[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 64 (Tuesday, April 18, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H1765-H1766]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     WOTUS RULE SHOULD BE REPEALED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, today, the House will vote to decide 
whether to overturn another bad decision by President Biden.
  His veto of H.J. Res. 27, which overturned the EPA's and Army Corps 
of Engineers' overreaching definition of

[[Page H1766]]

``waters of the United States,'' in yet another rule change to that 
law, keeps the new expanded definition of WOTUS in place.
  This change to one of most abused and litigated Federal statutes on 
the books allows the EPA to regulate every single ditch, every little 
puddle, every ephemeral stream in America, as if they were somehow the 
Mississippi River or the Sacramento River, in my home State.
  Of course, this is ludicrous, as our Nation's commerce, agriculture, 
and natural beauty are not dependent on a farmer's self-made ditch or 
irrigation canal or these ephemeral streams.
  With the expanded WOTUS rule, the Federal Government can now regulate 
almost any activity, from farming to landscaping, which occurs on 
private property.
  Treating Americans' private property as sacrosanct has been a core 
principle of this Nation for over two centuries.
  Our Founders would be horrified to see a United States Government 
agency, headquartered here in Washington, D.C., granting itself broad 
power to regulate every single American on their own land.
  We have seen the EPA abuse WOTUS before to regulate everything from 
farming to home building. Ridiculous interpretations on whether you can 
even plant a fallow field back to a wheat crop that previously had one 
without a permit can often take 3 years because there is no motivation 
from the Army Corps or other regulators to get the job done and tell 
the farmer: Yes, you may farm your ground the way you did it once 
before. They sued them for it, they fined them, and basically put them 
out of business over a farming activity that has occurred.
  Another example is the couple that are being sued over WOTUS, and it 
is being used as a weapon to prevent a married couple from building 
their dream home near the shore of a lake, all within the rules.
  I guarantee you, when the Clean Water Act and the Environmental 
Protection Act were passed in the early seventies by this Congress, 
they did not have the intent, nor would they have gotten away with, 
passing legislation that would have been so far-reaching as this.
  These are about, yes, clean water. They are about protecting species 
and some of the habitat for them, not every possible piece of ground in 
the world that might host one, even though they don't currently.
  They would not have been able to pass that through Congress because 
people would have run them out of here on a rail. Yet, through court 
interpretations over time, rulemaking, and guidance, this is where we 
have gotten to. The administration, and the previous Democratic 
administration, have been hyperaggressive in putting waters of the 
United States rules in place that have little to do with what the 
measurement used to be, that it was a navigable stream.
  Well, ``navigable'' used to mean you could actually drive a boat up 
and down that particular river or what have you. Now, if you can float 
a rubber duck in it for a half hour after a rain in a pond or a stream 
or what have you, then they seem to believe that should be a good 
enough definition for ``navigable waterways.''
  It is ridiculous. With the increasing cost of food to Americans and 
fewer food choices on our shelves, and even empty shelves in this 
country, this is the move they make, to restore to previous aggressive 
limits of waters of the United States and take away the ability to farm 
our products, already safely, already reliably, already ecologically 
sound.
  This is not needed under the Biden interpretation or the previous 
Obama interpretation. These are property rights, and these are land 
rights that are a cornerstone of our country's founding. Indeed, it is 
a way to take more control and put Washington, D.C., and put 
bureaucrats in greater charge of things that used to be good rural 
issues, rural values, which are keeping food on the table for 
Americans, thereby positioning us to be independent of having to import 
food, which keeps us strong.
  Food is strategic. Food is a security issue. We are seeing our 
security dissipate rapidly under the weight of crazy regulations like 
this and others that are so negatively affecting our ability to produce 
energy in this country. WOTUS is used to stop that, too. If we don't 
produce our own energy, are we going to import more from the Saudis or 
other areas?
  We have seen these embargoes twice in our past. It doesn't work very 
well. Energy is the core for everything in a civilized society. As we 
see our energy dissipating along domestic production, we are seeing the 
high cost of everything.
  WOTUS needs to be repealed, and I hope the House does that today.

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