[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 26 (Friday, February 7, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H580-H582]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                    ADDRESSING CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2025, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Sherman) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, my district has been hit by wildfires that 
constitute the greatest fire, in terms of total property damage, in the 
history of America. There are those who say that California should not 
get aid unless we change--get this--our voter registration laws.
  Different States have different voter registration processes, and 
they are all wonderful. They tend to work pretty well, and I disagree 
with some of them. Why condition aid? I have been on this floor time 
and again and voted for aid to Louisiana when they were hit with 
horrific hurricanes. I never once said, no, let's turn to hurricane 
victims and tell them to keep sleeping on their cousin's couch for 
months and years until Louisiana changes its abortion laws.
  I disagree with Louisiana's abortion laws. A woman ought to have the 
right to choose. I believe that strongly. It never occurred to me to 
turn to individual families and deny them the aid they need to overcome 
a giant disaster and to hold them hostage in an effort to get their 
State legislatures to change their statutes. I hope this House will not 
do the same to California.
  Then, we are told that the fires in the Palisades relate to 
California's statewide water management system. This is absolutely 
absurd. In Los Angeles County, our reservoirs are full to overflowing. 
We have plenty of water to live our lives. Even in the middle of the 
fires, no Los Angeleno was told to take a short shower or not to water 
their plants outside.
  We have debates on how to use water in California, but it had nothing 
to do--why were fire hydrants dry in my district? We have the 
Palisades, which go up quite steeply. The water system brings that 
water in at the bottom of the Palisades at sea level. Then, we have to 
pump the water up. We have a good system to pump the water, a system 
quite capable of making sure everybody in the Palisades could live 
their lives and water their plants and we could fight five house fires 
all at the same time.
  Then, we were hit not with 5 but with 500 house fires at the same 
time, with winds at an unimaginable level hurling cinders, flaming 
cinders, as large as golf balls, in some cases as large as baseballs, 
hundreds of yards. We did not have a water pumping system capable of 
bringing our fully sufficient water to where it was needed up in the 
Palisades.
  The President said that he is going to build you the fastest water 
pumping system in the history of America to make sure that you can 
bring that water up the hill. That is fine.
  Instead, what does he do? He has this ridiculous photo op where he 
released millions and millions of gallons of water in January. Not a 
drop of that water has reached L.A. County. That is irrigation water 
released at the wrong time, in January, that flows into basically a dry 
lake bed where it evaporates.
  We wasted enormous amounts of water. Thank God we stepped in and the 
local officials prevented it from getting worse. That is why not a 
single Republican Member from California will come here and say 
anything good about that ridiculous photo op where Donald Trump forces 
the Federal Government to waste water in California that could have 
been used and would have been used in spring and summer to grow crops 
for America.
  Talk about bad management. Trump froze the money across all the 
Federal Government. He had to tell people that at least he didn't 
freeze their Social Security checks, although our local health system 
clinics aren't getting money.
  What else did he freeze? He froze Community Wildfire Defense Grants. 
He came to my district. He showed sympathy for the victims, but we also 
needed him there to inspire the FEMA workers those victims rely on. 
They are working 12-hour shifts in some cases to bring people the help 
they need.
  What does he do to the FEMA workers? First, he insults them. Then, he 
injures FEMA. How does he insult them? He declares he wants to abolish 
FEMA. That is a great thing to say right in the middle of the most 
intense part of the disaster recovery effort.
  Then, he turns to FEMA workers and says he will give them 8 months of 
pay if they will just quit in the middle of the disaster recovery 
period. Right when we need them, he wants them to quit, and he is going 
to pay them to quit.
  He applies this not only to FEMA workers working the disaster 
recovery areas both in North Carolina and California, but he also 
applies this to temporary workers. FEMA has probably more temporary 
workers per capita than any other government agency because when there 
are disasters, they hire local people. If workers are only going to 
have a job for 6 months, they can announce that they are giving up the 
job and get paid for 7 or 8 months and do no work.
  Obviously, this will impair FEMA's ability to help the people in my 
district. What will also be a problem is he is offering a buyout to EPA 
workers. These are the people who are the specialists in toxics 
removal, dealing with a fire that has caused more Teslas and other 
electric cars to go up in smoke than any other fire in the history of 
the world, creating a toxic problem that only a few people know how to 
deal with. He is offering them a buyout, telling them to quit and stay 
home.
  This effort to insult and then injure is also applied to my State. We 
had House Committee on the Judiciary hearings, the whole purpose of 
which was to incense California, not just for fun, although some 
Members had fun, but to injure California by creating a political 
environment that says we are not going to help people recover from this 
disaster because they are Californians and we hate Californians. That 
is not a good thing to do when we are down and when we are trying to 
come up from this disaster.
  I should point out that this disaster affected not only my district 
but there were also the Altadena and Pasadena fires in Judy Chu's 
district. I hope this Congress provides the help it has always provided 
to the victims of enormous disasters.

                              {time}  1300

  A similar problem we have is with the CIA where intelligence officers 
have been offered a buyout. Well, who is going to take the buyout? The 
best and the brightest who can make at least as much money and probably 
a lot more in the private sector will take the buyout. You lose your 
best people. Those in the last year of their service, when we need them 
to pass on their knowledge, they are going to show us that they know 
that they don't have to work, and they can still get the money thanks 
to Donald Trump.
  What does it take to replace these workers, these intelligence 
officers? Well, first you have to put them through the security 
clearance. That can take a year. Then they have to learn foreign 
languages. Then they have to learn their craft.
  Who benefits from this? Our enemies, the terrorists, China, Russia, 
North Korea and Iran benefit from this.
  Finally, it impairs the ability of the CIA to carry on operations 
that could undercut the support of the Ayatollahs and hopefully bring 
regime change and democracy to Iran. The only way to be absolutely sure 
that you don't have a nuclear Islamic Republic of Iran is not to have 
an Islamic Republic of Iran.
  We see this not only at the CIA but at the FBI where eight of the top 
people have been shown the door, where 5,000 are under investigation 
for, what, for working the files they were assigned, which they are 
required to do.
  Now, I wasn't surprised when President Trump eliminated all future 
investigations of those who came to this floor and imperiled our 
democracy and imperiled the lives of many of us and our colleagues. It 
does surprise me that just because an FBI special agent was assigned a 
file they are now under investigation, it looks like they might get 
fired, and they are being encouraged to quit. They get 8 months or they 
can stick around and see whether Trump fires them. That free vacation 
is looking better and better.
  How big is this? It affects 5,000 out of the 37,000 employees of the 
FBI. The FBI only has 14,000 special agents. I believe most of those 
5,000 are among

[[Page H581]]

those agents, those less than 14,000 agents.
  If you decapitate the FBI, Americans will die. Mark my words, if you 
decimate the FBI, Americans will die. If you dismantle the FBI, 
Americans will die. Americans will die from the drugs and the gangs, 
and they will die from the terrorism. This attack on the FBI is an 
attack on the safety of all Americans.
  Another attack that doesn't seem like it is an attack on Americans, 
but really is, is the decimation of USAID.
  Now, I would expect Donald Trump--and I would applaud Donald Trump if 
he was talking about reforming, reevaluating, reprioritizing USAID, but 
instead, it seems that he is focused on dismantling USAID.
  Now, it is not like nobody thinks that is a good idea. Just today, 
Vladimir Putin applauded President Trump for decimating and in effect 
calling for the abolition of USAID. Now, Vladimir Putin doesn't care 
about the Constitution of the United States, but we should.
  Under that Constitution, this Congress passed into the law of the 
land statutes providing for USAID to operate. Then we passed statutes 
saying that for this or that operation, this or that amount of money 
should be spent. Laws of the land creating the programs, laws of the 
land indicating how much money should be spent on those programs, those 
are laws that are being shredded by king Donald the first.
  So who benefits from this? Well, there are three beneficiaries: 
China, disease, and mass migration. Let's first look at China. First, 
the Chinese are smart enough not to compliment Donald Trump for 
destroying USAID because they see an opportunity, particularly in the 
islands of the Pacific, islands my father risked his life for during 
World War II. They see in the Pacific islands small countries where 
just a little bit of aid can go a long way for the very few people who 
live there. These are strategic islands, as we learned in the 1940s. 
China sees us abandoning the world, and they come in in a position to 
grow in world influence.
  How much money are we speaking about here? If you look at the 
polling, Americans say, well, our foreign aid budget must be 25 percent 
of our Federal budget, and it should be lower. It should be down to 10 
percent of our Federal budget.
  Our foreign aid budget is less than 1 percent of our Federal budget. 
No one concerned with foreign aid has dreamt of it being 10 percent. It 
is less than 1 percent of our Federal budget. It is less than one 
quarter of 1 percent of our GDP, and for that we can vie with China for 
influence.
  There is more. There is health. A lot of USAID money is spent to deal 
with malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, Ebola, and bird flu. If you have 
no morality, if you do not care whether the world's most powerful 
economic engine does anything to help the poorest of the poor in the 
world, you might at least take a look at the health effects because 
every time one of these communicable diseases flourishes abroad, it can 
come here. We saw that with HIV/AIDS. We fear that with Ebola. Every 
single person who gets HIV/AIDS, every single person with tuberculosis 
gives the disease another little laboratory in which it might mutate 
and become more difficult for us to control when it does come here.
  We are talking about spending money for team human versus team virus 
and team pathogen. How much will it cost for us to treat people if 
there is a new drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis or a drug-
resistant or a more communicable version of HIV/AIDS?
  Finally, we are all focused on the price of eggs. We are all paying 
an extra 50 cents for every egg at Waffle House. Bird flu is combated 
by USAID around the world, and every chicken that gets bird flu in a 
very poor country is a chance for that flu to mutate and come to the 
United States in strength and form.
  If you are concerned about the health of Americans and the price we 
pay for our groceries, USAID's efforts to control disease should matter 
to you.
  Finally, when people are faced with the worst catastrophes, with 
drought, with war, with famine, those are the people most likely to 
engage in mass migration. Even if you have no morality, even if you do 
not want to help the least of these with even one quarter of 1 percent 
of the American GDP, do not take action, Mr. President, that expands 
the power of the Chinese Communist Party, expands the opportunity for 
disease around the world, and creates mass migration that will not be 
stopped by the wall you didn't build.
  Then we are told lies about USAID. We are told that $50 million was 
spent for condoms in Gaza, then the President himself said $100 
million. How about the truth not one penny was spent? That was a 
complete lie. That doesn't mean we haven't spent some money in Gaza. We 
did provide for field hospitals in Gaza. People were dying in Gaza, and 
we provided help. You can argue about what our policy in Gaza should 
be, but not one penny was spent on condoms.
  You know, there was another lie told that wasn't a lie, it was 
actually true. He said we spent $6 million on tourism for Egypt. That 
money wasn't exactly spent on tourism, but it related to 
transportation. It is mostly true, except it was a program that Donald 
Trump established in his first term. He is saying, abolish USAID 
because of what he did in his first term.
  While we are talking about lying about how money is spent, let's 
focus on another lie. They told the lie that USAID had spent $8 million 
on subscriptions to POLITICO Pro, a publication. The truth is the 
entire executive branch spent $8 million. Okay. Is this a woke 
publication, a waste of money, a subsidy for leftwing journalism and 
activism? Well, maybe it is. But Republicans in the House of 
Representatives last year and all their various congressional offices 
just in the House, I am not even including the Senate, spent $800,000 
in subscriptions to POLITICO Pro. Individual decisions were made in 
over 200 offices. They decided that the subscription was necessary to 
run their office.
  Do you know what? POLITICO Pro has a competitor, which provides much 
of the same kind of research, called Bloomberg Government, and 
Republicans in the House of Representatives spent another $800,000 in 1 
year. That seems like a lot of money, especially when you realize that 
the executive branch is a lot bigger than Congress.
  If you want to visualize it, the Republicans in Congress who spent 
$800,000 on POLITICO Pro have their offices in 1\1/2\ office buildings. 
Now, close your eyes and think about how many office buildings the U.S. 
Government occupies.
  Well, why do congressional offices and other policymaking offices 
spend money on these publications? It is because it is a lot more 
efficient to get an analysis that is published and footnoted by experts 
than it is to hire fine staff, and I have some here, to do the separate 
research for every entity in every office and every congressional 
office. That is a decision each Member of Congress makes when they 
decide whether to subscribe to Bloomberg Government and POLITICO Pro. 
That is also a decision that every doctor and medical researcher makes 
when they decide whether to subscribe to expensive medical journals.
  The fact is it is cheaper to read an article that is specialized and 
detailed and more expensive than your general purpose articles. This is 
not a newspaper with events in my city. This is not a huge mass market 
publication. It is cheaper to subscribe to a specialty journal than it 
is to hire hundreds of people to do your own research. That is why 
Members of Congress subscribe to POLITICO Pro and spend $800,000 on it. 
Yet, the President of the United States first lies and says it was $8 
million for USAID and then lies and says, oh, it is some sort of 
subsidy to some woke, liberal activist publication.

                              {time}  1315

  I know my colleagues well. I know my Republican colleagues well. Very 
few of them are interested in subsidizing woke journalism.
  Let's focus a little bit about the President's discussion of Gaza. 
Apparently, he wants to buy Greenland, and he is looking for a source 
of funds to buy Greenland. He thinks he can do it by selling timeshare 
condos in Gaza. I do not often provide investment advice. I certainly 
did back when I worked in the private sector.
  Mr. Speaker, do not invest in timeshares in Gaza. It is not a good 
idea. The idea is that 2 million people

[[Page H582]]

should be moved from Gaza. These are two contradictory ideas. Secretary 
of State Rubio says that these people are going to move out 
temporarily, and then they can move back in. Apparently a U.S. 
President who doesn't want to spend a dime on USAID wants to build 
fancy condos for every resident of Gaza.
  Secretary Rubio talks about how the people of Gaza are going to move 
out and then they are going to move back in to a beautiful condo. 
However, President Trump has said the opposite. He says that they are 
not going back. Instead, he believes that some country in the world is 
supposed to take in 2 million people from Gaza. So far he has 
identified 0.0 countries willing to take 0.0 Gazans in. He certainly 
hasn't volunteered that the United States would take them in.
  Then, second, he has got to persuade Gazans to leave, and they don't 
want to leave. Although, I guess if he offered them a luxury suite in 
Mar-a-Lago, then they would certainly consider it.
  What has he done with this proposal? First, he has embarrassed 
America. It is absolutely silly. Second, he has changed the political 
makeup inside Israel to empower those who believe that the Israeli 
settlers should move into Gaza and partially displace the Gazan 
population.
  We need a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, and we need the destruction 
of Hamas. I welcome the recent comments of Israel where they recognize 
that Hamas fighters are not going to surrender for Israeli prisons and 
have said that it is acceptable if the Hamas fighters depart the 
region. We saw that in 1982 or 1983 when so many terrorists departed 
Lebanon for Tunis.
  We can see a situation in which the people of Gaza without Hamas are 
able to live in peace. It is not going to be easy. I am not predicting 
that it is going to happen, but that is certainly our goal.
  Mr. Speaker, let me focus on one other issue, and that is an issue 
mentioned by the prior speaker from Arizona: Artificial intelligence. 
Trillions of dollars are being spent around the world, more in the 
United States than anywhere else, to make artificial intelligence more 
powerful. Basically, not a penny is being spent to make sure that as we 
make it more powerful that we are monitoring for or preventing self-
awareness, ambition, and a desire to take control.
  Then we are told: Well, my God, if we were to spend a penny worried 
about controlling AI, then the Chinese are going to be ahead of us in 
developing AI. We can't afford a single penny on anything other than 
making AI more powerful.
  If AI is self-aware and if AI develops a survival instinct, then AI 
will be able to understand many things, but even AI may not understand 
why the human race developed its own successor, a level of intelligence 
that is transhuman.
  The last time there was a new level of intelligence on this planet is 
when our ancestors said hello to Neanderthal, and then we said good-bye 
to Neanderthal.
  If you are going to develop a new level of intelligence, then perhaps 
it would be intelligent if we were to spend 1 percent, one-half of 1 
percent, making sure that AI is a tool of human beings and not a 
creature with its own objectives. Yet, so far, not one penny.
  I look forward to working, I hope, with colleagues on both sides of 
the aisle to make sure that as we make AI more powerful, we make sure 
that we keep AI under control.
  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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