[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 24 (Wednesday, February 5, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H491-H497]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         ISSUES RELATING TO REBUILDING THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2025, the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time and the opportunity 
to shed light on several subjects that we will cover here tonight. 
Indeed, there is much going on and much to be excited about, as well.
  In my home State of California, we have several issues I will touch 
upon that have to deal with water, water supply, fire and forestry, and 
some rebuilding that will need to be done around our State.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman), 
my colleague and good friend, who is also here tonight. He has been a 
strong leader on immigration and, more specifically, controlling our 
border. He has also been sticking up for our families in this country 
and the values it is going to take to have strong families and maintain 
the founding values that will make our country strong. I appreciate his 
work and articulation on that.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, there has been so much in the news in the 
last 2 weeks, it is hard to know where to start.
  I will cover a couple issues that the mainstream media has picked up 
on, though not done the best job uncovering, and one issue that made a 
huge difference in the lives of the most vulnerable of us that Donald 
Trump weighed in on not by doing something but by allowing an 
administrative rule to die.
  The first great victory for Donald Trump, which hasn't been reported 
out there, concerns the effort by the Biden administration, which ran 
out of time, to get rid of what they call 14(c) certificates.
  Everybody may be familiar with light manufacturing or packaging done 
in their district by people who are handicapped. Maybe they have spina 
bifida, maybe they have Down syndrome. In any event, for this reason, 
they are not able to be profitably employed for above minimum wage or 
minimum wage dollars.
  Each State does it a little bit differently, but the States make an 
estimate of what that employee is worth, and maybe they are paid $5 an 
hour for, like I said, light manufacturing or packaging.
  If you tour these facilities--and I think every Congressman ought to 
tour them at least once--it is one of the most enjoyable things you can 
do, because you will find the people who have been dealt a difficult 
lot on life so happy to see you, so happy to see what they are doing 
with you, so happy to make friends with the other employees there who 
have different abilities and other employees who are usually in a 
supervisory capacity.
  These are also a godsend to the parents or guardians of these folks. 
Under normal circumstances, they have to worry when the guardians or 
parents die off what type of friends and what type of social life they 
will have, but because they frequently stay in these facilities or work 
in these facilities for 20 or 30 or 40 years, they develop lifelong 
friendships which are so important for these folks to have.
  Now, had Donald Trump not won the election, it would have continued 
to work through the administrative rule process, and it is entirely 
possible that these sort of facilities would have been shut down by a 
Biden or Harris administration. They were working toward that. You 
might say, why would anybody take away the right for these people to 
have these jobs.
  The reason is, they will say, because if we are paying somebody $5 an 
hour, we are taking advantage of them. We can't take advantage of them, 
so we would rather have them shut down.
  How horrible is that? To the most vulnerable members of our society, 
Joe Biden was prepared to say, if you want to work here for $5 an hour, 
tough. We are going to close that facility, or we will leave the 
facility open, but you will no longer be able to work. You will no 
longer have the pride of being able to get a paycheck and spend it on 
clothes for yourself or gifts for your parents, what have you.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank President Trump for not continuing with that 
administrative rule. At least, probably for the next 4 years, we know 
the jobs of these folks, which mean so much to them--more to them than 
I would say the average citizen in our society--I thank President Trump 
for allowing the most vulnerable members of our society to have the 
choice to continue to work for, in some cases, subminimum wage, but 
have the enjoyment of that independence.
  I should point out that almost all the people I am talking about have 
some SSI payment in addition to that, so it

[[Page H492]]

is not like they are expected to pay a mortgage with their $5-an-hour 
job. They get other governmental assistance, as well.
  I know there are a lot of other things we have been grateful to 
President Trump for these last couple weeks, but keeping the 14(c) 
certificates is a tremendous victory for the most vulnerable of us. I 
don't think it would have happened if President Trump didn't get 
elected.
  Now, the next thing to look at. We have heard people talk about Elon 
Musk and what he wants to do to USAID.
  First of all, I will point out that the reason people are mad at Elon 
Musk, who can't do anything on his own--all he can do is advise the 
President. The reason they are mad at him is, horror of horrors, he 
thought there was a government program that wasn't necessary. That is 
not the way things work here.
  Nobody believes that if Elon Musk had Donald Trump's ear and came out 
for more preschool, if he came out for more mental health funding, if 
he came out for expanded government daycare, the folks on the other 
side of this aisle would be praising Elon Musk for being a forward-
looking person and for doing what people on that side of the aisle want 
to do, which is either expand old programs or come up with new 
government programs.
  Quite frankly, as long as I have been here, I am sure there must be 
some government program that ended, but I can't think of any.

  Elon Musk is under attack for actually suggesting a government 
program is unnecessary. I praise him for that. There is nothing wrong 
with him advising President Trump. I don't know if folks would feel 
better if they gave him a position and $100,000-a-year salary. I don't 
know, but it is refreshing that some of the most successful people in 
America can use their mind, their brains to advise President Trump on 
how to be a good President.
  It is particularly good to have somebody outside this building who is 
not used to the swamp-type mentality of we never under any 
circumstances get rid of a program; the only question is whether we are 
going to expand it 2 percent or 8 percent. It is great to have a friend 
who can look at some programs and say, hey, maybe this program sounded 
good when we first created it in 1963 or whatever, but it hasn't worked 
up to snuff.
  Of course, I agree with Elon Musk that some of the money spent on 
these programs is even a moral stain on the United States of America, 
particularly a moral stain because we are spending money in other 
countries.
  When we talk about gender-affirming care, that is where they give 
puberty blockers to young children. I think it is horrific that we 
would give puberty blockers to a 12 or 13 year old in America, but 
America is supposed to be the light unto the world.
  Can you imagine the United States weighing in and giving gender-
affirming care to the poor little children in Guatemala?

                              {time}  1830

  I mean, how bad can we be? How embarrassing can we be? That is what 
we do with the incredible amount of wealth that this country has been 
given? We take our wealth and try to screw up--what I would say is 
``screw up''--the poor little children in Guatemala?
  I am glad Elon Musk came across this program, and upon people 
pointing out what is in the program, I am glad that Donald Trump, when 
he heard about it, full bore put his foot on the brake and said if the 
people running this program are spending the money that way, we have to 
stop spending money right away and look a little bit further into the 
program.
  In any event, what I am going to do is, I am going to ask people on 
that side of the aisle to take an honest look at themselves. If Elon 
Musk announced that we needed more preschool, if Elon Musk announced we 
were going to need more mental health, with where the mental health 
professions are today in favor of these puberty blockers and that sort 
of thing, would they really be concerned that he is advising President 
Trump, or would they be praising him? Would The Washington Post and The 
New York Times be praising Elon Musk for being openminded and ignoring 
the hidebound conservative members of the Republican Party? Of course, 
they would be praising him.
  The only reason they question whether or not he can advise President 
Trump is because they don't like, for almost the first time, the first 
time that I have been here, that we genuinely are seeing a government 
program begin to end, hopefully.
  The third thing I will point out is that President Trump signed a 
bill today dealing with men in women's sports. It was a good bill. 
There are not a whole lot of men participating in women's sports around 
the country, but it is certainly a little weird that when one sets up a 
swimming tournament, a track meet, or something where it is very clear 
we have the men's event and the women's event, that under any 
circumstances we take a man and say, well, just because you feel like a 
woman today, we are going to pretend you are a woman. I think that is 
unusual enough.
  I am going to hope--and President Trump has had executive orders on 
this topic, as well--that we are able to do something statutorily about 
getting rid of government funding for programs that do things like give 
surgeries on minors, give puberty blockers on minors. There is no 
shortage of intelligent people who will say this is damaging, not to 
mention there are a huge number of people with just plain common sense 
who realize that you don't try to engage in irrevocable medical 
procedures with 14- or 15-year-olds.
  In fact, I would say it is medically inexcusable to engage in these 
procedures when people are 24- or 25-years-old. After all, in this 
country, you know, you can't buy a beer until you are 21 years old, 
can't buy a cigarette until you are 21 years old. I wouldn't think any 
medical professional with any morality--I realize they are making money 
on this--would harm these young people.
  Now that we took care of the ridiculous idea that men should be able 
to pick whether they are men or women, depending upon, I guess, whether 
there is a track meet that day, I hope our leadership team begins to go 
after these so-called medical professionals who are doing irrevocable 
damage, either with drugs or surgeries, on people under 18.
  Quite frankly, they ought to be barred for people under age 21. Quite 
frankly, the medical society ought to, on their own, make it clear that 
it is medical malpractice to do this sort of thing even on a 25- or 26-
year-old because we all know very well that the way we feel about 
things when we are 20 or 24 or 25 is frequently very different from the 
way we feel about things when we are 30 years old.
  I thank the gentleman from California for allowing me to address 
these issues. Remember, folks out there, if you have a ward or a child 
who worked for what used to be called a sheltered workshop, President 
Trump kept your ward or child employed the way they want to.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Wisconsin 
(Mr. Grothman) on that, for sticking up for families, and in other 
conversations on sensible border policy, which is going to keep our 
country safe and strong and our employees of this country more likely 
to be employed. It is appreciated.


                             General Leave

  Mr. LaMALFA. 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 topic of this Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Onder). Is there objection to the 
request of the gentleman from California?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, picking up on a little bit of what Mr. 
Grothman was saying here a moment ago, I would like to point out as 
well that I think a real national heroine, a young woman who has really 
stepped up, out of necessity, but also out of a strong desire to do the 
right thing and have the right thing, is Riley Gaines, a collegiate 
swimmer who swam so successfully and did much winning at the University 
of Kentucky.
  She is the one who also had to face off in competition against a 
basically 6'4" male and was denied opportunities, denied recognition, 
because of the unfairness and imbalance of girls and

[[Page H493]]

women in their sports having to face boys and men in their sports as 
well as all the discomfort from shared changing areas and the 
unfairness of losing out on the ability to win competitions that might 
put them in a position to win medals that might ultimately win them a 
scholarship from high school into college or put them in a national 
competition or an international competition if you are at the 
collegiate level or at the Olympic level.
  We saw some horrific things, in my view, in this last Olympics, where 
the young woman who was a female boxer, I believe she was from Italy, 
how humiliated she was when she had to face basically a male boxer with 
a clear physical advantage and just get the heck beat out of her in the 
process.
  One of the saddest things I have seen in a long time was her 
collapsing on her knees just in tears at that Olympic event afterward 
because of the unfairness of it all and how hard she trained for years 
and years to be in that position only to have, in this case, the 
Olympic committee say that we will let anybody compete against the 
women in this case.
  I know Riley Gaines personally and just find her to be a dynamic 
young woman who will stand up for the right things. She didn't ask for 
this position. She was a competitor and doing her thing. She was thrust 
into this position because she saw what needed to be done, what needed 
to be made right on this, and stuck up for other women and girls in 
their sports and in their other domains.
  Riley has gotten a lot of good work done, including, today, the 
Presidential declaration that this would no longer go on in this 
country, especially things that the Federal Government might have 
involvement in or sanction. I congratulate President Trump for 
straightening things back out a little bit and putting some common 
sense back into that area.
  Mr. Speaker, I also heard the debate here tonight on Federal workers 
and the opportunity that has been put in place here, if they seek and 
so choose--and there is the word ``choose,'' ``choice''--to take 
advantage of an opportunity if the job they are in is not meeting where 
they want to be, or you might see reduction in some of these government 
programs, in some of these government agencies.
  It is a pretty generous exit of 8 months of pay and such to retire 
from that job or move on from that one and go seek other opportunities. 
We heard a lot of caterwauling about that tonight, about, I guess, the 
essentialness of every single government agency and every single 
worker.
  Now, there are plenty of really good workers willing to work hard and 
do a good job in so many of our Federal agencies, but there are also 
quite a few who aren't as motivated. We see this battle over them 
returning to work, as is being mandated.
  We saw President Biden, just before leaving office, trying to give 
out super-generous contracts and extend the term of not having to be at 
the workplace based still upon, basically, the COVID era and getting 
used to that concept, to that way of doing things.
  It is proper for people to show up to work. It is essential. Around 
here, we had proxy voting, and our committees were not meeting in 
person. Doggone it, it is essential in this place that we sit across 
from each other, that we sit next to each other and have these real 
debates in front of the American public to allow true public debate on 
the things that are going to affect over 300 million Americans through 
the decisions made here.
  I am certainly glad we got rid of proxy voting here and got back to 
work doing things after the COVID era finally ended and a lot of 
manipulation that happened in that era. Still, we haven't completely 
recovered in our workforce and the attitudes, I think, of certain 
people who feel like they are entitled to just have the government send 
them checks, and the attitude of not having to show up to work.
  We found that certain people can do a certain amount of work from 
home, but the battle here in town, where some really high percentage--I 
have heard a number as high as 92; I don't know if it is accurate or 
not--92 percent aren't showing up here. Some of these buildings are 
almost ghost towns from the workforce not coming in there. This needs 
to be looked at.
  What is being looked at by the Department of Government Efficiency, 
DOGE, and Elon Musk is basically saying, hey, American taxpayers, we 
know you work hard for what you earn and what government takes from 
you.
  These aren't contributions. We heard talk about these contributions. 
They aren't contributions. They are compelled payments of taxes here. 
You don't have a choice. They come start taking things away from you, 
auctioning off your home or your car or your farm or whatever, if you 
don't pay your taxes. It is not voluntary. It is not contributions, as 
these guys talk about. It is not an investment. They take it from you.
  I think any taxpayer, any working person, has the right to demand 
that government is looking at things and is being efficient with what 
it is using.
  The stones they are flipping over and what they are uncovering so far 
with USAID, and many other aspects I can't list here tonight, confirms 
what I think normal people know, that there is a lot of money being 
wasted in government by many entities.
  Look at the situation in Ukraine. Now Zelenskyy is claiming that of 
about $177 billion that has been transferred over there, he thinks only 
$75 billion of it actually got to him or the causes they were working 
on over there in Ukraine. Where has $102 billion gone? Are these real 
numbers? Let's investigate. Let's find out.
  That is what we need to do, respectfully, with tax dollars that are 
taken from people not voluntarily. Every aspect of government needs to 
have that accountability. It is okay to audit. It is okay to ask these 
questions. It is not against something or against a certain group of 
people. When we are talking about, in this case, the opportunity for 
employees to find other opportunities, then what would be wrong with 
that if they so choose and if agencies are going to be downsized?
  Everybody is mad at Elon Musk now, at least on that side of the 
aisle. When he took over Twitter, now known as X, he cleared out about 
85 percent of the employees there. A lot of them were just hanging on 
and going for the party there. He seems to be able to run that entity a 
lot more efficiently. That should be an example for government instead 
of the scourge that we are hearing that it is awful, terrible.
  We appreciate those who do the things that we as Americans ask the 
government agencies to do, and they do them efficiently and with 
cheerfulness and remembering that the customers are the taxpayers, the 
people who come to the counter and say, hey, I need a permit to do 
this, or I need this or that service. These are the customers.
  Getting a passport has been a problem. We have had horrific stories 
coming out of my own office during the height of COVID and such that 
you could hardly get anybody to process a passport for you, at least 
very timely.

                              {time}  1845

  In my home State of California, just a simple thing like a 
personalized license plate at the State level from the DMV takes 9 
months now. It takes 9 months to get a personalized plate. Supposedly 
that is a revenue generator for the State.
  We have got to really check and see what the attitudes of the people 
are who work and serve in government at any level, whether you are 
elected, whether you are hired, whether you are an agency head, what 
have you. These are good conversations to have, not the cattle rolling 
we are hearing about: Oh, my gosh, they might be displacing somebody. 
Well, maybe we need to have a little downsizing. I believe we do. That 
is what I have to say on that debate.
  I am going to return back to issues going on in the West. I am 
privileged to chair the Western Caucus in the House here, and the 
important issues that it has addressed over the years, and a lot of 
that revolves around energy.
  I will tell you what: The issue with energy in this country when we 
see skyrocketing prices of all types of fuel, that has been a major 
inflation driver. Really, two aspects of why we are suffering from 
inflation is government overspending beyond anywhere close to what 
revenue was and the trillions we have seen being spent by the 
government during the COVID era and beyond and the end of the Biden 
administration.
  We are going to have to take some medicine on that and how about get

[[Page H494]]

back to a concept of pre-COVID level of spending, maybe even adjusted 
for inflation, old inflation, not just massive inflation.
  We have the right and the obligation to be looking at it this way. 
Inflation driven by massive government spending, eating up the pool of 
available currency and credit, as well as the cost of doing business 
driven by issues such as energy.
  In farming, for example, on my own farm, a couple years ago we saw 
that our price on fertilizer tripled and our price of fuel doubled in 
that season. What does that mean for a farmer like me or any other 
farmer growing a crop?
  They still have to be in the black at the end of the year. They still 
have to make profit. Those costs are going to be passed on somewhere, 
aren't they? It always comes back to the consumer. It always comes back 
to the taxpayer having to pay for these things. On one hand, government 
massive overspending here at the Federal level, and things that drive 
inflation, such as the cost of fuel and all of the things that are 
related. There is so much that depends on energy. Any type of 
production that depends on energy is going to have an impact on price. 
As an example, take diesel fuel, take a food product.
  As a farmer, when you start out in the spring, you need fuel to start 
tilling the land and getting it ready for preparing the seedbed to 
plant that crop. Someone has to bring you the diesel to run your 
equipment. Soon after, someone delivers that fertilizer, likely with 
the diesel vehicle, someone delivers that seed.
  At that point you planted, and you have irrigation of one type or 
another depending on your crop. In some cases, it is going to be fuel 
that is required to run the pumps or electricity to run wells, fuel for 
lift pumps. In some cases, you are fortunate, you have gravity-fed 
water much like we do in northern California. We do the storage of 
water.
  What is our energy policy? I guarantee you, under President Trump it 
is going to improve. With that, we are going to see improved prices on 
energy. That will help us to tame inflation.
  On the other side of the coin here with the work of Elon Musk and 
others on the Department of Government Efficiency, prices can go down 
if we are not doing so much massive spending and sucking up all the 
credit and all the currency out there by government action. It is a 
pretty good recipe.
  Why don't we allow success to happen. The American people are 
clamoring for that as they have had their eyes opened on what is going 
on and where their tax dollars are going. I say to my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle, you might just slow down a little bit and look 
and see what is really happening here and how people are feeling about 
that. How they are thinking about it. How they felt it for several 
years in their wallets with inflation and wondering: Why do I no longer 
have money left over to do some of the things I want?
  At the same time, where there are these mandates coming down the pike 
in my home State of California and affecting things nationally here. 
You can't buy a gas-powered vehicle anymore or a diesel-powered pickup 
in just a few years because we want to ban them because of 
CO2.
  That is taking choices away from people. That is giving them 
unaffordable alternatives, especially the more they ban and the more 
they drive up the cost of fuel in my home State. They keep adding on 
new taxes for climate taxes or CO2 taxes. They have auctions 
for the privilege of making CO2. Where did that come from?
  It is like they devised a new currency, CO2. I can remind 
you--you have probably seen me on TV doing this several times--but let 
me remind you. The composition of our atmosphere is those main 
components. Right there in yellow, that is nitrogen, 78 percent.
  Now, I ask people: How much CO2 do you think there is in 
the atmosphere? Most folks, you know, are going about their lives and 
not worried about all this stuff. They guess somewhere between 20 and 
50 percent.
  Nitrogen is at 78. Here in the blue is oxygen at 21. That adds up to 
99. Third place, here in the green, argon is .93 percent. We are 
already at 99.93 percent that is not CO2. Look over here. 
Here are some other trace gases that have to do with water vapor. There 
is even krypton gas up in the atmosphere. That is .03.
  You come down here to this little purple stripe right here. 
CO2 is .04 percent. It is practically a rounding error when 
you look at it on this chart. You would think it is an existential 
crisis the way John Kerry and all the others are taking their private 
jets over to Davos and talking about how we need to change our life. 
That people with the Paris accord and the World Economic Forum and 
others all want to make sure the United States is paying a heavy price 
for this.

  Meanwhile, China builds more and more coal-fired power plants and 
does what they wish. They are not part of the Paris accord. Again, a 
little reminder of CO2 and what that is actually going to be 
costing us.
  Let's get back to other forms of energy here. I am showing you a 
picture of the Shasta Dam. It is actually starting to fill up right 
now. We are getting massive rains in northern California. On the Shasta 
Dam, they are actually not dumping the water at a higher rate. That 
makes hydroelectric power.
  You see, it actually comes from the bottom of the dam is where the 
hydropower plant is. That is a different form of spilling there that 
comes out of the spillway when they feel like they have an excess.
  Hydroelectric power, if you want to play the CO2 game for 
a moment, is CO2-free power. It is available 24/7. As long 
as you have water behind the dam, you can generate that CO2-
free power. It is reliable. You don't have to wait for the sun to come 
up to heat your solar panels or the clouds to go away or the rain to go 
away or the wind to come up to blow your windmill.
  What is happening in northern California? Recently they decided after 
many years to tear down--this is kind of related to that subject--four 
dams on the Klamath River. You see some of the Klamath system here that 
helps transfer water to agriculture and other needs and wildlife, as 
well.
  They tore them down. They took down four dams that produce 
hydroelectric power. The CO2-free power everybody thinks 
they want. They tore them down. Guess what is happening now? Because 
they are getting a lot of rain in the area, we are actually getting 
flooding in certain areas. We will get more flooding with even a 
greater amount of rain because we don't have the dams anymore as a 
tool. This is all ostensibly to help a fish population go up and down 
the Klamath River.
  The flaw in that thinking is that the Klamath Lake is actually a 
system that is based on a very shallow, rather warm lake up here that 
feeds the rest of the system here that is not really the best for the 
salmon that they are talking about. We gloss over that because we want 
to tear the dams out and score a win.
  They got their way. They scored them. The whole basin here is being 
affected. The whole river system is being affected by where there used 
to be water and now you are getting sloughing. The people that live 
along the area there, their properties are now worth a lot less all 
because of, I think, fraudulent environmental claims that really have 
never been proven.
  What are some of the other effects of watching those dams be torn 
out? The initial happening was dead fish, essentially four fish. When 
they removed those dams, there was a great concentration of silt that 
had built up behind them over 50, 60, 100 years, depending on the age 
of which of the four dams. We had this massive till of this and a whole 
bunch of other wildlife up and down the river as that silt is now being 
pushed 170 miles or so out to the ocean.
  The salmon live on a 3-year cycle. If the silt doesn't wash all the 
way out to the sea in that 3-year period, what does that mean long-term 
for salmon populations? Will they die off as all the different cycles 
of salmon will be gone? Here is a dead fish. You had dead deer getting 
trapped in the silt. All sorts of wildlife, turtles, you name it.
  In the name of the environment, pinning their ears back and just 
going, they tore the dams out anyway, and they have their sights on 
more. One is called Lake Pillsbury in Mendocino County, which a lot of 
people rely on

[[Page H495]]

for drinking water as well as agricultural water. It used to be a power 
generator in that area, as well. The utilities decided it is not worth 
the fight anymore, so they abandoned it. If they get their way, it will 
be torn out soon, too. It is just one losing combination after another, 
all in the name of the environment, and another loser for the people.
  The tear out of the Klamath dams cost the people $450 million to 
remove those. Mr. Speaker, $250 million of it came from a State water 
bond. The rest of the bond is supposed to be actually building water 
supply, including the Sites Reservoir. I will talk to you about that in 
a little bit.
  Another $200 million came from the rate-payers of PacifiCorp where 
they charge a surcharge to put money aside for the dam removal so the 
company can skate out of there without any real liability on the dams 
they own. That was the honey deal that was put together for that.
  I will come back to this picture of the Shasta Dam here. When the 
water is not being run through the turbines at the bottom of the dam or 
like the one at Lake Oroville, then you miss out on the opportunity of 
generating low cost, highly reliable CO2-free power.
  The Shasta Dam isn't currently doing that right now, but Lake 
Oroville nearby, also in my district of northern California, is dumping 
water. I understand the Army Corps of Engineers has a goal of making 
sure there is enough storage to make up for massive amounts of rain. 
Indeed, we have gotten a lot of rain lately.

  The Shasta Dam had a peak inflow of 120,000 cubic feet per second. I 
think it was yesterday. In Oroville, I think it peaked at about 107,000 
cubic feet per second. Guess what? Both of those dams have still a 
massive amount of space behind them.
  Oroville, I think it is 400,000 more acre-feet of space, maybe 450. 
The Shasta Dam is still about 500,000 acre-feet of space. This storm is 
going to end mostly, I think, tomorrow. At that point, they have 
already tailed off from those peaks I said in the hundred thousands. 
Each of them are down now about 50 to 60,000 CFS coming in. Those 
numbers continue to tail off as the rain stops.
  We will have a situation where, yeah, we have got a good influx of 
water that is going to help fill the lakes. As I said, they are each 
still far from their goal of being full. If you recall, we went nearly 
zero for January on rain fall in northern California. We got some on 
the very last day. We are going to expect that we can count on filling 
these lakes in February or March.
  April 1 is kind of the magic date where they relieve the flood 
control mandate on that. They allow the lakes to fill up more than 
their action level, which those numbers are being caught up to now and 
maybe have slightly exceeded their levels.
  The thing is, they are quick to want to dump water. Yes, they are 
scared of this big storm right now, but it has just kind of brought it 
up to par. It is going to put us in a good position to be able to get 
the lakes full by the time May and June rolls around. There is nothing 
to say that they can't let water out a little at a time if it looks 
like it will get too full.

                              {time}  1900

  Mr. Speaker, but the haste, in my view, and it is my opinion, to let 
the water out--I think they want to bump Oroville up to 50,000. I think 
currently it is 33,000 CFS going out. They want to bump it up to 
50,000, which isn't the greatest for people downriver at that level.
  They could keep it at a steady 20,000 or 30,000 for a little while. 
Then, when the storm ends and they see the inflow has stopped, maybe 
they can take a timeout and forecast with the weather. We can watch the 
news and have a pretty good read on what the weather is going to be.
  The Army Corps of Engineers is still using 50-year-old manuals from 
the seventies on how they want to plan the flood control aspects of the 
storage of these lakes. They say they are updating them. When will they 
be updated so we can use dynamic scoring, so to speak, on how weather 
is going to be predicted? Can we manage the lake in a way like, well, 
we don't see much weather happening in the next 2 weeks, so we don't 
need to let water out in February or March or what have you. Let's let 
it build up.
  They are not allowing themselves to use that. They are still 
studying. They are still in the back room, studying and working on 
updating the manuals. They say we have 2 or 3 more years. Well, that is 
frustrating. Watch what happens when people don't get the water they 
need in the San Joaquin Valley to grow the amazing crops that we have 
in this State.
  I showed this poster quite a bit in these floor talks of what 
California grows. When we don't have the water to do this stuff, you 
don't get this stuff from California. When we see that over 90 percent, 
even 100 percent, of some of these products are grown in California, 
are we going to import them from somewhere else? At what quality, 
price, and continuity? Can we have them come from the State because we 
actually do have the water supply in the north to supply the whole 
State?
  Some of my northern California neighbors sometimes ask if I am going 
to send all the water south. They ask what is wrong with me. We have 
plenty of water if we would store it and if we would add to the Shasta 
Dam. We have the opportunity to raise Shasta Dam 18 feet, 600,000 more 
acre-feet of storage, and also the ability to not release water quite 
as quickly if they get to that point.
  We see the water chugging down the Sacramento River without the 
releases. There is a lot of water coming in. We get that, but that is 
what these structures are for, to take that ebb and flow, so to speak, 
and to be that rubber band. That is what dams are good for. That is why 
they are seeing flooding on the Klamath in areas, because they took the 
dams out and lost the hydroelectric power in the process.
  We talk about how much water is getting away from us that could be 
generating power and growing crops in northern and central California--
indeed, the breadbasket I just showed you.
  Here is a more updated poster I have now of what has been happening. 
The water year, they score it from October 1 until the following 
September 30. This is starting from October of `23, the water year, up 
to, so far, a little earlier in January when we had this information. 
It is about a year and a quarter of flow.
  What makes me crazy is we are not taking advantage right now of the 
water that is flowing out of Lake Oroville or coming out south of Lake 
Shasta and flooding the delta. During this year-and-a-quarter period 
that is almost current right now, we have a number of 29 million acre-
feet that came into the delta.
  Lake Oroville and Lake Shasta combined hold 8 million acre-feet. San 
Luis Reservoir holds about 2 million acre-feet. Nearby, New Melones is 
about 2 million. I think Trinity Lake is 2.2 million. I think Folsom 
Lake is a number of 800,000, if I remember correctly. We fill all those 
lakes one time with this year and a quarter's worth of flow that comes 
into the delta. That is what comes in.
  Certainly, we are using some of that water and moving it to other 
places because we are smart and can design things. We have the 
engineers for that. We had the vision for that when we built the 
Central Valley Project in the thirties and the State Water Project in 
the sixties.
  Their vision did put away a lot of water. They had a vision for even 
more, but they quit building it because the population didn't demand it 
at that time in the thirties or the sixties or whatever. It can't be 
built now because of all the environmental nonsense.
  How much did we save? Twenty-nine million went in. Twenty-two million 
went out to the Pacific Ocean and turned into saltwater.
  Some people say we should build some desal plants along the coast. 
Yes, we could do that. Certain areas might be strategically smart.
  Guess what happened? I think a project called Poseidon in Huntington 
Beach, one of the beach towns in southern California, fought over it 
for 20 years. They tried to meet every mandate, every hoop to jump 
through on what it would take to get a permit from the California 
Coastal Commission and others. They spent millions of dollars to build 
that desal plant down there. They jumped through every hoop

[[Page H496]]

and answered every question. They were told after 20 years they were 
not going to be permitted. There we are on our desal.
  Where do we want the water to come from for anybody, for any purpose? 
It could come from right here, this 22 million we are wasting. What is 
happening right now? The mass inflow is coming down the Sacramento 
River, Feather River, and all these other areas. I would like to see 
what these delta inflows are today. They are probably pretty amazing.
  There are two sets of pumps at the south end of the delta, a Federal 
set and a State set. President Trump has seen to it through the Bureau 
of Reclamation that the Federal pumps are running pretty strong. Some 
are around 90 to 91 percent capacity. State pumps are running at a much 
lower level, somewhere around 20 or 25 percent. It oscillates between 
that.
  Why don't they run it at 100 percent and take advantage of the 
opportunity to fill the San Luis Reservoir, which is only three-
quarters full right now, put water in the aqueduct, or put even more 
into the areas that water could be pooling in the Central Valley and 
doing groundwater recharge?

  I was just told today that we saw some groundwater recharge last year 
due to some of those positive efforts. That is a tough deal for those 
folks down there because they have had overdrafts due to agriculture 
and due to having their surface water taken away from them on these 
projects because it is going out to the ocean on a fish deal. They had 
to run their wells. Maybe they ran them too much. We have had 
subsidence where the land goes down. It depresses somewhat. We even see 
that on the canals going through there.
  We could be doing recharge right now, and the Governor has moved in a 
direction of allowing more recharge. For some reason, they have to get 
a permit every year. I talked to his team about that. I asked why we 
don't have the permits ready to go every year so we don't have to wait 
and lose time on that. Maybe that will be a precedent going forward.
  We have groundwater recharge, filling the aqueducts in the southern 
California reservoirs that aren't full. For example, this one, which 
was empty when the fire broke out in the Pacific Palisades, is the 
Santa Ynez Reservoir. My understanding of it is that, done correctly, 
the aqueducts could supply some of the higher lakes--I think Lake 
Cachuma. Someone could straighten me out if I am wrong on this. Through 
the domino effect, surface water, I believe, could make it here. I know 
they fill this with well water also, but the lake was empty because 
they had to fix the cover over it.
  They emptied it last February and haven't gotten around to doing the 
repair or finishing the job. It sat empty, 117 million gallons of 
water, which is about 40 acre-feet, which would have helped keep the 
hydrants full instead of just a few hours as they are relying on three 
1-million gallon tanks instead of 117 million. It lasted a few hours 
down there as they were valiantly trying to fight fires in the 
Palisades and other areas.
  They could have had several days' worth of water had that been full. 
Was it bad planning? I don't know. Maybe it was bureaucracy. The crazy 
thing was the L.A. Fire Department didn't even know. They didn't have 
the knowledge that it was empty. Instead, there is a burned-out 
community because they didn't have everything they needed to be able to 
fight that fire the way they could.
  Could they have beat it all? I am not sure. They had a lot of wind to 
beat. The firefighters fought valiantly, and people did what they 
could. Certainly, having that extra water supply could not have hurt.
  I know I have seen plenty of that in my own northern California area, 
with communities just disappearing due to fire.
  This falls more to forest management and land management. Down in 
southern California, they had a brush removal program in the areas 
adjacent and above those communities that burned. They suspended it. 
The brush is the fuel that allowed the fire, driven by high winds, to 
come all the way to the edge of town and burn through the town.
  Maybe brush removal wouldn't be the be-all and end-all on that, but 
it sure would have helped. It would have given them more of a fighting 
chance. That is what it is. We are doing forest management, especially 
folks have seen around our cities, to thin the product, thin the trees 
and such to a point where a fire coming at a high speed from a distance 
hit that because the trees are thin enough and spread out enough that 
it hits the ground and slows down, so we have a chance to save whatever 
town it is.
  We lost the town of Paradise partly because of that. We lost a town 
called Greenville in Plumas County. We lost another one next door 
called Canyondam above my hometown of Oroville, California. We lost the 
town of Berry Creek and other adjacent areas there due to fire after 
fire because of lack of management.
  The one above Oroville, Berry Creek, had funding lined up to do some 
forest thinning around there. They had a grant. The local folks were 
going to do it. There was an 18-month process or longer to get the 
permits to do something. This is not something new, either. This isn't 
new under the Sun of thinning forests and managing them. They didn't 
get it done. Those areas burned. They burned out. These towns burned 
out.
  I talked to a cattle rancher there about what that looked like for 
him. His family had been farming and ranching or grazing up in those 
forested areas for many generations and decades. Look it up on the 
Internet. Read his column. He is a man named David Daley, D-a-l-e-y. 
Look at his column. Look at the emotion. Look at what it meant to him 
on that. He wrote a really good column on that 2 or 3 years ago, on 
what that means. If we want to talk about a real human story on that 
and a real thing that affects the community, I ask my colleagues to 
look up David Daley. Search that and look at his column and the burned-
out carcass of the cattle that he and his family run there, as well as 
all the other wildlife, the cougars, the raccoons, you name it. This 
happens to everybody.
  The next effect of that after the fire is that when the rain does 
come, it is going to wash all this ash and all this mud down into the 
brooks, creeks, rivers, and streams and eventually into this area, Lake 
Oroville. Being a key part of the State Water Project, it supplies 
water to 20 million Californians.
  It isn't just, well, the guys way up there in the sticks don't 
matter, whatever. No, that has an effect on pretty much the whole State 
that draws that water supply because we aren't doing a simple thing 
like something that is not new under the Sun of managing forests 
properly.
  Well, they are going to clearcut everything. That is what they want 
to do. That is what the big timber and big lumber companies want. No, 
it isn't. That is nonsense.
  Pay attention. Dig in on this. These folks that do it on their 
private land have an 80-year, 100-year plan of how they harvest, 
manage, and plant it back. That is what we need to have similarly on 
Federal lands or other government-owned lands, which I am reminded 
aren't government-owned. They are owned by the people. The government 
is supposed to be the steward of them. It is not be being the steward.

  The Forest Service is way behind the eight ball. They have 193 
million acres under their purview. If they are managing 2 million of 
that per year, that is only 1 percent, which means it will take 100 
years to get over all of it. Hopefully, they are accelerating the 
process. That is what we are trying to cause them to do here.
  When they count burned-out land sometimes as treated acres, we can 
burn everything, I guess, and check the box that says it is treated. 
That is nonsense. That is terrible for everybody. The asset that timber 
is doesn't always get accounted for, for its value. We talk about what 
the cost of the firefighting was or the cost of the buildings and towns 
that were burned out. Do we ever get to see what the value is of the 
actual timber itself?
  What we have isn't working. It is not all that successful with the 
management of these forested lands, the management of the water supply, 
and the ability we have to do so much better. It doesn't cause 
environmental harm. We have excess water for much of the year going out 
the delta and other areas that could be captured and put to good people 
use.

[[Page H497]]

  People still need the food. They still need these products. We can 
grow them in California, or we can try to import them from South 
America or somewhere else and become dependent on a foreign food 
supply. That is a really great idea. Then, we don't have the employment 
of our people. We don't have employment of the lumberjacks in small 
towns I represent in northern California and others like it in other 
States.
  So, we have unemployment. We have small communities that are boarded 
up. We have all the things that go with the social aspect of the people 
who don't have the self-worth that comes from good, honest work. What 
does that get into? We know what that gets into. It ends up being 
alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence, all the things that would be 
restored with a strong local economy, giving products that people need 
anyway.
  They need wood and paper products. They need food products. They need 
electricity generated, whether it is by a hydroelectric power plant or 
any other manner of energy that can do it.
  Uranium, why aren't we doing much more with nuclear power? It is 
CO2-free, for all the CO2 scorers out there, so 
why aren't we doing that?

                              {time}  1915

  Environmentalists sue and stop over everything. We have to reform the 
Endangered Species Act; NEPA; and on the California State level, CEQA, 
to work for us once again. These are laws that the Fed level passed 50 
years ago or longer, and they have been manipulated and they have been 
weaponized by courts, by judges, and by environmental groups to turn 
into everything else, even something as nice as a national park.
  I would like to point out that the folks in Marin County, these 
farmers and ranchers there on an area called the Point Reyes National 
Seashore park, those folks came in in the early sixties and demanded 
they were going to bully these people off their land by eminent domain, 
so they struck a deal. They said, well, we will sell the land to the 
National Park Service as long as we have the ability to lease it back 
in perpetuity. That was the deal that was struck. As long as it is the 
same family that is in the operation there, the deal was it was 
supposed to be in perpetuity. They struck that deal, and they thought 
they could live with that.
  Well, not too many years later after the weaponization of 
environmental laws and what is known as NEPA, a permit process, that 
got weaponized by environmental groups to sue the heck out of these 
people every time they tried to get an extension of their grazing 
permit. They were trying to get them for 20 years, then they said, 
well, we have to settle for 5 or 2.
  For doing some of the environmental mitigation that they would be 
demanded of with only a 2-year lease, it is pretty tough to say, well, 
I can't put half a million dollars into my sheds or my equipment or the 
drainage to control whatever might be coming off the dairy or the 
ranch, so they can't make the investment because they can't be assured 
they will be there long enough to do that. Basically they are screwed 
by the government and by environmental organizations. These are good, 
honorable people. They are very compatible with the land.
  They say the tule elk are being affected by these cattle. The elk and 
the cattle get along beautifully together. There are many acres for 
them. They graze to a level that the land can sustain, and then they 
move them out. They move them to a different grazing area.
  Grazing is a good thing, whether you are talking forested areas or as 
fire breaks or in this case at Point Reyes Seashore. These families 
have been disrespected and basically had a gun held to their head to 
sign an agreement only recently to say you are going to have to leave 
the land. These are good, hardworking people, and there doesn't seem to 
be much reward in California and some aspects of the Federal Government 
for being good, hardworking people, honest people, the ones that will 
pull over on the edge of the road and help you with your flat tire and 
make sure you are okay like that, you know?
  What do they get? They get litigated to death. Some of them are very 
elderly now and they say that I just can't fight the fight anymore, I 
don't have enough money, I don't have enough will.
  So what happens? The government wins. Extreme environmental 
organizations win. Somebody comes in and says they will save the day 
telling you, hey, we are going buy you out. You will get 15 months to 
be eased out of this. When all the employees are gone, and the cattle 
is gone, the dairies are going to go somewhere else.
  It is hard enough to run a dairy in California anymore. They 
regulated that out of business. There are people who do not like dairy 
products. They don't like that. They don't like that it comes from 
animals.
  You know, a lot of wrong people are in charge, and it has been pretty 
refreshing to see what the Trump administration has done to put things 
back in a direction here that rewards hard work, honesty, and the right 
way of doing things.
  It can be kind of discouraging, very discouraging, and for the 
families, the farmers, the ranchers in this Point Reyes situation right 
now. My heart goes out to them. I hope we can find a solution for them 
because they shouldn't be getting kicked off that land. They, in good 
faith, when they were bullied off that land and had to sell to the 
parks or otherwise lose it to eminent domain, have now been bullied off 
by regulations, by NEPA, by endless lawsuits. That ain't right. That 
ain't America. They are still making a product that people want and 
people need. They would like to continue to do that as good stewards of 
the land.
  Instead, they have designs, like, well, we are going to have more 
tourism on there. Is that as good? I would suggest it probably isn't as 
good for that land, but they power ahead. I hope maybe something can be 
done to rectify that and rectify a lot of other things that have 
affected rural America so much so.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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