[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 148 (Wednesday, September 13, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H4278-H4283]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY NEEDED TO COMPLETE INVESTIGATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that 
all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend 
their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of my 
Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Louisiana?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, barring declarations of war, 
impeachment is the most awesome power that Congress has. It shouldn't 
be a threat. It shouldn't be a political exercise. It is certainly not 
a pledge to be made on the campaign trail.
  This is the most serious business that we can engage in. No one 
should want to impeach a President or take any pleasure in that. 
However, after months of blocked investigations by agencies in this 
administration, it became clear that an impeachment inquiry was the 
only course of action to complete our necessary and important 
investigations.
  Let me explain why because there has been some confusion and some 
controversy about this.
  Mr. Speaker, there are three irrefutable facts that have taken us to 
this point.
  One, President Biden lied directly to the American people.
  Two, President Biden's family and their associates profited millions 
through shell companies.
  Three, President Biden's Federal agencies are stonewalling our 
legitimate congressional inquiry.
  That is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many scandals. 
There is so much corruption that is being uncovered. Every stone that 
we overturn leads to more and more corruption.
  Because of that, Mr. Speaker, a lot of the American people are simply 
getting lost in the barrage of evidence, in the barrage of allegations 
of corruption, and the evidence itself.
  Let me go through just a couple of highlights here to bring 
everybody's attention to this to help explain why we are doing what we 
are doing.
  In August 2019, President Biden said: ``I have never discussed with 
my son or my brother or anyone else anything having to do with their 
businesses, period.''
  Two months later, he said: ``I never discussed a single thing with my 
son about anything having to do with Ukraine. No one has indicated I 
have. We have always kept everything separate.''
  He then doubled down on those claims during the debates, and both Jen 
Psaki and Karine Jean-Pierre have echoed that straight from the White 
House press briefing room.
  Make no mistake about this: Everyone now knows those were all bald-
faced lies.
  While President Biden was Vice President, we know now that he had 
dinner at least twice with his son, Hunter, and Russian and Kazakhstani 
oligarchs. He spoke on the phone at least 20 times with Hunter's 
associates.

[[Page H4279]]

He met with CEFC, a Chinese energy company, while Hunter was working on 
their behalf.
  Here is a text message from Hunter Biden that alone is justification 
for an inquiry: ``Z--Please have the director call me, not James or 
Tony or Jim. Have him call me tonight. I am sitting here with my 
father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not 
been fulfilled.''

  A confidential human source, known well to the FBI and relied upon 
often, alleged that President Biden received a $5 million bribe for 
services rendered.
  The House Oversight Committee investigation has been going on for a 
while, and the investigation has yielded many important facts. Here are 
a couple of examples the investigators have found.
  They found that Hunter Biden flew on Air Force Two at least 15 times 
and engaged in activities that Devon Archer testified were to sell the 
brand and enrich the Biden family.
  They found an email from Biden associate James Gillar that breaks 
down the profit agreement for a deal involving the Chinese Communist 
Party-linked CEFC, including ``10 held by H for the big guy.''
  They found a text message later that month from Gillar to Tony 
Bobulinski, which read: ``Don't mention Joe being involved. It is only 
when you are face-to-face. I know you know that, but they are 
paranoid.''
  This is just a sampling of what we already know. This impeachment 
inquiry will offer House investigators greater subpoena authority to 
receive information from evasive Federal agencies.
  We have been impeded in the collection of all this evidence because 
the Federal agencies under the executive branch are openly, 
aggressively trying to protect the President. We are going to have 
advanced authority now and a larger platform to share this information 
with the American people.
  Mr. Speaker, remember how we arrived here. When the New York Post 
reported the existence of the Hunter Biden laptop, now-Secretary of 
State Anthony Blinken organized a group of 51 former intelligence 
officials to claim the laptop was Russian disinformation. Social media 
accounts were banned from sharing the story, and individuals who 
believed it were labeled Russian assets and conspiracy theorists.
  We now know that not only was the laptop not Russian disinformation, 
of course, but it was known previously to the intel community and many 
of the individuals who signed that letter. They knew it was legitimate. 
They knew it was not Russian disinformation. They knew it came from 
Hunter Biden, and they hid it from the American people.
  On July Fourth, just a couple of months ago, the Federal district 
court in the Western District of Louisiana, my home State, issued a 
155-page court opinion. The State of Louisiana and State of Missouri 
sued the Biden administration because they had a hunch and knew that 
the White House and its agencies, including the FBI, the DOJ, and other 
Federal agencies, were engaged in a coverup. They were censoring and 
silencing the viewpoints of Americans they disagreed with. They would 
not allow conservative speech on the social media platforms.
  We know from the evidence produced in that case and listed in the 
155-page court opinion that issued an injunction against the White 
House. By the way, just last Saturday, that was upheld by the U.S. 
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The court points out that Elvis 
Chan, the FBI official in the San Francisco field office, was meeting 
regularly with the Big Tech platforms in Silicon Valley leading up to 
the election and telling them things that they had to pull off the 
internet, conservative voices and social media postings that they 
didn't want people to see. The FBI coerced, the court said, and then 
coordinated with the Big Tech giants to make sure that on Facebook, 
Google, and Twitter at the time, and all these other platforms, you 
couldn't see that information.
  It wasn't just the Hunter Biden laptop story. It was a lot of 
categories of things. It included negative information about the 
economy. It included people's opinions, conservative's opinions about 
the efficacy of COVID vaccines and the lockdowns, how crazy that was, 
and what they were doing to schoolchildren. All that was censored.
  They even took down jokes about the President. If you posted a parody 
about President Biden, even as a candidate or after he was elected, it 
was pulled off the internet.
  It is unbelievable. It is staggering. The judge's words in the court 
that this is arguably the largest and the greatest attack on free 
speech in U.S. history. He called it Orwellian. He said it was 
dystopian.
  This is what we are facing. This is what this White House has been 
involved in. They did not want the American people to have the facts, 
and that is one of the reasons that we have to go to this next step.
  That is why, Mr. Speaker, we have to follow these facts where they 
lead. The facts are irrefutable. They have understandably set 
Washington ablaze, even though the American people weren't able to see 
it. The judge said that millions of free-speech-protected postings were 
taken down from the internet and not seen. Yet, it has set Washington 
ablaze. Why? Because we are bringing these facts to bear. We are laying 
them out for people to see.
  Our colleagues here, some of them, don't want to see it. As John 
Adams said, ``Facts are stubborn things.'' As expected, the D.C. and 
national press corps have blindly accepted the White House's spin and 
are trying to convince the American people that our inquiry, even the 
impeachment inquiry, is illegitimate just 3 years after they carried 
the water for Adam Schiff and the Democrats on their crazy impeachment 
quests against Donald Trump.
  Here is a sampling of the headlines so far. Now, remember, we just 
announced the impeachment inquiry step yesterday. Here it is so far.
  From Time magazine: ``Biden inquiry may be weakest in history.''
  From CNN: ``The most predictable impeachment investigation in 
American history.''
  From Reuters: ``McCarthy opens long-shot impeachment probe of 
Biden.''
  From MSNBC: ``McCarthy's Biden impeachment inquiry is the Benghazi 
investigation on steroids.''
  These headlines are going to increase. We know it is coming. We know 
that they are working against us, against the American people, in this 
case, and for the White House. They are on their team. We get it.

  CNN is reporting this week that the White House is urging news 
executives to ramp up scrutiny of our investigation. In fact, now there 
is a memo going around that they sent to all the big news agencies. As 
if weaponizing the Federal agencies wasn't enough, President Biden is 
now publicly directing the free press to play defense for him. Do you 
know what? They are willingly going along with it.
  Mr. Speaker, why? I am just going to ask this question. It is a 
rhetorical one. Nobody can answer it here, of course, but we are trying 
to seek the answer to this. I think we know. If there was no 
impropriety, why wouldn't the President provide congressional 
investigators with all the information we have requested? What do they 
have to hide?
  The President could make the short trip from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue 
tomorrow. He could sit down with our committees. He could clear his 
name. We could do that behind closed doors. We could do it very 
discreetly, with all the protection he needs. In fact, we would welcome 
it.
  Let this be an open invitation to President Biden. I know the White 
House is recording all this. They are watching what we do here. Here is 
the open invitation: President Biden, Secretary Blinken, any of the 
Biden family members and associates, or anyone who seeks to clear their 
name, anybody involved in this investigation at all, you can come right 
here. You are welcome here in Congress to our committees.

                              {time}  1800

  We on the House Judiciary Committee, House Oversight Committee, 
Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, the 
Ways and Means Committee, any of them--pick your committee--and we will 
bring you in and you can clear your name.
  Mr. Speaker, we would love to return our full focus to our regular 
and important work here, but the fact is our sworn oath to defend the 
Constitution

[[Page H4280]]

requires this inquiry. I will close with this--and I am going to bring 
up a couple of my colleagues who will share their thoughts, as well--
but remember that Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution itself 
expressly states that the sole power of impeachment belongs here to 
this House. Then Article II, Section 4 says--listen to the language 
carefully. It is expressly written in the Constitution. These are not 
political talking points. We are not making this up. It says in Article 
II, Section 4 that the President shall be removed from office on 
impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high 
crimes and misdemeanors.
  Mr. Speaker, I listed just a small sampling, just the tip of the 
iceberg of the credible allegations and the mounting evidence that 
shows that Joseph Biden has engaged in bribery schemes, pay-to-play 
schemes. This is what the evidence shows.
  We have to follow it. We took an oath to uphold the Constitution. The 
Constitution requires this action. The inquiry is the appropriate step. 
We have no choice but to pursue the facts wherever they lead, and we 
will leave no stone unturned.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield next to the great gentleman from Utah (Mr. 
Owens), not only a Super Bowl champion but also a wonderful 
Congressman.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana for 
yielding me the time.
  I rise today in full support of House Republicans' formal impeachment 
inquiry into President Joe Biden.
  Seven months ago, House Republicans returned oversight to the 
people's House. We have worked consistently day after day to make your 
government more accountable as promised in our Commitment to America.
  Since January, concerning and credible allegations against President 
Joe Biden have emerged, including abuse of power, obstruction of 
justice, corrupt foreign business dealings, and influence-pedaling 
schemes that led to tens of millions of dollars in the pockets of 
several members of the Biden family--so far $20 million in profits to a 
family that has nothing to do with our government at this point.
  I think we can all agree Americans deserve accountability from our 
President. Our impeachment inquiry is not a political ploy--it is an 
opportunity for Congress to continue its duty, digging into the 
potential of corruption and bringing facts to light.
  The evidence is very troubling. Our witnesses have testified about 
President Biden's involvement in phone calls, interactions, and dinners 
that resulted in significant financial gains to his son and his son's 
business partners.
  The Treasury Department alone has flagged more than 150 transactions 
involving the Biden family and other business associates as suspicious 
activity by U.S. banks.
  Even a trusted FBI informant has alleged a bribe to the Biden family.
  There is evidence that President Biden used his official office to 
coordinate with Hunter Biden's business partners regarding Hunter's 
role with Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.
  These actions, and more, raise serious questions about the integrity 
of our highest office. Our government serves the interests of all 
Americans, not just a select few.
  Rest assured, House Republicans will follow the evidence wherever it 
leads, and the truth will come to light.
  I thank the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Johnson, for yielding and 
for bringing this team together tonight.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from 
Idaho (Mr. Fulcher).
  Mr. FULCHER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding.
  This is an important week when it comes to the vehicles that we have 
and the access to those vehicles.
  To that end, I rise in support of an upcoming bill, H.R. 1435, 
Preserving Choice in Vehicle Purchases Act.
  If the leftist central planners get their way, the internal 
combustion engine could be outlawed by 2035 or sooner.
  The Biden administration and big city do-gooders want to ban the 
internal combustion engine with climate change as the excuse, but the 
facts speak otherwise. In 2021, 93 percent of light-duty vehicles sold 
were powered by gasoline or flex-fuel variants.
  From cleaner technologies, advanced fuels, and lower carbon 
emissions, the internal combustion engine continues to be valued by 
consumers from all walks of life.
  Consumer choice is essential in rural areas where farmers, ranchers, 
and small towns need access to reliable transportation and fuel. 
Forcing electric vehicles on the masses through compulsion defeats the 
very purpose of the consumer marketplace.
  H.R. 1435 stops the attack on reliable and affordable transportation 
options. Consumer choice in vehicles keeps education accessible, 
employment a reality, and healthcare options in reach.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge support of H.R. 1435.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I ask the gentleman before he 
leaves the podium today: I was told by automobile dealers who were in 
my office from the district that the State of California has banned the 
combustion engine. Is that a rumor or is that true?
  Mr. FULCHER. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. I yield to the gentleman from Idaho.
  Mr. FULCHER. Mr. Speaker, only in California can something like that 
be brought up, but, yes, that is my understanding. That is the 
direction they are going.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Isn't it true then that if California, 
which is one of the largest markets for vehicles, bans the sale of the 
combustion engine, then the car manufacturers, if they want to do 
business in California, are going to have to shift lots of their 
production lines to these vehicles that, by the way, no one wants, and 
they are not affordable or maintainable. As I understand it, if the 
battery goes it costs you another $100,000 for an already overpriced 
vehicle that no one wants or can charge up. Isn't that then going to 
affect the automobile market in every other State, and your ability to 
get a truck or a car?

  Mr. FULCHER. That affects everyone else. We didn't even get into the 
whole topic of just the overall economic and environmental impact, and 
the resources necessary to build these electric cars. The resources 
need to be sourced in unfriendly areas because we don't allow ourselves 
to produce those components here. We are talking about lead, we are 
talking about lithium, we are talking about the things that those 
vehicles need. You probably know this, but if not, the places where 
they get sourced are not exactly economically or environmentally 
friendly.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Exactly.
  Mr. FULCHER. This is a very bad situation, and it is up to us to try 
to do something about it.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I think the people are calling 
upon us to bring common sense to this equation because this team on the 
other side who is pushing this radical climate agenda is engaged in 
fantasy economics.
  The people in my State of Louisiana need their trucks and cars. They 
are not going to buy electric vehicles. They can't afford them, first 
of all. It is not practical because there is nowhere to charge them in 
my State.
  If we have a shortage of vehicles on the market that is going to be a 
real problem. I am told delivery trucks are involved in this in 
California, and if you can't get the fruit shipped from California, 
that means the prices at the grocery store are going to go up, as well. 
Everyone is going to suffer from this; isn't that true?
  Mr. FULCHER. That is true. H.R. 1435 is not the only answer, but it 
certainly is a step in the right direction. Just keep our internal 
combustion engines alive and going.
  By the way, the cleanliness of the vehicles that we have, the 
internal combustion engines we have now have been getting continually 
better and better and better and more efficient. So this whole ruse 
about climate change being the purpose that this needs to happen is 
just totally flawed.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, it is about government 
control. I thank the gentleman for his work on that, and we urge our 
colleagues to support the bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa), 
the gentleman from the northern portion of California.

[[Page H4281]]

  

  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I just 
happen to be speaking about the subject of California.
  Now, California is a beautiful place, beautiful climate and terrain 
and territory. It is just that its politics have gotten so upside down 
in the last--pick a number of years--40 years, 50 years. I am not 
really there to serve the people anymore but to serve climate agendas 
and other crazy agendas I will not go into here tonight.
  I live in the rural part of California. I like to say, I live in the 
normal part still in the far north where we farm and we ranch--we still 
attempt to do mining--in order to produce the products that city people 
need. If they didn't have us around to do those things then, I don't 
know--they want to, I guess, import all of it, which seems to be the 
direction here. Let's import it all from China.
  One of the interesting things--I won't say funny, although the people 
watching might think it is funny because we do this to ourselves--but 
our California Air Resources Board released a rule requiring all new 
cars in California that will be sold new to be zero-emission vehicles 
by 2035.
  Now, this was tried back in the eighties where they said, well, we 
want--I believe maybe it was 1990--10 percent of all cars sold by the 
year 2000, if my memory is correct, to be zero-emission vehicles.
  So what did we end up with? Car companies are trying to make battery-
powered vehicles that look like glorified golf carts or maybe those 
little rigs you saw on ``Fantasy Island'' that Tattoo was driving 
around in to be legitimate vehicles you would have out on the roadway. 
You saw basically oversized golf carts with license plates on them 
trying to somehow meet this mandate.
  Well, CARB figured out at the time it wasn't going to get there so 
they relented on it, but now they are not relenting.
  So we have this mandate--not actually passed by legislature, signed 
by the governor but made by the California Air Resources Board, which 
is famous around the country for being heavy-handed on truckers and 
off-road vehicles and everything else.
  Here is the funny part: Just a few days after this mandate came out, 
our esteemed Governor Newsom had to publicly beg electric vehicle 
owners to not charge their cars due to concerns about the power grid 
and blackouts. He told them, hey, please don't charge your cars right 
now because our grid is overstretched during that particular time.
  You have also a few months later when the winter came in residents in 
Sierra Nevada lost power for many days due to heavy snowstorms knocking 
the power out, so they couldn't heat their homes and do normal things 
there. But if they had also had an electric vehicle they couldn't even 
have gotten out of there to go someplace where it was warm or for other 
needs, maybe emergency medical care or what have you.
  We also have rolling blackouts that are common in the State due to 
overuse and not enough power on the grid to keep things going. 
Industries in California, many of them have agreements with the 
utilities that they will voluntarily shut down if they are called upon 
if the grid looks like it is going to be overtaxed at a particular 
point. So you have manufacturers that have to lay off their workers for 
the rest of the day, stop production in order to pull off-line and not 
use power because we don't have enough of a power grid in California.

  Then up in my area because we have a forest issue--which our forests 
aren't managed as well as they should be, especially Federal land by 
the U.S. Forest Service--where the power lines have been run through 
for many decades, where there is hydrogeneration, et cetera, power may 
be coming in from another State, we don't get to maintain around the 
power lines like we used to because it might be an environmental 
concern. We can't take the trees down that you need to to make sure 
that they can't swing if they are falling; they might fall within the 
path of those power lines if the tree, you know, is taller than what 
the clearance is, right?
  So I had to pass a bill a couple years ago to make the process just a 
little bit easier to get a permit from the Forest Service to do that on 
Federal land. It is still not easy, and it is not very timely, but it 
got a little bit better. So we have that to deal with. They call it a 
public safety power shutoff.
  It especially affects part of my district. It seems like when I drive 
through Tehama County sometimes during that time of year--now, they 
have improved it a little bit--the whole county would be shut off 
because the wind blew, and it might cause branches to blow into the 
power lines, therefore, bad things happen such as the Camp fire, which 
85 people died in Paradise, California, due to a power line problem a 
few miles east of there with the wind blowing through. Then other fires 
like the Carr fire near Redding, the Zogg fire, and many others.
  Then we saw, of course, the effects, tragically, in Hawaii that we 
just mourned this week--and that is what this red ribbon represents--
because we are not managing the lands around power lines.
  This is happening right in California at the same time they are 
mandating more and more electricity use, forcing us into vehicles we 
can't afford or don't want. Also, they want to ban gas stoves and gas 
water heaters and make them be on the grid, as well. I mean, you 
couldn't get any dumber with the stuff we are doing in my home State, 
my beautiful home State of California. Rolling blackouts.
  By a miracle last year they decided we have to keep the Diablo Canyon 
nuclear power plant going for another 5 years instead of maybe a 40-
year permit--it was put in in about 1982 when I was going to school 
down there in San Luis Obispo. It had a much longer life than what they 
were allowing because, oh, we don't like nukes, nukes are scary, even 
though they make zero CO2, as does hydropower.
  Right now they are in the process of tearing dams out to make 
hydroelectric power in my district, and they have their eyes on more up 
in Washington and other areas because, oh, it might be an environmental 
issue. It is really absurd what we are doing to ourselves. We are 
putting ourselves into the Stone Age so we can go live in caves and eat 
insects that these guys are prescribing for us, you know. It is 
disgusting.

                              {time}  1815

  Now, they want to apply this toward our vehicles. We have got the 
cleanest burning, most efficient vehicles ever being put out by the car 
manufacturers, but they don't look at it that way. They don't give 
credit for how much better and cleaner it is. The Los Angeles Basin's 
air is cleaner than it has been. You remember the 1950s and 1960s and 
all that. It is so much cleaner now. We have made so much progress on 
this, yet they want to because they have the power to or arbitrarily 
think it is a feel-good policy to take these vehicles away, to take car 
choice away from people.
  I remember the EPA under Andy Wheeler, just a few years ago, was 
trying to make it where people could have more affordable cars and not 
have this 54.5-mile-per-gallon mandate. What does a 54.5-mile-per-
gallon vehicle look like to you? Is that a car choice to you when that 
mandate was going to be fully fleshed out?
  I mean, most cars that get pretty good gas mileage get 30, 35, 
somewhere around there. A lot of others get 20, 25, depending on what 
you want, but it isn't about your choice. It is about government 
deciding what you need or what you should have; what is your 
neighborhood going to look like; how much do you get to travel anymore, 
all of these massive control issues.
  We have public safety power shutoffs. We have them tearing down the 
hydroelectric dams. The dams they still do have, they are requiring 
more and more of the water to go out in such a way that they don't even 
turn the turbines. Instead, we want the cold water to go out to lower 
the temperature of the river maybe by 1 degree and it will be a little 
bit better for the fish in the river or we want the water to come off 
the top of the lake that can't go through the turbines because we want 
to save that colder water for later in the season so it can be 1 degree 
colder down the river for the fish. I mean, it is crazy.
  When this first was announced by CARB, the Governor of California, we 
sent him a letter and his CARB chair,

[[Page H4282]]

Liane Randolph, asking them to consider alternate policies to reduce 
emissions that do not add additional strain to the State's energy grid 
or restrictions on consumer choice. Choice, we all like that around 
here, don't we?
  I thank my California Republican colleagues for joining me on sending 
a unified message, and I believe that this letter has helped us get a 
bill on the floor this week, which is known as H.R. 1435. The bill 
would prevent the U.S. EPA from issuing a waiver to California Air 
Resources Board in order to enact that rule the State is trying to do, 
without, again, legislation by the elected legislators.
  This is what they have been using for a lot of years to put 
California even under a tighter scrutiny than a lot of the rest of the 
country, and it makes us uncompetitive in many aspects.
  Though 95 percent of the vehicles on America roads are run on 
internal combustion engines--they are using the acronym ICE these 
days--States like California are trying to pass these egregiously 
unrealistic emissions mandates to force American car manufacturers, and 
foreign ones, too, to prioritize EV manufacturing.
  Where are we going to mine the materials to make these? Are we going 
to have the power on the grid to run them? You are going to change the 
power grid in neighborhoods to have the massive amounts of transformers 
and the wires and the poles and insulators and all of that in order to 
have these charging units inside people's homes and in their garages. 
They aren't taking that into account. It is just that la-di-da, pie-in-
the-sky deal. We will just mandate it, and it will be great by 2035.
  The idea that people just can't afford these vehicles, as many of 
them are sometimes $17,000 to $20,000 more for the equivalent, same 
size, same usage type vehicle, they don't care.
  A whole bunch of the country's economy would be affected by this 
because probably a bunch of other States would follow California's 
ideas on this, with this waiver that they are seeking.
  It is a real market manipulation that nobody has asked for other than 
the do-gooders in Congress, at the State level, and others that are 
forcing us in many ways in our lives. They want to force what kind of 
home we live in, what we eat, what we drive, and how we power our 
stoves and our water heaters.
  Now, I mentioned a little bit ago how the grid got knocked out in 
some of the mountainous areas after the storm there. You think, well, 
at least people can go turn on their generator in order to provide some 
electricity and some heat in their home perhaps. No, no, they want to 
ban gas-powered or fuel-powered generators, too. I am wondering: What 
are you supposed to run a generator on if you can't run it on gas or 
diesel or natural gas or a propane tank or something you might have 
nearby? What are you supposed to run it on when the power goes out?
  If you live in a rural area where there are frequent public safety 
power shutoffs or fire or other things happen that knock out the grid, 
what are you supposed to do? They just make up the mandates. Governor 
Newsom, who is maybe inspiring to be President--I warn people across 
the country who are watching, don't fall for this stuff.
  I like to joke around a little bit. I am from California. People, 
don't do what we do, okay? It is going to affect your privacy. It is 
going to affect your freedom. It will affect basic choices. It will 
affect your economy of your household and of your State.
  We don't even nearly have the EV charging systems that it would take 
to have them close enough or enough of them onsite. You ought to see 
the lines there. There is one place down in San Luis Obispo where you 
can see the cars all lined up, all the Teslas and all these other folks 
lined up waiting for the opportunity to plug onto one of these things 
for 2 hours and then go on about their way, about their business as 
they travel.
  Mr. Speaker, you probably heard the story about the guy from, I 
think, Michigan who bought the new Ford electric truck and was going to 
go camping with it. He made it about one or two States away and finally 
had to give up on it. I think he went and bought a Dodge Cummins diesel 
in order to complete his family camping trip, because it was way 
oversold as to what it could do versus what it could actually do.

  Getting back to the bill. We don't want to empower California, and 
perhaps up to 17 other States, with this EPA waiver, that they can 
force this stuff upon the people and take away their choices, their 
mobility to do what they need to do.
  Ask a guy who is a contractor or a roofing company or a farmer or a 
rancher or a miner or a logger if they need their F-250 or if they want 
to get a fleet of five Priuses to go do the same job. They need to have 
choices. This is at a time when we have got, as I said, the cleanest 
running, most efficient vehicles we have ever made.
  Oh, we have got to cut down on the CO2. Climate change. 
Climate change, give me a break. CO2 is only 0.04 percent of 
our atmosphere. They act like it is the end of the world. 
CO2 is an important building block for plant life. 
Everything is made out of carbon. They act like, because they have been 
able to dream this up as a killer, that we have to stop all things that 
make CO2.
  I tell you what, if we are too good at this and we go below 0.2 
percent, plant life starts dying off. Now, we will never be that good 
getting rid of CO2, but we are going to spend trillions 
doing it, and we are going to make ourselves a Third World country here 
while China and others keep going ahead.
  Our Governor Newsom is running over to China for a visit to talk 
about climate change. Meanwhile, we have one of the worst homeless 
problems in the State of California, and our economy and our water 
isn't that greater either. Even though we were blessed with so much 
rain this year, we need to build water storage for people. We need to 
build that for our agriculture so we can supply this Nation with the 
food it needs from California, with so many of our crops, 90-plus 
percent, coming from California.
  You wouldn't have your almonds. You wouldn't have your tomatoes. You 
wouldn't have your pistachios. You wouldn't have many things that come 
from California, but we are prioritizing this nonsense of taking away 
people's vehicles.
  Climate change gets preached on half the time around here, and every 
policy in this place has to be run through a climate change filter, 
even though it is nonsense that CO2, once again, is only .04 
percent of our atmosphere and it is not a killer, because carbon is a 
building block of everything we live off of.
  Please, call your Congress Member and tell them to support H.R. 1435. 
Don't empower California to control your State and your economy by 
mandating what kind of vehicles you can drive because it is going to 
affect you and it will ripple out from our whacked-out State to your 
State what vehicles you are going to drive and how you are going to do 
your business. Please check that out and support the bill.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for his 
remarks.
  Sadly, what happens in California, that giant market out there, 
affects the entire country. I appreciate him shining light on that.
  Mr. Speaker, I will wind down our Special Order hour just by 
returning to the issue of the impeachment inquiry.
  Even as I have been sitting here, I got a question from a Hill 
reporter about some of the Senators in the other Chamber and their 
reaction to our bringing forward the impeachment inquiry.
  I just want to say that, to speak very frankly, whether or not the 
Senate is courageous enough to confront the alleged corruption of 
President Biden is not really the House's concern.
  As I mentioned earlier, it is Article I of the Constitution, Section 
2, that gives the sole power of impeachment to us in the House. We are 
supposed to investigate these things. We have to do it. It is our 
constitutional responsibility. They will later try the matter, if it 
comes to them.
  If our committee uncovers evidence, if our investigations uncover 
evidence that lead to an impeachment vote indeed, then it will be 
incumbent, when we send it over to the Senate, to decide if they want 
to engage with those facts. They will have to answer to their own 
constituents and voters and the American people, but we will have done 
our job here.
  If the inquiry comes up fruitless, say some evidence is determined 
and uncovered that completely exonerates

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President Biden, then we will have concluded a legitimate congressional 
inquiry as directed by the Constitution, and we will be satisfied with 
that and the American people will be satisfied. Some will be frustrated 
whatever happens at the outcome of this, but the Constitution will have 
been followed and upheld. On our side, that is the most important thing 
here.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from 
engaging in personalities toward the President.

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