we going to have water for fish in order to have it go down the streams to the fish each year when you don't have the dam there because it is all gone in a short amount of time after the rain stops? We have to get our heads back together on how things really work. We are not going to have a food supply. We are not going to have a timber supply--because it is all burning right now--until we get past having the Endangered Species Act and the environmental organizations rule what we do in this country. Madam Speaker, we have to get serious.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, recent aggressive moves by California water and environmental regulators now threaten very long-held water rights, pre-1914, the gold standard in my home State. Why? The mismanagement of water during a short rainfall year has led to hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland being cut off from water due to Federal and State regulators that prioritize fish over people's needs. A California State agency is now ready to cut off water to crops in just 6 days, midsummer, mid-crop year. Imagine, over halfway through the year, and they just cut it off. This is in favor of failed environmental policy that allows the water to flow out to the sea and doing so ostensibly to help a fish population that it really is not helping. Our infrastructure that we are contemplating needs to include water storage projects. For the American consumer, don't count on these fruit and vegetable products coming from somewhere else in the world, except at a much higher price. They will not get to your table with the same high quality you expect. We need water storage. We need to be included in any infrastructure bill. Otherwise, we all suffer as Americans. This is everybody's problem.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, it has been obvious for years now that we need to rethink our forest management strategies. 2020 was the worst fire season on record for California and much of the West. California alone saw 4.2 million acres of land burned. Currently, there are 85 large fires burning across the West and already 1\1/2\ million acres burnt. Last week the smoke reached all the way to Washington, D.C., causing health advisories for people not to be outside if they either have health issues or for athletic purposes in D.C. and Baltimore. The plume even reached all the way up to New York. The U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior have identified more than 80 million acres that are overgrown and at a high risk of fire. As wildfires burn across California and the West, Republicans have several bill proposals before this House that would improve forest management. These bills propose comprehensive solutions to address the declining health of our forests and help prevent catastrophic wildfires by expediting the environmental analysis, reducing frivolous lawsuits, and increasing the pace and scale of management practices. We have suppressed fires for over 110 years which is okay on the surface, but now most forests are intensely overstocked and overgrown with the fuel that causes the fires because we didn't do the other side of the coin: the harvest work, the treatment, and the removing of materials. For example, in California most forest types had in the past about 64 trees per acre in the mid-1800s. Now they sit at over 300 trees per acre or more, causing weak trees that are more susceptible to insects and ultimately death because they don't have enough water supply, and so this in itself exacerbates the drought within the forest with all the competition of trees per acre and the death of the trees themselves. One of my bills, the CLEAR Zones Act, would allow better clearing around power lines. It would allow a wider buffer to prevent trees from falling on the lines and igniting a fire which is what they do. A tree falling into power lines lately was likely the cause of the Dixie fire, currently the largest fire burning in California. So far it has burned right around 200,000 acres in my district, and it is only 22 percent contained. This is hitting the area north of the Camp fire that burned in 2018. As you might remember from history, Mr. Speaker, it burned the town of Paradise, part of Magalia, Concow, and Yankee Hill, this large area here. Then following up in 2020 was the North Complex fire. They are burning up against each other basically over history here. And now we have the Dixie fire, as it is known, along with a smaller one called the Fly fire which have burned together. Pretty soon the whole landscape is going to have a history of having burned. For what reason? It is because we won't manage the lands. We won't do what needs to be done to put the kind of buffers and the kind of zones in that would help make it easier for the firefighters. Well, the solutions we do have are: we have proper forest management. We have seen that in this area here, around this current Dixie fire. The Collins Pine Company based in Chester, California, and a lot of areas in northern California, has done a lot of free work along highways around the community that would be very, very helpful and ultimately will be very helpful towards the type of management that will make us fire-safe. The thinning that is done along the highways and around the towns is what has made it possible for the firefighters in a very difficult situation--on the just seen Dixie fire, on my map there--to have a chance to stop this fire finally. It has ravaged so much, and they have done an amazing job of protecting communities and homes in those areas. But it has turned from a fire where a tree hit a power line--we are still waiting for the forensic report on that--from a small, half-acre fire and just a couple weeks later 200,000 acres and all this endangerment. So work that had been done previously by Collins Pine is going to probably save the day for the town of Chester and others up in that direction. So if we dramatically increase the fuel treatments across all these landscapes, then it gives us a fighting chance. We need to thin the forest and return low-intensity fire to these landscapes in the form also of a prescribed fire at a time of year when we can control them. The Native Americans used to use this method, and we can learn from them. This map of fuels treatment projects around the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, overlaid with the satellite image of the 2018 Carr fire burn scar, shows that where the fuels were managed the fire was less intense. The green area has been highlighted to show a better contrast. The areas that had been thinned did not burn nearly as intensely. Instead, the big trees survived, the fire goes through the area at the bottom of the forest much more slowly, and it is much more manageable. The upper areas are the ones that burned to a crisp. So this map shows that forest management works and that thinning works. We need to increase the pace and scale of this type of project so when fires come, the landscape is ready, and it doesn't endanger our firefighters and our communities unnecessarily. Fire will happen. It is going to happen whether it is a manmade accident or nature with lightning strikes and the things that happen there. It is going to happen. But what are we going to do to address that? If we want to talk about change of temperatures and the drought situation we are facing in the West, we have to do even more to address overgrown forests and the amount of inventory per acre a forest can handle. Basically, all these trees in an overloaded forest are called ladder fuels. The fires will be lower intensity if we do the right work. They are easier to put out and much less devastating. Indeed, it is the natural landscape we used to have over 100 years ago when fire was actually constructive.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, actions by the Federal Government are devastating the Klamath Basin on the north end of California and south Oregon. Earlier this year our government cut off all of the water for the Klamath Basin from the farmers and the wildlife in order to deal with Endangered Species Act rules for two competing species of fish. Madam Speaker, you can see the devastation last year with a duck kill that happened inside the refuge. We did manage to rescue this one. The wildlife refuge has no water. The farmers who also provide water, food, and resting areas for migratory birds now cannot provide food or habitat, and the entire basin is hurting. The government has created an ecological disaster that will result in the death of tens of thousands of federally protected migratory birds. Last year when the Bureau of Reclamation reduced the water by more than half, 60,000 birds died of botulism. I toured this area last year, and it is indeed devastating. This year there is zero water. There is no habitat for nesting birds and no feed for them from farmers. This is a government created disaster, and our environment and people are paying the price. We need to deliver the water that farmers own to the farmers, and that will also in turn help deliver water to the Federal refuge. Federal courts and the Bureau of Reclamation need to get out of the way and let the people on the ground succeed for food and for our wildlife.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Sure.

Mr. LaMALFA. It is a pretty clear defined mission what our military is supposed to be doing in protecting our shores. We have certainly strayed very far from that. As I mentioned, it is not inspiring the best, the brightest, the toughest to come in. I have had some of these conversations with the parents and some of the people already in the military here. A young man just the other day, during the 4th of July, of all things, I said, ``What do you think of what is going on?'' This young man is very, very gravely concerned, because by far there are a lot of great, great young people there. They are standing up for their flag, for their country, and they are wondering what is going on with their leadership. Indeed, if we want to be at the point of the type of readiness that is even more acute than ever right now in this world with China, China is just waiting. China is probably over there laughing at us right now with what is going on with this administration and the priorities for our military. Russia is poised to continue to do more aggression in their zones over there. And let alone an unstable place like Iran and even North Korea. What is it they can do or be capable of doing? Now with this pullout in Afghanistan, what are we unleashing there? We have got to return to a commonsense approach that goes back to what the true military role and duty and mission is, and we are drifting far from it. What I wanted to pick up on, too, as far as when we were talking about our border, immigration, in general, and this recent topic of with Cuba. What do we learn from 60-plus years of oppression under Castro and those who followed? Maybe everything wasn't beautiful under Batista back in 1959 or what have you, but they certainly, when they had that revolution then, I don't think the regular, normal, good people of Cuba bargained for what they have had at all for the last 60 years. The way this administration is handling it is almost basically ignoring it. Look at the people in Cuba who are holding our flag, not unlike in Hong Kong. It is very interesting. The question the gentleman posed to my colleague, maybe he wants to pose it again here, but when we are going in the direction of where Cuba is, where the Communist Chinese Party is going, we are holding up pictures of Che Guevara. Even in this Chamber we hear the type of sympathy towards the Castro era. It is unbelievable to me how this has been allowed to happen. Well, part of it, I guess, is the American public isn't paying enough attention. You need to demand more or demand better of who you are electing and compare this, contrast it with what hasn't worked around the world under communism for many decades. So with Cuba, you have a situation where this administration is ignoring those who are seeking asylum from a Communist regime for years and years. We have a lot of good Cuban people who have come to this country years ago--they even trickle in now--colleagues that Mr. Roy had mentioned here that some were in this Chamber of Cuban descent. They love this country and see the opportunity here. That is why they cobble together these boats and rafts. I would like to say they are made basically made out of milk cartons. They coming toward us. We don't see these people complaining about this country and its flag and desecrating its flag cobbling together milk carton rafts and going toward Cuba for their amazing healthcare system and their amazing education system that we hear people on other side of the aisle claiming to be the way to go. So what is it? What is asylum? When we are granting it to people coming up illegally from Central America, they are not seeking the true definition of asylum, they are seeking economic opportunity. Do I blame them? No. They live in bad conditions down there, but they also see this giant green light at our border saying: Come on across. Even though the laws on the books say ``no'' and we have people hired to patrol the border. Instead, they are being focused more and directed more to be a welcome wagon at the border. What are we doing? Asylum is defined: ``The protection granted by a nation to someone who has left their native country as a political refugee.'' The people who have been trying to and some successfully escaping Cuba for 60 years are the perfect definition of that. Those are the ones we should be looking at, and this administration should be looking at finding a way to help them. Those in Central America who are coming here for jobs, we have legislation to work in that direction to have a legal workforce come here, or those who are already here illegally, find a way to get to legal status under our rules, under our laws. But, no, this administration is leaving our border wide open, as was mentioned. The fentanyl, thousands of pounds, how far would that go? And where is it landing? The stuff we do catch is significant, but the stuff that we are not catching up with at the border, where is it going? Where is it being stockpiled? When is that going to come out? That is extremely dangerous. Extremely. I like to think that these freedom fighters, whether it is Hong Kong or other places who are using our flag as a symbol of freedom and hope, and the one they want to emulate and get to, whether it is in their country or maybe even come here, and we are going in the other direction. It is unbelievable to me when we can't even have our Olympians respect our flag; we can't have our soccer team; when we can't have basically the singing of the National Anthem or the recitation of our flag salute in our schools. One of the young men I talk about, now in the military, I am really proud of that young man. I don't have authorization to say his name. His first name is Grayson. What a great kid. He is going to be a real doer in our military. He fought to just have his flag salute done at his high school. It hadn't been done in 40 years, and he had to overcome a bureaucracy that said: Oh, we don't know. It might offend somebody. Oh, we haven't asked all of the teachers. We haven't asked all of the school board. This young man took it upon himself to petition his fellow students to get this done. And I said: If they don't get it done, I will be right there with you at 8:30 in the morning. We will do it right in the front of the school. Well, they got it done. And I am so proud of him and what he is going to do. But there are many, many Americans like that all over this world, serving across the world, living here in this country that believe in that as well and take that pledge. Spontaneously, at the baseball game, if they are not going to do the National Anthem, they spontaneously start it themselves. It is pretty amazing. At the NHL hockey playoff game in New York, those Islander fans stood up and joined in with one that was going on, and the singer, she actually stood down so she could feel that moment. Pretty amazing. This still exists in the hearts and minds of most Americans in this country. We will not allow ourselves to be beaten down by political correctness, critical race theory, and all of these other things that aren't really who we are or what is in the hearts of the vast majority of the people of this country. When we are talking about our border, it is a sieve, which is a giant problem. It wasn't a problem nearly as much under President Trump, who was trying to solve the issue, but also work with those countries and help solve the issue within. Instead, it was just open season on all of us, on our taxpayers, our schools, our healthcare system, and even all of the COVID business that has been manipulated to a degree that Americans really need to question how much longer they are going to have their freedoms, as was mentioned by Mr. Roy: vaccine passports being forced upon us. In California, they are talking about you can't work in the State as a State employee unless you get the vaccine, or perhaps you can get off the hook by getting a test every single week. Where are our liberties? If you are not concerned about our liberties and our basic freedom, you better wake up right now because you don't get them back once they have been taken. It is much more difficult to get them back than what our Founders had laid down and all of those buried in Arlington--as I drove by in town today--fought to preserve. We have a job as Americans. I wear this tie and suit. I leave my farm every week to be a part of it, too, because we can't just sit still anymore. We all have to be part of this.

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I appreciate both my colleagues from Texas and the spirited debate here. You know, I hadn't intended to talk about the draft there, but Mr. Roy was bringing that up very vigorously. I have to agree 100 percent that our volunteer military has worked pretty well for us for approximately, I think, 40 years. What is it that would have anybody even institute the idea of draft for men or women, incredibly, at this point? Is it because our numbers are down? Is it because we are not getting the people in or is it somehow some kind of equity? I am not sure what the mind set is, but if you want to inspire people to be part of our military, why don't you make it inspiring instead of a bastion of political correctness and the woke racism conversations happening everywhere else where even a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is bringing it up and bringing this literature out that is supposed to make people feel bad about serving as brothers in arms in the military, you know, because of their race. If you want to inspire people, don't make them feel bad about joining. Therefore, you don't even have to talk about draft, because you could get folks who want an opportunity, whether it is their dedication to completely serving their country or they see some opportunities there with the education that can be offered through the program with the military. Whatever the combination is, you inspire people to be part of it, just as if you are selling a product anywhere else in the free market in this country. Why in the world would we do this political correctness, this continued race conversation that is driving people away? I don't understand.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, we have a record-setting surge of illegal drugs coming in across our southern border, including the very, very deadly fentanyl, which takes only small amounts to greatly affect many people, as well as whatever other activities the cartels want to do. The U.S.-Mexico border is basically unprotected, and it doesn't seem to be a priority of the Biden administration at all. Please, prove me wrong. Yet, the Biden administration is happy to, once again, push the idea of perhaps shutting down the country over COVID again. Is it because of the delta variant, or now is it going to be over a new Mexico variant? But it seems to be coming our way. Yet, they will not control the border and the flow of illegal immigrants that might be carrying COVID themselves, whether it is through the new Mexico variant or not. So you have to ask, whose side is this administration on with this open sieve of a border, these drugs coming through, illegal immigrants coming through, and then putting the clamps down on our own economy and our own people?

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to see President Biden has acknowledged that we are having a lot of inflation right now in this country affecting prices for everybody. He even went so far as to tell some restaurant owners that you are going to be in a bind for a while because it is going to still be hard to get workers. When people are paid not to show up because of overgenerous benefits, all our small businesses will continue to be in a bind. When you pay people not to work, you get inflation. So for a few maybe getting a wage increase because the restaurants are in a bind, everybody receives higher prices. Prices are up, we know, on food, on fuel, lumber, many things. This is what happens when the government spends too much, puts too much money into the economy all based on debt. So what are we going to do about that? Are we going to set a course here to put people back in business, or do we want to have, like we saw just this last month, another 5.4 percent of inflation, which is really a tax on every American.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, Americans everywhere are feeling the real effects of inflation due to the Democrats' reckless spending spree. Basic and time-tested economics show that more money in the marketplace leads to inflation, especially when it is created by new debt. Families across the country are paying $10, $20, $30 more on groceries each week. Gas prices are up nearly 50 percent. Remember the ads for the $6 burger that used to be $3.99? You used to see it on TV. Well, they are actually going to be $6 pretty soon the way things are going. Democrats claim that they are working for the American people. Their policies are, in fact, hitting middle-class families hard. The American people are noticing. It is no coincidence that inflation has increased every month during the Biden administration. They need to understand that all the money they keep spending directly and negatively impacts real Americans.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, the Communist Party is afraid. They are seeing their ideas collapse. They are seeing that people will no longer wait for the countless empty promises of the Castro years to be fulfilled. This is why we are seeing thousands of unarmed protesters being arrested, beaten, and killed all across the island of Cuba. If the Communist Party of Cuba had their way, if they were successful in blocking the communications of their people as they intended to do with their power outages and censorship, then we wouldn't even be able to see these abuses. Cuba's Communist Government has had 62 years to prove that it could provide health, housing, education, work, food, and security to its people. Instead, we see buildings collapsing on the heads of Cuban citizens. We see that the government provided food full of gravel. We see security forces firing live rounds into crowds that are not allowed to be armed. The White House needs to act soon to help the Cuban people organize and communicate freely, and let the rest of the world know what is really happening only 90 miles from our border. Where is the United Nations? I call on President Biden to unblock and expand uncensored internet access. We have the technology to do it now and guarantee cellular service to their island. The embargo is not the problem. People need to be liberated. They are political prisoners. Provide independent and free press. Madam Speaker, which of these do the Cuban people not deserve?