    [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 39 (Thursday, February 27, 2025)]
    [House]
    [Pages H895-H901]
    From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                                  {time}  1115
                 RETURN THE UNITED STATES TO A BALANCED BUDGET

      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 effort to make
    this time available so that we can communicate directly with the
    American public about what is going on in Congress.
      Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed that I sometimes hear a lot of
    misinformation going out, including several presentations just a few
    minutes ago on the distortion of what the intentions are under the
    budget resolution and ultimately budget reconciliation and how we are
    going to return the United States back in the direction of a balanced
    budget, which has ballooned to be so unbalanced in the last few years.
    At least let's get back to the pre-COVID numbers instead of $2 trillion
    annually.
      We will resolve that, and we will talk about that. We will talk about
    it publicly in the upcoming weeks, and the people can tune right into
    the committee hearings and see for themselves rather than having to
    believe lies made by politicians and by the media.
      Mr. Speaker, I also will share this time and this hour here with
    colleagues, including my new colleague here from Indiana (Mr. Shreve),
    who would like to give his comments and thoughts here.
      Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Shreve).
      Mr. SHREVE. Mr. Speaker, during our district workweek this past week,
    I had the opportunity to visit with Hoosiers across Indiana's Sixth
    District. I applied my first in-district workweek traveling from
    Indianapolis to Columbus and points in between. It was great to hear
    directly from Hoosiers about their priorities and listening to the
    issues that are important to them.
      Above all else, in this role, our job as Representatives is to listen
    to our constituents. I was honored to attend the Indiana National Guard
    change of command ceremony, at which Brigadier General Lawrence
    Muennich assumed command from Major General Dale Lyles, making General
    Muennich the 60th Adjutant General of Indiana's National Guard.
      I met with constituents from the Indiana Railroad Association and the
    Indiana Trucking Association. The district that I represent literally
    lies at the crossroads of America, and industries such as these
    represent key parts of the lifeblood of our economy.
      Indiana's Sixth continues to be home to safe and prosperous
    communities in which to raise families. It was highlighted by my visit
    with the leadership of Franklin College and a number of state of the
    city addresses that occur in the month of January, including
    Greenwood's, where I attended Mayor Mark Myers' 14th state of the city
    address.
      I visited with the leadership of Cummins Engine Company,
    headquartered in the district. I toured their cutting-edge engineering
    facility at their Cummins Engine plant.
      I toured Rolls Royce and their massive aircraft engine design and
    manufacturing facility, where they are at the leading edge of military
    aircraft production for our national defense.
      I also visited with SABIC, a company in Bartholomew County that is
    part of a global plastics industry.
      At each of these companies in my district, I witnessed the best of
    Indiana: highly-skilled, hardworking Hoosiers who are contributing to
    the success and the defense of our country.
      Above all, I heard a common theme as I traveled my district: Let's
    bring more Hoosier common sense to Washington.
      Mr. Speaker, that is the commitment I made, and that is what I will
    continue to do.
      Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for participating and
    letting us know what is going on in the gentleman's district. I wish
    the gentleman the best in his first term and new term as a Member of
    Congress.

    [[Page H896]]

      Mr. Speaker, just in quick review once again here, in passing the
    budget resolution this week, H. Con. Res. 14, it is a 60-page document,
    I invite people to look it up for themselves and reconcile for
    themselves between what they are hearing and what my colleagues on the
    other side of the aisle are trying to scare the public with on things
    that are going to be cut because of it. They are not in there.
      Again, Medicaid, no cuts. Medicare, no cuts. Social Security, no
    cuts. SNAP, none. We even heard a bit ago about veterans. No. We want
    to make these things better for them. We want to make them more
    effective.
      Our veterans deserve to have the best possible care and the best
    possible services for them. It isn't going to come from the type of
    rhetoric of what we are hearing here.
      As I mentioned before, Social Security. No one is going to reduce
    Social Security, but looking forward in the long term, it is going to
    be in big trouble in 7 or 8 years. Shouldn't we be working together in
    a bipartisan way to make sure that that program can sustain itself
    beyond that when the trust fund runs out, at such a point when more
    money will have to be paid in by workers or having less benefits or
    things like that because it just flat runs out?
      That is not good. Let's have an honest debate on that and how
    Medicaid is going to go forward, as well. All of these programs need to
    be looked at in order to keep them on a solid fiscal course. That
    doesn't happen when lies get told about what we are trying to do here
    in sight of running $2 trillion budget deficits.
      Mr. Speaker, with so many different issues for us to be looking at in
    Congress, we also have to revitalize our economy. A growing economy
    will help a lot in solving our deficit problem.
      Two big drivers of inflation are overspending by Federal Government
    and the cost of energy, which is integral to so much of our economy, to
    every aspect of production and transportation and delivery and what we
    do in our daily lives. The cost of energy, from electricity in our
    homes and businesses, manufacturing, and fuel for vehicles, trains, and
    aircraft. Those are the two main drivers.

      As we have seen in the last several years, when the Federal
    Government has basically put a giant vacuum on the available money
    supply, prices go up on everything. The energy to produce those things
    causes higher prices.
      I am a farmer in my real life at home. A couple of years ago, I saw
    the tripling of the cost of fertilizer as an input for our crops and
    the doubling of the cost of fuel. Where is that going to be made up? It
    is in the price of food. Everybody is kind of mad about the price of
    eggs right now. I get it. I understand that.
      A couple of points that factor into that is that we have California
    regulations, especially on how eggs are to be produced and the chickens
    are to be raised. We have seen all those things that drive inflation
    affect the egg growers and the poultry folks.
      Also, I believe there is an overreaction on the bird flu. The last
    number I saw was 160 million chickens have been exterminated because of
    the idea or perception on that. Yes, there is a real deal out there,
    but I think the Biden administration took it way too far. When you have
    these things going on, that is going to affect the price of eggs.
      The Trump administration is working diligently on that. I spoke with
    the Secretary of Agriculture just yesterday, and they are looking at
    remedies for that. We will be soon getting a handle on that and other
    things that are inflationary if we are allowed to have our economy
    thrive and be open enough to take care of these things.
      I am encouraged by this direction. There is a lot of talk about DOGE
    and what it is doing. It is, indeed, flipping over rocks and finding a
    lot of cockroaches scurrying away on some things that the American
    public cares zero about on what is being spent in foreign areas. At
    USAID, at the beginning, there were some good aspects of USAID, but it
    sure turned into something that the public doesn't care about or want.
    There are effects from these costs and of these actions of government.
      Mr. Speaker, we should then look at the regulatory side. We have had
    so much being expended on climate change, in my home State of
    California especially. What actually is climate change, and let's look
    at long-term trends.
      There is a lot of science behind that being ignored, I believe. What
    are the trends on temperatures? What are the trends on CO2?
    There are so many different aspects that are a lot more scientific than
    politicians, me included, who are trying to expound upon that.
      We have seen very difficult regulations come down the pike on the
    regulations especially of CO2. My colleagues have probably
    seen this poster of mine in the past, where I have pointed out the
    makeup of CO2 in our atmosphere, one of the greenhouse gases
    that are the main concern by several administrations now.
      The main gas is nitrogen, oxygen, and these trace gases. We put right
    over here, especially carbon dioxide. Look at that very narrow strip
    which that represents.
      When I actually show them this stuff, people are astounded at how
    little CO2 is in the atmosphere because they have been
    scared and had so much fear instilled in them by media, by politicians,
    and by regulatory agencies who say that CO2 is going to be
    the end of mankind. It is an existential threat. It is the biggest
    threat we have according to John Kerry and others. It is not the
    actions of China and others in the promoting of war and terrorism
    around the world.
      Let me show my updated chart here. This one points out the same one I
    just showed here. This is currently in 2025. This is what it looked
    like back in 1970, back when I was a kid in school and they were
    instilling fear in us that we were going to have an ice age. Those are
    the days of the ice age. Those are the days of global cooling.
      Look at the two charts. They are a bit smaller than the first poster
    here, but they are the same ratios. There is CO2 once again,
    that little, skinny, purple piece of pie in that chart here. There it
    is right here. It is the same ratios. Yes, CO2 is bumped up
    a little bit over that time, but that can be defined by so many things
    besides human activity.
      Mr. Speaker, the credit that we would get as a nation isn't very
    often forthcoming that we have actually already done a lot of good
    things in this timeline. There is the Paris climate accord. Only the
    U.S. and one other country have actually seen their CO2
    numbers go down in that period of time and leading up to it. Everyone
    else's is going up.
      When efforts are being made to so dramatically regulate carbon
    dioxide, it is killing our economy. It is killing people's choices.
      Look at my home State of California, where they want to ban vehicles
    that are gas or diesel powered by 2035. They are coming after
    locomotives. More and more, they have forced aircraft into using
    different types of fuels.
      That is fine. If you can develop the fuel and it is a better fuel,
    let's look at it, but is it really going to produce? Instead of where
    the rubber meets the road, I guess where the wing meets the air, are we
    going to see dramatic savings in the different pollutants that are
    being focused on, or is it going to be offset by such tremendously high
    costs that it is never worth doing it?

                                  {time}  1130

      When you look at the CO2, so many things are being done to
    try and avoid CO2, such as, again, vehicles. They want to
    take away gas stoves and gas water heaters. We have had legislation
    recently to address that, no, this isn't something that should just be
    done by whim, by the stroke of a pen in executive orders by EPA or
    others.
      We have had CRAs, referring to the Congressional Review Act, to say,
    no, we are going to let people keep what they have because it really
    hasn't been shown that there is going to be a dramatic positive effect
    by taking away people's appliances, their gas stoves, vehicles, what
    have you.
      Let's go back a little bit. I want to talk about greenhouse gas and
    the efforts by the EPA in different administrations.
      In 2003, under the Bush administration, there was a petition
    submitted to the EPA for the agency to regulate greenhouse gases and
    CO2 under the Clean Air Act. It led to litigation that went
    all the way up to the Supreme

    [[Page H897]]

    Court, which ruled, in 2007, that the Clean Air Act was written broadly
    enough, at least in that Court's decision, for EPA to regulate
    greenhouse gases, which include CO2 supposedly as a
    greenhouse gas--you can debate that if you want--and that EPA must
    decide if emissions from new motor vehicles endangered public health or
    welfare.
      Once the Supreme Court made that ruling in 2007, 2 years later, the
    Obama administration, under their EPA, jumped to issue a 2009 finding
    that CO2 greenhouse gas endangered public health and that
    these emissions from new motor vehicles contribute to that
    endangerment. That is the endangerment clause that we talked about.
      With these actions, the EPA is now required to establish
    CO2 standards for new motor vehicles for upcoming years. Up
    until that 2007 ruling, EPA generally did not regulate CO2
    and greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. We saw that, in '09, as I
    mentioned, the Obama administration moved in that direction, and we
    have been hearing about CO2 as a pollutant ever since.
      Let's go back to basic school chemistry and science on that.
    CO2 is an important element in the atmosphere, even though
    it is only this tiny fraction at 0.04 percent. It is enough to sustain
    plant life. It is an important element, a key element.
      We breathe oxygen, basically. We breathe all this, but oxygen is what
    we carry in our bloodstreams. CO2 is basically the same
    oxygen for plant life, tree life, all of it.
      Interestingly, if we are too successful at reducing CO2
    below the 0.02 percent level, you will see plant life starting to die
    off. You will see, with certain agricultural and horticultural
    operations, some will put up greenhouses in order to get the new
    developed plants to grow faster. Maybe for retail sales, so you can buy
    your tomatoes at the market to plant in your garden, they will inject
    extra CO2 into that to boost the speed of the plants. That
    shows right there firsthand that CO2 is essential to plant
    life and tree life.
      If we are making that an existential threat, then we are really
    missing an important key to the science. Even though back in '09, in
    that area, everybody wanted to say that the science was settled. This
    is a catastrophe waiting to happen, that has been happening ever since,
    especially in my home State of California, where they are hell-bent on
    taking away people's choices on their vehicles, gas stoves, gas leaf
    blowers, and whatever you can think of, even--catch this--generators.
      Think of what a generator does during an emergency. Generally, they
    are pretty portable and are needed when there is no electricity
    available in an area. A lot of times, this might be up in the hills or
    in the woods where there is no electricity anyway or in a remote area,
    maybe out on a farm. Maybe you need to weld something on your farm
    equipment, so there is a generator on the truck that can hook to the
    welder. A lot of people have home generators that are fuel powered,
    frequently gas powered, some diesel powered.
      Let's say they get their way and ban fuel-powered generators of all
    types. Hospitals have backup generators when the power goes out there.
    Lord knows, in my part of the State here, we have seen plenty of power
    outages where we have what is called public safety power shutoffs in
    northern California because we have so many forest fires. Some of them
    have been started by the interaction of trees and tree branches and
    such with power lines. You get two bad results when that happens. A
    tree falling into a power line or a large branch, et cetera, sparks and
    causes fire.
      The two bad outcomes frequently will cause a blackout. The power will
    be knocked out, but the things that are more dramatic and more
    noticeable in the long term are the fires that could come from that and
    then torch tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands and, in one
    case, a million acres. In my district, a perfectly healthy-looking tree
    that had been inspected and deemed to be okay fell into a power line.
    That is how the Dixie fire started and burned 1 million acres.
      What are the effects of that fire on CO2, air quality, and
    all that? It is really bad.
      The Dixie fire, for example, was, as I mentioned, 1 million acres of
    such concentrated smoke that that smoke plume got up into the
    atmosphere in such density that it made it up into the jet stream that
    comes across west to east in this country and affected the East Coast.
      People in New York, Philadelphia, and even here in D.C. were advised
    for a several-day period to not go out and do physical athletic
    activities outside because the smoke was seen as above healthy levels.
      This isn't just in my backyard, where it happens so often that people
    are almost used to having brown skies because of burning forests. Our
    fire is affecting the East Coast.
      You noticed it a year or two ago with the Canadian fires, where it
    was coming down from either Ontario or Quebec, much more close by, and
    suffering those effects, too. That came all the way from back there.
    That is a result of regulations not allowing us to manage the forest in
    such a way that you can put fire out much more simply and sooner.
      You are always going to have fires. You are always going to have
    burning forests. The last 50 years or so, because of the way they have
    not been managed, the forests are now so dense, so full of burnable
    material, burnable fuels, that it is extremely difficult to put a fire
    out.
      We need what is called shaded fuel breaks, which in plain English
    means thinning areas of the forest. We should prioritize around towns
    and cities, of course, but any area that you can do that means that you
    are going to have a lower density of trees per acre. A lot of the brush
    and other material that gathers on the bottom of the forest, that
    biomaterial can actually be used for positive things.
      There are folks talking to us even more about expanding the use of
    that for pellets to export, positive export, positive for our economy
    and our trade deficit, but also for cleaning up our forests and putting
    jobs back in our forests.
      For some reason, we are the number one importer of wood products of
    the Western countries. Let's get some wins on that. Let's get some wins
    for everybody on the management of the forest and the negative
    environmental effects you have on air quality as well as water quality.
    You have all the ash that is left behind on these catastrophic fires
    that basically leave you a moonscape that is washed into the streams,
    brooks, and rivers, and eventually the lakes, such as lakes in northern
    California that store mass amounts of water--4.5 million acre-feet in
    Lake Shasta, 3.5 million acre-feet in Lake Oroville, when they are
    allowed to be full. That is the water supply for most of the rest of
    California. It is the drinking water for L.A. It is important.
      What do you do with that water quality with all that stuff flowing in
    there because we are not managing the forest lands? When we harm
    ourselves with CO2 information that really isn't accurate or
    proportional, we hamper our ability to do much of anything.
      I am excited to see that our new EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, is
    taking a look at this again. We are not just accepting that, back in
    2009, the Obama administration was able to just say that the science is
    settled.
      What do you know about science? Science is never settled. Science is
    constantly evolving at some level or another as new information is
    found. I don't know how many things you can really decide are the final
    word in the area of science, biology, or what have you. We are always
    learning more, so how you can have the whole equation on whether it is
    mankind's involvement or what nature does with forests and trees--in
    the rain forest, for example, as plant life grows and dies, as it
    absorbs oxygen doing so, it releases CO2 when it dies off.
      What is happening in the ocean? There are a lot of sources where
    CO2 could be happening. That is under the assumption that we
    think CO2 is bad, but ask a tree. CO2 is good.
    Pretty much everything is carbon-based anyway in our world and our
    lives.
      If we are going to eliminate CO2, which I don't know that
    we can eliminate that much, down to 0.02 percent, that would be really
    dangerous to do so.
      I am pleased that under the executive order that President Trump put
    out, the EPA Administrator is going to look at recommendations on the
    2009 endangerment finding as it was called

    [[Page H898]]

    at the EPA under the Obama administration. It has been the basis for
    many climate-related regulations. This executive order will determine
    whether this really aligns with what the energy policies, legal
    interpretations, and, more importantly, the needs of Americans are for
    energy and all the things that come from energy.
      Remember, I talked about the main cost drivers of inflation and why
    everything is so expensive now, including eggs and fuel. Our fuel in
    California is about $1.25 or $1.50 a gallon higher than the national
    average. That is another thing we get to enjoy under the regime in
    California.
      Taking a look at this endangerment finding and saying the science
    isn't settled is going to be extremely important. We can actually get
    some more science involved back in how we are going to look at
    CO2.
      The other greenhouse gases, I think we need to continue to look at
    methane and NOX, nitrogen oxide. Those are still issues we
    need to look at, and I think certainly that Mr. Zeldin over there at
    EPA is going to be responsible in that area.
      I also am very glad that we are asking the question once again,
    because if you watch this floor very much, you might see me pretty
    often talking about this chart because so many people have been scared
    into believing that CO2 is this giant existential danger.
      I ask people frequently when we have gatherings or meetings and sway
    into this topic a little bit. Most people on the street believe the
    atmosphere is somewhere between, typically, 20 to 50 percent of
    CO2. Again, they are dumbfounded when they find out that it
    is 0.04 percent.

      We are exporting our jobs to the Pacific Rim, Mexico, or other places
    because we don't want to do it here. Part of the findings is that when
    you look at the whole equation, we are not helping overall global
    emissions. The finding itself states that even if the U.S. cut its
    emissions to zero, global emissions would keep increasing because of
    countries like China, India, and others in that neighborhood. They
    would keep going up.
      Remember the Olympics that were held in China just a few years ago?
    The air is so nasty there in those large cities that they actually shut
    down their industries for about a couple of weeks leading up to the
    Olympics and during the Olympics so they could try to have blue skies
    and cleaner air for the athletes participating back then.
      We don't have to do that stuff here, except when we have forest
    fires. Of course, no one wants to go outside if the forest fire is
    affecting them. That gets down to a forest management thing I will talk
    about on a different day.
      We have achieved so much, and we have achieved good things with
    regulations in this Nation here going back to '66 and '68. A lot of
    those rules came in on car emissions, devices, and such that have
    helped.
      The L.A. Basin is a lot cleaner than it was in the late sixties and
    earlier seventies and probably before that, as well. We have done so
    much. The technology with engines these days, with the internal
    combustion engines, called ICE, is so tremendously much cleaner-burning
    now than it used to be. Credit doesn't seem to be given to industry for
    doing that. Truck engines and tractor engines are up to Tier 4 now.
    They burn pretty darn clean.
      We can still do more to improve, but if industry is allowed to
    improve on its own as technology is done organically instead of being
    forced by a regulation that is taking it in the wrong direction, away
    from improving what we have, we are not going to get there.
      We are going to have these electric vehicles that nobody can afford
    and nobody really wants, other than the elitists and what have you.
    They are being forced upon people, and they are forced upon the
    industry that is trying to develop a way to make it better.

                                  {time}  1145

      Battery technology, I am sorry, has not caught up to the desire to
    have battery-powered vehicles. Storage batteries, it takes so much
    area, so many resources to build the batteries, so many metals, metals
    that we are not allowed to mine in this country due to EPA and other
    regulations.
      In one case, a copper mine took 29 years to permit. Copper is going
    to be dramatically needed as more and more AI technology; AI centers
    are built. The amount of electricity to run them is going to be
    tremendous as well.
      Where are we going to get the energy to do all this? Well, we have
    these clean forms of energy that have been shunned for a long time. One
    form is hydroelectric power. In my own district, just recently, they
    took four hydroelectric dams down that generated CO2-free
    power. Hydroelectric creates zero CO2 in making that
    electricity. Nuclear power creates zero CO2.
      The type of power they make is 24-hour, 7-day a week availability of
    power. You don't have to wait for the Sun to come up, the rain and
    clouds to go away, or for the wind to blow, as is necessary for a
    windmill or solar plant to become effective. I am not against those
    forms of power, but I am just looking at what is the efficiency of them
    versus what we know has worked for a long time.
      The country has moved away from coal. Coal is still a very important
    component. Coal could still be a win if we would redesign the power
    plants and allow them to be retrofitted. Maybe it is a good backup
    plan. I am not sure. That is a tougher debate.
      Natural gas plants are very, very clean running plants. We need more
    of them, as we have so much natural gas available after the miracle of
    hydraulic fracturing was invented and is being perfected more each day.
    There is so much potential there. It is important that we up the
    production of natural gas and the export of it, as well.
      Look at Europe, where Russia built the giant pipeline to bring gas
    into Germany, and other areas I suppose. When you look at the history
    of that area of the world there, I am astounded that Europe would want
    to be dependent upon Russia for natural gas. They could take that 90-
    degree valve and shut it off anytime if they didn't like what Germany
    or others were doing politically or what have you.
      We have a much stronger relationship with Europe. We are in NATO
    together, which we need to maintain that relationship. I am glad to see
    President Trump is also requiring stronger participation by NATO folks
    to pay for more of their own way. Why should that be on the American
    taxpayer? They seem to be getting it. Germany was talking more recently
    about participating at a stronger level. That is all good. We are still
    their friends. We are still allies together. There is nothing wrong
    with that.
      Why would they want to be dependent on the Russian bear for their
    natural gas?
      What if there was actually not a political crisis but just some kind
    of hiccup anyway?
      The U.S. has tremendous ability to develop more natural gas and
    export it via those big ships to Europe. We should be doing a lot more
    of that as a good ally and a good trading partner. It will help with
    trade.
      We were talking about trade in agriculture a little bit earlier
    today. We are not having a lot of great results on that trade. Dairy,
    for example, is really suffering in this country as there is a
    tremendous amount of imports coming in, kind of undercutting our
    dairies. Why is that?
      Why are we seeing so much Canadian lumber and wheat coming down? I
    see it as I sit at the railroad crossings in northern California when a
    train goes by. Why are we importing all that, especially the lumber? We
    burn hundreds of thousands, millions of acres each year that are not
    being managed by the Forest Service or by allowing those contracts to
    be let out for the lumber, the timber that needs to be taken from those
    areas.
      The first thing you will hear from the environmental groups: Oh, you
    want to clear-cut. You are just in it for big lumber, big timber
    companies.
      That is not what it is at all. We are managing these lands. We will
    be much more successful. The forests will be healthier, and it is
    better for the wildlife. Nothing is good for the wildlife when you burn
    a million acres. The habitats of the spotted owl, cougar, and raccoon,
    and everything else goes up with them, and the water quality, on and on
    and on.
      It comes back to these choking regulations that don't allow us to do
    what we need to do. I am getting back to the CO2 and the
    work the EPA will be looking at.

    [[Page H899]]

      As I mentioned, the U.S. has cut emissions in absolute terms as a
    share of global emissions since really the 1990s. Despite our
    increasing population, larger economy, we have been able to accomplish
    that.
      An important thing to note about the ruling by the 2009 Obama EPA is
    that Congress has not directly given the EPA the authority to regulate
    these emissions. It was by the sweep of a pen in the Supreme Court.
      Well, isn't Congress the most responsive, the closest to the people,
    especially this House, as each of us represents about 750,000 people?
      We have the most opportunity to interact most directly with our
    constituents and hear from them. That is the model that was set up by
    the Founders. The U.S. House is the one most directly responsive to the
    people and has 2-year election cycles so that if they get tired of us
    they can throw the bums out.
      There has to be a responsiveness. It has a responsibility in that it
    really should be leading the way on how regulations are going to affect
    those same people that send us here.
      That is why we have, thankfully, for the EPA and others, the
    Congressional Review Act where if a regulation is put in and it seems
    to be overreaching, overbearing, we have the opportunity in the House
    to hear those. We have passed a couple lately that say, no, we are
    going to put you back in your more reasonable role as a regulatory
    agency.
      What we are hearing from the people is they don't want their light
    bulbs taken away. They don't want their cars taken away. They don't
    want all these things to happen to them when the science is unsettled
    about if it is really helping anything. They know it is driving costs
    up. They know they have fewer choices.

      The Supreme Court has already had another recent ruling where the EPA
    has tried to move even more aggressively to regulate emissions and they
    have found that some of these rulings were illegal in their overreach,
    so it comes back to us to legislate on it.
      Let's take credit for what we have done. Let industry take credit for
    having done the research and development to make cleaner running
    vehicles, more efficient vehicles, cleaner power plants, more efficient
    appliances than ever. Just over time, by attrition, when more and more
    of these are replaced with the newer stuff, you are going to see
    improvements in that, even with the increased population and more
    things going on with the economy.
      As I mentioned AI a minute ago, the amount of need for electricity is
    going to grow dramatically just for that. If we did have all these
    electrify-everything mandates, electricity needs to be grown as well.
      How are we going to do that if we are not building more power plants,
    like nuclear power, natural gas, hydroelectric?
      They are after more hydroelectric plants in northern California,
    Washington, and Oregon. It is all about tearing dams out right now. We
    are seeing some of the negative effects.
      Let's talk about the Klamath River. As soon as they tore the dams
    out, millions of cubic yards of silt flushed right down the Klamath
    River. I have the pictures in the other room--I have shown them to you
    enough times probably--of dead fish, dead wildlife, and the muck that
    has been moving down the Klamath River. That is a pretty negative
    effect from all the hype of what it was going to do to help that.
      With all this happening, we still have a pretty amazing, strong
    economy in this country. I am very, very pleased that President Trump
    is trying to restore that after the 4 dark years of the Biden
    administration not really paying attention to much of what we need,
    especially in the rural sector with the economies we used to have in
    timber, mining and agriculture as well.
      Due to the timber industry being devastated for most of the last 50
    years, we have to resort to something called the Secure Rural Schools
    Act that myself and Mr. Neguse from Colorado are putting forward. It is
    a fund that comes from the U.S. Treasury to make sure that the schools
    and roads in local areas have some of the money they need that they
    used to get from timber receipts.
      When you cut timber in those areas, they had this fee upon that
    timber that went to the local roads, local schools and counties, et
    cetera. With the sweeping away of the timber industry and so many mills
    that we have lost in the West, the negative effect it has had on those
    local funds has been required to be replaced by the Secure Rural
    Schools Act that we are again putting forward.
      We have enjoyed pretty good bipartisan support in the past on that,
    but it does have a budget effect, so we have to fight for it every
    year. Wouldn't we rather fight for the timber receipts and not have to
    come hat in hand to Congress, to the American people and say, yeah, we
    need this fund for something that got taken away by a regulatory act?
      It is something we need anyway. It would be better for these wood and
    paper products to come from American forests instead of us being the
    number one importer of wood products, as I mentioned.
      Why are we doing that? We are not forced to take these products by
    any type of trade agreement.
      Certainly, President Trump is looking at how we are going to even the
    score with other countries via tariffs. Tariffs are controversial, I
    get it. I have long believed, just personally--this is as a
    nonpolitician, when I was much younger--you know, our policy with other
    countries ought to just be a mirror. You treat us how we will treat you
    or vice versa. That is what our trade policy is going to be. If you are
    going to tariff us, then I guess we should tariff you back until we get
    to the point where we can just get rid of the tariffs and whoever can
    build the best product or compete the best is going to be able to trade
    with each other. India has been pretty bad on that. Even some of our
    best trading partners we have these tariffs. I hope that ultimately, if
    that has to be a stick until we can get to the carrot--and I hope we
    get to the carrot soon--then that is something we have to look at.
      I am encouraged that under this administration we are looking at
    things in a different way, maybe more scientifically than we have in a
    long time, but the greenhouse gas thing is going to be very detrimental
    long term to our economy and the things that we do well unnecessarily.

      I mean, in California, they are still pushing forward on this high-
    speed rail project. You have heard me talk about this maybe a few
    times. What started as an idea back in 2008 and put before the
    California voters was a $33 billion fast train from S.F. to L.A.
      Well, this is 2025. That is 17 years, and not a single mile of track
    has been laid yet. There have been kids born and graduated high school
    during the amount of time that this hasn't been done.
      This fast train from S.F. to L.A. was projected to be finished by
    2020. That is what the voters were told when they approved the bonds by
    a narrow 52 to 48 percent. Okay. We will put forth $9 billion of bonds
    to kick-start the investment.
      I love that word ``investment'' around here, meaning we are going to
    spend your dollars, we are going to invest.
      That said, they narrowly agreed to that because private investment
    was going to come along as well. They would be attracted to it. This
    will be a great project, a money maker. It will be a great thing.
    Private investment has stayed away in droves. Nobody wants to come in
    on this unless they can have guarantees that they will make money.
      However, in that bond initiative specifically, in order to pass it,
    because people would be warning against that, it specifically outlined
    that no subsidies of train tickets, what have you, are allowed. Now
    they are going to try to find ways around that, which is another lie
    told to the voters on that proposition. Still, they forge ahead. Many
    years later, not a single mile of track has been laid.
      They have these bridges and causeways built, which one day will be
    monuments to the idiocy of this project. Still, they forge ahead.
      You can only identify between that $9 billion--and then right back in
    2009 there are kids in junior high school that saw that happen--or
    still in high school, I mean, that saw during that timeline when the
    Obama administration had the ARRA funds, which was

    [[Page H900]]

    known as the stimulus package then for shovel-ready projects.
      How many years can you do a project and have it still be deemed
    shovel-ready when we are 17 years in on high-speed rail?
      Shovel-ready projects, they had a component for high-speed rail
    around the country. Three other States wanted a piece of that. After a
    while, looking at the cost, they gave it back, so it all went into one
    pile. California said: We will take that $3.5 billion. Here we are 17
    years later without having a mile of track even laid.
      We are having an investigation into that, too. I appreciate that
    Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy came out to L.A. a little over a
    week ago and announced that they are going to be auditing that,
    reviewing that, and seeing if the American taxpayers are getting a bang
    for the buck for the money that had been, not really asked for, but had
    put in there, that original $3.5 billion in 2009, and then right at the
    end of the Biden era another approximately $4 billion.
      As I started to mention, you can only identify between all this
    money, the $9 billion, the two chunks from Federal, and then California
    has implemented a cap-and-trade act to tax people's ability to make
    CO2, as in manufacturing. If you are a certain size or
    larger manufacturer, you have to go buy the right to do what you have
    always done if that produces CO2, you know, 0.04 percent of
    the atmosphere in that.

                                  {time}  1200

      Mr. Speaker, they have created their own phony currency. They just
    had the auction for it. They have an auction where people have to go
    bid for this. They had it sometime in February and raised some money
    for the State government to spend. About a billion of that is dedicated
    each year since then to the high-speed rail.
      If all of these numbers are added up and if they are somehow allowed
    to keep the $3.5 to $4 billion that Secretary Duffy is looking at--that
    I hope to claw back--adding all that up, it is about $18 billion or $19
    billion. The price of that rail project has quadrupled since its
    inception in 2008 from the $33 billion to now about $130 billion.
      Let's look at these numbers for a bit. The $130 billion, after all
    this trouble, after all this battle to get Federal money--two chunks of
    a little over $3 billion, the $9 billion from the voters, and this $1
    billion at a time for the CO2 cap-and-trade money generated
    in California with that fake currency they are taxing people that
    produce--$18 billion to $19 billion, they are about $110 billion to
    $112 billion short of the $130 billion that is commonly accepted to be
    the total price.
      They have extracted maybe seven or eight out of the Federal
    Government. They want another $110 billion, and the private sector is
    not coming forward to finance this thing because they know it is a
    loser. They can recognize that.
      Are they going to hit the people of California with another bond?
    Instead of just $9 billion, it is a bond of $110 billion which takes 30
    years to pay back once they have doubled the price of that. Where are
    they going to get the $110 billion?
      Secretary Duffy of the Department of Transportation is right. He is
    smart to look at the $4 billion still hanging right now just recently
    given by the Biden administration. Let's claw that back now and let
    them figure it out in California, my home State. Let them figure it
    out. Why should the other 49 States pay for something that isn't
    working at all and that is so late?
      They promised--back when this came along in 2008, 2009, 2010--it will
    probably provide a million jobs for California. Are we kidding
    ourselves? People up there on that dais were promising that number.
      It turns out, after review a couple of years later in a State senate
    hearing, they said we meant a million job years. Job years is a
    different terminology than what they had been telling people.
      Currently, they claim there are 14,000 jobs involved in building
    whatever the portions of high-speed rail they are doing. When we do the
    math on that, 14,000 divided into that million job years, that means
    that at about 70 years of 14,000 people at a million job years, it will
    take about 70 years to make that math work, which they are right on
    track. It is going to take about 70 years to build this rail if they
    actually got the financing. I don't know that anybody wants to come
    forward with $110 billion to continue this.
      I thank Secretary Sean Duffy for looking at this. I thank EPA
    Director Lee Zeldin for looking at the CO2 side of it here
    because most of the premise of the high-speed rail in California is
    that it will be a CO2 saver. We have this electric train.
    Where does electricity come from? How many trains can they actually run
    on that track from northern California to southern California to
    displace Southwest Airlines and all the other airlines that have a heck
    of a lot of traffic?
      How much is the ticket going to cost to ride this since it is not
    allowed to be subsidized? It will probably be in the rage of $300. They
    say it will be cheaper than airlines. How will it be cheaper with these
    rates? It can't be. It can't possibly be. People will ride it for the
    novelty.
      Even at one point they said, in order technically for it to be the
    high-speed rail going from San Francisco to L.A. in 2\1/2\ hours, they
    only have to run one train as an express each day to do that. Other
    trains can stop in little burbs along the way, which means it won't be
    a high-speed rail anymore except in between the cities.
      It will probably end up being a 4-hour train anyway by the time they
    do that. What have they gained? What have they gained for all that
    money? What have they gained for all that pain--from the ag land, the
    farmland, a rendering plant that is in the way of it?
      Rendering plants are very essential, where they take discarded farm
    animals that have died: dairy, horses, whatever. To resite a rendering
    plant isn't popular. No one wants to be next to one of those,
    especially in this day and age where people don't understand rural
    issues and rural needs. They ask: What is all this dust? What is all
    this noise? What are all these tractors going slowly down the road? It
    is making our food is what it is doing, but we will worry about all
    that later. Maybe we can import all that.
      It brings back this old poster I always use here. We are not growing
    the food in California if we are not growing these crops. Somewhere
    between 90 and 100 percent of these crops listed here are grown in
    California. If we don't grow them, then we have to import them or do
    without them. We have to pay higher prices.
      We won't have the stability of where they come from, all because it
    is being regulated out of business. The water is being taken away for
    these growers. The land is being taken away in some cases like this
    debacle going on at the Point Reyes National Seashore Park where
    farmers for dairy and beef ranches are being kicked off right now
    because the national parks have muscled them off, along with
    environmental organizations. They are muscling them off because of
    phony NEPA stuff that they have made up to move them out of the way.
      They say the Tule elk will now thrive there because of that. Cattle
    and Tule elk get along just fine on these lands. Cattle are very
    essential for helping maintain the landscape, grazing at a level that
    helps with keeping it healthy. In areas where it is dry, it keeps it
    safe from fire.
      That is more government regulation muscling people out there. That is
    what we see. That is why we have the Congressional Review Act. That is
    why we have what we are looking at here with DOGE flipping things over,
    finding these phony-baloney contracts, and giving it even to some of
    the media here, to buy subscriptions to the media to keep them pumped
    up.

      We see how many people are getting laid off from some of the higher
    levels of media and some of the programs that are closing because maybe
    they are not getting these hidden subsidies anymore from things like
    USAID.
      It is disgusting when a lot of people see what is going on and what
    this Federal Government has been getting away with behind the scenes.
    It is exciting to see the rocks flipped over and watch the cockroaches
    run away on this.
      There is criticism about how some of it is coming about, and I think
    that is being looked at and refined. To throw away the process of
    making government accountable is a giant mistake if that is allowed to
    happen. The rhetoric flying out of here on that is just amazing. People
    are defending basically this massive government waste and these

    [[Page H901]]

    scandalous issues that are being funded by our tax dollars.
      I understand. Tax dollars aren't contributions. People don't have the
    option of making these contributions for these investments. These are
    mandatory. If people don't pay their taxes, bad stuff happens to them.
    Wages are garnished. Stuff is taken away and auctioned. A person might
    even find himself in handcuffs and prosecuted if they think it is a
    high enough level.
      I think the American people need to be optimistic about the direction
    things are going and not fall for all the scary stories. Again, we have
    been hearing it all week long. They are going to cut Social Security.
    They are going to cut billions and billions from Medicaid. Nope. We
    need to look at how these programs can be made better, but there is
    nothing in the budget resolution this week that said we are going to do
    that.
      Ongoing, the President has pledged that. We, in Congress, should look
    at it. How can we make them better? It is by not taking a single
    benefit away from anybody. Don't buy the lies. Read H. Con. Res. 14 on
    the budget resolution. It is not even listed in there. Don't buy the
    lies flying out of this place and that the media keeps pushing.
      Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time and the ability to get some of
    these ideas across to the American public and our colleagues here.
      Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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