[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 52 (Wednesday, March 22, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H1320-H1323]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1930
                       CALIFORNIA'S WATER CRISIS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Kiggans of Virginia). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 9, 2023, the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Kiley) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of 
the majority leader.
  Mr. KILEY. Madam Speaker, we have had a series of very heavy storms 
in California. We have gotten a lot of water, and I wanted to take a 
moment to talk about what is happening to that water.
  This is a photo I took a few days ago at the Folsom Dam; 20,000 cubic 
feet is being released per second where it is sent on its way to the 
Pacific Ocean. That staggering amount of water is not available to 
California farmers, businesses, or residents.
  Meanwhile, State-sponsored billboards tell people to put a bucket in 
their shower so they can save that water for gardening. Restaurants are 
prohibited from serving their customers drinking water unless the 
customer specifically asks for it.
  Here are some of the other emergency drought restrictions that have 
been in effect: Turn off decorative water fountains. Use an automatic 
shutoff nozzle on your water hose. Use a broom, not water to clean 
sidewalks and driveways. Commercial, industrial, and institutional 
decorative grass should not be watered; same for the common areas in 
homeowner associations.
  Down here you can see all the enforcement, all the penalties if you 
don't follow this. It says here, for local jurisdictions, for urban 
water suppliers, if needed, exercise authority to adopt more stringent 
local conservation measures. Some local authorities have done just 
that.
  The Las Virgenes Municipal Water District began sending government 
employees into residents' homes to install flow restrictors. Once 
installed, you are also barred from watering anything outside, and you 
are not able to use two appliances needing water at once.
  One resident said: ``You have to take what's called a Navy shower . . 
. 2 minutes. . . .''
  In Los Angeles, they have the water police, where municipalities pay 
individuals to drive around and check for leaky swimming pools, green 
lawns, or other signs of water use.
  This is just the beginning. In 2018, the California Legislature 
adopted a statewide limit of 55 gallons of indoor water use per person 
per day; so a single person living alone can't take a shower and do a 
load of laundry in the same day. Yet, last year, the legislature 
decided even this was too generous and reduced the allotted water to 42 
gallons per day.
  Then, of course, there is the impact on farmers. For both 2021 and 
2022, surface water deliveries dropped by 43 percent. An estimated 
752,000 acres lay idle in 2022.
  The general manager of the Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District said: 
``We typically plant 100,000 acres of rice in our district. And this 
last year we planted 1,000 acres. It is just a massive, massive 
impact,'' he said.
  As a result, $1.7 billion in crop revenues were lost in 2022, and an 
estimated 19,400 jobs.
  These drastic sacrifices have been required of Californians because 
of a supposed lack of water. We prayed for rain, and then the rain 
comes, and this happens.
  Here is the overall impact of this image and others like it 
throughout the State. So far this year, October through mid-March, the 
net outflow, this is after pumping, from the delta into the San 
Francisco Bay is 11.6 million acre-feet.
  Meanwhile, the State has only pumped 1.0 million acre-feet into the 
California Aqueduct, and the Federal Bureau of Reclamation has only 
pumped 826,000 acre-feet into the Delta Mendota Canal.
  With this record precipitation, that means 13 percent of delta 
outflows have been captured. The rest is squandered.
  If we were able to capture this water, we wouldn't have to worry 
about floods, and we wouldn't have to worry about droughts. Communities 
wouldn't be put at risk. Farmers wouldn't have to fallow their fields. 
Citizens wouldn't have to take shorter showers.
  The reason we aren't capturing it isn't because this water is somehow 
inherently elusive. It is because there is simply no place to put it.
  California has not seen a new water storage project in at least 30 
years, despite many promising potential projects that have been in the 
planning stages since the 1950s.
  In 2014, California voters said enough is enough and passed a $7.5 
billion water bond. Build water storage, the voters said. Yet, nothing 
has been built. In the 9 years since, no significant project has 
materialized. Endless litigation, mind-numbing bureaucracy and, most of 
all, a lack of political will have been a recipe for inaction.
  The executive director of the most significant project, Sites 
Reservoir, said: My experience is that for every 1 year of 
construction, you have about 3 years of permitting.

[[Page H1321]]

  It doesn't need to be this way. The massive Folsom Dam, of which this 
is the auxiliary spillway, holds about a million acre-feet of water and 
took less than a decade in the late 1940s and early 1950s to build.
  In addition to failing to build any new in-stream or off-stream 
reservoirs, California has also rejected all but one proposed 
desalination plant, and is taking advantage of a small fraction of the 
potential for water treatment.
  Even now, amidst the current record precipitation, our State and 
Federal pumps still aren't operating at full capacity.
  In short, this uniquely Californian absurdity of alternating or even 
simultaneous floods and droughts is not some inevitable by-product of 
our climate or geography. It is the direct product of political 
failure. We have more than enough tools at our disposal to have a 
sustainable, secure supply of water for all users.
  This image needs to be a wake-up call for California's leaders at the 
State and Federal level. No more excuses. Let's solve this problem now. 
Let's end this era of floods and droughts, of shorter showers, and 
fallow fields. Let's liberate our constituents from this regime of 
enforced scarcity and give Californians the abundant supply of water 
they deserve.

  This is California's problem, but it affects the entire country. 
California agriculture feeds the Nation and the world, and we could 
never have become the State that we are, or at least once were, a State 
that used to lead the country in so many good ways, without the dams, 
aqueducts, pipes, tunnels, canals, plants, pumping stations built by 
previous generations.
  We need to summon the can-do spirit of our forebearers, and we don't 
even need their ingenuity. We just need basic competence.
  Effective water management was indispensable to California's 20th 
century rise and is just as indispensable to reversing its 21st century 
decline.


                         Recent Court Decisions

  Mr. KILEY. Madam Speaker, this last week, two court decisions in 
California delivered a near-fatal blow to one of the worst laws that 
has ever been passed, the California law known as AB 5, that destroyed 
the livelihoods of countless people, wiping out hundreds of professions 
in our State.
  These court decisions have significant ramifications for three 
matters of national importance: First, the recently re-introduced PRO 
Act, which seeks to nationalize California's ban on independent work; 
second, a proposed Department of Labor rule that seeks to do much the 
same thing through the bureaucracy; and third, the upcoming 
confirmation hearings for President Biden's nominee for Secretary of 
Labor, Julie Su, who, as California's Labor Secretary, was an architect 
and lead enforcer of AB 5.
  The PRO Act, the Labor rule, Julie Su: It is a multi-pronged assault 
on the right to earn a living in America, a concerted strategy to limit 
or eliminate the gig economy, freelancing, independent contracting, 
self-employment, and other alternate work arrangements that entire 
careers are based on and entire industries have been built around.
  If this strategy is successful, it will be devastating for the 
American economy and American workers. We know that because of the 
devastation California has already experienced.
  When he signed AB 5 in late 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom rendered 
countless Californians, spanning hundreds of professions, unable to 
earn a living in our State. Videographers and caricaturists, 
transcriptionists and interpreters, technicians and engineers, analysts 
and consultants, musicians and conductors, artists and dancers, writers 
and editors, coaches and trainers, teachers and tutors, nurses and 
doulas, hardly an industry or profession is unscathed.
  The consequences go well beyond just the affected professions. To 
take one example, thousands and thousands of truckers are at risk of 
being taken off the road, throwing supply chains into chaos.
  AB 5 is a law so bad that California voters have repudiated it, and 
the legislature has granted over 100 exemptions to professions with 
enough influence at the Capitol.
  These two developments, the clearly expressed will of California 
voters, and the scattershot exemption process, were the subjects of 
last week's court decisions.
  In the first decision, the California Court of Appeal unanimously 
upheld Proposition 22, an initiative passed by California voters in 
2020. Prop 22 repealed AB 5 for one category of independent 
contractors, app-based drivers.
  Uber, to take one example, was going to have to terminate up to 80 
percent of its drivers because of AB 5, and nearly had to stop 
operating in our State altogether. Their drivers, who prize the 
flexibility of being able to switch on the app whenever they want to 
work, were appalled at the prospect of being assigned to fixed shifts, 
minimum work hour requirements, and more, if they were able to drive at 
all.
  So Prop 22 was proposed to preserve the independent contracting model 
for these drivers and enable services like Uber and Lyft to continue in 
California.
  In November of 2020, Prop 22 passed overwhelmingly with 59 percent of 
the vote. This is the one time that AB 5 has been subject to a direct 
vote of the people, and California voters decisively rejected it.
  Yet, tellingly, the special interest groups behind AB 5 then tried to 
defy the will of voters, tying up the initiative in arcane legal 
challenges; but last Tuesday, a State Appellate Court put an end to 
this anti-democratic nonsense. The Court respected the will of voters 
and upheld the initiative.
  The Justices acknowledged the people of California had chosen to 
overturn AB 5 and protect independent contracting. So, for the dozens 
of Democrat Members of Congress sponsoring the PRO Act, take notice: 
your position is at odds with the voters of even my own very blue 
State.

  There was a second decision on AB 5 last week of perhaps even greater 
significance. This one, also a unanimous ruling, was from a Federal 
Appeals Court. Overruling a district court decision, the Ninth Circuit 
Court of Appeals held in favor of independent contractors who alleged 
AB 5 violates the United States Constitution.
  Specifically, it is an Equal Protection violation. By granting over 
100 exemptions to AB 5, the Court wrote, the legislature has not only 
refuted its own justification for the law, but it has picked and chosen 
who is allowed to work and who isn't, without any rational basis.
  Indeed, the court referred to the ``. . . piecemeal fashion in which 
the exemptions were granted,'' saying this ``lends credence to 
Plaintiffs' allegations that the exemptions were the result of the 
`lobbying' and `backroom dealing' as opposed to adherence to the stated 
purpose of the legislation.''
  The court wrote that who is subject to the law, and who isn't, could 
plausibly be ``attributed to animus rather than reason,'' and that the 
State's policy of now enforcing AB 5 on some but not others, borders on 
corruption, pure spite, or naked favoritism.
  For this reason, the court found that the constitutional case against 
AB 5 passes the rational-basis test, which is notoriously difficult to 
pass. Under that standard, a court will only strike down a law if there 
is not ``any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a 
rational basis for'' it.
  In this case, the court explained that ``even under this `fairly 
forgiving' standard of review, we conclude that . . . Plaintiffs 
plausibly alleged that AB 5 . . . violates the Equal Protection 
Clause.''
  Why in the world would a law that, per the Ninth Circuit Court of 
Appeals, lacks any rational basis be transformed into national policy, 
ensnaring millions of Americans in its web of corruption, animus, and 
economic failure?
  Why would we take a law so bad that legislatures felt the need to 
unconstitutionally award 100 exemptions to their friends and say this 
is our model for the American workforce?

                              {time}  1945

  There is no good reason at all, no good reason why a law that the 
voters of deep-blue California rejected should be the template for 
national labor relations, as the PRO Act seeks to do.
  There is no reason why a law that cannot be justified by any 
reasonably conceivable state of facts should be imposed by executive 
fiat nationwide, as the Biden administration's labor rule would do.

[[Page H1322]]

  There is no reason why an architect and ruthless enforcer of that 
law, former California Labor Secretary Julie Su, should be elevated to 
the highest labor office in the land.
  Julie Su's historic failure to deliver unemployment checks to 
millions of Californians, along with her allowance of the largest fraud 
of taxpayer dollars in history, are easily disqualifying from the 
standpoint of competence, but it is her mistreatment of California 
workers through the ruthless enforcement of AB 5 even during the COVID 
shutdowns that truly makes her unfit for this position.
  The voters of California repudiated Julie Su with the passage of 
Prop. 22. Two separate appeals courts repudiated Su with last week's 
decisions.
  It is time for President Biden to withdraw this nomination. If he 
refuses, I urge the United States Senate to join California voters, 
California judges, and Federal judges in rejecting this nominee.


                Honoring the Life and Memory of Rex Hime

  Mr. KILEY. Madam Speaker, in recent weeks, my district has lost 
several of its most distinguished citizens. I want to share a few words 
about their lives and the legacy they have left in our communities.
  Madam Speaker, I would like to take a moment to honor the life and 
memory of Rex Hime, a committed public servant, veteran, native 
Californian, and friend to many.
  Rex's life was guided by a commitment to serving others and a work 
hard, play hard attitude that endeared him to people across California. 
In fact, Rex's habit of regularly walking the halls of the California 
State Capitol in Sacramento and testifying in a Hawaiian shirt rather 
than the customary suit and tie was by some accounts singlehandedly 
responsible for relaxing the dress code at the capitol building, which 
is appreciated by many.
  Rarely would Rex let a meeting or conference call end without making 
everyone laugh and lightening the mood of the conversation. Rex also 
spread joy to others through serving as the chair, vice chair, and 
board member of the Cal Expo & State Fair for over 20 years. His 
passion for bringing joy to others through the fair was widely 
recognized, as five different Governors from both political parties 
continued to appoint Rex to the California State Fair Board.
  Rex's service to his community and country extended far beyond the 
fair. He served in both the Army Reserve and California National Guard, 
retiring as a major in 1990. Rex was also a member of the California 
Task Force on Violence Prevention, a regent of the University of 
California, and president of the Cal Aggie Alumni Association.
  Apart from his community work, Rex worked as president and CEO of the 
California Business Properties Association for 37 years and was often 
instrumental in protecting taxpayers and helping craft legislation that 
served as models for States across the country.
  I am honored to have known Rex. He was a devoted husband and father, 
and our community and California will never forget the impact that Rex 
Hime had and continues to have on our lives through his service and 
advocacy work throughout his 75 years.


                  Honoring the Memory of Martin Harmon

  Mr. KILEY. Madam Speaker, I rise to honor the memory of Martin 
Harmon, a philanthropist, entrepreneur, and beloved member of the 
Roseville community who passed away in February at the age of 88.
  Martin lifted the lives of thousands of members of the community 
through his charitable foundation, which supported hospitals, churches, 
cancer research, substance abuse recovery programs, the arts, disaster 
relief efforts, and children's programs throughout the Sacramento area.
  He impressed upon his family the importance of making a positive 
difference and is survived by his cherished wife, Kathryn Harmon; 9 
children; 33 grandchildren; and 29 great-grandchildren.
  Martin also embodied the American entrepreneurial spirit. He started 
his career at age 9 by selling cookware door to door during World War 
II and later parlayed his experience working behind a butcher's counter 
into opening his own market and meat-packing company as a teenager.
  At the age of 27, Martin purchased his first nursing home in Auburn, 
which presaged his future as a developer and contractor. Martin's wide-
ranging developments, from medical office buildings and shopping 
centers to subdivisions and apartments, leave behind a profound legacy 
for his children and grandchildren.
  I was honored to know Martin, and our community will never forget the 
impact that Martin Harmon has had and will continue to have on our 
lives for many years to come.


               Honoring the Life and Memory of Paul Dugan

  Mr. KILEY. Madam Speaker, I would like to take a moment to honor the 
life and memory of Dr. Paul Dugan, a committed physician and pillar of 
the Roseville community who sadly passed away in February at the age of 
92.
  Dr. Dugan served countless members of the Roseville community and 
Sacramento area through his work as a physician. His passion for caring 
for others through medicine, sparked by an early affliction of polio, 
is abundantly clear through his life's work. Ever since moving to 
Roseville in 1963, Dr. Dugan regularly spent weekends doing house 
calls, serving uninsured patients and friends of patients, and 
tirelessly advocating for public health awareness.
  Paul and his wife, Olga, even started the first-ever mass CPR 
training program, Start-A-Heart, in 1978. The program ran continuously 
for 19 years and was later replicated as CPR Saturday across the 
country and internationally by the American Red Cross. Dr. Dugan 
doubtlessly saved countless lives through his leadership in organizing 
and executing the Start-A-Heart program and his service as a physician.

  Dr. Dugan's passion for serving others extended beyond medicine and 
beyond Roseville. Dr. Dugan served on the Roseville Planning 
Commission, helping shape Roseville into the city it is today. He 
served as president of the Roseville Chamber of Commerce and was 
recognized by community members as Roseville's Citizen of the Year in 
1978 and 1992. Dr. Dugan was also selected to serve on the California 
Board of Medical Examiners by both Governor Ronald Reagan and Governor 
Jerry Brown, and he assisted in credentialing the UC Davis School of 
Medicine.
  I was honored to know Paul, and our community will never forget Dr. 
Paul Dugan and the tremendous impact he has had on his patients and 
residents of Roseville through his service as a physician and leader in 
the community.


                 Honoring the Memory of Greg Van Dusen

  Mr. KILEY. Madam Speaker, I rise to honor the memory of Greg Van 
Dusen, a pillar of the Sacramento-area community.
  Greg was born in Sacramento in 1950 and, from an early age, had a 
passion for serving others and for sports. Greg's service and 
leadership were recognized by his peers after he served as student body 
president in 1968, and he later served a 12-month combat tour in 
Vietnam.
  After returning from Vietnam, Greg combined his passion for service 
and sports by working tirelessly to facilitate the move of the 
Sacramento Kings from Kansas City to Sacramento in 1985. As a result of 
Greg's efforts, generations of Sacramento-area residents have become 
diehard Kings fans, although, admittedly, it has been pretty tough in 
many recent years. The team's somewhat unexpected success this season, 
I think, is a tremendous tribute to Greg.
  Greg was also a devoted father and grandfather, helping shape his 
three sons into the men they are today. He always looked forward to 
visits from his grandkids, attending their sporting events and teaching 
them life lessons. His son Brett remembers him as ``a brilliant mind; a 
hardworking, compassionate father and grandfather; and always willing 
to help anyone who asked.''
  I was truly honored to know Greg. He was a good friend. Our community 
will never forget the impact that Greg Van Dusen has had and will 
continue to have on our lives through his passion for serving others.


            Honoring the Life and Memory of Allan Zaremberg

  Mr. KILEY. Madam Speaker, I would like to take a moment to honor the 
life and memory of Allan Zaremberg, a beloved member of the Sacramento-
area community and a kindhearted public servant.

[[Page H1323]]

  Allan's impact has been felt over 40 years at the California State 
Capitol, including for 23 years as president of the California Chamber 
of Commerce.
  Allan held a deep commitment to forging constructive compromise with 
anyone willing to help deliver results for the people of California, 
listening respectfully and kindly to everyone's opinions and building 
trust through honest dealmaking, the very embodiment of how politics 
ought to be practiced.
  His work, among many other results, helped ensure that significant 
investments were made in infrastructure and in caring for Californians' 
mental health. Allan also served several California Governors in a 
variety of roles, including Governor George Deukmejian and Governor 
Pete Wilson.
  Allan also served our country as an Air Force officer during Vietnam. 
During the war, he was a captain and flight navigator in the KC-135, 
responsible for refueling spy planes. His time in the Air Force 
informed his approach throughout his life's work, from calmly managing 
a crisis to learning how to get the job done, no matter the obstacles 
at hand.
  Apart from his service, Allan is also remembered as a kind 
individual, often making pizzas from scratch for friends at his home in 
Loomis.
  I was truly honored to know Allan and to work with him. People 
throughout California will never forget the impact that he had and will 
continue to have for many, many years to come.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________