Doug LaMalfa

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to see that this week we are taking up H.R. 678, the PHONE Act. This bipartisan piece of legislation is common sense and helps real people after natural disasters. This bill would place a moratorium on phone companies reassigning people's landline phone numbers when their house is destroyed by a natural disaster, such as forest fires, which I am having so many of in my district. I have heard countless stories of people whose houses are burned down in wildfires that continue to get charged for their landline phone number, or their number is reassigned to a new customer. This bill would help alleviate some stress and give people one less thing they have to deal with. I am proud to cosponsor a bill that is stepping up and providing a solution to help out wildfire victims and other natural disaster victims. The goal of recovery is to bring back a sense of normalcy, and helping people maintain their phone number is a good step.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I want to speak with the body here about the situation in the West with wildfire and drought. As so many of you know from the news, there is wildfire breaking out all over in the western States. My home State of California has several going on right now. I represent the very north part of the State, the First Congressional District, and we have fires routinely reaching now the five-digit mark, including the newest one known as the Dixie fire; it is over 30,000 acres. My understanding is, there are 11,000 new acres just last night burning up in the area of Feather River Canyon. But this is not, unfortunately, news this time of year in the West. Anything west of the Rocky Mountains pretty much seems to be on the line. What is going on is that for many years we in this country value the Smokey the Bear principle of putting out fires when they occur in the forest. And I think we still do value that. But what we haven't done on the back side of that is to manage our forest lands. And so what we have seen in the decades since, a good-minded policy, a good-intended policy, is that the forests have built up so much fuel. So much damage gets done from all this fuel being built up from fire season. It kind of creates its own drought situation inside the forest there when you have more inventory per acre than what the forest can sustain, especially during a drought period. And so in the West, in California, it is known you are going to have drought years, you're going to have wet years. And it kind of goes with the program there. So I am disturbed that we can't advance the ball more on really the type of forest management we need to be doing. We can sustain X amount of trees per acre, and this is depending on tree type, tree age, particular landscape, the particular weather pattern in a micro area, but if we are not doing that then we are going to see this year after year. So the U.S. Forest Service has kind of transitioned from--not that many years ago--about one-third of their budget would go for fire suppression and two-thirds for the good green work we call it, green harvest, permits, maintenance of forest roads and all the other things you do in the off season in order to make the asset protected from fire and also usable to the people, Because this is indeed the people's asset. And they are getting less and less access to it because of fire, but also just flat being closed down because of other environmental concerns that have been brought up. That is a key part of the argument here is that we have had hundreds of thousands of acres burned. I will just stick with California for a moment here. And simple projects after the fact when we are talking salvage, salvage timber that needs to be removed after a fire, if you do that within a reasonably soon amount of time after a fire then you can still get value out of that timber. If you do it soon. No more than a year would be ideal. But what happens is that when Forest Service goes to try and contract or do some of the work post fire to remove trees that will be dead or are already dead but still have a salvage value, you can make a timber product out of that, they get sued. The environmental groups come in and sue them saying, oh, we think you are going to take away habitat for the black-backed woodpecker or something like that. And indeed, what has already happened is the environment has already been ruined for quite a few years where the spotted owl might have been, where other owls might have been, or other wildlife had been. You should see some of the horrific pictures of how the wildlife is affected in a fire like this. And these are not just a slow-moving fire, but these conflagrations that we have these days that move from treetop to treetop across the whole landscape. And one of the saddest stories you will see is a rancher just right in my home county of Butte on the east side who wrote the story about how their family had been there for at least five generations and long- time ranchers there, and a fire whipped through there and took out so many of their livestock, but also the legacy, the land that they love has been ruined by fire in eastern Butte County, California, last year. So what are we going to do? Are we going to continue to watch this go on year after year after year? I have run legislation to try and make it just a little bit simpler to do basic, I think, commonsense idea of trimming around power lines, moving hazardous trees and foliage away from power lines. But that means you are going to have to cut some trees. That means you are going to have to do some trimming. You are going to have to do some actual work. The environmental groups even sue over that. I am hearing reports that one of the latest fires might have been where a hazardous tree fell into a power line. Why can't we create a zone around all power lines? The lines are already there--it is not like we are putting in new ones--to make it where there is enough distance around power lines so that if a tree does fall, it doesn't fall into them, and you get two bad things: a fire and blackouts. So we will continue in Congress here to try and legislate that way. And I want to convince my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that this is very important, because we are losing millions of acres every year to wildfire, losing millions of acres of habitat for wildlife, millions of acres of wood products. As you see with wood products, spiraling--through the roof. It has added $30,000 to $40,000 easily to the cost of a new home because of the high cost of wood products. Anybody that has been to any of the vendors to buy a piece of plywood or two-by-four, it affects everybody. It isn't just those building homes. I mean think about the folks that need--for other disasters, our friends that have to suffer hurricanes down there. Where do they get the plywood to be able to board up for that? We have to produce these products. We have to produce them domestically. We can't import everything in this country. In my real life, I am a farmer. And we can't continue to have the situation where we are going to rely on imported food or somehow replace our wood products. For some reason, the United States is the number two importer of wood of all countries. Why are we importing wood when we have so much of an overload and over-inventory in our western States? So we should be employing our people and getting that material out. Now, people are going to be fearful that, Oh, you are talking about clear-cutting. No, it isn't clear-cutting. That is the first thing they want to ask you when you have a press conference or something about it: ``So you want to clear-cut everything.'' No. We do this in zones. We do this with thinning. You do areas where you might do a 30-acre spot but then you plant it back, especially on private land. And you can tell what the private land is versus the Federal land that is basically almost not managed by flying over it after a fire or especially 5 years after a fire when you can see the checkerboard pattern you find so frequently of land ownership in forested areas. The private lands have already reclaimed. They have already salvaged. They have already started planting back. You can see the green; you can see order coming back to those forests there. In the Federal land, you can still see the same snags. The same ghost trees--they call them--are there, left behind to--who knows when they will ever get around to it. And what does that mean? It propagates the next fire, the next time lightning strikes, or the next flame blows through, or the next time there might be some kind of an accident. So I really, really want to get the attention of my colleagues here in Congress, those that regulate the forest, those in the U.S. Forest Service, and those of the American people, their attention to what is going on, because this is not sustainable. It is not good. It is not good for anything I have talked about with wildlife, the asset the American people own in these Federal lands. And we must do something to address some things that might be inconvenient: cutting some trees--not all of the trees--you might have control burns during the correct time of the year to get rid of some of the slash. But on the positive side, why aren't we using this biomass, taking this wooded material out here that doesn't turn into a two-by- four or baseball bat, or what have you, and turning that into something useful that we can use to generate electricity. Heaven knows, we don't have an oversupply of electricity generated in California. We even saw Texas was a problem last winter. So we are going to need to develop these sources, and that means jobs in these rural communities, jobs cleaning up the forests, any dependable 24/7 electricity supply because you could control the fuel. Solar, you don't control the fuel. You have to have a sunny day without clouds or have it not be nighttime. The wind machines, you can't control them either. 24/7 fuel sources, whether it is hydro, whether it is new, whether it is natural gas, or biomass using these wooded products, we need to use for something positive anyway, we need to put them to work so we have a stable grid. Heaven knows, with all the new demands that are being made by environmental-minded people on more electric cars, getting rid of gas stoves, getting rid of gas water heaters--all for electricity. Where is all this electricity going to come from? We can be generating it with things that come from our forests with these byproducts, so we need to be putting them to work. So I just implore everybody that has a role in making a decision around here, in Congress, with our Federal agencies, environmental groups, could you please back off a little bit and let some of this good work happen. And the American people, listen to what we are talking about and encourage those folks that may be timid or not inclined to want to do the type of forest management, encourage your Member of Congress this has got to be done, because this air quality affects all the west. Last year, some of it even blew back all the way to the East Coast from fires that were happening in California and the West. So we can do a heck of a lot better. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the time here tonight. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Comer), my good colleague. In Recognition of John ``Bam'' Carney

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Comer for his tribute to the good people of Kentucky and the service you do there. They are served well by him and the work he does here in Washington, D.C. Madam Speaker, I would like to resume for a few moments to what I was mentioning beforehand on forestry and the effects on our natural resources. Year after year, as I was mentioning, there are tens and hundreds of thousands, even millions, of acres of wildfire affecting our habitat and air quality. What I didn't get to touch on was water quality as well. You will find, when you burn these mountainsides, you burn those slopes, and indeed, with so much inventory on hand there of trees per acre and brush and other dead vegetative materials, when this all burns, it burns catastrophically. In a lot of cases, you get a moonscape that is left behind. With that, there is a great amount of ash and other material that, because it is on a mountainside and hillside, it eventually is picked up by the next rainfall and/or snowpack and washes down the whole watershed into our brooks, creeks, streams, rivers, and, eventually, the lakes that we have. This also creates a toxic environment, when you have that much ash material going down and almost actually plugging the lakes, for example. I talked to folks in the hydroelectric business there. With all that ash and soil erosion--really, the soil erosion is a big, big part of that, too--they have to go in and clear the bottom of the lakes in some cases to keep their hydro projects running. Otherwise, you have less and less electricity being generated and the cost of all that to the taxpayers and to those water rights holders, et cetera. When we talk about wildfire in the West, it isn't just, yes, we lost a few trees and some deer got burned, some mountain lions and bear, and all that, which is all really important, but there is a lot more than meets the eye with all this. If we talk about the electricity grid for a moment, if the hydroelectric plants can't operate--and we are already stretched the way we are for electricity in the country and in the West because the shift has been pushed, with so much emphasis on doing it all with solar or wind power because we want to fulfill these renewable ideals. They are fine. They are fine in their own segment, what have you, but they are not fulfilling that big of a percentage of our grid yet. We are still reliant upon a big part of our grid coming even as legacy from coal, natural gas, hydro, and nuclear. We are not just going to replace that overnight, and we are not going to do it, certainly, cost-effectively with these expensive forms of electricity. Everything still needs to remain on the table. It is very important that we are domestically in charge of our electricity generation, our energy, and our energy policy not relying on imported. The wildfire effects do have a wide ripple across a lot of our lives. It gets back to: Are we going to manage our forests, or are we going to watch them burn? Manage it means jobs for us. It means wood products that are grown domestically, paper products. Heaven knows, we use plenty of paper around here. Why not have that product come from something that is going to employ somebody and help make our forest a better place? For the power grid, we always seem to be on the edge, in the hot summer, of having to shut off. Indeed, they call it Flex Alert in California, where they are asking people to shut down the usage of electricity. They already contract ahead of time with large manufacturers like the cement manufacturers and others to say that we might need you--they are contracted ahead of time to shut down at a phone call, basically, saying: We are going to have to shut you off for the rest of the afternoon. Stop that production and stop that work because the rest of our power grid is going to be in trouble if we don't get these voluntary, precontracted sign-ups shut down. They are asking regular households to do that. I saw an alert the other day--it is almost hysterical--asking people to not charge their electric cars between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. This is at the same time we are getting the bum's rush to say: Hey, convert to electric cars. California has a mandate to eliminate new combustion engine cars by, I think, 2035. Just make it up out of nowhere, no more of those cars. Are we going to have a power grid that can do that? And then, do people want to buy these cars? Is it more than just idealists who want to purchase these vehicles or more who want to just drive in the special high-occupancy vehicle lane that has a sticker on it in California so you can use your car there? Is this what vehicle choice looks like for folks? I am not against them, but I don't like having things crammed down people's throats like that either. So, what are we going to do? Our forests, our energy grid, all of these things work together. I was talking about the fires that break out because the trees and other foliage can come in contact with power lines, or a downed power line might light up a forest as well. We have to be wise about how we are managing these things. Forestry is required that takes that into account. Our power lines, we still need to deliver the power from where it is generated. We have so much hydroelectric power up in my area, yet they want to remove dams. They want to remove the dams that are making this clean, 100 percent renewable power up in the Klamath Basin, where farmers this year are getting zero percent of their allocation of water--zero. How do you do that to a group of people, just taking that away? Especially in the Klamath Basin, these farmers own the water rights for that Klamath Project that was built by the Federal Government, and Oregon, of course, has upheld that water right. Yet, the Federal Government muscles the water away anyhow, just muscles it away because it thinks it can. Agriculture in California has taken devastating hits on water supply this year. Some districts are as low as 5 percent, and even others getting zero. Others are getting smaller cuts but still getting cut. In our State, we have many crops that we grow over 90 percent of what the United States uses. In my area, there are a lot of olives grown, table olives and olive oil. Imagine not being able to get that commodity and having to rely on imports totally for that because we don't have a heads-up plan in this country that accounts for what we produce and should be producing. Our wood products need to come from the U.S. Our ag products need to come from the U.S. Our energy, so we can be self-sufficient, needs to come from the U.S. We need to store more water in the Western States so we can produce these things, so we can produce hydroelectric power, so we can produce these ag products. We have environmental groups pushing to tear dams out that are already in place, stretching our power grid, stretching the food that comes to your table. Just look them up. How many crops come from California that you rely on nationally that you wouldn't get if they weren't grown there, or we can turn to other countries to import from? There was kind of a popular saying or a bumper sticker amongst agriculture some years ago: If you like imported oil, you will love imported food. At what point are we going to wake up to this? Environmental groups are doing a lot of winning on this. Yet, at the end of the day, what they are pushing for doesn't actually do much to help the species they claim to be saving. The delta smelt, which is part of the delta just east of the bay area in northern California, since 1992, I think they have been usurping and taking away more and more water from agriculture, from human use, to run through the delta to try to keep the salinity level low, with the theory that will help the delta smelt. The population has continually decreased since that time to where, when they are out there doing surveys--they call them trawls. The last several surveys, they haven't found any. They are not finding the species. Yet, hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water and more are just being flushed through the delta because they still have the biological opinions put out by somebody in government and somebody willing to sue to stop the ability of that water to be used properly, for people use or even a purpose that would be helpful for the economy. Why does it have to be this way? There is a page on Facebook that I would invite everybody to look at and to watch if you are interested at all in where your food comes from and why our resources in California and the West are being managed the way they are but especially with the intent being on our water supply in California. California water supply isn't just important to California. It is important to the whole country for these fresh fruit and vegetable products, the nut crops, and other things that are produced there that are not produced anywhere in this country otherwise or in very, very tiny percentages elsewhere. All of your almonds pretty much come from California. Yet, there is all this rhetoric out there, like the almonds are using all the water, that we are exporting all the water. No, the water doesn't actually leave the State. Each almond nut doesn't have that much water in it. It goes back into recharging the groundwater. It goes back into keeping the local economy growing those trees that replace CO2 with oxygen. Madam Speaker, I would like for you to check out this page on Facebook. It is called the California Water for Food and People Movement. A young lady named Kristi Diener on there puts out excellent information all the time on all the different aspects of California water and why that is important to everybody. We have the possibility of adding more water supply to our States. We could raise the Shasta Dam located in Shasta County near Redding, California, far up north. You could raise it 18 feet and augment it by about 630,000 acre-feet of additional water supply when you fill the lake. Also, another one called Sites Reservoir in the western part of the Sacramento Valley, it is about 70 to 80 miles south of the Shasta Dam. That would mean up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water that could be stored there when you fill that project. Those chunks of water would go a long way toward helping to keep the crops growing, as well as people's needs and cities. It is my view, as low as the lakes are getting right now, Lake Shasta, Lake Oroville, Lake Folsom, San Luis Reservoir, where water is transferred to after having been pumped through the delta--except they can't because the State pumps and the Federal pumps are hardly running because they think they are helping the delta smelt. If these reservoirs are all full, we can go up to 5 years if we are not wasting the water on biological things that don't make sense. We need to do a lot more to augment our water supply so we can keep growing the crops and have an economy of domestically grown products that are high quality and that people enjoy. And they won't know they are missing it until you can't get it. For seeing good information, on this Facebook page, the California Water for Food and People Movement, check into that because it is at least a counterargument to what you hear all the time in the press and in the news about what farmers are doing or how water storage is bad and how dams are bad. Dams, you get several good things by their existence. You get stored water for people in ag, as well as water that would not exist in summertime or in the fall that you could help with fish flows. Imagine that? You get hydroelectric generation. You get prevention against floods because you can store this water during the wild rainy season and keep that. The Army Corps of Engineers runs those operations for flood control around the country. Imagine the flooding you would have in those regions that can have that high flow during extraordinary rain events. You get recreation. You get a lot of good things from storing water, and we used to do that. We used to think ahead to do that. Now, we think we are getting ahead by tearing out this infrastructure that people need and actually can be beneficial and is beneficial to nature as well. We have to start thinking soundly and logically about what we are doing. That is why I have spent so much time on the Agriculture Committee, the Natural Resources Committee, and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee talking about these issues. We have an opportunity with an infrastructure bill or two or three coming up here to do some real things in that. I think most people when they think of infrastructure are thinking of our highways, the basic transportation they use every day. They are thinking of things like levies, whether that is in my area of northern California or Louisiana or all around the country, that help prevent floods and keep water where we want it instead of where we don't want it, and water storage itself, the dams that make so much possible, as I mentioned, hydroelectric power, stored water, recreation, and flood control. It just makes sense. Why aren't we getting back to a sensible way of thinking about that? We are just letting the environmental groups and the press--they seem to want to cozy up to their argument and not get the counter side to this. Meanwhile, I have many constituents who aren't farming at all this year, not growing crops and doing that honest, good work that they have done for generations. These are good, hardworking people. Sometimes I wonder why they keep doing it because they don't seem to be appreciated for what they are doing. It is always a fight. They always have got to be heading into town to defend something, defend their water supply, defend their land uses, or defend against some more regulations thought up by somebody in Sacramento or in Washington, D.C., who really doesn't understand or seem to care about why they do what they do. It makes this hard sometimes because as a Representative I go back home, and I tell them: We are not having any really great answers coming out of Washington, D.C., lately. Under the Biden administration they are talking about pushing to reinstall the WOTUS regulations, the Waters of the United States. There are those in the Federal Government and environmental movements who think that every drop of rainfall somehow belongs to the Federal Government or State government for them to regulate. Madam Speaker, you have people trying to collect rainwater off their roofs into rain barrels and getting in trouble for that sometimes. The water running off their driveway, they can't corral that water. They can't build a stock pond to keep water for their stock because somehow that is affecting the whole water table or the whole water system. That is how far they want to interpret things--Waters of the United States. I tell you what, Madam Speaker, not everything belongs to the government. We have operated agriculture in this country for 200 years and done pretty well for the most part, and we are always working to improve and have better, more efficient water usage, better fertilizers, developing herbicides and things that leave less of a footprint behind or zero footprint behind and still produce a safe crop. People really should be asking questions. Ask these questions of the Biden administration. Ask them of the EPA. Ask them in your home State, Madam Speaker, as you see this stuff going on. Where are we going to get our food supply? Where are we going to get our electricity supply? Where are we going to get our wood supply? Where are we getting our fuel from? Enjoy this $4 fuel--almost $5 as I saw on the way to the airport today in Sacramento. It doesn't have to be this way. We need pipelines, we need domestically produced energy, and we can do it ecologically soundly. This isn't new ground. This isn't the 1850s or the 1860s when they hydraulic mined old mountain sides and they killed all the buffalo and cut all the trees. We are way smarter than that. Yet, Madam Speaker, you would still think that from the way the media covers it and the way the environmentalists talk about it in their groups and their fundraising pushes that it is the 1860s all over again. It isn't. We are pretty wise about how we manage our resources for our farms. These are our families' legacies. Why would we not take care of them? Why would we not take care of the soil? We do. We can do it better than any of those folks with their wide- eyed ideas who come around saying: ``We could put your land into a long-term legacy that we help control,'' and pretty soon you are eating from their hand on how you manage your own farm, how you manage your own land, or maybe you decide to manage not to farm it for a while. You might be required to farm it anyway because it is now a habitat. Where did all this come from? Don't we trust rural people anymore to make good decisions? Don't we trust these people who work from sunup to sundown who provide for us from their heart and from their soul? Don't we trust them? Do we trust bureaucrats in D.C. or Sacramento or other State capitals? I don't. Not anymore. We have got to do better, and it is going to take the American public getting behind this, not just politicians here and not just ones locally because sometimes they are hesitant, and they are afraid to. We have to be bold. We have to be loud about this. And we have to speak up every 2 years at election time if they are not doing it because we are in big trouble right now. If California doesn't get above average rainfall next year, I don't know how much of agriculture is going to be in business. The lakes are getting to be at record low pretty soon. If California is not farming nearly to the percentage of what it does, it will affect everybody in this country. They will see it in prices, and they will see it in availability. Look at the store shelves already, how hard it is to keep certain things on the shelf when you go in and ask for it and it is not there, Madam Speaker. In restaurants if you ask for certain menu items, they are not even there. I went through a drive-through the other day, and half the items weren't available. What is going on in production? Yes, we know it has been a year of COVID, but production of basic hard items, car parts, any other manufactured item, nobody is going to work, or nobody can get the resources mined and shipped and made into an end product that people need. We have to wake up here. What is going on that the means of production we are either exporting it or we are shutting it down and we are putting the clamps on it? Heaven knows $6 trillion out of thin air spending last year because of the COVID mess, and yet trillions and trillions more are being proposed and sought to be spent upcoming on things that are not going to produce a rebounding, stronger economy but instead fulfill political goals. What are we doing? They are still pursuing high-speed rail in California--something the voters were told would cost $33 billion when it was voted on, I think in 2008, $33 billion the voters were told. That price now is over $120 billion. It is only partially done. It is going to stop in an orchard somewhere around Bakersfield and go to another town in the northern part of the valley there where it will be a full rail line. For a $120 billion price tag we could build three large dams and lakes, and California would not be worried about water supply once those were built and filled. Yet we chase these boondoggle things, either to fulfill campaign promises or some kind of idea of that something will be green and environmental. We are not going to have the resources we need the way we are going to fulfill the power grid for the amount of electricity that needs to be produced. We are not going to have it. We are going to wake up someday with electric cars that won't go and appliances that won't turn on because of shortsighted thinking. Do the math, Madam Speaker. We have got to do the math and hold accountable the people who are spreading this misinformation. If it just doesn't seem right or sensible to you, Madam Speaker, trust your little voice. Trust your instinct on that because when this stuff doesn't add up, you are probably right. It doesn't. I have seen it enough around here to know it doesn't add up long-term. I don't normally do this open mic business here, but I am watching my constituents being burned out of where they live. I am watching them being pushed out by an economy that doesn't support what they used to produce of things that people need and people used to need and still will need. I am watching normal, hardworking Americans feeling a little hopeless right now, and I don't feel great about it because there is not more I can do as one of 435 in this room to help fix it. But we get up every day, and we try and get this message out. That is why I use this microphone, because we can't let this fall on our watch. I ask the people to dig in, pay attention, and hold accountable those who are putting the noose around the neck of our rural economy and things that all Americans rely on. Help us out. We desperately need it. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, here we go again. The laughable attempt by senior White House officials to cast Republicans as those that want to defund the police is completely ridiculous. They put up this fig leaf concept because we didn't support an irresponsible, nearly $2 trillion spending package, which had a tiny portion of it--$350 million out of $2 trillion--possibly to be able to go for local government to decide its own use for police. That is what the whole premise is on. So somehow, Republicans are defunding the police. Well, I think that is the mantra we have seen come from the Democrats, some in this Chamber and many at the local government level. In New York, for example, one Member from this Chamber said: ``Defunding police means defunding police.'' New York City proceeded to cut $1 billion from the NYPD. In Minneapolis, another Member said that it is time to ``reimagine public safety in Minneapolis.'' They went on to cut over $6 million. But after seeing the error of their ways, they are now restoring the money. In Los Angeles, for example, there were calls for a cut of $100 million, and now they are restoring that. Amazing.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, radical environmentalists have weaponized the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, known as NEPA, and are using frivolous lawsuits to block nearly every management project or salvage sale after fire that the U.S. Forest Service proposes. This has helped result in over 68 million acres of forest land burned in the last decade and over 10 million acres just in 2020 alone. I am pleased to see President Biden today is speaking about how to address wildfires. One important component I hope he will look into and help rectify is we desperately need to rectify the litigation and the amount of stoppage of forest management that is the result of environmental groups. These groups have worked very hard to advance the false scenario that climate change is somehow responsible for the increasing vulnerability of forests. This is flatout false. The truth is that the decline of responsible timber harvesting and the lack of active management are undeniably the real culprits. In California, most forest types historically had, in the past, about 64 trees per acre. They now sit at an average of over 300 trees per acre. Indeed, too much inventory. We need to get back to basics and manage our forests and help prevent this fire problem.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I do have to clear up one point made earlier. The sales of gas Mustangs are double that of the so-called four-door electric Mustang in the month of May, and the gas Mustang is triple that of the electric Mustang for the year. As a Mustang driver, I had to get that out. So when we had the Biden administration announcing an over $2 trillion spending package, but we only end up with 6 percent in expenditures for roads and bridges, it is a bait and switch. Indeed, it seems like the Democrats are trying to take this miniscule investment in infrastructure and challenge themselves to waste it on something else in Green New Deal programs. It is already a big enough challenge to get money and keep money in infrastructure these days and keep it from being siphoned off. This bill does nothing to reform or fix the 30 percent of overhead costs that go towards frivolous regulation, et cetera. That means they are planning to waste right off the top $160 billion of their own proposal. In California, with the high-speed rail boondoggle, they are setting aside $25 billion for a program that originally was going to cost $33 billion, according to how it was sold to the voters. So this needs to be stopped and put into programs that people can actually use like their road system.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, after the 5-month deployment of the National Guard around our U.S. Capitol, after the fact of the January 6 break-in, the bill has come due now of over half a billion dollars-- $521 million--for the thousands of troops to guard this Capitol. This was, again, after the big break-in of January 6. Of course, had the decisionmakers on hand here at the Capitol with their security intel used ahead of time decided to employ just a handful of those troops, we wouldn't have had the January 6 situation happen. But they did not want the bad optics of armed troops standing in front here at that time. So, instead, we got 5 months' worth of it with two rows of fence, razor wire, and the inability for the people to come visit their Capitol. So now we have months of those optics and a half-a-billion- dollar bill instead. Mr. Speaker, if that bill doesn't get paid, now our National Guard will not be able to do their training and have their other readiness needs met because Congress hasn't paid the bill for what they did not want ahead of time--bad optics. Instead, the taxpayers get the bad optics of that bill and a possibly decimated National Guard.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, recently, the National Archives released a report in which they concluded a structural nature of racism permeates all aspects of work and workplace culture at the National Archives. Unbelievable. Among other things, they claim that the rotunda where our founding documents--the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights--are housed are displayed as an example of structural racism. Also, they called out the praise of our Founders that constructed those documents as being somehow triggering of people. The report recommends that we reimagine--a buzzword, these days--the rotunda at the National Archives, including staging dance and performance art in the space that invites dialogue about the ways the United States has mythologized the Founding era. So rather than celebrating our independence, like we will in a few days, we will be focused on the U.S. failures or flaws. It seems we have enough bashing of our country, our flag, even our National Anthem, as we saw at a track and field event of a would-be Olympian who turned away from our anthem. The report also calls for putting in place trigger warnings for those who would view and see the display there. We are losing our minds, folks. These are our founding documents.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, China, led by the Chinese Communist Party, has inflicted more damage and suffering on the world and even its own people than is even calculable. Accountability for its action, or timely inactions, on the Wuhan virus is necessary. Transparency in how research labs conduct business is essential in holding those responsible that allowed the leak of extremely dangerous byproducts that have cost multitudes of lives and inflicted many trillions in economic harm upon the world. The U.S. must zero out its dependence on China for so much of what we use and need in everyday life. We must produce our own pharmaceutical products, our own rare-earth products from our own mines, our own manufacturing. We must prohibit the gain-of-function research that likely led to the Wuhan virus being unleashed on the world. Overhaul the World Health Organization and our relationship with it. Prohibit National Institutes of Health funding to those who don't have the United States and American peoples' best interests and wellness at heart. Reimpose visa sanctions on China. And, certainly, why give China a legitimate stage to the world via the Olympics? The Olympics rightly should be rebid and moved in time for 2022 to countries that respect and revere human rights and right to basic freedoms from oppression. Otherwise, we give it all a green light and a tacit stamp of approval.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, environmental protection of species revolves around the use of indicator species. But what has been lost in recent years is the impact also on humans and their needs. The indicator, for example, for farmers in California is very grave in the great Central Valley and up at the Klamath Basin. Up on the Klamath, you have one environmental management plan that says more water is needed for salmon, for example, under a biological opinion, and another management plan that says more water is needed to be stored in the lake for suckerfish. You can't do both at the same time, and the result is the salmon are not more plentiful and the suckerfish are not recovering as a species. But the rural areas in Klamath and Siskiyou Counties are being cut off from their main economic driver. The farms up there are suffering badly because of water that has been taken by the Federal Government that does not belong to the Federal Government. The stored water in that lake was created for agriculture solely, and yet it is being used as more or less a slush fund for Federal agencies that want to take this water and somehow try and make a difference in the river. This has got to come to a stop, because we need agriculture in California.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, access to our public lands is being cut off by road closures throughout the national forests in Region 5. The U.S. Forest Service is citing public safety concerns due to hazardous trees from past fire seasons. But this blocks the public from accessing the public lands, and it also prevents those roads being used as evacuation routes or access points to fight fires in coming seasons. One road that has been closed, the Greyback Road in the Rogue River- Siskiyou National Forest in northern California, is a California Office of Emergency Services designated evacuation route for the town of Happy Camp, California. If Highway 96 is blocked, this is the only other way out of Happy Camp. Litigation is preventing the U.S. Forest Service from working with private-sector partners to clean up the forests. For example, in the Mendocino National Forest, 300,000 acres burned in 2018. The Forest Service wanted to do 4,700 acres, a tiny 2 percent of that, yet it was blocked by a lawsuit from doing that cleanup work. Without offering the salvage timber sale, that means it is going to cost taxpayers $5.5 million instead of being able to recover some of the money. This litigation harms the public by leaving hazardous trees and snags out in the forest, which create safety issues and become fuel for the next fire season. We must reform NEPA and ESA.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, we talk a lot about infrastructure around here. The American people wonder what is that actually going to mean coming out here. Well, it really needs to be focused on things that we are short of, but would be fixing our highways, fixing our bridges, things like that. In California, where I come from, the subject is water. Water storage is desperately needed. We have had some years of drought, but we also have not added to our water storage in a significant way in 40 years. With a growing population, there is a growing need. For example, what does that mean to all Americans, not just Californians? The food we eat. The top crops in California that are grown approximately 99 percent or more in California are almonds, artichokes, celery, figs, garlic, raisins, kiwis, honeydew, nectarines, olives, cling peaches, pistachios, plums, sweet rice, and walnuts. If California is not growing those items, where do we intend to get those? For almonds especially, California grows all the domestic production Americans use and 77 percent of the global production. We also produce 92 percent of the Nation's avocados, grapes, lemons, and mandarins. No avocados? No guacamole. What are we going to do, import all this? We have to be producing this stuff in the State of California. What does that mean? We need to invest in water infrastructure. We can be raising Shasta Dam, which is a Federal project. Eighteen feet yields over 600,000 new acre-feet for these crops. We could be building Sites Reservoir. Both of these have been invested in slightly by the Federal Government lately. We need to do much more because we are the leading State in so many of the important products that Americans actually use. So, we have to talk a lot more about water storage.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, in June of last year, the city of Portland, Oregon, cut $16 million from their police budget, and shut down a unit of the police which was designed to reduce violence in the city. As Republicans predicted--and a lot of others--this has not led to peaceful streets. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler has been forced to ask for more funding for police. This is not unique to Portland. Major cities across the U.S. have seen a spike in violent crime as they cut police budgets. Last year, New York City defunded their police department budget by about $1 billion, or 9.2 percent. The result? Murder is up 17 percent; shooting incidents are up 77 percent. In Los Angeles, homicides are now up 23 percent after a defunding. How much more evidence will the defund the police movement need before they admit they were wrong and innocent people are indeed being killed? On top of this, prosecutors in some areas are refusing to charge perpetrators and putting criminals back on our streets to continue their crimes. We must push back against these radicals who want to defund the police and stop this crime wave.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, in California, we are known for having a lot of marijuana grows. But we have to recognize this is still an illegal substance at the Federal level. We have, in my district--it is amazing--many hundreds of illegal hothouses that have been planted in Siskiyou County full of marijuana grows. Now, we haven't had many resources to help out up there until very recently, when a sheriff up there took it upon himself to eradicate these grows, to go against the county ordinances there, to go against other ordinances on water use, chemical use. They are using chemicals that are not even available to farmers that have long been made illegal in this country and in the State of California. These grows cause irreparable damage to the environment and wildlife and are even dangerous to people who happen to traipse in there accidentally, with folks who are so heavily armed. They are cartels from out of the country that are in there doing this operation--all illegally. Why do we allow this to go on? These marijuana grows are dangerous and are against the law. The Federal Government needs to be a stronger partner in backing the locals on eradicating these grows because of how much damage they do to the community, to the environment, to the wildlife, and to the overall feeling people have of their community up there. We need to help more.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from the State of Washington, a good friend and chairman of our Western Caucus. I appreciate the time and the effort to have this time of education here tonight on the House floor, and for those who would watch and want to actually learn what goes on. So where do we start on the Endangered Species Act? Passed in 1973, signed by Republican President Richard Nixon. Now, if you were to listen to the rhetoric any time Republicans want to talk about reforming the Endangered Species Act or doing things that make sense, I think, out in the woods or with water storage, with mining the critical minerals we are going to need for a lot of these idealistic views, we are going to have more and more use of electricity, you would think that we were going to be the plunderers of the land. Completely not the case. The things that are going on right now in the time of drought we have in the West, in my home State of California, and the ongoing problems we have with nonmanaged timber lands, U.S. forest lands, and the resulting effect that has on private lands with the bad neighbors of U.S. lands are typically to them. If we are in a time of drought, we need to up our game more so on forestry, forest management, thinning, and using these materials for the good of people. We had a toilet paper shortage months ago, as ridiculous as that sounds in a first-world country like the United States, yet we are burning millions of acres every year. You could trace a lot of this back to the misuse, the abuse of the Endangered Species Act to stop and block the type of work we need to be doing. We have had hundreds of thousands of acres of fire like over there on the Western Coast, north coast of California. They try to put in a project after a 400,000-acre burn to do a minimal amount, 7,000 acres of clean up, of restoration, of removing some of the dead trees and brush and other things that were left behind along roadways and somewhere around communities, et cetera. Environmental lawsuits come in and stop them from doing 7,000 acres, less than 2 percent out of the fire. So what is the solution to this? Just watch these ghost trees stay there, watch the brush grow up around all this and become the next tinderbox for the next fire in 5 or 7 years? That seems to be the solution by those on the far left that use the Endangered Species Act as a weapon to stop progress for people, as well as nature, as well as the environment. California is in the throes of drought right now big time. Our reservoirs are way down from just 2 years ago when they were all practically full, and 2 years before that topped off, too. You may recall Lake Oroville, the Oroville Dam had the spillway break apart in the early part of 2017, because the lake was actually flowing over the top of the emergency spillway. The dam is in fine shape. The spillway has been rebuilt. And we have stored a lot of water between then and now. So what has gone on? So much water has been released out to the Pacific Ocean and not used for people use, for agricultural use or even smart environmental use. The usage of the Endangered Species Act as a weapon has devastated so much of agriculture in California, which maybe people don't realize that 90 percent of certain types of crops, the vegetable crops that the United States people use come from California. Most of the almonds that you would use come from California. Where is this going to come from if California is out of business because of the misuse and abuse of the Endangered Species Act, because someone might decide the coho salmon up in the Klamath Basin is more valuable than the sucker fish in the Klamath Lake or the water foul that gets forgotten about in the basin right around there? Last year, we had a devastating kill on ducks and other wildlife in that Klamath Basin area because they couldn't get water through the agricultural system to where the refuges are for the ducks. So what species is it we are going to pick? The water in the Klamath project actually is assigned agriculture use. The Klamath project added additional water storage space to the existing Klamath Lake. Oregon courts have already ruled a couple times that additional water belongs to agriculture. It is not something for the Bureau of Reclamation and the Department of Interior to use in order to make their equations work out on the failed application to salmon in order to, in their idea, flush a virus out of the Klamath River. There is other evidence out there saying this is actually the opposite of what you should do. That the virus--the C. shasta virus is actually propagated by these additional flows. It is done year after year after year, and the virus keeps returning. Maybe you need to let that stuff dry out. Also, the sucker fish that they are trying to protect in the lake, the bottom feeding fish, too much water in the lake studies show by the NAS--National Academy of Sciences--that too much water in that lake makes them more vulnerable to predators and doesn't help the sucker fish, which is good at living in a shallow amount of water. So we are going in opposite directions. Agriculture is devastated in the Klamath Basin. You are probably not going to see the potatoes that In-N-Out Burger uses, horseradish, mint, other products, as well as a lot of hay crops. They are not going to happen this year, except for whatever water they can get from wells up there; not going happen. So when you see these things not on your store shelf anymore, you will know that there is something going on, or when you see them highly overpriced because we have to get them from some foreign country. You are going to see the root causes because the California water supply has been frittered away for other things besides useful purposes. And this isn't in defiance of the ESA or helping species, but the right science isn't being used. When you have one-term paper written being used as gospel on the Klamath River as setting policy versus a lot of other evidence--they want to remove the hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River. Now, when we are talking about drought in California, when we already have lakes and reservoirs that are low, we have--Lake Oroville is going to be at dead pool probably about mid-August. Now, what is the temperature in mid-August? Not quite near what my colleague in Arizona was speaking about, but it is hot. So when we have this water supply run out, unable to produce the hydroelectric power that we normally could because we could store it, then we are going to have more power shortages, not just because of power shutoffs. Because when the wind blows in California, now we have to shut off the power because trees and things might blow branches into the power lines and cause another devastating fire, like what is known as the Camp Fire that devastated the town of Paradise, also in my district. Where is the common sense with this? Where is the common sense of applying if we have drought conditions or, as the left likes to talk about every other speech in this Chamber, climate change, the religion of climate change? Okay. If the blankety-blank climate is changing, why aren't we storing more water since we, as people, are smart enough to know we will need a water supply? Why aren't we doing more to cause electricity be generated at that water storage site? Why aren't we doing more to trim and manage our forests that are overcrowded? Way too many trees per acre when they have been managed that way for 100 years. Instead, we go on and on, and somebody comes up with a lawsuit to prevent us from managing forests that way, prevent us from storing additional water. Not to mention when we talk about all cars have to become electric by 2035. I know a lot of people who aren't interested in buying electric cars. What happened to the choice people have of vehicles, the size and the style they seek to have? Yet we are hell-bent on electrifying everything. In the bay area, they want to ban gas stoves and gas appliances in people's homes because of some idealistic view of the environment and somehow tying that back to the misuse of the Endangered Species Act. All this ties together. The Endangered Species Act has been a great tool to shut down the things we need to do, whether it is the expansion of a highway, water storage. Shasta Dam right now in my district could be raised 18 feet and add right away 640,000 acre-feet of water on those full years. 640,000 acre-feet would be enough for 1.2 million homes or 200,000 acres of crops that people watching this right now like to have for their fresh fruits, for their salads, for their vegetables, whatever it would be. And this is all going to be gone. Do you like imported oil? Did you love the oil shortages back in the seventies? Do you like this $4 or $5 or $6 gas and diesel we are having right now? Then you are going to love imported food. And the Endangered Species Act has been used as a weapon to stop people from farming, from timbering, from mining, basic things that we need in order to have our electronics, to have copper for our wiring, any of those things. It has been such a weapon since 1973, when it was passed with good intentions. And I still think we need to have it. It saved the bald eagle. It saved a lot of things. But also, its record overall, looking at savings of endangered species, is a pretty low number. Why? Because of ridiculous regulations and ridiculous biological opinions that don't even connect the dots of how this is going to help the salmon in the Klamath River or farther up in Washington where they want to rip some of those dams out, too, and take away that hydroelectric power. Where are we going to get the stored water? Where are we going to get the hydroelectric power? You want to completely rely on what is a narrow part of the grid, solar power or wind power? You can't even rely on those, not for a major part of the grid. We need to have 24-7 electricity you can count on with either biomass, wood products stacked on the deck, the waste wood that should come from the forestry that we should be doing but aren't doing nearly fast enough, or natural gas plants. We have so much gas in this country now because of hydraulic fracturing, but that is vilified, too. Pipelines bringing energy where it is needed is vilified, too, because they are using an endangered species somewhere as a tool to stop these developments. Americans, enjoy these high prices you are getting right now. Enjoy these shortages of electricity, of fuel, the higher cost of food, the shortage of certain food items, because the usage of the Endangered Species Act--and the usage of other environmental laws that have been abused--that has been completely taken out of context from the original intent like Congress passed back in 1973 or layered upon in recent years. We have to reform this process. It is not because Republicans want to plunder the planet. That is so tiresome. Any time we talk about forest management, oh, you are going to clear cut everything--I'm from northern California--from here to Oregon, or somewhere else. That is not it at all. Talk to any smart timber operation, and they have 80- to 100-year plans for the private lands that they manage. If you could fly over and look at how these timberlands are managed, you can tell there is generally a checkerboard of private land versus Federal land. You can see the different squares as they are managed either before a fire, ongoing, or after a fire. Just fly over one 3 years after a fire and see who has actually been out there cleaning up their lands and trying to restore things versus unmanaged Federal land, which is still the big mess it was right after the fire. You will see the way the government is doing it, the way the left is foisting these ridiculous rules and laws upon us and not allowing us to do reasonable reform to bring just a little bit of balance back into what was passed 50 years ago into what we have to deal with. At this time, when we are watching things go way off-kilter here under this administration, I just remind those watching to look at the root cause. It all ties together, the Endangered Species Act, other environmental laws, other lawsuits, when you can't even turn around to do a simple thing without somebody coming after you, suing you over it. Look around your own home. Try to build a deck on your own home and someone is going to try to environmentally slow you down on that these days. Farmers are getting fined for building a pond on their land in the Western States in order to retain a little more water for their cattle. When you see the high prices of these things all happening, look at the root cause. Enjoy these high prices of fuel and electricity and the shortage there, and know it is not because of our policies here but because of the policies of misuse and abuse of endangered species laws, of environmental laws, and all the lawsuits that go along with them.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, today we celebrate the adoption of the stars and stripes as the official flag of our Nation. In 1777, six years before the end of the Revolutionary War, is when it was adopted by Congress. Over the past year, however, we have seen a constant stream of disrespect for our stars and stripes. We expect the flag to perhaps be beaten and burned on the streets of Beijing or in the Middle East or other cities of our global adversaries, but we do not expect that to happen within the United States. This past year, we have all fought against the raising of political flags in military bases and atop our embassies and consulates. Our flag is the only flag that belongs above those buildings. Our flag is a symbol of hope and unity. I hope today, of all days, we can remember who fought to raise the flag and why.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, this chart by the Republican Study Committee shows the difference not just a year makes but what an attitude to governing makes toward making a living and managing families' needs, even enjoying what you have earned and how you see fit to spend it. Energy independence: Stopping production and oil and gas infrastructure in the U.S. gives higher prices, which are eclipsing $4 now even in my home State of California. Lumber: Though our California and Western forests burn millions of acres each year, somehow we have a lack of harvest and lumber shortages, thanks to strange environmental thinking prohibiting the forest harvest and management we need to prevent fires and keep the lumberyards full. I know it is not the logger or the log truck driver making the killing here in the quadruple pricing per board-foot. Home costs: They ride right up there with lumber as well, and all the other inputs, up 20 percent. Coffee: Up 50 percent. Coffee has to come from somewhere. Wheat: Up big. Bread and cereal won't be any cheaper. Will the farmer see this windfall? Not likely. Corn: The same thing. Will the farmer do any better with the much higher cost of corn? No. Copper: Used in so many of our mechanical and electrical devices, it is going up, making it harder to wire our homes. The bottom line is: Everything you need is much more expensive, thanks to Biden policy.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with great concern over the Biden administration's foreign policy. The world has watched with growing concern as Hamas rockets have pummeled the Israeli people, forcing Israel to take retaliatory steps to protect its own citizens. This escalation occurs as the Biden administration has pivoted away from anything useful in the Middle East, neglecting Israel, which is one of our strongest allies. Just recently, we have learned that over $15 million in foreign aid from this year's phony Democrat coronavirus package went to the Palestinians, who take their orders from the terrorist group Hamas, which is a proxy state for Iran, who wishes the total eradication of Israel. What message does this send to our allies, sending money to both sides? Similarly, President Biden is looking to restart the Obama-Biden Iran nuclear deal that President Trump smartly left. That naive accord had broad bipartisan opposition, including from now-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and was strongly opposed by Israel. It is astounding that President Biden would take the word of the Iranian Government, whose leaders call us their sworn enemy, and spurn our strongest ally in the region, Israel. We have got to do better.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I want to speak a little while today on the issue going on with the Klamath Basin, which straddles Northern California and Southern Oregon, and the water supply that has been a long-time issue and dispute up there for many purposes, agriculture, hydroelectric power, and endangered fish species, and how these are going to be shared, adjudicated, et cetera. Currently, the battle in the basin there is how waters can be delivered to agriculture. Last year, in 2020, the situation was very dire where, initially, 140,000 acre-feet was promised to the growers up there. And then they went ahead and started their planning process. They had their crops in the field based on that number. The Bureau of Reclamation decided they were going to pull that back and not deliver that water. We were able to work with the Department of the Interior and restore that water so that the crops that are already in the field planted would not die, that massive investment and massive loss to the farmers and to the community would not happen. This year, we have a similar path. In March, the Bureau estimated they would deliver 130,000 acre-feet of water, 10,000 acre-feet less than last year. This of a water right that belongs in the basin of 390,000 acre-feet when fully delivered. And that is where we need to really discuss this today, is that we are talking about the elevation of the lake here. We have, at the full mark, 4,143.3 elevation is a maximum lake. The project goes as low as 4,136 right down here. So that represents a heck of a lot of water. The farmer's share of this, the 561 is the 390,000 I had mentioned. Currently, the lake sits at 4,140.4 feet of elevation, so that represents availability of 307,000 acre-feet of water supply. Now, the species of fish that we are talking about here are the longnose sucker fish that is in the lake. It lives in the lower part, the brown area of the lake there. And that is where it is best-suited. It is a bottom-feeding fish. So the problem is that the Bureau of Reclamation, taking the cue from U.S. Fish and Wildlife, has decided that the water that belongs to the farmers has been adjudicated over time. The Oregon courts have held that these water rights do belong to agriculture. This is after NEPA and the ESA went into effect in the Endangered Species Act Oregon Water Resources Department began the process of detailing and adjudicating these rights. So in reviewing the water rights of all the users in the basin, they noted that the Bureau claimed the reserved water rights apply only to the primary purpose of that water right, which is determined by a 1978 case, U.S. vs. New Mexico. The Ninth Circuit determined in a 1983 case, the U.S. vs. Adair, that this land's reservation was for the purpose of agriculture. So as we apply that to the Klamath Irrigation area, the KID took the Bureau of Reclamation to court over its decisions to increase downstream flows to salmon, as well as the retention of water for the sucker fish. So they want to retain this portion here for the sucker fish even though this portion of water does not belong to the Bureau or Fish and Wildlife to use for that purpose. This project was created over 100 years ago for agriculture, to deliver water down this A Canal through a whole entire system there. This dam was completed, the Link River Dam, in 1921, to help regulate that source. So in the process of Klamath Irrigation District having taken them to court, the State ultimately agreed with KID that the Bureau has the right to store the water and administer the water in Upper Lake, but the Bureau of Reclamation does not have the permit, the license, the right to use the water themselves for salmon in the river or for the sucker fish that stay in the lake. Going further, Section 8 of the Reclamation Act clearly states that the Federal Government cannot interfere with the laws of States relating to the control or distribution of water used in irrigation. So in 1978, California vs. the U.S. certified that a State can impose requirements under distribution of water through a Federal reclamation project as long as they are consistent with clear Congressional directives as Congress set this back up over 100 years ago and ongoing. The Congress has made it clear multiple times that the Klamath Project was designed and established for irrigation. So if you want to concede just for a moment, playing along with Fish and Wildlife, that the current level at 4,140.4, and you take it down to 4,138, there is 173,000 acre-feet of water available for farmers right now that should not be taken, even if you concede the sucker fish total. So we have got giant problems in the basin.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I hereby remove my name as a cosponsor of H.R. 3287.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I appreciate us being able to team up on this dire situation up in our common area like that. Let me just touch on this part here. Going into the wildlife refuge aspect and the areas there in the basin that have sustained much wildlife and waterfowl over the years, this is 2020, when deliveries were already inadequate. Now, it might be hard to see on camera here, but this is a photo of part of the duck kill and the birds that were plucked out of the Tule Lake area here. You can see some of the dots here that indicate dead ducks. I volunteered one day to go out and help retrieve some of that, to get this problem out of the water there. They become infested with maggots, and they help spread disease and all that. So this is what this really looks like, the waterfowl that is being devastated up there in 2020, even when it had some water. There were 44,000 acre-feet delivered then. Sixty thousand waterfowl are estimated to have died in 2020. This year, if zero acre-feet are delivered, what is that number going to look like? What is that going to mean for the fly away? This is one duck we managed to rescue. They had an operation up there to take them back and pluck the live ones that were sick and take them to a nursery and spiff them up and release them once again. That was one small positive. Indeed, part of the bill package that Mr. Bentz and I will be working on, we will have funding for that. Let's get down to the bottom line here. What do we have that we could be doing this year? This chart indicates the Klamath Project water, what it brings to the table. This is stored water from the 4,143 mark here down to 4,136. This is what mankind can have influence over, and actually, it can be used for a lot of things. I think a lot more of this needs to go back into agriculture and be used for the wildlife refuges as well. Currently, the lake sits at 4,140. That is 307,000 acre-feet of available water, down to the level where you can't control it anymore. It becomes what they call dead pool. This is what the suckerfish need here in this zone. This is deemed by U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the additional 2 feet, 134,000 acre-feet, as the suckerfish number that they want to see. So if we look at this total number, we still have available, between the current level and the 4,138, 173,000 acre-feet in this lake that could go right now to help keep those canals going, whatever agriculture still could use at this late date in mid-May, and go into the refuges. And it still concedes the 2 feet of surface water, 134,000 acre-feet, to the suckerfish, which is above what is really their right as the Klamath Project is designed and intended and dedicated to agriculture when it was built over 100 years ago. So, we have 173,000 acre-feet above this arbitrary U.S. Fish and Wildlife number for suckerfish that we could use and put into play. Will that happen? It is hard telling. It is probably going to take yet more litigation up there to back up what the Oregon courts have already ruled does belong, under the Federal law, to the growers, to the project. Will we see water going down this A canal here, the initial canal coming out? I don't know. Do we see it coming through this river dam to get to these end needs? Who knows. Things have gone a different direction under this administration right now. It is tragic, tragic what is going to be happening to the wildlife I showed you, to agriculture, to the products that we still need. In the interim, Mr. Bentz mentioned that. We are going to be introducing legislation that has a total package of about $57 million: $40 million will help to fill in what is going to be lost to agriculture and irrigators there; $2.5 million for refuges, which will include the botulism assistance for the disease that is going to be out there for all the dead ducks that are going to happen; $2.5 million for residential wells, as some of them could be going dry if A canal and others are not recharging and replenishing the groundwater supply; $3 million for commercial fishermen; $4 million to repair the inevitable damage that is going to happen to these canals if they don't get wet like my wooden boat analogy; $5 million for food aid through USDA and the BIA, Bureau of Indian Affairs, for Tribes and Tribal governments and their food aid. Also, at this same time, the Bureau of Reclamation has an expansion and construction of a new headquarters in Klamath Falls that the growers get the bill for in order to get no water this year. We are setting aside, in this legislation, the concept that they need a new building up there to house who knows how many personnel that aren't doing the original goal of the project. Madam Speaker, $4.3 million is currently obligated. This needs to go back into the relief of what it is going to take to either run the district as it is and direct relief. Finally, the relief to the farmers themselves is not having to make the payments to the Bureau of Reclamation that they do every year to help pay the bills and keep things going because they are not getting the water. I am proud to offer that legislation with Mr. Bentz and bring the relief they need. But wouldn't it be something to actually bring them the water that is going to be much more sustaining for the wildlife, for the infrastructure, for the domestic wells, for agriculture, since everybody watching this probably enjoys some of these food products, whether it is the french fries, the horseradish, the mint, the alfalfa that goes for feed for many of the beef products. There are amazing things that they do up there when you tour that area and talk to these good people who are just trying to do what they have done for generations, what they were promised by the Federal Government, especially our returning veterans after World War I and World War II who were given this promise, especially in lieu, in some cases, of their after-war bonus that they would receive. We need to uphold this promise and quit jerking the chain on the people of the Klamath Basin. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LaMALFA. Now, there is still much ground we need to cover here tonight, but I think I have set the table for what we are looking at and the devastation. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Bentz) for his presentation.

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to stand up here with my friend and colleague, Representative Cliff Bentz of Oregon, as we both go over in detail the dire situation currently happening in the Klamath Basin in the area bordering northern California and southern Oregon here, upper Klamath Lake. So this has been an ongoing problem over several decades, really. In March of this year, the Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees the water in the Klamath Project promised that the growers there in the basin would receive 130,000 acre feet of water. This on the heels of 2020 with a similar situation where the Bureau promised water to the growers in the amount of 140,000 acre feet. Now, this is of a total of a true water right of 390,000 acre feet that is promised in the basin for the project. These are already big cuts to what the original project intent was, with 390,000 acre feet, and the amount that these folks have endured in cuts in recent years. So when they made that initial March allocation, the Bureau followed up in April, cutting that figure another 70 percent. Remember, 390,000 acre feet cut to 130,000. In April, they cut, additionally, 70 percent more down to 33,000 acre feet. So that is 8 percent of the water the irrigators would have been promised initially. Last week, another cut was made, now down to just 3,000 acre feet. An acre foot, for those scoring at home, is about 326,000 gallons, or the amount of water it takes to cover 1 acre with a foot of water. At that point, the 3,000-acre delivery, the Bureau has decided, is not worth the effort to deliver into the district into the canals, et cetera. So basically what this means, in 2021, no water would flow to the Klamath Project, this is for the first time since 1907, the headgates of the A Canal would remain closed. From June 1907 to May 2021, some amount of water has always flowed into the Klamath project. From the upper lake here to the A canal. I will show you more pictures later, Madam Speaker, on how the A canal works to feed much of the district. This area, of course, is populated by Tribes, descendants of pioneers, frontiersmen, and veterans of World War I and World War II who quite literally won a lottery to homestead in the footprint of Lake Modoc. The water hasn't always been enough, and a mountain of unpleasantries have been shared over the allocation of this resource, but there has always been water at least. So, I would like to start the conversation on the Klamath going back to the fundamental water rights. The first private ditch in the basin was dug in 1868, and the few irrigation projects that were there at the time were quite small. In 1882, the first bit of land within the current project was irrigated. Authorized by Congress in 1905, it is the second oldest project in the West. There are several hundred miles of main canals, lateral canals, and drainage ditches, and 200,000 acres of irrigated farmland across 1,400 farms. Excuse me, 27,000 irrigable land in the lower Klamath, and to the Lake National Wildlife Refuge. Today, it is over $200,000 worth of value in alfalfa, hay, wheat, and potatoes, including the ones you would get at In-N-Out Burger french fries as well as pasture. In 1917, the rock sill between Upper Klamath Lake and the Link River was lowered allowing more flows to agriculture areas and downstream basins. In 1921, the Link River Dam was completed allowing water to be retained during spring peaks and increasing the total amount of water in the lake. After nearly 50 years of construction, the final piece of the project was completed in 1964 with the Iron Gate Dam along the Klamath River, one of four dams that are providing hydroelectric power and are currently in peril, too, due to a fish passage issue. In total, the project allows for nearly 600,000 acre-feet of water to be stored. So the Bureau of Reclamation has been making an incorrect claim for quite a while to the Klamath project water. They have been involved, of course, since Congress authorized the project in 1905. Every year, the farmers in the basin spend about $30 million to maintain this project, paying the government for that. The Bureau has acted and operated the project and the head works of the irrigation systems. In 1970 and 1973, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act, known as NEPA, and the Endangered Species Act, both well-intended. This legislation effectively requires, according to interpretation, the bureau to prioritize the environment over the well-being and economic security of humans. That is not the original intent of Congress. This is what courts have ruled over the years. So the fish involved in the current issues are several species. The Lost River sucker fish and the shortnose sucker only exist in the Upper Klamath Lake. From 1984 to 1986, the sucker population began a steep decline heading to their listing as endangered in 1988. The biological opinions which heavily influence water decisions and allocations coming out of the Upper Klamath Lake are the results of Interior attorneys--longtime career attorneys--here in Washington, D.C. So the recent biological opinions put out in the end of the Trump administration were partly responsible for setting the record straight and helping last year to get a little bit more water to the farmers, as we had to rescue that situation in May in order to have their allocation kept at 140,000. So when the Lost River sucker was listed, two Klamath scholars actually noted that no one seems to anticipate that the listing of the sucker fish might have serious impacts on the operation of Klamath Project, which the impacts economically to people are required as originally part of the Endangered Species Act. That has all seemed to have gone out the window. Coho salmon is the other population of fish native to the Klamath basin and adjacent rivers and rivers all up and down the West Coast. Salmon populations have followed a general trend of decline that is seen all across the Pacific Coast. With all these populations, they are not just in the Klamath River, so year after year, extra water flows down the Klamath River have been used to deal with what is known as the C. shasta virus. Now, there is a lot of debate whether these flows are actually effective or not. There are counter opinions that keeping the river wet and all these flushes actually help propagate the virus instead of drying it out and making the virus dry out basically on the vine. Then there is a similar debate with the sucker fish in the lake that a high level of water in the lake will cause them to be more subject to predators in the lake where the lower level, since they are bottom feeder fish and it is less conducive for the atmosphere for the predators of those fish. So it is seemingly going in opposite directions. But we also have counter purposes for the Federal agencies that are regulating right now, Fish and Game, Fish and Wildlife, that are trying to preserve the deep lake for the sucker and at the same time they want to have the flows go down the river to take care of the C. shasta virus for the salmon--you can't do both--as well as have any water available for agriculture, for the communities, and for the refuges for the wildlife. So the irrigators despite their receiving no water, the Bureau still plans to send 375,000 acre-feet downstream for salmon. Now, let's get to what the water rights look like. In 1975, shortly after NEPA and the Endangered Species Act went into effect, the Oregon Water Resources Department began the process of detailing and adjudicating the water rights of irrigators. Under Oregon law Chapter 539, it lays out the process of determining water rights before 1909, when the water rights code in Oregon was initiated, and a large part of this is on the Oregon side of the lake. This process culminated in the 2013 Findings of Fact and Order of Determination, which were then amended in 2014. Oregon water laws uphold the rights of the irrigators and distributes water based on the seniority of the claim. So what are the ramifications for failing to deliver the water? Now, there is still work to be done in reaffirming these property rights, which at the time seemed to be ironclad, but everything is fudgeable these days. So securing the property and water rights of the basin will still continue to be a battle. While we continue that fight, we must highlight the dire straits of the basin today without water. The canals, the ditches, and the irrigation districts are drying up. This will cause permanent damage to the ditches and the irrigation system there. Basically it is kind of like a wooden boat. They need to be gotten wet, each irrigation system. Also, the groundwater recharges provide for the people and the nearby neighbors with their domestic wells. Every year the project goes dry or loses water the costs of returning to standard operations will increase. As I mentioned with the canals coming apart, the first water that needs to go in them is actually absorbed by the canals to get them back into shape. So when I mention the 3,000 acre-feet that are cut down to and the Bureau decided that is not even worth delivering, at least that could be positively used, to some extent, for those systems, as well as I mentioned the groundwater damage without the recharge. So, most of the basin has to plan and plant, based on what the Bureau tells them in April will be their allocation. For example, one grower there, a fellow named Scotty Fenters, notes that the panic set in when the Bureau revised down their allocation last year in May 2020. He had already bought seed, already paid the rent, and already put the fertilizer in fields. Can you imagine, you have something halfway done and committed, and they say, No, you are not going to have the inputs anymore to finish? So in total, about $75 million had been spent planning and preparing. Now, last year again in 2020 after the Bureau initially reduced their allocation, the basin community rallied. There was a convoy of tractors and trucks that stretched 30 miles to say, You have to keep your word, Federal Government. So, indeed, it was an impressive turnout. So we come back to the water rights being upheld. Last year, Klamath irrigation took the Bureau of Reclamation to court over its decision to increase downstream flows for salmon in the Klamath River. The State ultimately agreed with KID stating that the Bureau had the right to store water in the Upper Klamath Lake, but it does not own that water. It only has the right to move the water on behalf of the growers and the intent of the project. They do not have the right to take the water for salmon or suckers--salmon in the rivers and suckers in the lake. Madam Speaker, may I ask how much time remains.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I rise tonight to speak about the proposal for yet another idea for a carbon tax. This will just drive inflation, which is already a significant problem for Americans, for fuel, for running their small businesses, for taking their kids to school, for just doing the things they do, maybe even going on a vacation. Costs will go up if we have to tax energy more and more and more for doing business, for buying groceries, for every aspect of our lives, yet another tax heaped upon the people. There are already proposals around here to raise taxes on fuel or maybe every mile you travel in your automobile. We have seen this in California already. I have watched what a carbon tax has done. It becomes a slush fund for government to spend to use on whatever it is they want to do, such as boondoggles like the high-speed rail in California, which is already triple over its original budget concept. So why do we want to heap more and more on the backs of families, of small businesses, of a country whose economy is trying to recover by hitting them once again with one more bad idea of a carbon tax when, by the way, carbon dioxide is 0.04 percent of our atmosphere? A lot of hype is being made out of this. No, the science is not settled by a long stretch, certainly by what human needs are compared to what human cause is.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I rise today with deep concern over the escalating attacks on the Israeli people by Palestinian terror groups like Hamas. After a period of relative stability in the region, these attacks threaten to create an all-out war that will endanger millions. This is an avoidable outcome born of inattention and incompetence. It is no coincidence that this violence has erupted as the Biden administration has pivoted away from the Middle East. The leadership vacuum created by this absence can only allow radical elements who would harm us and our allies. It is maddening to see the progress made under the Trump administration toward stabilizing the Middle East undone. It was less than a year ago that the Abraham Accords, perhaps the most significant move toward peace in the region in over a decade or longer, were signed. We cannot let these gains be wasted. The American people stand firmly behind the people of Israel. They have every right to defend themselves. Their existence depends on it. The Biden administration must abandon its retreat and reengage on the previous successful peace process in the Middle East. We cannot abandon our strong ally in Israel by our indifference or inaction, especially when they need us most.