Doug LaMalfa

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Certainly you can make an argument that the first places you should look are the urban areas where you can have the potential ridership. Here on the east coast, you have a lot of ridership between Washington, D.C., on up all the way to Boston. I don't know about the financial viability of that, but at least you can make a case there. Here, as was reported just a couple of years ago, they wanted to start in the Valley because, as was quoted, they had the least amount of resistance to building the rail starting in the rural Valley as opposed to what it was going to take to run through the South Bay area, places like Palo Alto and others, that some people are feverishly opposed to what that would do and what that infrastructure tends to bring to high- value communities like that as well. But, again, the promise lies in the Central Valley for us in what we do well already. My portion in northern Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley, these are strong agricultural areas. I am wondering--and maybe you can touch on this as well--we have had different ideas for water projects that for a fraction of the money we are talking about with the high-speed rail system, how far could we go to do one or two water storage projects and what would that mean for especially communities like you have down there that have seen a huge economic impact with the cutoff of water due to the delta smelt and those other problems? What would that mean in real jobs for the people that have the skills and education level that likely aren't going to be working on a high-speed rail project, but have a strong background in agriculture? What do you see that doing to help your area?

Mr. LaMALFA. Certainly. Eminent domain is something that governments should use very reluctantly, very rarely, and only when there is no other option available. My farm has been affected by that as well with the large towers, the power lines that move basically from hydroelectric projects in the northeast part of the State down to the San Francisco Bay area. It is something that affects our fields, but it is part of the greater good. Our tractors have to drive around those now and figure out how to still keep straight lines going through towers running at an angle, and you have ag aircraft that have to tangle with avoiding wires and flying over the towers at 200 feet and trying to drop seed or fertilizer, things like that. So we get some pretty strange streaks in our fields because of that infrastructure, but it is important. We want the folks in the Bay area to have that. Eminent domain isn't always very fair. What I am seeing here is the promises, if there are any promises made by the high-speed rail authority, to truly keep people whole on this and give them options, and as you mentioned, the alignment changes frequently. We are not even sure if they have a full 520-mile alignment decided yet. They could have gone for a more low-impact route, perhaps putting it down the middle of Interstate 5 or adjacent to it, using parts of 99, perhaps.

Mr. LaMALFA. Indeed. We are both from long time farming families. I think when you are a farmer, or any business that is multi- generational, but especially on the land, you develop a bond. You develop a love of the land that you don't really put a price on. I think most farmers will farm until they can't farm any more, either due to age or regulations taking it away from them, or whatever. So how do you put a price on my family, raising the fifth generation, and you and your neighbors, you have multi-generations as well. How do you put a market price on your legacy? Someone is coming in from Sacramento or Washington saying we think it is worth that. It may be worth infinitely more to you and your family and the generations behind you. How do you quantify that?

Mr. LaMALFA. Is the high-speed rail authority guaranteeing to help or see through as part of the environmental documents to help make sure this is replaced or other infrastructure is replaced? There are dairies in line. Again, in California, securing a permit for a new dairy has become nearly an impossibility, as my colleague in the dairy industry would probably report. So there are a lot of people weighing in on that. Relocating the dairy, these are facilities and lands that have been for generations of families that have been there. Is anything being taken into account on the authority helping with these processes as part of the impact they are having?

Mr. LaMALFA. Indeed. Let me ask you, too: How easy is to relocate a rendering plant? A rendering plant, that is a facility that processes dead agricultural animals, which happens, and so they need to be taken to be processed, and one of those is right in your district, I understand.

Mr. LaMALFA. One question: a commission, a board in California, recently moved to the three-person board to authorize the rail authority to start condemning property under eminent domain. Of course, there is going to be a lot of resistance. Kings County is a hot bed of resistance to this project. The eminent domain procedures are not easy or cheap to get through a court process. They are already moved to condemn two pieces of property, I believe, in Fresno County, and I believe there are at least 380 that may have to go through this process. How do your constituents feel about the forced taking of land and an alignment that doesn't make a lot of sense and some of the infrastructure that might be lost in these communities?

Mr. LaMALFA. We are also joined by a colleague from the lower San Joaquin Valley area of the State for whom this issue is very important, very key to his district as well, on the impact of the rail route as well as the economy, as well as what it means for the taxpayers of the State and the entire country. Indeed, this has an effect on national taxpayers and the budget as well. So people in other 49 States are looking at what is going on here and saying, Why is our Federal money going into something that can't possibly work out? And so I know we are all willing to help people in other States with sensible infrastructure projects. That is the way it works in this country with our interstate system that President Eisenhower had the vision for back in the day. And yes, there might have been naysayers there, but you could actually point to positive results in something that works long term and other infrastructure projects that were invested in, but this one here, the numbers just don't run. So my colleague, David Valadao from the valley, has got very great concerns and has been very strong in leading in his area too, as well, on what are the impacts going to be, what are the costs. I would like to yield to Congressman David Valadao.

Mr. LaMALFA. Indeed, when the stimulus money first started coming available, there were other States that applied for high-speed rail money, such as Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin. I believe that after they looked at their numbers, ran the figures on projects that were eligible for that stimulus money, they turned that money back and went back into this pool. Of course, California said it wants it; but interestingly, it would have been a much smaller portion had California been sharing with those other States what Federal money would have come to the State. So the other ones said, We have looked at the numbers, and we are turning that money back in. I think we ought to apply some of the same logic as the other States looked at when they had Federal money available, eligible funds, that they indeed turned back. So I really appreciate your leadership on this, Congressman Denham, and we will be doing a lot more to make sure this is held accountable to the public here. I look forward to your hearing tomorrow on this matter.

Mr. LaMALFA. California just passed a recent tax known as Prop 30 last year, 2012, that was going to pay for a whole lot of things, go for a lot of different measures with perhaps schools and other infrastructure. We had talked about cap-and-trade. You can even point to truck fees, that they are all now trying to be shifted towards high- speed rail instead of other priorities. I wonder if that is what the voters' intentions were on Prop 30 or on their truck fees or weight fees, et cetera. So I think there has been a lot of deception around this, again, on cost and on ridership. As I mentioned a minute ago, if it has been revised down to a $68 billion plan, we can only point to, for sure, approximately $13 billion from Fed stimulus and the State bond. Where does the other $55 billion go to build what is really an illegal plan? Where is it going to come from? Mr. Denham, you mentioned we haven't seen the private-sector money from anywhere, yet you can point to, recently, a proposal came out for an east coast plan to build a maglev, magnetic levitation train, that would link east coast urban centers, and there are already interested investors from Japan on that with much more modern technology. You can say that rail isn't new technology because it is wheels still running on a steel rail. And in California, which is supposed to lead the way in technology and innovation, we are really not leading on this at all. So what do you see as far as the problems with that bigger funding gap? And then, bringing that back, what is that going to do for our economy?

Mr. LaMALFA. Indeed, when we look at the project in totality here, what ended up being $100 billion to be legal under Proposition 1A, to have a true high-speed rail--which is required--to go from San Francisco to L.A. at a high speed, 2 hours and 40 minutes, a $100 billion project was revised now down to a $68 billion project, which does not include high-speed all the way to San Francisco in the north. It would stop at the San Jose area, and then you are required to use local transportation, local light rail, what have you, to get all the way up to San Francisco. And at the southern end, you have, in L.A. County, it doesn't go to downtown Los Angeles under the new plan. It would stop somewhere in the north, remote north L.A. County portion. So it isn't truly high-speed rail anymore. As you mentioned, too, Mr. Denham, on that, if they take the Palmdale route, they probably can't even sustain those speeds. So it is illegal on that count that it probably can't make a 2-hour-and-40-minute ride. And with that, you have three different segments. So if you have to buy three different tickets, I don't know how the customers are being suited by three different stops like that, as well. We were told back in the day that the price of a ticket would somehow be tied to 85 percent of what an airline ticket was to go from north to south or south to north; and a real estimate, if this were self- sustaining, it would be somewhere maybe triple of that. So the impacts of that, again, California agriculturally with water supply is struggling this year. So for a fraction of the amount of money it would take to bolster California's storage, we are going to spend perhaps what would have been $100 billion--in the revised number, $68 billion--to do an illegal Prop 1A version from south San Jose to north Los Angeles. That is a $55 billion gap on the entire project right there. We can only point to $13 billion worth of funding, the 9.9 from the bond. Bonds have consequences. They have to be paid back by an already financially strapped State. As well, the 3.5 billion or so that is promised from the Federal Government under the 2009 stimulus has strings, too. It has an expiration period. Please embellish on that a little bit, Mr. Denham, because we know there are some very important deadlines coming on that as well, if we can.

Mr. LaMALFA. Indeed, I attempted that in 2012 with legislation at the time called SB 95 in California to place that back in front of the voters, give people the option, now that they have more information, to say do they really want to go through with this with California's other issues. You mentioned, Mr. Denham, the challenges we have had with water supply. Even our Governor is saying that this is a huge priority and a huge problem for California to face in 2014, and yet we have a very difficult time allocating a few billion dollars to enhance our water storage in California and instead are faced with this. What would that mean for jobs in the valley if we are able to turn the water, turn the tap back on to agriculture at a fraction of the price of high-speed rail? I yield to my friend.

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, our subject here tonight is about California's high-speed rail project, a project that was voted in in 2008 by the voters of California with approximately $9 billion worth of bonds to help fund what would be a project that would seek outside private investment as well, a project that would link San Francisco to Los Angeles with possible additional spurs to Sacramento and San Diego. It has run into large funding problems and such. So the subject of our time tonight is that we see that there are huge problems with the funding and where will the funding come from. I have my colleagues here from California, as well, who would like to speak on this subject. First of all, I would like to yield to my good friend and colleague from the north San Joaquin Valley, Congressman Jeff Denham, who has been a leader on this issue here in Congress as well as chairs the Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which deals directly with rail and this issue. So, Congressman Denham, I would love to hear from you tonight.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, during the month of December, we oftentimes take time to memorialize what happened on December 7, 1941. Unfortunately, the survivors of Pearl Harbor, we are losing them more and more each year. Today I would like to memorialize a friend from the Shasta County area of Northern California, Hank Reynolds, who we lost just recently. He was a gentleman who faithfully turned out each year to memorialize Pearl Harbor on the courthouse steps in Redding, California. He was, at one time, the chairman of the California Pearl Harbor Survivors Association and always was there with a sharp salute. Even though these gentlemen are in their late eighties and early nineties now, they always would turn out and encourage us, encourage the youth that day to memorialize and remember that. Hank served on the USS Detroit and was right in the middle of it there, ships on either side of him being attacked. They were about to go out on leave that Sunday morning, and he returned back to his post and helped fight that battle that day. So I will miss Hank. I really enjoyed his company and seeing him at those events. I know our country is greater for having had them serve for us at that time, and we memorialize them here today.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to memorialize a friend who just passed away recently here in northern California. I knew her from Paradise, California. Her name was Hazel Reed. Everybody referred to her as Haze, and that is kind of the part of the fun of who she was. I know she enjoyed visiting our ranch on occasion and was always very active in our community with political-type issues and the standing up for the freedom and values that this country is founded on. And so I always appreciated her greatly for her spirit, her feistiness, and that she would take the time out of her life to be involved in the political process and more importantly standing up for our community and its values. So again, I'm happy to at least at this date memorialize her, though we will miss her. Hazel Reed known as Haze from Paradise, California. So God bless her.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate an extraordinary milestone of Durham resident Eric Larrabee, as he celebrates his 50th birthday today, November 14, 2013. A fourth generation Californian, Eric is an active member in the communities of Butte City, Chico and Durham. Eric and his wife, Treasa, are busy raising their twin daughters--Abigail and Jillian--in Durham, while simultaneously running a thriving agricultural operation and giving back to the communities he works and lives through volunteer efforts and serving on boards. Eric currently serves on the boards of the Association of California Water Agencies, as a trustee to the Enloe Medical Center, and a director at Western Canal Water District. He has also served on the Glenn Country Farm Services Agency County Commission, California Rice Research Board, Levee District Three, Butte City Volunteer Fire Department, and the Glenn County Planning Commission. Eric is also owner and partner of Larrabee Farms in Butte City, where he works alongside two of his brothers growing rice, pecans, walnuts and various row crops. Farming has been a part of Eric's entire life, being born in Chico and raised on a family farm his great grandfather originally started in 1918 in Clarks Valley in western Glenn County of the California coastal range. Eric enjoys spending time with his family, skiing in the winter, hunting and fishing throughout the year and enjoying the beautiful landscapes all of Northern California has to offer. As a proud father and husband, family is a strong part of his character. His dedication to community service, family and a life in farming is to be commended. Mr. Speaker, please join me in congratulating Eric on this special day, November 14, 2013, and in wishing him a Happy 50th Birthday. May he have many, many more.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, the Republican side of the House has put out everything that the other side wants except for what America doesn't want--and that is ObamaCare. Instead, people are going to be railroaded into a program that fines them for not buying a product that they don't want and from a Web site that doesn't work. Is this America or is this something a whole lot different? Choices are being taken away, and people are being forced into a program they don't want. That is why our side fights for liberty and fights for one's choice of determining one's own health care system and health care plan. Would my colleagues on the other side of the aisle please join us in putting out what we need to do to get done since we agree on almost everything in the CR except for the continued forcing of people into the ObamaCare program.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Exactly. Now, who are the navigators? Weren't they supposed to be vetted as to who they are, go through security? And as well, look at the track record of the IRS. Do the American people really want 18,000 or so IRS individuals helping with their important personal health data? I mean, there have been laws passed to make sure that that is a very secure thing. Sometimes even inconvenient to the patient, where you might be at the doctor and say, well, don't you already have this information from my other doctor? There are very strict guidelines in how your information is traded around. Now it is going to be in the hands of navigators that are unvetted and with IRS agents that have some very huge security issues already with the way that is being used against certain organizations.

Mr. LaMALFA. The most outrageous thing for most folks, though, is that the waivers, many individuals in this country are asked for and got to be outside of this as it was coming together; and more and more are asking for it, some are being turned down. But especially, I guess, buying off Members of Congress through the OPM, allowing Congress and Capitol Hill to be exempt from this. If it is such a great program, if it is going to work so well, why would we be subject to a waiver? Why are they talking about there would be a brain drain on Capitol Hill because everybody would be leaving because they can't afford the health insurance? How does that work?

Mr. LaMALFA. I appreciate my colleague, Mr. Gohmert, here on pointing out really the hypocrisy of what's going on with the public's lands, the public's parks, the way this is being used as leverage by the folks higher up in this administration to try and extract from the American people, from those of us in this House, perhaps, what they want. He mentioned the thing in South Dakota there. Now, there is a lot of suffering going on in South Dakota where a lot of ranchers have lost a lot of livestock. And if anything, if your government has the ability to do something, it should be finding ways to help people, instead of putting up cones where they aren't supposed to be on a State highway they claim is on Federal land. So if all those cones are in the bottom of the canyon that they may have had to rent or what have you, similar to the barricades they are putting up around the monuments and memorials here in this town, where they have to go out and rent barricades on company time with furloughed employees even to set them up and put sandbags in place, this an insult to the American people. It is an insult to all of our Honor Flight folks that have been coming in to town, anybody that would use what would normally be 24-hour memorials, 24-hour monuments. So what gives? I don't understand. You know, getting to the bottom of this here, we have this impasse in the Congress here in Washington. Mr. Speaker, it is about time this is ended because we are hurting the American people by the actions of this White House, by the impasse, the Senate. We have sent over various, either all-inclusive CRs, or the bits and pieces we are doing to try and fund things as a priority, one at a time, that are very important to the American people. Funding our veterans, funding the basic ability when we have had fallen soldiers come home here in this recent news story, that their families can't even go pick them up because of an unyielding-ness by this administration, by those in the various bureaucracies to instead work to help American people in a time of fiscal straits that we are in, to help as much as possible, they are looking for ways to instead hurt them as much as possible. What is with this? We can even go back to previous impasses where, at least, President Clinton would sit down with the Republican House or Republican Senate or, after a while, it was a Republican House and Democrat-controlled Senate. There has been a mixture, over time, of putting aside the bitter partisanship and figuring out how we are going to hammer this out. If we can do it with President Clinton, we can do it in previous Presidencies. This isn't the first time there has been this kind of impasse or this type of slowdown or shutdown. Yet this time seems to be unique in the meanness and the bitterness that's coming down from the intractability at the White House level and over on the Senate side as we have put forward solution after solution.

Mr. LaMALFA. Yes, thank you. Yes, we have had unanimous votes go off this floor with nearly 200 Democrats joining us on two of the pieces of legislation, and anywhere from 25 to 35 to 40 on many of the other pieces that have gone out. So it has been a bipartisan effort. I think both sides of the aisle see this is really a nonpartisan issue on these issues we are working on. And so why do they have to rest on Senator Reid's desk over on the Senate side? Why do we get threats of vetoes from the White House when we find agreement? We would find agreement on almost the entire CR if we got that one provision there, where even some of the Senators themselves, and now we are seeing it in the press where, I think you mentioned Wolf Blitzer has now joined with Senator Manchin as well as Senator Baucus in thinking the Obama health care take over is a train wreck, that we are seeing a pretty diverse group of people saying, you know, a 1-year delay would not be an unreasonable thing. As we have seen the exchanges rolling out, they are not working very well. And people, when they are looking finally to find out what the prices are, what it is going to cost them, maybe people thought they were going to get it for free. They were going to get a rebate; they were going to get a lower price. A lot of Americans, especially the youth, are going to see higher prices. They are not going to see the savings. And if you look at the track record of the government operating things, government generally doesn't do things cheaper, and we are going to learn this in a very detrimental way to our economy, to the health care for the people of this country as this Obama health care takeover continues to roll out.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Well, Mr. Speaker, it's late back here, but I'm from the west coast, so ``let's play two.'' I'm really disappointed with the rhetoric that's been flying out of here in recent days. You hear all Republicans this, or Tea Party that, or you're in the hold of the Tea Party. You know, we're in the hold of the American people here because we see this Obama health care plan is not affordable; it's not going to work. We're just trying to go back and take another bite and see if we can revise, delay, or do something different than foist these costs and an unworkable program that's going to ruin people's health care. Let's go back to the table. Instead, we get ``no'' from the President, we get ``no'' from the Senate, we get a lot of ``no'' from the other side of the aisle. Aren't we supposed to have a negotiation? Aren't we supposed to have a discussion here? The American people demand that. They're seeing that this program is not going to work. It's going to cost them; it's going to cost their jobs; it's going to make their health care less accessible. And yet all we get are ``no.'' So if we want to look at who's causing this government shutdown, listen to the people yelling the most about it over on the other side of the aisle--yes, yelling. So we're here. We're ready to play two here tonight if we need to.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. I greatly appreciate the gentlelady from Minnesota for her efforts here and for the great lady she is. Mr. Speaker, again, here we are, discussing an issue where this has taken away choices from the American people. Now, as promised, we saw the President himself say, if you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away. One of my colleagues on this floor yesterday, counter to that, said how he had had his plan canceled as of the end of this year. People all over this country are now starting to get cancellations on their health care insurance plan that they've chosen with their families, around their kitchen table, probably agonized over how they're deciding to afford it, what level of deductible, what kind of coverage they're going to have. And that's being swept away by what really feels, to a lot of people--a lot of my constituents are telling me it feels like a very oppressive plan that's being pushed upon them. It's really unbelievable in the United States of America that you can be forced into being a part of this system. It blows my mind that the Supreme Court would agree and rule that people should be forced into purchasing something of this personal choice. We talked a little bit earlier about how people's privacy is going to be so greatly affected by all this information being dumped into a pool, and government bureaucrats are going to be in charge of that. Look at the leaks we've already seen with other people's information being leaked out by the NSA, or things accidentally put on the Internet by who knows all the different agencies involved. Yet, this is going to manage one-seventh of our economy, and a very important, very personal thing with people's health and their family's health care. I really, really shudder to think--if this measure cannot be slowed down or stopped by the efforts we're doing in the House and in the next few days around here, it's going to be devastating to people's personal choices, to the economy, to their jobs. Look at the part-time jobs that are being made out of full-time jobs because people have to react. There are true costs to what the Obama health care takeover is going to do to the people of this country, their families, their livelihood. So that's why we dig in so hard to do this. This isn't politics for us. No, it isn't. It's about doing the right thing for the American people. A document that really was not well-read or well-vetted, done here just about three or four short years ago here, now is coming home to roost, in its ineptness, in its incompleteness and the overall oppression it's causing for Americans who are feeling that they're out of choices. In my own home area, for example, people had up to approximately 130 different choices of health care plans through 8 to 10 different providers. They will be limited to two in my part of northern California, with maybe 8 to 10 total plans that they can choose from. And the way this is rolling out right now, you might get only one plan if you're in certain sectors for perhaps a full year. How is this improving anything? How is this making health care more affordable, more options, more anything? We've got to repeal this. But, in the meantime, at the very least, we ask our colleagues in the Senate to not strip out the provision we put in place that would allow for a 1-year delay, which is the least we would need, as a country, to see something made better than what it is right now. Exemptions, one after the other, are being dropped on us. And why do people that work in the public sector want exemptions if this is such a great plan? Pretty soon there'll be nobody left in it except for the taxpayers themselves. So I thank you for the time. I thank my colleague, Mrs. Bachmann, for allowing this time here today. And let's do the right thing here the next few days in this Congress.

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, it is kind of interesting to hear all the chatter about a government shutdown here, chatter that seems to be coming from the other side. I think they, maybe, protesteth too loudly, because Republicans have acted to give the Senate and the President the tools, the means, to avoid a government shutdown. We've acted on two occasions to pass the language of the Full Faith and Credit Act to ensure the government continues paying its bills in the event of an impasse in budget negotiations. However, the Senate has failed to act on a commonsense proposal which would preserve our Nation's credit rating, continue paying the military, protect Social Security and other essential services. Where is the Senate's action on this measure? What is the President doing to help? He is, instead, more willing to meet with foreign leaders and is unwilling to talk to us in the House. Mr. Speaker, is this what the American people asked for--that we have an impasse amongst the three legs of the legislative process in this country, that we can't even talk to each other and we'd rather talk to foreign leaders first on the important, key issues like what we have coming up: the continuing resolution, the sequester, the debt limit, and the impending ObamaCare takeover of our health system?

Mr. LaMALFA

Mr. LaMALFA. I appreciate working with the chairman of the committee, Doc Hastings, on the amendments to this legislation. This amendment seeks to prevent the Department of Justice from seeking excessive, unquantifiable damages from property owners who have fires accidentally escape from their property onto public lands. We have seen U.S. Attorneys sue landowners for hundreds of millions of dollars above the damage to national forests and the costs of firefighting based on very speculative claims about the value of habitat--claims which appear to be based not on science, not on fact, but only on the desire to generate revenue for the government. When the Forest Service gains as much revenue from lawsuits as it does from timber receipts from an actual working forest, something is surely wrong with the system. This language would help to end that problem in many Western States. However, I plan to continue working on this issue until we develop a 50-State solution to this problem. So it is for these reasons that I respectfully ask unanimous consent to withdraw this amendment at this time.

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.