Tom McClintock

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, I would simply point out that forcing the military to pay $26.60 per gallon for fuel that can be obtained for $2.50 a gallon isn't about flexibility. It is about insanity, and it is time that we put an end to this. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, my amendment forbids defense dollars from being spent to fund two executive orders and several other provisions of law that require the military to squander billions of dollars on so-called green energy. For example, according to the GAO, the Navy has spent as much as $150 per gallon for jet fuel. In 2012, the Navy purchased 450,000 gallons of biofuel for its so-called green fleet at the cost of $26.60 per gallon, at a time when conventional petroleum fuel cost just $2.50. What taxpayer in his right mind would pay $26.60 per gallon to fill up his car when, next door, they are selling it for $2.50? Yet that is precisely what our Armed Forces are ordered to do--except they are not just filling up their cars, they are filling up entire ships and aircraft, and this all comes out of our precious defense dollars. The Air Force paid $59 per gallon for 11,000 gallons of biofuel in 2012--10 times more than regular jet fuel. It is not just biofuels. The Pentagon expects to purchase 1,500 Chevy Volts at a subsidized price of $40,000 apiece and a production price of $90,000 apiece, paid for by other subsidies. As Senator Coburn's office points out: Each one of these $40,000 Chevy Volts represents the choice not to provide an entire infantry platoon with all new rifles or 50,000 rounds of ammunition that cannot be used for realistic training. Under these green energy mandates, the Army and Navy have been required to install solar arrays at various facilities. At Naval Station Norfolk, the Navy spent $21 million to install a 10-acre solar array, which will supply a grand total of 2 percent of the base's electricity. According to the inspector general's office, this project will save enough money to pay for itself in only 447 years. Of course, solar panels only last about 25 years. In Alaska, the Pentagon was ordered to convert three radar stations from diesel fuel to wind turbine energy. The Air Force claimed it will take 15 years to pay for itself, but auditors found that the generators produce only ``sporadic, unusable power,'' and the inspector general charged that the Air Force claim was completely unsubstantiated. As of 2013, the Defense Department had at least 680 such projects, including 357 solar, 29 wind, and 289 thermal energy projects. There are several arguments that we hear for this mandate. One of them is it is going to save us money, but as you can see, these orders are running up huge costs. We don't know exactly how much because, as the GAO said: There is currently no comprehensive inventory of which Federal agencies are implementing renewable energy-related initiatives and the types of initiatives they are implementing. Outside estimates are as much as $7 billion for the Department of Defense for this year, a figure that will only grow each year. We are told it is to move our Armed Forces toward energy independence from hostile foreign sources. This is from an administration that has obstructed every effort to develop America's vast oil shale reserves that would make Saudi Arabia look like a petroleum pauper. The XL Keystone pipeline, by itself, would bring a half-million barrels of Canadian crude a day into this country. Finally, we are told this is all a grand strategy to protect us from climate change, which the Secretary of State has called as big a threat as terrorism. Even if it were possible to wage an environmentally- sensitive war--which I doubt--I think there is a good chance that climate will continue to change, as it has that past 4 billion years, whether or not we waste our defense dollars to pay for this quixotic venture. This explanation does reveal the real reason for this folly. This is an ideological crusade imposed on our military that will pointlessly consume billions of defense dollars, mainly to keep money flowing to politically well-connected green energy companies that can't get anybody else to buy their products. These green activists are willing to squander the resources of our military to do so. This is a travesty that we can end here and now with this amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of former Mayor of Truckee, California, Ron Florian. Mayor Florian's career as a public servant was forged out of love for his community. He was born in Sacramento and moved to Truckee in 1992 to follow in his father's footsteps as a grocer. Mayor Florian's work as President of the Truckee Rotary is worthy of note; through his membership in the Rotary Club, Ron gained access to a new way to serve those around him. While he cared deeply about these activities, they did not define him. Ron was a man characterized by an energetic spirit, quick wit, and a boundless capacity for generosity. Ron Florian took his commitment to service further when he served two terms on the Truckee Town Council and two terms as Mayor. During his time on the Council, Ron proved instrumental in establishing the Truckee Police Department and constructing the Highway 267 Bypass. He consistently worked to make Truckee safer, stronger, and more united. Ron understood what it means to be a part of a community bigger than oneself. Mayor Florian enjoyed doing the people's work and loved working side by side with the citizens of Truckee. Even in the instance that he and his colleagues disagreed, Ron considered them friends rather than adversaries. While he received numerous accolades, Ron consistently attributed the accomplishments to his staff, who he believed deserved credit for all the heavy lifting. He loved and valued them, just as he loved and valued the town they all served together. Ron's grace, wit, and sense of humor will surely be missed. Ron and his lovely wife, Patti, fulfilled their dream of owning a business together when Florian's Fine Wines & Specialty Foods opened its doors in 1999. Through his business, Ron continued to serve and unite the town of Truckee, with Florian's becoming a local meeting place. One of Ron's greatest gifts was his commitment to shaping the next generation. Ron's legacy lives on in the lives that he touched, and it is my privilege to rise in recognition of his many achievements and contributions to Truckee.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, California is suffering one of the worse droughts in its history. More than a half-million acres of the most fertile farmland in the Nation have been devastated. Some Central Valley farmers have been notified that they will receive zero water allocations from the Federal system. The owners of long-held water rights are being cut off. In some communities ``water police'' go from door to door to enforce water restrictions. Homeowners are forbidden to water their lawns, except under the most rigid constraints. Sacramento offers an app so they can turn in their neighbors to the water authorities. And yet, knowing full well that we are facing a devastating drought and that our dwindling water supply will be desperately needed by our people this summer, over the past several weeks the Bureau of Reclamation has released 70,000 acre-feet of water from dams on the American and Stanislaus Rivers to meet environmental demands that place fish above people. This is enough water to meet the annual needs of a city of half a million people, all sacrificed in order to flush salmon smolts to the ocean, where they tend to swim anyway, and keep the river at the right temperature for the comfort of the fish. The releases of this water are so enormous they are called ``pulse flows.'' Citizens are warned to exercise extreme caution on rivers undergoing pulse flows, so swift is the water current they produce as the water rushes toward the ocean. Four months ago, Folsom Lake on the American River was almost empty. Yet on April 21, the Bureau of Reclamation more than tripled the water releases from Folsom and Nimbus Dams from 500 cubic feet per second to more than 1,500 cubic feet per second for 3 days. That is about 7,000 acre-feet of water. On April 14, a 16-day pulse flow drained nearly 63,000 acre-feet of water from New Melones and Goodwin Dams on the Stanislaus. The irony is that if we hadn't built these dams, these rivers would be nearly dry in this drought and there wouldn't be any fish. We cannot demand that our people discriminate and save and stretch and ration every drop of water in their parched homes while at the same time this government treats our remaining water supply so recklessly, so irresponsibly, and so wastefully. This conduct utterly destroys the credibility of government demands for stringent conservation and sacrifice by our people, and it thoroughly undermines its moral authority to make these demands. Inflexible laws administered by ideologically driven officials have taken this wastage of water to ridiculous extremes, and it cries out for fundamental reform. The House twice has passed such a reform bill, most recently as H.R. 3964, but the Senate refuses to act on it or to pass its own alternative. Nevertheless, the administration has the authority to stop these releases through provisions in the Endangered Species Act but has failed to do so. Mr. Speaker, we use the word ``outrage'' too often on this floor, but in this case it is an understatement. If a homeowner is caught with a 1-gallon puddle on his lawn on the wrong day, he can be fined. But the government thinks nothing of flushing 23 billion of gallons of desperately needed water for the comfort and convenience of the fish. How much longer will the people tolerate this kind of mismanagement from their government? How much longer will we allow these policies to threaten the health, safety, and prosperity of the human population throughout these drought-afflicted lands? California's chronic water shortages won't be addressed without additional storage. There are plenty of suitable sites, but current laws have delayed them indefinitely and made them cost-prohibitive. Until those laws are changed and new dam construction can begin, our State and Federal Government have a responsibility to manage our dwindling water supply as carefully as we ask our citizens to do. The wildly frivolous and extravagant water releases from our dams last month make a mockery of the extraordinary sacrifices that our citizens are making to stretch supplies in this crisis. Perhaps, at least, these releases will serve to educate the public on just how unreasonable these environmental laws are--and the policymakers responsible for them.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding to a dissenting opinion. Mr. Speaker, one of the biggest complaints I hear is the practice of forcing taxpayers to underwrite the losses and risks of politically well-connected companies. Companies reap the profits; taxpayers pay for the losses. Today the House considers a bill that perpetuates this policy with the objective of creating jobs not in America, but overseas. Quietly tucked into this bill is a provision to reauthorize the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, or OPIC, for another 3 years. OPIC provides political risk insurance, loan guarantees, and direct loans to U.S. companies for their overseas investments, making U.S. taxpayers responsible for their losses. Recent beneficiaries include the Ritz-Carlton in Istanbul; Citibank branches in Pakistan, Jordan, and Egypt; and a SunEdison solar farm in South Africa. According to the Congressional Research Service, this does nothing to help our economy. We are told it doesn't cost taxpayers because recent losses have been minimal and covered by fees. I remember similar assurances about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Such assurances are good only until they are not good, and taxpayer exposure is monumental and growing. This measure directs OPIC ``to prioritize investment in the sub- Saharan electricity sector.'' Yet one company doing so, Symbion, recently warned the Senate that it was owed $70 million at the end of February by utilities in just one African country. Reviewing OPIC's $10 billion portfolio in Africa, the Center for Global Development reported that if the money had been used for natural gas plants rather than renewables, an additional 60 million people would have had electricity. But that is not politically correct. OPIC pays for the bad business decisions of large corporations and underwrites job creation abroad, all ultimately underwritten by hardworking American taxpayers. What is not to like about that?

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 6 minutes. Mr. Chairman, the budget substitute offered by the Congressional Black Caucus is a good faith effort to lift a growing portion of our population out of chronic poverty and despair, a goal all of us share. It attempts to do so over the next 10 years by raising $2.3 trillion of taxes on corporations and the wealthy and running up an additional $4.3 trillion of debt to increase overall Federal spending by $6.7 trillion to fund so-called stimulus spending relative to the Republican budget. My fear is that it will accomplish exactly the opposite of what it intends, harming the very people it is trying to help. Let's start with some fundamentals on tax policy. First, we need to understand that businesses do not pay business taxes. There are only three possible ways for business taxes to be paid: they are paid by consumers as higher prices; they are paid by employees as lower wages; and they are paid by investors as lower earnings--your 401(k) or pension plan, for example. Secondly, we need to understand what a trillion dollars is. Divided by the number of U.S. households, it comes to about $8,200 for every family in America. As much as we like talking about taxing the wealthy, there aren't enough wealthy people in this country to make more than a dent in these numbers. Indeed, many of the so-called wealthy are actually small businesses filing under subchapter S. Raising taxes by $2.3 trillion ultimately, then, means that families, on average, will have $18,000 less to spend on their own needs that they will pay through higher prices in stores, through lower wages at work, or as lower retirement savings. In addition, the CBC budget would plunge our Nation $4.3 trillion further into debt after 10 years relative to the House Republican budget. That is more than $35,000 per household. That is not a theoretical number. That amount, plus interest, will have to be paid back in future taxes just as surely as if it appeared on your credit card statement. In fact, families will be required to pay this debt back before they pay their credit card, and the IRS is quite insistent that they do. Again, not all of that will be direct taxes. Much of it will be hidden in higher prices, lower wages, and lower retirement savings for families. But make no mistake; it must all be paid back, and families will bear that burden. Let's look at the massive increase in spending designed to jump-start the economy. That policy has already failed us, and failed us miserably, and here is why: Government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy until it has first taken that dollar out of the economy. If I take a dollar from Peter and give it to Paul, it is true Paul is going to have an extra dollar to spend. He is going to take it into a store. The storekeeper is going to order more inventory, the manufacturer is going to order more resources, and that dollar will ripple through the economy. But we have completely forgotten the other half of that equation. Peter now has one less dollar to spend in that economy--one less dollar to ripple through it. So, in the end, we have not stimulated the economy at all. That is why the trillions of dollars we have already spent trying to stimulate the economy have not worked. Indeed, this does great damage to the economy because we are transferring huge amounts of capital from the productive sector, which invests its money based on the highest economic return of a dollar, to the public sector, which invests based on the highest political return of the dollar. Those are two very different things. Indeed, that is the difference between FedEx and the post office; it is the difference between Apple Computer and Solyndra; it is the difference between the Reagan recovery and the Obama recovery. So I beg my colleagues to reconsider. We have tried these policies and they do not work. Under this administration, we have seen record tax increases, record spending increases, and record debt. The result is tragic. The poverty rate for Americans of African heritage has grown from 12 percent in 2008 to 16.1 percent today. Median income for White households has declined by 3.6 percent during this administration, but it has dropped by 10.9 percent for African American households. Compare that to the Reagan years, when median income increased for all Americans by 4.4 percent but grew by 4.5 percent for African American households. No one doubts the sincerity of the Congressional Black Caucus in bringing this budget substitute to the floor, but there is an old saying: You can't fix a broken bucket by pouring more water in it; at some point, you have to fix the bucket. The House Republican budget does this by reducing the tax and regulatory burdens that are choking investment in job creation and that are causing the long, cold winter that our country has endured. If we want to see morning again in America, we need to restore the policies that have produced it before. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, we are ready to close when the gentlelady has finished her presentation. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, it is human nature, I think, to resist concluding that our beliefs have been disproven by experience. The more we invest in our mistakes, the less willing we often are to recognize and correct them; but sooner than later, we have to acknowledge from our own experience that certain policies work and certain policies don't, whether they are tried by Republicans or Democrats. My Democratic colleagues are right to praise the Clinton administration's handling of the economy; but we must ask: What were those policies? In 1995, he announced that the era of Big Government is over. Working in cooperation with the Republican Congress, they reduced Federal spending by a miraculous 4 percent of GDP. They enacted what amounted to the biggest capital gains tax cut in American history. They reformed entitlement spending by abolishing the open-ended welfare system. They produced four budget surpluses in a row, and the economy flourished, and it expanded for all Americans. My colleagues are also right to heap scorn on George W. Bush's handling of the economy; but we have to ask again: What were those policies? Well, he increased Federal spending by 2 percent of GDP. He enacted the biggest expansion of entitlement spending since the Great Society. He began the era of stimulus spending. He ran up what, at the time, were record budget deficits. Don't my colleagues see that they are advocating the same policies that got us into this mess? My objection to President Obama is not that he has changed Bush's policies, but, rather, that he has not changed them. He has taken the worst of them and doubled down on them. The CBC substitute takes us further down this path of debt and doubt and despair. In 1862, Abraham Lincoln sent this message to the Congress--and I think that they are words meant for us today. He said: The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. I invite my friends to think anew and act anew; to disenthrall ourselves from the policies that have failed; and to return to the policies of individual liberty, constitutionally limited government, and personal responsibility that produced the most prosperous, happy, and free society in the history of civilization. In short, freedom works, and it is time that we put it and our country back to work. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, it has been the honor of a lifetime to serve on the Budget Committee under the leadership of our distinguished chairman, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan), to whom I yield such time as he may consume.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, I am now pleased to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford), the former Governor.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, our Constitution assigns the principal responsibility over the public purse to the House of Representatives. Under that constitutional doctrine, a dollar can't be spent by this government unless the House says it gets spent. Yet today, spending increasingly seems to be out of our hands, driven automatically by a variety of provisions and practices that thwart the very design of the Constitution. Roughly two-thirds of our spending is for entitlements, over which we have lost any direct control in the appropriations process. That is the big problem. But there are other reasons for this problem as well that this bill addresses. One of them is the current process by which we calculate the baseline from which we begin our annual budget negotiations. Any family would begin its budget process by asking, for example: What did we spend for groceries last year? Once it has that baseline, then it would begin to adjust for changing circumstances. The price of milk is going up. Should we cut back or look for substitutes? Or should we cut back on something else to afford that increase? That is the rational process known to every reasonably well-managed family. This process gives budgeters, whether they are a household or the House of Representatives, the ability to adjust for changing priorities, needs, and conditions. Yet the Federal budget process builds in a variety of spending increases above and beyond what we had previously agreed we could afford--before our budget deliberations even begin. That same family doesn't begin its budget process by building in assumptions of how it might change its spending in the future. For example, if it took vacations the last several years, it doesn't automatically budget for a vacation next year until it has met its other needs, that is, it doesn't budget for decisions that it has not yet made. But we do, quite routinely. Thus, we begin the budget process with a baseline that hides the many tough decisions that a budget requires: How do we cope with price increases? Should we continue to deviate from our spending plan next year just because we did last year? The current budget process denies us the perspective that any family has when prices go up or conditions change. It often prevents us from asking the questions that a family would ask under these circumstances. Instead, we sweep these issues under the rug--or, more precisely, we sweep them into the baseline. Does this bill make our job harder? Yes, because it requires us to figure out how to cope with changing conditions. Right now, we start our budget by assuming that we are hostages to our spending. This measure makes us the masters of that spending. That is a harder job, but that is our job.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, in August of 2010, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs warned that the greatest threat to our national security was our national debt. That was $4 trillion of debt ago. In fact, since the inauguration in 2009, we have accumulated more total government debt than we have run up from the very first day of the Washington administration through the third year of the George W. Bush administration. We were told this would jump-start the economy. It hasn't. Instead, it has deprived markets of the capital that would otherwise be loaned to businesses seeking to expand jobs, to consumers seeking to make purchases, and to home buyers seeking to reenter the housing market. I would remind the House that we cannot provide for the common defense or promote the general welfare if we cannot pay for them, and the ability of our government to do so is being slowly and surely destroyed by our debt. Balancing this budget and ultimately paying down the national debt is a national security imperative, it is an economic imperative, and it is a moral imperative. Under Chairman Ryan's leadership, the House is about to pass the fourth budget in a row to balance. It stands in stark contrast to the President's budget that never balances and that condemns our Nation to a debt spiral that will consume our future. It reforms and reorganizes our social safety nets. It prevents their impending bankruptcy, and it restores them to financial sound foundations for the generations to come. This is not beyond our ability. President Clinton, working in cooperation with a Republican Congress, delivered four balanced budgets in a row. Together, a Democratic President and a Republican Congress cut Federal spending by 4 percent of GDP. They enacted what amounted to the biggest capital gains tax cut in American history. They reformed entitlement spending by abolishing the open-ended welfare system. The economy blossomed. In the years since, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, we have veered far from these policies of fiscal responsibility and economic expansion, and the economy languishes. The budget before us combines the policies necessary not only to restore solvency to the government and save the social safety net, but it also restores prosperity to the American people. All we lack is the same cooperation from the President and the Senate that we had just two decades ago. Time is not our ally. Every day we delay, the problem becomes more intractable and the road back becomes more difficult, protracted, and perilous.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his kind words. Mr. Chairman, the question before the House is whether we are going to continue to ignore the economic consequences of the major actions that we take or whether we are going to start recognizing that incentives matter and that the legislation we pass has profound economic consequences that must be taken into account. Why does Amsterdam have the narrowest houses on Earth? It is because they tax by street frontage. Incentives matter. What happens to our revenues if we tax all of a person's $100,000 income? The static scoring on which we now exclusively depend says that that would raise us $100,000, but we all know the correct answer is that we would raise zero dollars because that person now has no incentive to work. Macroeconomics gives us tools to anticipate the real-world effect of major policy changes, and we ought not to be blind to them. It is not perfect, but it comes far closer to the mark than does a static model that assumes that people are mindless automatons whose behavior never varies despite major changes in the economic environment that our laws create. This measure doesn't presume to tell the CBO how to do its job or what formula to use in its analysis. We will still get all of the static scoring the same as before, but on major legislation that greatly impacts the overall economy, this bill says: give us the complete picture. If a proposal is going to affect the economy by more than a quarter percent for good or ill, then tell us. Tell us what you think, and show us why you think so. For too long, Congress has blundered from one economic policy to another with its eyes wide shut, and it is time we got the complete picture and took into account the real-world consequences of our actions.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Chairman, this amendment creates two different classes of citizens: ski resorts and everybody else. It leaves the portion of the bill that protects ski resorts from being forced to relinquish their water rights as a condition of continuing to operate in the Federal forests, and that is good, but then it creates a tier of second class citizens. Unless you own a ski resort, you are fair game for the same demands by these Federal agencies to either give up your water rights or be forced out of business. For example, our subcommittee heard testimony from Randy Parker. He is the CEO of the Utah Farm Bureau. He told us that the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have threatened to force farmers that have grazing allotments to give up their water rights as a condition of continuing to use the public lands. In some cases, these are permits that family businesses have held for generations. The water rights are accorded to them under State law. The Federal Government has no right to usurp that law or to force anybody into the Hobson's choice of closing their business or surrendering their water rights. This amendment is an affront to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, as well as to the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. These rights are fundamental constitutional rights that are unalienable for every American, not just those who happen to operate ski resorts. Let's not take the Orwellian position that all Americans are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Chairman, people need to understand exactly what is going on here. The U.S. Forest Service and other Federal agencies have begun demanding that privately-owned businesses surrender their long-held water rights simply as a condition of receiving routine renewals in their special use permit so that they can continue to operate on public land. This is a radical departure from more than 100 years of Federal deference to State law on this issue. It amounts to an uncompensated taking and is a violation of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, and it is an affront to State law, under which the Federal Government must acquire water rights through the proper channels as would any other user. Now, there are 121 ski areas on Federal public lands that are affected by this practice; 14 of them are in my district. These businesses rely on their water rights for snowmaking. They use this water as collateral for financing to build and maintain their facilities and for supplying water to the local communities they support. In 2011, the Forest Service issued a directive that would effectively take these private property rights without compensation, in violation of State law, while jeopardizing these enterprises all together and all the direct employment, spinoff economic activity, and tax revenues that they provide. This involved far more than ski resorts. Our Subcommittee on Water and Power has also received reports of similar tactics directed against farm and ranch operations that rely on State-recognized water rights for irrigation and stock watering. Mr. Tipton's bill simply directs Federal agencies to stop perverting what should be a routine permitting process into an excuse to extract long-held water rights from private owners.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, as we begin the annual budget process, we need to stop thinking in terms of Democratic and Republican policies and start thinking in terms of what policies have worked and what policies have not. The successes and failures of both parties could teach us much. We are now in the sixth year of policies that promise to restore prosperity to America by radically increasing government spending and government intervention in our economy. These 6 years have not been happy ones for our Nation. When people say this is the worst economy since the depression, I remember a time much more recently when we suffered double-digit unemployment, double-digit inflation, mile-long lines around gas stations, and the prime interest rate at 20.5 percent. Perhaps we don't remember these times as vividly because they didn't last very long. That was the end of the Carter administration. We elected Ronald Reagan who declared that: ``Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.'' He reduced the tax and regulatory burdens that were crushing the economy and produced one of the most prosperous periods in our Nation's history. In doing so, he was following the precedent of successful presidencies from both parties, including Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s, Harry S. Truman in the mid-1940s, and John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s. Lest we forget, in 1995, President Bill Clinton proclaimed: ``The era of big government is over.'' He dramatically reduced Federal spending as a percentage of GDP. He signed what amounted to the biggest capital gains tax cut in American history. He reduced entitlement spending by reforming the open-ended welfare system. He produced 4 years of budget surpluses, and the economy blossomed. George W. Bush pursued the opposite policies with the opposite results. He dramatically increased Federal spending as a percentage of GDP. He pushed through the biggest expansion of entitlement spending since the Great Society. He began the folly of stimulus spending. He turned in massive budget deficits, and the economy tanked. The problem with Barack Obama is not that he changed Bush's policies, but, rather, that he did not change them. He took the worst of them and doubled down. He has added $6.8 trillion to the national debt, meaning that today's young people will have to pay back $56,000, plus interest, per household through their future taxes for nothing more than to pay for this administration's overspending. He seized one-sixth of the American economy that provides our health care and is well on the way to wrecking it for millions of American families, costing them their health plans, their doctors, their savings, and their security. He has increased annual taxes by $551 billion. That averages about $4,600 for every household in America. He made a lot of promises that turned out not to be true. He promised that massive government spending would produce prosperity. Instead, average personal incomes declined $2,600 during his presidency, and food stamp dependency is at an all-time high. Nearly one in six Americans is now living in poverty, including 22 percent of all children. The workforce has shrunk to a smaller proportion of the population, as it was during the disastrous Carter years. He promised a government takeover of our health care would reduce our health costs and increase coverage for Americans. It has done exactly the opposite. Millions more American families have lost their health plans and their doctors than have gained them, and the overwhelming majority has suffered ruinous increases in their health care costs. The result is a declining standard of living at home, a declining respect for America abroad, and a generation in danger of becoming the first in our history to be less well off than their parents. Mr. Speaker, our own experience should now tell us that these policies don't work. They didn't work under George W. Bush, and they certainly haven't worked under Barack Obama. We know what does work, reducing the financial and regulatory burdens that government has placed on the economy, as both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton proved. It is time that we abandon these policies of debt, doubt, and despair. It is time we recognize that this government has grown too big and too powerful at the expense of hardworking taxpayers. It is time we restored those uniquely American principles of individual liberty, constitutionally limited government, and personal responsibility that have always been the foundation of our Nation's freedom, its prosperity, and its happiness.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, 2 weeks ago, President Obama visited the drought-stricken Central Valley of California. He announced his administration's response: he wants to spend another billion dollars to study climate change. Well, I think I can save him the trouble. The planet has been warming, on and off, since the last Ice Age, when glaciers covered much of North America. The climate has been changing since the planet formed, often much more abruptly than it has in recent millennia. Until the planet begins moving into its next ice age, we can reasonably expect it will continue to warm, on and off. That is going to mean less water that can be stored in snowpacks and, therefore, more dams will need to be constructed to store that water. There, I just saved a billion dollars. You are welcome. Everyone thinks that the Colorado River is the mother lode of all water in the Western United States, but the Colorado is a junior system to the mighty Sacramento River system. The difference is this: we store 70 million acre-feet of water on the Colorado and only 10 million acre-feet on the Sacramento. The rest is lost to the ocean. Droughts are nature's fault. They are beyond our control. Water shortages, on the other hand, are our fault. We have not built major water storage on the Sacramento system since 1979 because of opposition from the environmental left and, most recently, from this administration. Indeed, we have had to fight back against its attempts to tear down perfectly good existing dams, including four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River. Even in years of plenty, this administration has insisted on diverting 200 billion gallons of water from Central Valley agriculture for the amusement of the delta smelt, devastating the economy, drying up a quarter million acres of fertile farmland, and throwing thousands of California families into unemployment. Because of opposition from the environmental left, we have been unable to even raise the spillway of the Exchequer Dam by a lousy 10 feet in order to add 70,000 acre-feet of storage at Lake McClure. Because of radical environmental regulations, 800,000 acre-feet of desperately needed water--that is a 1-acre column of water, 150 miles deep--was drained from Shasta, Oroville, and Folsom Lakes last fall, knowing full well that we were heading into a potentially catastrophic drought. Now, Governor Brown proposes to spend $14 billion for cross-delta tunnels that will produce exactly zero additional storage and exactly zero additional hydroelectricity. Yet, for a fraction of that cost, roughly $6 billion, we could complete the Shasta Dam to its design elevation, which would mean 9 million acre-feet of additional water storage, nearly doubling the storage capacity of the Sacramento River system. Everyone has seen the eerie pictures of Folsom Dam as its lake lay almost completely empty. For just a few billion dollars, we could complete the Auburn Dam, upriver of Folsom, that would hold enough water to fill and refill Folsom Lake nearly 2\1/2\ times. That is in addition to 800 megawatts of electricity for the region and 400-year flood protection for the Sacramento Delta. The billions we are currently spending on delta levee repairs is to protect against a 200-year flood. Both projects have been stalled for decades because of environmental opposition. Enough is enough. Mr. Speaker, we are at a crossroads, and it is time to choose between two very different visions of water policy. One is the nihilistic vision of the environmental left, increasingly severe government-induced shortages, higher and higher electricity and water prices, massive taxpayer subsidies to politically well-connected and favored industries, and a permanently declining quality of life for our children, who will be required to stretch and ration every drop of water and every watt of electricity in their bleak and dimly lit homes. The other is a vision of abundance, a new era of clean, cheap, and abundant hydroelectricity, great new reservoirs to store water in wet years to assure abundance in dry ones, a future in which families can enjoy the prosperity that abundant water and electricity provide, and the quality of life that comes from that prosperity. It is a society whose children can look forward to a green lawn, a backyard garden, affordable air-conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter, brightly lit homes in cities, and abundant and affordable groceries from America's agricultural cornucopia. This is a time of choosing.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

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

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and particularly want to thank him for his work on the Natural Resources Committee and for his invaluable assistance on this bill. This summer, the biggest fire in the history of the Sierra Nevada mountains burned 400 square miles of forestland. The fire left behind an unprecedented swath of environmental devastation that threatens the loss not only of the affected forestland for generations to come, but sets events in motion that could destroy the surrounding forest for many years to come. The fire also left behind hundreds of millions of board feet of dead timber that is on Federal land that could be sold to raise millions of dollars, money that could then be used to replant and reforest our devastated lands. In addition, processing that timber would help to revive the economy of a stricken region. But time is already running out. Within a year, the value of the timber declines rapidly as the wood is devoured by insects and rot. That is the problem. Cumbersome environmental reviews and litigation that inevitably follow will run up the clock of this valuable asset until it becomes absolutely worthless. Indeed, it becomes worse than worthless--it becomes hazardous. Bark and wood-boring beetles are already moving in to feast on the dead and dying timber, and a population explosion of pestilence can be expected if those dead trees remain. The beetles won't confine themselves to the fire areas, posing a mortal threat to the adjacent forests. By the time the normal bureaucratic reviews and lawsuits have run their course, what was once forestland will have already begun converting to brushland, and by the following year, reforestation will have become infinitely more difficult and expensive. Within just a few years, several feet of dry brush will have built up, and the smaller trees will have begun toppling on this tinder. It is not possible to build a more perfect fire stack than that. That means that intense second-generation fires will take advantage of this fuel, sterilizing the soil, eroding the landscape, fouling the watersheds, and jeopardizing surrounding forests. Without timely salvage and reforestation, we know the fate of the Sierras because we have seen the result of neglect after previous fires. The trees don't come back for many, many generations. Instead, thick brush takes over the land that was once shaded by towering forests. It quickly overwhelms any seedlings struggling to make a start. It replaces the diverse ecosystems supported by the forests with scrub brush. For this reason, I introduced H.R. 3188, which waives the time- consuming environmental review process and prevents the endless litigation that always follows. It authorizes Federal forest managers, following well-established environmental protocols for salvage, to sell the dead timber and to supervise its careful removal while there is still time. The millions of dollars raised can then be directed toward replanting the region before layers of brush choke off any chance of forest regrowth in the foreseeable future. It was modeled on legislation authored by Democratic Senator Tom Daschle for salvaging dead and dying trees in the Black Hills National Forest, a measure credited with speeding the preservation and recovery of that forest. Unfortunately, the bill spawned lurid tales from the activist left of uncontrolled logging in the Sierras. Nothing could be further from the truth. The legislation vests full control of the salvage plans with Federal forest managers, not the logging companies. It leaves Federal foresters in charge of enforcing salvage plans that fully protect the environment. Because of the opposition--and we heard a little bit of it just a moment ago--in a few minutes, I will offer an amendment that was worked out in consultation with the U.S. Forest Service and with several Democratic offices, and I hope it will receive bipartisan support. It preserves the EIS process and the environmental and judicial reviews, but it expedites them and assures that salvage under the direction of the Forest Service can begin this spring. There is plenty of room for compromise, but there is absolutely no excuse for inaction. The left wants a policy of benign neglect--to let a quarter of a million acres of destroyed timber rot in place, to surrender the ravaged land to beetles and to watch contentedly as the forest ecosystem is replaced by scrub brush. It is true that without human intervention the forests will eventually return in about a century from now but certainly not in the lifetimes of ourselves, of our children or of our children's children. If we want to stop the loss of this forestland and if we want to control the beetle infestation before it explodes out of control, the dead timber has to come out soon.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, if the opposition prevails, the Sierra, 400 square miles of it anyway, will be consigned to scrub brush and disease for generations to come. We have bent over backwards with the opposition to work out this compromise, and their continued opposition is quite disappointing. I repeat that time is of the essence. I beg the Senate and the Democrats to take up these provisions without further delay. These provisions were developed with the full input of the administration and Democratic offices. But if they are still not acceptable, then tell us what is, but please don't just sit there and do nothing. The Forest Service estimates that 2.2 million board feet can be processed per day. That means every day we dither and delay, $250 million of Federal revenue is lost. That is enough to reforest more than 1,000 every day. But every day we delay, we lose that revenue, we lose those jobs, the salvage value deteriorates with the wood, and that window will start to close even before the litigation begins under current law. The private lands destroyed by the fire will have been fully salvaged and replanted a few years from now. They are going to host a thriving, young forest. If we don't change current law now, the public lands will remain unsalvaged and the millions of dollars we could have raised for reforestation will have been forfeited. Dry brush and dead trees will be the legacy of the Sierra that we leave our children. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. McCLINTOCK. I yield to the gentleman.