[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 CO<inf>2</inf>? 
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 CO<inf>2</inf>. My colleagues have probably 
seen this poster of mine in the past, where I have pointed out the 
makeup of CO<inf>2</inf> 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 CO<inf>2</inf> 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 CO<inf>2</inf> 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 CO<inf>2</inf> once again, 
that little, skinny, purple piece of pie in that chart here. There it 
is right here. It is the same ratios. Yes, CO<inf>2</inf> 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 CO<inf>2</inf> 
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 CO<inf>2</inf>, so many things are being done to 
try and avoid CO<inf>2</inf>, 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 
CO<inf>2</inf> 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 CO<inf>2</inf> 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 CO<inf>2</inf> 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 
CO<inf>2</inf> standards for new motor vehicles for upcoming years. Up 
until that 2007 ruling, EPA generally did not regulate CO<inf>2</inf> 
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 CO<inf>2</inf> as a pollutant ever since.
  Let's go back to basic school chemistry and science on that. 
CO<inf>2</inf> 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. CO<inf>2</inf> is basically the same 
oxygen for plant life, tree life, all of it.
  Interestingly, if we are too successful at reducing CO<inf>2</inf> 
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 CO<inf>2</inf> into that to boost the speed of the plants. That 
shows right there firsthand that CO<inf>2</inf> 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 CO<inf>2</inf>, 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 CO<inf>2</inf> 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 CO<inf>2</inf> when it dies off.
  What is happening in the ocean? There are a lot of sources where 
CO<inf>2</inf> could be happening. That is under the assumption that we 
think CO<inf>2</inf> is bad, but ask a tree. CO<inf>2</inf> is good. 
Pretty much everything is carbon-based anyway in our world and our 
lives.
  If we are going to eliminate CO<inf>2</inf>, 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 
CO<inf>2</inf>.
  The other greenhouse gases, I think we need to continue to look at 
methane and NO<inf>X</inf>, 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 CO<inf>2</inf> 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 
CO<inf>2</inf>. 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 CO<inf>2</inf>-free 
power. Hydroelectric creates zero CO<inf>2</inf> in making that 
electricity. Nuclear power creates zero CO<inf>2</inf>.
  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 CO<inf>2</inf> 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 
CO<inf>2</inf>, 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 CO<inf>2</inf>, 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 CO<inf>2</inf> 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 CO<inf>2</inf> side of it here 
because most of the premise of the high-speed rail in California is 
that it will be a CO<inf>2</inf> 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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