[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 126 (Monday, July 19, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H3661-H3666]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      WILDFIRE AND DROUGHT UPDATE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I want to speak with the body here about 
the situation in the West with wildfire and drought.
  As so many of you know from the news, there is wildfire breaking out 
all over in the western States. My home State of California has several 
going on right now. I represent the very north part of the State, the 
First Congressional District, and we have fires routinely reaching now 
the five-digit mark, including the newest one known as the Dixie fire; 
it is over 30,000 acres. My understanding is, there are 11,000 new 
acres just last night burning up in the area of Feather River Canyon.
  But this is not, unfortunately, news this time of year in the West. 
Anything west of the Rocky Mountains pretty much seems to be on the 
line.
  What is going on is that for many years we in this country value the 
Smokey the Bear principle of putting out fires when they occur in the 
forest. And I think we still do value that. But what we haven't done on 
the back side of that is to manage our forest lands.
  And so what we have seen in the decades since, a good-minded policy, 
a good-intended policy, is that the forests have built up so much fuel. 
So much damage gets done from all this fuel being built up from fire 
season. It kind of creates its own drought situation inside the forest 
there when you have more inventory per acre than what the forest can 
sustain, especially during a drought period. And so in the West, in 
California, it is known you are going to have drought years, you're 
going to have wet years. And it kind of goes with the program there.
  So I am disturbed that we can't advance the ball more on really the 
type of forest management we need to be doing. We can sustain X amount 
of trees per acre, and this is depending on tree type, tree age, 
particular landscape, the particular weather pattern in a micro area, 
but if we are not doing that then we are going to see this year after 
year.
  So the U.S. Forest Service has kind of transitioned from--not that 
many years ago--about one-third of their budget would go for fire 
suppression and two-thirds for the good green work we call it, green 
harvest, permits, maintenance of forest roads and all the other things 
you do in the off season in order to make the asset protected from fire 
and also usable to the people, Because this is indeed the people's 
asset. And they are getting less and less access to it because of fire, 
but also just flat being closed down because of other environmental 
concerns that have been brought up.
  That is a key part of the argument here is that we have had hundreds 
of thousands of acres burned. I will just stick with California for a 
moment here. And simple projects after the fact when we are talking 
salvage, salvage timber that needs to be removed after a fire, if you 
do that within a reasonably soon amount of time after a fire then you 
can still get value out of that timber. If you do it soon. No more than 
a year would be ideal.
  But what happens is that when Forest Service goes to try and contract 
or do some of the work post fire to remove trees that will be dead or 
are already dead but still have a salvage value, you can make a timber 
product out of that, they get sued. The environmental groups come in 
and sue them saying, oh, we think you are going to take away habitat 
for the black-backed woodpecker or something like that. And indeed, 
what has already happened is the environment has already been ruined 
for quite a few years where the spotted owl might have been, where 
other owls might have been, or other wildlife had been.
  You should see some of the horrific pictures of how the wildlife is 
affected in a fire like this. And these are not just a slow-moving 
fire, but these conflagrations that we have these days that move from 
treetop to treetop across the whole landscape.
  And one of the saddest stories you will see is a rancher just right 
in my home county of Butte on the east side who wrote the story about 
how their family had been there for at least five generations and long-
time ranchers there, and a fire whipped through there and took out so 
many of their livestock, but also the legacy, the land that they love 
has been ruined by fire in eastern Butte County, California, last year.

                              {time}  1930

  So what are we going to do? Are we going to continue to watch this go 
on year after year after year?
  I have run legislation to try and make it just a little bit simpler 
to do basic, I think, commonsense idea of trimming around power lines, 
moving hazardous trees and foliage away from power lines. But that 
means you are going to have to cut some trees. That

[[Page H3662]]

means you are going to have to do some trimming. You are going to have 
to do some actual work. The environmental groups even sue over that.
  I am hearing reports that one of the latest fires might have been 
where a hazardous tree fell into a power line. Why can't we create a 
zone around all power lines? The lines are already there--it is not 
like we are putting in new ones--to make it where there is enough 
distance around power lines so that if a tree does fall, it doesn't 
fall into them, and you get two bad things: a fire and blackouts.
  So we will continue in Congress here to try and legislate that way. 
And I want to convince my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that 
this is very important, because we are losing millions of acres every 
year to wildfire, losing millions of acres of habitat for wildlife, 
millions of acres of wood products. As you see with wood products, 
spiraling--through the roof. It has added $30,000 to $40,000 easily to 
the cost of a new home because of the high cost of wood products. 
Anybody that has been to any of the vendors to buy a piece of plywood 
or two-by-four, it affects everybody. It isn't just those building 
homes.
  I mean think about the folks that need--for other disasters, our 
friends that have to suffer hurricanes down there. Where do they get 
the plywood to be able to board up for that? We have to produce these 
products. We have to produce them domestically. We can't import 
everything in this country.
  In my real life, I am a farmer. And we can't continue to have the 
situation where we are going to rely on imported food or somehow 
replace our wood products. For some reason, the United States is the 
number two importer of wood of all countries. Why are we importing wood 
when we have so much of an overload and over-inventory in our western 
States? So we should be employing our people and getting that material 
out.
  Now, people are going to be fearful that, Oh, you are talking about 
clear-cutting. No, it isn't clear-cutting. That is the first thing they 
want to ask you when you have a press conference or something about it: 
``So you want to clear-cut everything.'' No. We do this in zones. We do 
this with thinning. You do areas where you might do a 30-acre spot but 
then you plant it back, especially on private land. And you can tell 
what the private land is versus the Federal land that is basically 
almost not managed by flying over it after a fire or especially 5 years 
after a fire when you can see the checkerboard pattern you find so 
frequently of land ownership in forested areas. The private lands have 
already reclaimed. They have already salvaged. They have already 
started planting back. You can see the green; you can see order coming 
back to those forests there.
  In the Federal land, you can still see the same snags. The same ghost 
trees--they call them--are there, left behind to--who knows when they 
will ever get around to it.
  And what does that mean? It propagates the next fire, the next time 
lightning strikes, or the next flame blows through, or the next time 
there might be some kind of an accident.
  So I really, really want to get the attention of my colleagues here 
in Congress, those that regulate the forest, those in the U.S. Forest 
Service, and those of the American people, their attention to what is 
going on, because this is not sustainable. It is not good. It is not 
good for anything I have talked about with wildlife, the asset the 
American people own in these Federal lands.
  And we must do something to address some things that might be 
inconvenient: cutting some trees--not all of the trees--you might have 
control burns during the correct time of the year to get rid of some of 
the slash. But on the positive side, why aren't we using this biomass, 
taking this wooded material out here that doesn't turn into a two-by-
four or baseball bat, or what have you, and turning that into something 
useful that we can use to generate electricity.
  Heaven knows, we don't have an oversupply of electricity generated in 
California. We even saw Texas was a problem last winter. So we are 
going to need to develop these sources, and that means jobs in these 
rural communities, jobs cleaning up the forests, any dependable 24/7 
electricity supply because you could control the fuel. Solar, you don't 
control the fuel. You have to have a sunny day without clouds or have 
it not be nighttime.
  The wind machines, you can't control them either. 24/7 fuel sources, 
whether it is hydro, whether it is new, whether it is natural gas, or 
biomass using these wooded products, we need to use for something 
positive anyway, we need to put them to work so we have a stable grid.
  Heaven knows, with all the new demands that are being made by 
environmental-minded people on more electric cars, getting rid of gas 
stoves, getting rid of gas water heaters--all for electricity. Where is 
all this electricity going to come from? We can be generating it with 
things that come from our forests with these byproducts, so we need to 
be putting them to work.
  So I just implore everybody that has a role in making a decision 
around here, in Congress, with our Federal agencies, environmental 
groups, could you please back off a little bit and let some of this 
good work happen. And the American people, listen to what we are 
talking about and encourage those folks that may be timid or not 
inclined to want to do the type of forest management, encourage your 
Member of Congress this has got to be done, because this air quality 
affects all the west. Last year, some of it even blew back all the way 
to the East Coast from fires that were happening in California and the 
West. So we can do a heck of a lot better.

  Madam Speaker, I appreciate the time here tonight. I yield to the 
gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Comer), my good colleague.


                 In Recognition of John ``Bam'' Carney

  Mr. COMER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for 
yielding.
  Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize a great Kentucky Statesman 
and a true friend. This past weekend, Kentucky lost one of its best. My 
dear friend, and the former majority leader of the Kentucky House of 
Representatives, Bam Carney.
  Bam represented his home county of Taylor and Adair County in the 
Kentucky General Assembly for many years. He rose as high as majority 
leader, and remained there and would have been there as long as he 
wanted to be majority leader until he fell ill. And those of us who 
have kept up with Bam over the past year and-a-half know that he fought 
a battle that few people could have fought over the past year and-a-
half.
  I am sad to report that this past weekend, Bam passed away, but he 
will never be forgotten. The history books will write about Bam Carney, 
and they will talk about his role as majority leader of the Kentucky 
House of Representatives. They will also talk about his role as a great 
educator, and a leader for education in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
  Madam Speaker, I want to take a few moments to recognize Bam Carney, 
my friend. When you are involved in politics, you get to meet a lot of 
political people. And I had the pleasure of serving in the Kentucky 
House of Representatives with Bam Carney. I remember when he arrived in 
Frankfort, Kentucky, a few years after I got there. And Bam immediately 
made an impression on me. He wasn't like everybody else in Frankfort. 
Bam was genuine. What you saw is what you got. Bam and I became very 
close friends. In fact, I considered Bam Carney one of my best friends. 
We worked together on legislation, our families became close, we played 
a lot of golf together. I never beat Bam, by the way. Not many people 
did beat Bam Carney on the golf course. But we became friends. He 
stayed at my house on weekends. We traveled together. Bam was someone 
that you could trust. Bam was someone that--in politics it is rare to 
say--but you always knew where he stood. And if he told you something, 
then that was good as gold because he stuck with his word.
  Bam wasn't like most politicians. Bam didn't want to hide from the 
controversial issues or the tough issues, the issues that Bam knew 
might not be the most popular issues in his district. But Bam did what 
was right and what he felt was right for the people he represented.
  Bam was a career educator; a basketball coach. Bam played college 
baseball

[[Page H3663]]

at Berea. Bam was a Christian. In fact, one of the last things that he 
said was he was ready to go to heaven. And I know that is where he is 
right now. Bam was a great brother, a great father. Bam was a great 
leader, a great friend, just an all-around great person.
  Kentucky lost a great statesman this past weekend in Bam Carney. I 
hope that those of us who knew Bam can learn from the greatness of Bam 
Carney, the great person he was, the great leader he was, and the great 
representative of the people that he was. Bam represented the people, 
not the special interests.
  Madam Speaker, I can't say enough heartfelt things to Bam Carney's 
family: His mother, his brothers, his sister, his two sons. They have 
endured a lot over the past year and-a-half through Bam's sickness, and 
they never left his side, never gave up hope; always having a positive 
attitude. Bam Carney is the kind of person that we all need in 
legislative bodies, someone you can count on and someone that is honest 
and someone that is in the legislative body for the right reason.
  Madam Speaker, I appreciate the time today on the floor of the U.S. 
House of Representatives to recognize the great life of a great 
Kentucky leader and a great Kentucky friend, Bam Carney.


                 Honoring the Life of James Otis Catlin

  Mr. COMER. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Mr. James 
Otis Catlin of Sebree, Kentucky, who passed away earlier this month--
July 9, 2021--at the age of 90. James was a hard worker throughout his 
life. He was a proud Korean War veteran, earning a Bronze Star and 
Purple Heart.
  His love for our country and servicemembers continued after his 
military career, and he joined the Austin Collins American Legion Post 
243 in 1952, eventually becoming its oldest member.
  James was a dedicated servant of the Lord and an active member of 
Sebree General Baptist Church. His humble service touched many in 
Webster County and all of Kentucky's First Congressional District.
  I will always be grateful for the sacrifice of our Nation's heroes. I 
was proud to represent James in Congress, and his enduring legacy of 
service and faith will live on through his family, friends, and all 
those he impacted.


                     Honoring Mark and Lori Wilson

  Mr. COMER. Madam Speaker, for 141 years, on the first Saturday in 
August, people from all over Kentucky make their way to the small 
community of Fancy Farm in far Western Kentucky for the annual Fancy 
Farm picnic, hosted by St. Jerome Catholic Church in Graves County.
  Thousands gather to enjoy good food, good people, and good old-
fashioned political stump speaking. Over 19,500 pounds of pork and 
mutton are served, along with hundreds of pounds of fresh home-cooked 
vegetables and homemade pies and cakes. All funds raised benefit St. 
Jerome Catholic Church for charitable endeavors. Additionally, the 
Fancy Farm picnic is entirely a community effort made up of local 
volunteers.
  Madam Speaker, today, I would like to honor two of those volunteers--
Mark and Lori Wilson--for their 15 years of service as chairs of the 
picnic-speaking committee. Mark and Lori have dedicated countless hours 
to make the Fancy Farm picnic a great success.
  I was especially honored when Mark and Lori asked me to serve as 
master of ceremonies at the 2012 Fancy Farm picnic when I was 
Kentucky's commissioner of agriculture. Their efforts to create a 
successful picnic every year are invaluable.
  Mark and Lori Wilson will be stepping aside and paving the way for 
new community leaders to step up and fill this role. However, I know 
that Mark and Lori will continue to be an active presence not only on 
the Fancy Farm stage, but in their proud Graves County community. I 
personally appreciate not only their years of service, but also their 
friendship.

                              {time}  1945

  Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Comer for his tribute to the 
good people of Kentucky and the service you do there. They are served 
well by him and the work he does here in Washington, D.C.
  Madam Speaker, I would like to resume for a few moments to what I was 
mentioning beforehand on forestry and the effects on our natural 
resources. Year after year, as I was mentioning, there are tens and 
hundreds of thousands, even millions, of acres of wildfire affecting 
our habitat and air quality. What I didn't get to touch on was water 
quality as well.
  You will find, when you burn these mountainsides, you burn those 
slopes, and indeed, with so much inventory on hand there of trees per 
acre and brush and other dead vegetative materials, when this all 
burns, it burns catastrophically. In a lot of cases, you get a 
moonscape that is left behind. With that, there is a great amount of 
ash and other material that, because it is on a mountainside and 
hillside, it eventually is picked up by the next rainfall and/or 
snowpack and washes down the whole watershed into our brooks, creeks, 
streams, rivers, and, eventually, the lakes that we have.
  This also creates a toxic environment, when you have that much ash 
material going down and almost actually plugging the lakes, for 
example.
  I talked to folks in the hydroelectric business there. With all that 
ash and soil erosion--really, the soil erosion is a big, big part of 
that, too--they have to go in and clear the bottom of the lakes in some 
cases to keep their hydro projects running. Otherwise, you have less 
and less electricity being generated and the cost of all that to the 
taxpayers and to those water rights holders, et cetera.
  When we talk about wildfire in the West, it isn't just, yes, we lost 
a few trees and some deer got burned, some mountain lions and bear, and 
all that, which is all really important, but there is a lot more than 
meets the eye with all this.
  If we talk about the electricity grid for a moment, if the 
hydroelectric plants can't operate--and we are already stretched the 
way we are for electricity in the country and in the West because the 
shift has been pushed, with so much emphasis on doing it all with solar 
or wind power because we want to fulfill these renewable ideals. They 
are fine. They are fine in their own segment, what have you, but they 
are not fulfilling that big of a percentage of our grid yet.
  We are still reliant upon a big part of our grid coming even as 
legacy from coal, natural gas, hydro, and nuclear. We are not just 
going to replace that overnight, and we are not going to do it, 
certainly, cost-effectively with these expensive forms of electricity.
  Everything still needs to remain on the table. It is very important 
that we are domestically in charge of our electricity generation, our 
energy, and our energy policy not relying on imported.
  The wildfire effects do have a wide ripple across a lot of our lives. 
It gets back to: Are we going to manage our forests, or are we going to 
watch them burn?
  Manage it means jobs for us. It means wood products that are grown 
domestically, paper products. Heaven knows, we use plenty of paper 
around here. Why not have that product come from something that is 
going to employ somebody and help make our forest a better place?
  For the power grid, we always seem to be on the edge, in the hot 
summer, of having to shut off. Indeed, they call it Flex Alert in 
California, where they are asking people to shut down the usage of 
electricity. They already contract ahead of time with large 
manufacturers like the cement manufacturers and others to say that we 
might need you--they are contracted ahead of time to shut down at a 
phone call, basically, saying: We are going to have to shut you off for 
the rest of the afternoon. Stop that production and stop that work 
because the rest of our power grid is going to be in trouble if we 
don't get these voluntary, precontracted sign-ups shut down.
  They are asking regular households to do that. I saw an alert the 
other day--it is almost hysterical--asking people to not charge their 
electric cars between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. This is at the same time we are 
getting the bum's rush to say: Hey, convert to electric cars.
  California has a mandate to eliminate new combustion engine cars by, 
I think, 2035. Just make it up out of nowhere, no more of those cars.
  Are we going to have a power grid that can do that? And then, do 
people want to buy these cars? Is it more than

[[Page H3664]]

just idealists who want to purchase these vehicles or more who want to 
just drive in the special high-occupancy vehicle lane that has a 
sticker on it in California so you can use your car there?
  Is this what vehicle choice looks like for folks? I am not against 
them, but I don't like having things crammed down people's throats like 
that either.
  So, what are we going to do? Our forests, our energy grid, all of 
these things work together. I was talking about the fires that break 
out because the trees and other foliage can come in contact with power 
lines, or a downed power line might light up a forest as well.
  We have to be wise about how we are managing these things. Forestry 
is required that takes that into account.
  Our power lines, we still need to deliver the power from where it is 
generated. We have so much hydroelectric power up in my area, yet they 
want to remove dams. They want to remove the dams that are making this 
clean, 100 percent renewable power up in the Klamath Basin, where 
farmers this year are getting zero percent of their allocation of 
water--zero.
  How do you do that to a group of people, just taking that away? 
Especially in the Klamath Basin, these farmers own the water rights for 
that Klamath Project that was built by the Federal Government, and 
Oregon, of course, has upheld that water right. Yet, the Federal 
Government muscles the water away anyhow, just muscles it away because 
it thinks it can.
  Agriculture in California has taken devastating hits on water supply 
this year. Some districts are as low as 5 percent, and even others 
getting zero. Others are getting smaller cuts but still getting cut.

  In our State, we have many crops that we grow over 90 percent of what 
the United States uses. In my area, there are a lot of olives grown, 
table olives and olive oil. Imagine not being able to get that 
commodity and having to rely on imports totally for that because we 
don't have a heads-up plan in this country that accounts for what we 
produce and should be producing.
  Our wood products need to come from the U.S. Our ag products need to 
come from the U.S. Our energy, so we can be self-sufficient, needs to 
come from the U.S.
  We need to store more water in the Western States so we can produce 
these things, so we can produce hydroelectric power, so we can produce 
these ag products. We have environmental groups pushing to tear dams 
out that are already in place, stretching our power grid, stretching 
the food that comes to your table.
  Just look them up. How many crops come from California that you rely 
on nationally that you wouldn't get if they weren't grown there, or we 
can turn to other countries to import from?
  There was kind of a popular saying or a bumper sticker amongst 
agriculture some years ago: If you like imported oil, you will love 
imported food.
  At what point are we going to wake up to this? Environmental groups 
are doing a lot of winning on this. Yet, at the end of the day, what 
they are pushing for doesn't actually do much to help the species they 
claim to be saving.
  The delta smelt, which is part of the delta just east of the bay area 
in northern California, since 1992, I think they have been usurping and 
taking away more and more water from agriculture, from human use, to 
run through the delta to try to keep the salinity level low, with the 
theory that will help the delta smelt.
  The population has continually decreased since that time to where, 
when they are out there doing surveys--they call them trawls. The last 
several surveys, they haven't found any. They are not finding the 
species. Yet, hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water and more are 
just being flushed through the delta because they still have the 
biological opinions put out by somebody in government and somebody 
willing to sue to stop the ability of that water to be used properly, 
for people use or even a purpose that would be helpful for the economy.
  Why does it have to be this way? There is a page on Facebook that I 
would invite everybody to look at and to watch if you are interested at 
all in where your food comes from and why our resources in California 
and the West are being managed the way they are but especially with the 
intent being on our water supply in California.
  California water supply isn't just important to California. It is 
important to the whole country for these fresh fruit and vegetable 
products, the nut crops, and other things that are produced there that 
are not produced anywhere in this country otherwise or in very, very 
tiny percentages elsewhere.
  All of your almonds pretty much come from California. Yet, there is 
all this rhetoric out there, like the almonds are using all the water, 
that we are exporting all the water. No, the water doesn't actually 
leave the State. Each almond nut doesn't have that much water in it. It 
goes back into recharging the groundwater. It goes back into keeping 
the local economy growing those trees that replace CO2 with 
oxygen.
  Madam Speaker, I would like for you to check out this page on 
Facebook. It is called the California Water for Food and People 
Movement. A young lady named Kristi Diener on there puts out excellent 
information all the time on all the different aspects of California 
water and why that is important to everybody.
  We have the possibility of adding more water supply to our States. We 
could raise the Shasta Dam located in Shasta County near Redding, 
California, far up north. You could raise it 18 feet and augment it by 
about 630,000 acre-feet of additional water supply when you fill the 
lake.
  Also, another one called Sites Reservoir in the western part of the 
Sacramento Valley, it is about 70 to 80 miles south of the Shasta Dam. 
That would mean up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water that could be 
stored there when you fill that project.
  Those chunks of water would go a long way toward helping to keep the 
crops growing, as well as people's needs and cities.
  It is my view, as low as the lakes are getting right now, Lake 
Shasta, Lake Oroville, Lake Folsom, San Luis Reservoir, where water is 
transferred to after having been pumped through the delta--except they 
can't because the State pumps and the Federal pumps are hardly running 
because they think they are helping the delta smelt. If these 
reservoirs are all full, we can go up to 5 years if we are not wasting 
the water on biological things that don't make sense.
  We need to do a lot more to augment our water supply so we can keep 
growing the crops and have an economy of domestically grown products 
that are high quality and that people enjoy. And they won't know they 
are missing it until you can't get it.

  For seeing good information, on this Facebook page, the California 
Water for Food and People Movement, check into that because it is at 
least a counterargument to what you hear all the time in the press and 
in the news about what farmers are doing or how water storage is bad 
and how dams are bad.
  Dams, you get several good things by their existence. You get stored 
water for people in ag, as well as water that would not exist in 
summertime or in the fall that you could help with fish flows. Imagine 
that? You get hydroelectric generation. You get prevention against 
floods because you can store this water during the wild rainy season 
and keep that.
  The Army Corps of Engineers runs those operations for flood control 
around the country. Imagine the flooding you would have in those 
regions that can have that high flow during extraordinary rain events.
  You get recreation. You get a lot of good things from storing water, 
and we used to do that. We used to think ahead to do that. Now, we 
think we are getting ahead by tearing out this infrastructure that 
people need and actually can be beneficial and is beneficial to nature 
as well.
  We have to start thinking soundly and logically about what we are 
doing. That is why I have spent so much time on the Agriculture 
Committee, the Natural Resources Committee, and the Transportation and 
Infrastructure Committee talking about these issues. We have an 
opportunity with an infrastructure bill or two or three coming up here 
to do some real things in that.

                              {time}  2000

  I think most people when they think of infrastructure are thinking of 
our

[[Page H3665]]

highways, the basic transportation they use every day. They are 
thinking of things like levies, whether that is in my area of northern 
California or Louisiana or all around the country, that help prevent 
floods and keep water where we want it instead of where we don't want 
it, and water storage itself, the dams that make so much possible, as I 
mentioned, hydroelectric power, stored water, recreation, and flood 
control. It just makes sense.
  Why aren't we getting back to a sensible way of thinking about that?
  We are just letting the environmental groups and the press--they seem 
to want to cozy up to their argument and not get the counter side to 
this.
  Meanwhile, I have many constituents who aren't farming at all this 
year, not growing crops and doing that honest, good work that they have 
done for generations. These are good, hardworking people. Sometimes I 
wonder why they keep doing it because they don't seem to be appreciated 
for what they are doing. It is always a fight. They always have got to 
be heading into town to defend something, defend their water supply, 
defend their land uses, or defend against some more regulations thought 
up by somebody in Sacramento or in Washington, D.C., who really doesn't 
understand or seem to care about why they do what they do.
  It makes this hard sometimes because as a Representative I go back 
home, and I tell them: We are not having any really great answers 
coming out of Washington, D.C., lately.
  Under the Biden administration they are talking about pushing to 
reinstall the WOTUS regulations, the Waters of the United States. There 
are those in the Federal Government and environmental movements who 
think that every drop of rainfall somehow belongs to the Federal 
Government or State government for them to regulate.
  Madam Speaker, you have people trying to collect rainwater off their 
roofs into rain barrels and getting in trouble for that sometimes. The 
water running off their driveway, they can't corral that water. They 
can't build a stock pond to keep water for their stock because somehow 
that is affecting the whole water table or the whole water system. That 
is how far they want to interpret things--Waters of the United States.
  I tell you what, Madam Speaker, not everything belongs to the 
government. We have operated agriculture in this country for 200 years 
and done pretty well for the most part, and we are always working to 
improve and have better, more efficient water usage, better 
fertilizers, developing herbicides and things that leave less of a 
footprint behind or zero footprint behind and still produce a safe 
crop.
  People really should be asking questions. Ask these questions of the 
Biden administration. Ask them of the EPA. Ask them in your home State, 
Madam Speaker, as you see this stuff going on.
  Where are we going to get our food supply?
  Where are we going to get our electricity supply?
  Where are we going to get our wood supply?
  Where are we getting our fuel from?
  Enjoy this $4 fuel--almost $5 as I saw on the way to the airport 
today in Sacramento.
  It doesn't have to be this way.
  We need pipelines, we need domestically produced energy, and we can 
do it ecologically soundly. This isn't new ground. This isn't the 1850s 
or the 1860s when they hydraulic mined old mountain sides and they 
killed all the buffalo and cut all the trees. We are way smarter than 
that.
  Yet, Madam Speaker, you would still think that from the way the media 
covers it and the way the environmentalists talk about it in their 
groups and their fundraising pushes that it is the 1860s all over 
again. It isn't. We are pretty wise about how we manage our resources 
for our farms.
  These are our families' legacies.
  Why would we not take care of them?
  Why would we not take care of the soil?
  We do. We can do it better than any of those folks with their wide-
eyed ideas who come around saying: ``We could put your land into a 
long-term legacy that we help control,'' and pretty soon you are eating 
from their hand on how you manage your own farm, how you manage your 
own land, or maybe you decide to manage not to farm it for a while. You 
might be required to farm it anyway because it is now a habitat.
  Where did all this come from?
  Don't we trust rural people anymore to make good decisions?
  Don't we trust these people who work from sunup to sundown who 
provide for us from their heart and from their soul?
  Don't we trust them?
  Do we trust bureaucrats in D.C. or Sacramento or other State 
capitals?
  I don't. Not anymore.
  We have got to do better, and it is going to take the American public 
getting behind this, not just politicians here and not just ones 
locally because sometimes they are hesitant, and they are afraid to. We 
have to be bold. We have to be loud about this. And we have to speak up 
every 2 years at election time if they are not doing it because we are 
in big trouble right now.
  If California doesn't get above average rainfall next year, I don't 
know how much of agriculture is going to be in business. The lakes are 
getting to be at record low pretty soon. If California is not farming 
nearly to the percentage of what it does, it will affect everybody in 
this country. They will see it in prices, and they will see it in 
availability.
  Look at the store shelves already, how hard it is to keep certain 
things on the shelf when you go in and ask for it and it is not there, 
Madam Speaker. In restaurants if you ask for certain menu items, they 
are not even there.
  I went through a drive-through the other day, and half the items 
weren't available.
  What is going on in production?
  Yes, we know it has been a year of COVID, but production of basic 
hard items, car parts, any other manufactured item, nobody is going to 
work, or nobody can get the resources mined and shipped and made into 
an end product that people need.
  We have to wake up here.
  What is going on that the means of production we are either exporting 
it or we are shutting it down and we are putting the clamps on it?
  Heaven knows $6 trillion out of thin air spending last year because 
of the COVID mess, and yet trillions and trillions more are being 
proposed and sought to be spent upcoming on things that are not going 
to produce a rebounding, stronger economy but instead fulfill political 
goals.
  What are we doing?
  They are still pursuing high-speed rail in California--something the 
voters were told would cost $33 billion when it was voted on, I think 
in 2008, $33 billion the voters were told. That price now is over $120 
billion. It is only partially done. It is going to stop in an orchard 
somewhere around Bakersfield and go to another town in the northern 
part of the valley there where it will be a full rail line. For a $120 
billion price tag we could build three large dams and lakes, and 
California would not be worried about water supply once those were 
built and filled.
  Yet we chase these boondoggle things, either to fulfill campaign 
promises or some kind of idea of that something will be green and 
environmental. We are not going to have the resources we need the way 
we are going to fulfill the power grid for the amount of electricity 
that needs to be produced. We are not going to have it. We are going to 
wake up someday with electric cars that won't go and appliances that 
won't turn on because of shortsighted thinking.
  Do the math, Madam Speaker. We have got to do the math and hold 
accountable the people who are spreading this misinformation. If it 
just doesn't seem right or sensible to you, Madam Speaker, trust your 
little voice. Trust your instinct on that because when this stuff 
doesn't add up, you are probably right. It doesn't. I have seen it 
enough around here to know it doesn't add up long-term.
  I don't normally do this open mic business here, but I am watching my 
constituents being burned out of where they live. I am watching them 
being pushed out by an economy that doesn't support what they used to 
produce of things that people need and people used to need and still 
will need. I am watching normal, hardworking Americans feeling a little 
hopeless right now, and I don't feel great about it because there is 
not more I can do as one of 435 in this room to help fix it.

[[Page H3666]]

  But we get up every day, and we try and get this message out. That is 
why I use this microphone, because we can't let this fall on our watch.
  I ask the people to dig in, pay attention, and hold accountable those 
who are putting the noose around the neck of our rural economy and 
things that all Americans rely on.
  Help us out. We desperately need it.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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