Tom McClintock

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Ciscomani).

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Nehls).

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Kiley).

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Ms. Hageman).

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson), the author of one of the other measures in this package.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gooden).

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy), one of the moving forces behind this bill.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter), the author of one of the other measures in this package.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa), my colleague.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Van Drew).

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Fitzgerald).

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Fry).

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I am ready to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, we know how to secure our borders and protect our country. We had done so under the Trump administration. The remain in Mexico policy slowed illegal immigration and phony asylum claims to a trickle. The border wall was nearing completion. ICE was actually enforcing court-ordered deportations. All of that changed when the Democrats seized control of our government and reversed all of these policies, and the result we can now see all around us. It is affecting our schools, hospitals, law enforcement, working families' wages, and social services that are now strained to the breaking point and soon beyond the breaking point. This bill simply restores those policies that worked and makes it more difficult for a future President to refuse to faithfully execute the laws. I ask the American people to watch the catastrophe that is unfolding right now on our collapsing southern border. What we are seeing is something historic. It is a mass, illegal migration on a scale the world has never seen and that no civilization has ever survived. At this hour, history is screaming this warning at us that countries that cannot or will not protect their borders simply aren't around very long. Without enforcing our immigration laws, we have no immigration laws. Without immigration laws, we have no borders. Without borders, we have no country. Let that not be the epitaph of the American Republic, what Lincoln called ``the last best hope'' of mankind on this Earth. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, for the first time in my 15 years in Congress, I will vote for a debt limit increase because for the first time we have a bill that is serious about controlling the reckless spending that is destroying America's productivity and its prosperity-- $4.8 trillion in savings. How could anyone who cares about the debt not vote for this measure? The debt limit is there for a reason. If your family is living beyond its means and needs to raise its credit limit, it better sit down around the kitchen table and have a serious discussion over the circumstances that have gotten it into this mess and what steps it needs to take to get out. The debt limit is there to assure that we have exactly that discussion as a Nation. Now, the President and the Democrats across the aisle say they are not willing to engage in that discussion. Well, to coin a phrase, ``Come on, man.'' When Bill Clinton lost the House in 1994, he reached across the aisle to work with House Republicans. Together, a Democratic President and a Republican House accomplished wonderful things. They reformed the welfare system, as this bill does; they cut spending as a percentage of GDP; they produced the biggest capital gains tax cut in history; but most importantly, they balanced four budgets in a row and produced one of the greatest economic expansions in our Nation's history. By the way, Clinton was reelected. Americans are soon going to ask themselves, are we better off than we were 4 years ago? Mr. Biden is going to need a better answer than doubling down on policies that two-thirds of Americans are desperately trying to tell him have put our country on the wrong track, and that answer is right here before us today. Mr. Speaker, I beg the Democrats to join us to set our Nation's finances in order.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Chair, everything around us that makes our lives possible is either mined, or it is grown. Everything. Above the Speaker's chair is a plea from Daniel Webster to those who serve in this House. ``Let us develope the resources of our land, call forth its powers . . . and see whether we also, in our day and generation may not perform something worthy to be remembered.'' Yet, for 50 years, the environmental left has slowly strangled our Nation's ability to do just that. In the process, it is impoverishing the American people. One of its most powerful weapons is the National Environmental Policy Act imposed in 1969 with the promise that it would protect the environment. It has done exactly the opposite. It has made it endlessly time consuming and ultimately cost prohibitive to manage our forests, to provide abundant water for our people, and to prosper from our vast energy and mineral resources. My district comprises the forests of the Sierra Nevada and the agricultural heartland of California's Central Valley. The left promised us that NEPA would protect our forests and water resources. Come to my district, and you will see what a cruel and demonstrable lie that has become. Excess timber is removed from our forests in only two ways. If we don't carry it out, nature will burn it out. Throughout the 20th century, the U.S. Forest Service marked off surplus timber and auctioned it to logging companies that paid us to remove it. The result was healthy, resilient, and fire-resistant Federal forests, a steady revenue source for forest improvements, and thriving mountain economies. Then came the National Environmental Policy Act. Simple forest thinning projects now require an average of 4\1/2\ years of environmental studies, costing millions of dollars, more than the value of the timber. Instead of making money for the government, removing excess timber now costs us money. As a result, our forests have become morbidly overgrown, carrying four times the timber that the land can support. In that stressed condition, the trees succumb to disease, pestilence, drought, and ultimately catastrophic wildfires we haven't seen in over a century. California is one of the most water-rich regions of the country. Yet, the farms of the Central Valley have had their water systematically choked off because NEPA and other environmental laws make major new reservoirs all but impossible to build. Record rainfall this year is being lost to the ocean simply because we have no place to store it. When the little town of Foresthill tried to add a $2 million spillway gate for additional water storage, they discovered that because of NEPA, they also had to budget an additional $1 million for environmental reviews and $2 million for environmental mitigation. After more than a decade, the project has yet to be built. The last reservoir over a million acre-feet constructed in California was completed in 1979. Meanwhile, the State's population has nearly doubled. Madam Chair, when something is plentiful, it is cheap. When it is scarce, it is expensive. NEPA is making everything we depend upon in our lives increasingly scarce, and therefore, increasingly expensive. The left obsesses over a 1-degree rise in temperature over the next century, but they couldn't care less that they are making it impossible for people to heat their homes in subfreezing winters. They promise us they care about the environment, but they couldn't care less that entire human communities' and species' habitats and millions of acres of forest are being laid to waste by preventable mega fires. They obsess over the snail darter but couldn't care less that they have destroyed thousands of agricultural jobs, idled a half million acres of California farmland, and sent grocery prices skyrocketing. They promised us that NEPA would protect our forests. Instead, it is destroying them. H.R. 1 begins to dial back the damage that NEPA has done, both to the environment and to the quality of life of all Americans, simply by reducing the time and cost required for these massive bureaucratic studies. The question before us is whether our children will grow up in a world of scarcity, poverty, and misery or one of abundance, prosperity, and optimism. That is the simple question before us. We choose prosperity; a future of abundant and affordable energy, water, food, lumber, minerals, and all the material comforts and benefits that flow from the resources our country has been blessed with. That is something worthy to be remembered, and that future can begin with this vote today.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I thank the Ways and Means Committee for taking up my bill, H.R. 187, the Default Prevention Act, today. Similar bills I introduced passed this House in 2013 and 2015, and I am gratified the committee would take it up in this session. The bill simply provides that even if there is a fiscal impasse in our deliberations over the debt limit, the debt of the United States will always be paid in full and on time. Frankly, that is already the law. Our revenues vastly exceed our debt service costs. As every family knows, if you are living off your credit cards, you better make the minimum payment first. The law and the Constitution require it. The organic act that established the Treasury Department in 1789 is clear on this point: `` . . . it shall be the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to digest and prepare plans for the improvement and management of the revenue, and for the support of public credit. . . .'' I repeat: The management of the revenue and the support of public credit. The Constitution is also crystal clear. The 14th Amendment commands that the public debt is not to be questioned. The GAO spelled it out so there would be no doubt when they answered the Senate Finance Committee in 1985, ``The Treasury is free to liquidate obligations in any order it finds will best serve the interests of the United States.'' Yet, over the years, various Presidents have threatened to default on the debt as a way to roil markets and pressure lawmakers to bend to their will. This President, sadly, is no different. Even while the Obama Treasury Department was denying it had the ability to prioritize payments to pay the debt first, we later discovered it was making preparations to do exactly that. We also discovered documents that revealed that Federal Reserve officials were appalled that the administration would ever suggest defaulting because such statements ran a severe risk of panicking credit markets. We are hearing those same statements today from some Democrats in this Congress and in this administration. The Default Prevention Act simply takes this threat off the table. Amendments being offered by the committee also require priority be given to Social Security, Medicare, and defense to assure no President can threaten to hold seniors or servicemembers or veterans hostage, as well. Nor is this unusual. Most State constitutions provide that first call on any revenues is to maintain and protect their sovereign credit. Indeed, several years ago, in testimony to the Senate, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke praised these State provisions for maintaining confidence in State-issued bonds. This is not to endorse a prolonged impasse over the debt limit. Postponing prompt payment of other bills is not a good thing, but the full faith and credit of our country is fundamental to paying all of those other bills, and that is why we should prevent any President from threatening to default on that credit. The most preposterous claim we hear is that this prioritizes paying China before other obligations. The fact is, most debt is held by Americans, including most likely your pension fund. China holds about 3.2 percent of our bonds. The debt limit is there for a reason. If your family is living beyond its means and needs to seek an increase in its credit limit, it had better sit down around the kitchen table and have a very serious discussion over the circumstances that have gotten it into this predicament and what steps it needs to take to get out. That is why we have a debt limit, to have exactly that discussion as a nation. That is why it is so disturbing when the President says he is not even willing to discuss the subject. Well, considering the fact that he has added $3.7 trillion to the national debt in just 25 months in office, that is irresponsible. Not discuss it? Why in the world does he think we have this building with the dome on top at the very center of our Capital City? It was built exclusively to have these discussions, to talk out our differences, and to reach a wise and satisfactory conclusion for our public policy questions. Not discuss the biggest fiscal threat our Nation has ever faced? He can't be serious. However, serious or not, no President should have the ability to threaten to default on our debt, to destroy the full faith and credit of the government, or to take hostage our seniors, our veterans, and our other servicemembers. This bill prevents him from ever threatening to do so again, and it needs to be enacted.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, it is often said that socialism is sharing and capitalism is selfishness. It is precisely the opposite. The only way to prosper in a capitalist society is to identify what somebody else needs and to provide it for them better than they can provide it for themselves, whether it is sweeping a floor or designing a microchip. Socialism is taking what one person has earned by helping others and giving it to someone who hasn't. Socialism always produces poverty and misery because when you take a dollar from Peter and give it to Paul, both have been robbed of that dollar's incentive to help each other. Peter has been denied the reward of his dollar's worth of work, and Paul no longer needs to help someone earn that dollar. Socialism and slavery both spring from exactly the same rotten principle, as Lincoln put it, that you work and toil and make bread, and I will eat it. Both have been championed by the same party through the ages.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, if you want to understand successful law enforcement, the first place to look is the career of El Dorado County Sheriff John D'Agostini. It is not hard. It was under his leadership--in fact, it was because of his leadership--that the day-to-day operations of his department became the subject of the popular TV series ``Sheriffs: El Dorado County'' that ran from 2014 to 2019. It is the very definition of successful policing, pioneered by Sir Robert Peel and perfected and practiced by Sheriff D'Agostini. Ideal police departments are run as extensions of the communities they serve. They work in partnership with local citizens, and this was the heart of Sheriff D'Agostini's success. I have seen it over and over in action. During the devastating King fire, I watched him at his post even when his own ranch was imminently threatened. During the Caldor fire, he opened that same ranch to the stream of evacuees who had fled the devastation with only the clothes on their backs. I can't tell you the number of times I watched him during these terrifying disasters--always calm, always focused, always reassuring, and omnipresent. He is loved by his community and his department because he loves them, and that caring is what binds the community to the sheriff's department and exemplified and, indeed, defined his successful record of modern policing. He was first elected in 2010 by a razor-thin margin of 1,300 votes, but as he proved himself, he became a beloved institution in the community and won reelection overwhelmingly in 2014 and 2018 and would have won by acclimation in 2022, but for the fact that he chose to retire back into the community he has so faithfully served and protected. They were not all easy years. He lost a deputy to an illegal alien in a marijuana grow in 2019 and became a national figure warning of the dangers that our porous border and sanctuary policies present to communities across America and to those who risk their lives to protect us. When State bureaucrats ordered businesses to shut down during the COVID hysteria, Sheriff D'Agostini stood up for the constitutional rights of his constituents and refused to destroy their livelihoods. His courageous stand has since been affirmed by the mounting evidence that the lockdowns cost lives, destroyed livelihoods, and did nothing to slow the spread of the disease. Sheriff D'Agostini worked his way up through the ranks, first graduating from the Sacramento County Sheriff's Academy in 1993. Throughout his career, Sheriff D'Agostini served in numerous positions, including patrol deputy, detective, SWAT team member, narcotics investigator, rangemaster and firearms instructor, and investigator for the Amador County District Attorney's Office. Sheriff D'Agostini is well known for his many accomplishments and contributions to the community, including his leadership in constructing a new public safety headquarters located in Placerville. This building now provides local law enforcement with emergency operations services, a 911 dispatch center, a morgue, an evidence building, and a special operations and training building, as well as an indoor shooting range and armory. Mr. Speaker, without law enforcement, there is no law, and without law, there is no civilization, which is why it is impossible to overstate the necessity of our local police departments and the law and order they uphold within our communities. I am proud today to congratulate John on his numerous accomplishments and his exemplary leadership, and, on behalf of the grateful citizens across El Dorado County, thank him for his extraordinary service. El Dorado County has been extremely fortunate to have had his leadership for these past 12 years. Although he isn't going anywhere-- he is retiring right back into the community that raised him--and although his successor is well prepared under his tutelage to carry on his successful policies, that won't stop us from missing him anyway in the role that he defined and the responsibilities that he discharged so well.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, in order to enforce our laws, we give terrifying powers to such agencies as the FBI, the IRS, and the CIA, among others. The misuse of these powers to effect political outcomes would be fatal to freedom, and it is the hallmark of any dictatorship. This, our Constitution, was written to prevent whoever is in power. Now, in recent years we have watched the IRS target individuals because of their political beliefs. We have seen a glaring double standard in the enforcement of our laws by our Justice Department based on the political beliefs of their targets. We have seen their powers used to intimidate citizens into silence, whether the Tea Party or parents questioning their school boards. Most alarmingly, we have seen the use of the FBI and our intelligence agencies to suppress political viewpoints disagreeable to those in power or to manufacture or propagate one of the greatest scandals in American history: the Russian collusion hoax. Now, when a government can interfere with the elections that govern it and when agencies can act independently of the outcome of these elections, then democracy will die. This select committee is designed to get to the bottom of these alarming allegations, and I would hope the Democrats would be just as eager to sort this out as the Republicans. After all, it was not that long ago that these powers were turned against the left and could be again if we do nothing. As Madison warned: Democracy alone is not enough to protect our liberty, for in a pure democracy, 51 percent of the people can vote any time to throw the other 49 percent in jail. That is why we have a Constitution which limits the powers of government through checks and balances like this Congress and like our Bill of Rights, and it is why each of us takes an oath to support and defend it. Let us all honor that oath today.