[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 184 (Thursday, December 17, 2015)]
[House]
[Page H9378]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      WATERS OF THE UNITED STATES

  (Mr. LaMALFA asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, bipartisan majorities in the House and 
Senate, a majority of the States, and two Federal courts have rejected 
the administration's waters of the United States proposal by the EPA to 
reinterpret the Clean Water Act in order to seize authority over 
virtually every waterway, dry streambed, ditch, and puddle in the 
Nation. One Federal court found the proposal so excessive and so 
outside the President's authority that it issued a nationwide stay.
  This week, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office confirmed 
what we already knew: the administration not only violated Federal law 
when preparing this proposal, but also engaged in an illegal propaganda 
campaign to misinform the public, soliciting skewed comments in favor 
of their proposal using social media, even so far as using general 
comments on Twitter in order to skew their view.
  Mr. Speaker, when is enough going to be enough? When the 
administration spends Americans' own tax dollars to solicit and 
persuade them to give up their rights, should that not be a wake-up 
call, that it has crossed a very bright ethical line?
  It is time that the administration admit that the waters of the 
United States rule is an illegal power grab, an overreach, and withdraw 
it immediately.

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