Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Moore for leading this opportunity to cover important subjects that we are working on in the House in D.C. and in tandem with the excellent effort coming out of the Trump administration. It is a more positive outlook we have had lately. With the economy moving in the right direction, it gives people more freedom.

The foreign relations are going to improve. I think it is important that we have strong relations. I think NATO is extremely important and that we support and remain part of NATO. I am encouraged to see that NATO countries under President Trump are moving to step up a little bit more and take some more of their own responsibility for their defense. It shouldn't all be on the burden of taxpayers of America, but indeed with more and more of that self-starting, I would say. We are seeing that talked about in Germany a little bit more right now.

It is always important that we maintain the NATO alliance and that the United States remain part of that, as well as our relationship with Israel. It is such an excellent partnership that we have with them; how we are able to work together in tandem as two different nations with the technology that has been developed.

They do amazing things in concert with our knowledge and our technology in this country, for example, on agriculture water-saving technology. They have to irrigate in a desert. In my home State of California, we have a rather arid climate, but we do have a very plentiful water supply. It comes from the Sierras in the north and the east. Israel has shown the way on how to make water go much farther with their drip irrigation systems. It comes from working together on these technologies, as well as defense systems.

That is important. Israel puts so much effort into defending itself, and America has worked in tandem with that to develop missile defense systems that are helpful for us. They are helpful with our other allies around the world and Israel, as well; them with the Iron Dome, ours with the Patriot, and newer technology that has come since then.

When we consider Israel, they have really been under the gun ever since they were reconstituted back in the late 1940s. No sooner were they were put in place and set up shop than the neighboring countries immediately attacked them. For the Israeli people, it is really an existential situation. They are constantly under threat.

To hear what they are trying to do and the way they advocate for constant peace and coexistence--I mentioned that a little bit earlier today--Israel would like to get along, and they have many folks of Arab descent that live within their country.

When I have been able to listen to different seminars on that, those folks are asked would they like to move out of Israel if they feel like they are an Arab in Israel and may or may not be having a good go of it. They said that, no, they like it there. They want to stay there. We see that cooperation within on people that have that understanding.

Marking recently the 500 days since the horrific attack by Hamas on October 7, when an Iranian-backed group inflicted an incredible amount of damage, death, destruction, and terror on a group of people that were just peacefully enjoying the day, for the next 500 days we have hardly gotten much cooperation. More recently, we have been able to negotiate hostage releases; but they still have more.

Hamas, that terror regime in Gaza that has been there and set up shop not long after the whole Gaza Strip was deeded over basically--and Israel withdrew in good faith, land for peace back then. What is the reward for that? Before the ink is even dry on agreements, the mortar rounds are being set up and launched indiscriminately into Israel.

What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to just let that happen?

Of course, they are going to defend themselves. We have seen that since October 7 or approximately 500 days ago. Israel has done what it must do in order to defend itself from these indiscriminate terror attack that happened from within Hamas and still holding many hostages, both Israeli and even some Americans.

How do we negotiate with that? They are doing the best they can. They are doing their best to keep peace. They are doing their best to be a good neighbor. That doesn't seem to be rewarded in that part of the world.

I think it is perfectly appropriate and I think in a way our duty as an ally to people with a lot of kinship with us that we remain strong as a support of Israel and ultimately eradicate Hamas from what they are doing there. I don't know what the overall long-term solution is going to be in Gaza. What they have going now is not working.

As long as they want to continue to inflict that kind of damage as a bad neighbor, then Israel is going to have to take steps to defend itself. When it does, it does so surgically. It isn't indiscriminately bombing out areas there. I know there have been many, many casualties. We get that.

When Hamas is using their people in Gaza, their own neighbors as human shields, and expecting Israel to not make a move where the terrorism or the rocket attacks are emanating from, what are they supposed to do? Hamas is the one that is evil, using their own people, their own neighbors, their own kind as human shields. Somehow the rest of the world wants to blame Israel for what is going on there. It is nonsense.

As these 500 days have passed and we remember the 1,200 innocent lives lost, taken, butchered, and at the time the 240 hostages that were taken, we must stand strong with them.

I appreciate what President Trump has been able to set up, in just a month, to send a signal there that the United States is going to stand strong with Israel and that Prime Minister Netanyahu recognizes that and will do everything he can to find a solution to forge that peace amongst that and still be strong for his nation and for his people that is essential for its continued existence.

It is an existential threat every day. I have toured the country and met with folks more toward the southern part of Israel. They live on a 15-second alert status basically. They have to be ready at any time to be able to find shelter within 15 seconds in certain sectors of more southern Israel for what might come in as a rocket attack upon them. What a way to live.

On the other hand, it seems they take it in stride. It is amazing. They are amazing, resilient people, time and time again. All they want to do is get along, to peacefully coexist.

I made this comment a little bit earlier, but I don't see the ``Coexist'' stickers on the back of the military vehicles or automobiles that are in the Gaza area or the Hamas vehicles. They aren't interested in coexisting. They ultimately have to be defeated and moved out of there, because this is not going to work long term. You can't deal with unreasonable people who want to eradicate who you are, so I don't blame Israel.

Of note here in Congress, we were able to accomplish an important budget resolution just last night. It is amazing the rhetoric that flies out of here about what we are trying to do.

Government needs to be accountable, much more accountable than it has been. Since the COVID era, when spending went up dramatically, and we are dealing with $2 trillion deficits--how do we even say that so easily and add that number every year to our national debt? We are fortunate interest rates aren't worse off, because the management of that debt, the servicing of that, the interest on that, would consume the rest of our budget if it got too much more out of control.

What we are trying to do and what the Trump administration is trying to do by identifying the fraud, the needless spending that is happening with these organizations, should be commended.

In our budget resolution last night, as this leads us toward the budget reconciliation process, that indeed is trying to find things that will more streamline and clean up our budgeting process. That is a good, honest, earnest effort here.

Hearing the rhetoric flying around on the other side of the aisle or coming out from the media that they are going to make draconian cuts to Medicaid, nowhere in that document is there even mention of Medicaid or certainly cuts to it or some of the other programs that people have come to depend on.

That is going to be an ongoing discussion in the budget reconciliation process of where are we going to find these reductions. If DOGE can keep doing its work without being unfairly criticized for the effort being made, then we are going to find more and more. We are finding billions already, finding bogus contracts, things that the average American is not interested in having their money--$40 million here, $15 million there, billions on certain things. That is not in the American people's interest because they have their own difficult time.

There was a lot of discussion about the price of eggs. When the Biden administration caused an overreaction to bird flu, 160 million chickens had to be eradicated in this country. Yeah, it is going to have an effect on the price of eggs and poultry and other things. When the government does things, there is a cause and there is an effect.

I am hoping with this budget being resolved here and moving forward with the reconciliation conversation--again, it is going to be on national TV in a committee process, open hearings, as these numbers are wrestled with.

It isn't easy. If we can just reset back to pre-COVID spending, with perhaps an adjustment for inflation since then. However, the inflation we need to be adjusting to is something more normalized, like in the first Trump era, instead of the dramatic inflation caused by the Biden policies on energy and massive spending, such as the Infrastructure Act--which, hey, there is some good infrastructure in there, but there is a lot of spending that really isn't infrastructure. On top of that, the American Rescue Plan and then, ultimately, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which was another trillion-dollar spending spree of pet programs and green projects that the Democrats seem to love.

Maybe we can salvage a bit of that money and channel it into good things. That is some of the effort here, but a lot of that needs to be limited and cut off longer term. That is the effort that needs to be made here.

I keep coming back to my home State's high-speed rail project. There was an additional $4 billion dumped on top of that right at the end of the Biden administration. That is where these eleventh hour pronouncements and executive actions really need scrutiny.

I am glad we have the Congressional Review Act to look at those, some onerous regulations on last-minute spending, on monuments that are all around the country, with massive amounts of acres declared under the Biden administration as national monuments and areas that are not going to be available.

For example, one ocean monument that was set here that is about 625 million acres. How big is that area? Let us do the math on that. Basically it boils down to a million--it really boils down to, in easy numbers, a 1,000-mile square. That is how much those acres add up to, 625 million. That is basically a no-go zone for doing normal things like certain types of fishing, or if there is an area that is rich in oil, being able to take advantage of that and do offshore drilling that would be helpful to our economy.

We know how to do it right. Yet, when there is a massive declaration by the President, just by the stroke of a pen, under abuse of the Antiquities Act, it puts us in a hard way, a difficult way to be energy independent and sustain our own needs as a country when these willy- nilly declarations just keep happening.

Thankfully, that has come to an end, and we can review some of these things and say: Is this really what is effective under the Antiquities Act for our country, for the landscape we have, and for the resources that are available?

I am hoping for good things, and I think good things will happen. We need the American public to have faith and see what has been happening so far with the DOGE process. What we would

be seeing under budget reconciliation is that we want to put the power back with the people, for the people, and not have it just be vested in government.

Government run amuck becomes abusive. Your rights are limited and your property rights abused, as we see so much of in the West where people are being sued for a 150-year-old fence and charged criminally for a fence line that has been undefined, for example. This is in South Dakota. The Forest Service is going after them for that when it was unsettled. They hadn't even done a survey on it to see if there was something right or wrong with that particular fence line. Property rights are being trampled and people are being intimidated by their government in this sense.

Let's reset on this and put government back in a position where it is accountable directly to those who are elected, who are accountable directly to the people. We will be much better off with that. It is moving in a good direction, I certainly believe, as we have more accountability for the spending. Where is it going? Is it something that is effective? Is it a good value for the American people?

That is why I am happy with the DOGE process. There are some imperfections in it. We will figure that out. We will hammer that out.

The budget reconciliation process will be underway very soon and, hopefully, will be successful. This is something that Republicans have stood for for a long time, the accountability to the American people, accountability for how their tax dollars are being used, and accountability for those working in the government and who are supposed to be showing up and providing a service. Government jobs are not supposed to be a jobs program. They are there to deliver a service to the people that give us the charge to bring them aboard and start these agencies.

Somehow, they think it is supposed to be 100 percent job security. That isn't available anywhere else in the country in the private sector, especially when overactive government and overactive regulators can sweep away your right to farm, to mine, to ranch, to have a business or have it taken away by eminent domain, such as we have seen on the Point Reyes National Seashore, where 12 ranching families there, dairy and beef ranchers, have had that swept away from them after they finally relented back in the early sixties to sell the land, because the government came and bullied them off of it. Now they are kicking them off all the way, if that is allowed to stand. I hope we can put a stop to that, because that is not right and that is not the American way of doing things.

There is a lot of energy to do the right things for the American people coming from the administration and from this House. Hopefully, the Senate can take up what we send over there and have success on that. It is really about, again, resetting and making government accountable to the people and doing what is best for them, not what is best for the expansion of the government and the furthering of the little fiefdoms that go on in it.

Mr. Speaker, I am really grateful for the opportunity here. I am grateful that our House was able to pass the budget resolution and continue the process. It is going to be one I think we can ultimately be proud of.

Mr. Speaker, once in a while we could cooperate with the President and those who are trying to do things to make our government run better ultimately for the benefit of the citizens of this country, the taxpayers.

So what we see with DOGE is that $65 billion of savings have been found and many, many contracts that are illegitimate or unnecessary to the operations of the government or what people expect are being turned over and are being rescinded.

This includes the scandal that has been USAID. What started out as a good thing many years ago has been turned into something that is almost completely corrupt.

So let's take a look at some of the other items that DOGE has found: 104 DEI contracts eliminating $1 billion in spending. I could go down a whole long list: $168,000 for a Dr. Fauci exhibit and a $45 million DEI scholarship in Burma.

What are we doing here when we have really difficult issues in our home districts and across the country as well as a $2 trillion deficit?

So this isn't going to solve everything overnight, but it sure is a right step.

So why don't we have cooperation by Federal agencies that work for us but ultimately for the American people?

Here is the food chain: The people are on top. In a republic these are the voters who vote us in to carry out what they tell us they want done. Then we employ people at the different levels of different agencies to get that work done for us, which is ultimately the American people.

Why is that not being recognized here, that yes, we are supposed to hold them accountable, and yes, we are supposed to have oversight?

Ultimately, the oversight hearings don't work around here because it is 2 hours of running the clock out by the bureaucracy. Now we have an administration that has the executive authority to do that oversight.

That is an important thing that keeps getting lost here. The administration has the executive authority to appoint people. That is what the entire administration is: people appointed by the executive branch, by the President. At the State level it is by a Governor. In a city it is by a mayor. It is not a foreign concept.

Certainly, it is something that the Democrats when they are in charge take advantage of. They appoint people to do things.

I didn't vote for Fauci, did I?

A whole lot of other people are wondering that too.

That is what gets done by the executive branch.

Whether we are talking about Elon Musk, or whether we are talking about anybody in the President's Cabinet and the people that they appoint, yes, they are appointed positions. It is our job to rein them in and hold them in line to whatever their mission statement was, if they remember their mission statement, and to follow that.

The work that DOGE is doing is pretty darn good. Yes, there are some fits and starts here and there and some things that we need to modify and smooth out a little bit on some of the employment out there, but at least the people's tax dollars are finally being respected.

We want to keep going with this and work that out, but we would like to be able to work with the agencies and say: Where are the areas that we could do better in, and what personnel are extra to the process?

Certainly, when the government was shut down due to COVID and we saw which people are essential and which people are nonessential, that should have been pretty revealing right there. That is tough if you are on the nonessential list, but we have to remember that we hire people in government and we create the agencies to serve a task and a purpose for the people of the country. It is not a government jobs program. It is a get-a-job-done-for-the-people program.

State of California's High-Speed Rail Project

Mr. Speaker, one thing I point out here that came up last week in my home State of California as part of a considerable amount of savings we could do federally is to quit funding that high- speed rail project. It has been a boondoggle from day one.

Right at the end of the Biden administration, they put up nearly $4 billion more at the end, so let's quickly review that. The original high-speed rail program was going to be $33 billion to build the rail from San Francisco to L.A., and that has ballooned in the following years to $130 billion.

It was supposed to be completed by 2020. All they have is about an 1,800-foot-long bridge near Fresno done right now. They haven't laid any track. They have seized a lot of land. They have devastated a lot of agricultural land, parts of cities, important installations, et cetera, but they haven't laid any rail yet.

They are trying to first do the easy part between Merced, California, and an orchard somewhere outside of Bakersfield. They actually said at the time it is because they will have less resistance to building that portion. That is not going to help anybody in San Francisco or Los Angeles, where the population base is.

Basically, if it is timed versus Amtrak, I think you get from Merced to Bakersfield about 20 minutes faster, if they actually had a high- speed rail that ran all the way through on just this chunk of track. They don't, and they won't by at least 2033, 2035. To build out the whole thing will be a lot longer.

We had a conference meeting in Los Angeles at Union Station last week, and I was very pleased. This was called by our Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, at the behest of the Trump administration. We had this opportunity to talk to the press, the people of California, and anybody who would listen about what such a boondoggle this high- speed rail project is. It demands $4 billion of new money that we need to claw back and put toward something useful, such as fixing our highways, water infrastructure, or anything besides this boondoggle.

Mr. Speaker, the important work we are doing right now on the budget resolution is going to set the course to bring really strong fiscal responsibility back to this Congress and for our Nation.

It is important that we get on board and pursue this process so that we can do even better things later on this year. There is so much that needs to be done.

We are seeing the great work that DOGE is doing in reeling in the size of our government and trying to claw back some of the waste that has cost

the taxpayers money. It is not our money. It is the taxpayers' money.

This includes, for example, the great work done by our Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy the other day in California. He pointed out that this boondoggle, high-speed rail system in California that has cost about $15 billion so far now is going to cost $130 billion.

The quibbling over $4 billion right now of Federal money that Biden dumped in at the last minute, we should claw that back and then stop the spigot. No more spending. It is $110 billion short of what it is going to take to build the whole rail from San Francisco to L.A.

We need to stop the boondoggle spending. The work of DOGE and the work of our Budget Committee are going to be important to set the course for all of America and on all of these things we have been wasting so much money on.

Remember, Mr. Speaker, we have to respect the taxpayers. It is their money, not ours.

Mr. Speaker, it has been over 500 days since Iranian- backed Hamas terrorists carried out the worst attack on Israel and the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Over 1,200 lives were taken, families were shattered, and 240 people were dragged into captivity. Many are still being held hostage.

Hamas still poses an ongoing threat to Israel's security. Thanks to strong leadership from President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, a reasonable ceasefire deal was reached, bringing some hostages home, but the fight to bring the rest back continues.

Israel has the right to defend itself against those who seek its destruction, and we stand with them in that fight. As we mark this grim milestone, we remain dedicated to ensuring Israel has the support it needs to ensure lasting peace in that region.

Mr. Speaker, in one of the many eleventh-hour actions by the Biden administration, the EPA handed California unprecedented power to enforce extreme vehicle regulations, giving them the green light to ban new gas-powered cars by 2035 and impose crushing new emissions standards on heavy-duty trucks, and also using the ever-increasing price of fuel to price people out of being able to drive or into these vehicles they don't want to be in.

This wasn't about cooperative federalism. It was about one State backed by Washington, D.C. bureaucrats forcing its agenda on the rest of the country.

The EPA's waivers let California dictate the future of the auto and trucking industries, driving up costs for regular consumers, squeezing small businesses, and putting even more strain on an already struggling supply chain, at the same time that they are now trying to put in a high-speed rail system whose costs quadrupled what they told the taxpayers just 15 years ago.

Instead of letting Congress weigh in, the Biden EPA let California call the shots for everyone across the country, bypassing the legislative process we hear so much complaining about here, and pushing policies that could force everyday Americans to pay more and get less for their hard-earned money.

That is not how this country is supposed to work. We are about having choice, choice of automobiles, choice of trucks, and what have you.

This Federal overreach needs to be stopped.

Mr. Speaker, in this ongoing conversation about government overreach and last-minute regulations that have been so damaging, I want to bring up how that has affected the water supply for California and for the West. For everybody that enjoys American-grown food, it affects them.

What we have seen happen is that there is an ongoing effort and an onslaught, really, to remove dams, especially in the Western States and in my own district in northern California.

What are the results of that? In order to somehow believe that they are seeking fish passage and greater fish populations, for example, with this government overreach, with these false pronouncements based on really faulty, fake data, what are we getting?

On the Klamath River we have thousands of dead fish and other wildlife after the removal of the dams that have happened. The silt loads that are behind that dam that we warned them about have been flowing down the river of the Klamath ever since. Massive amounts of fish are killed, and other wildlife are getting caught in that silt. We warned them about that.

They are pronouncing it nirvana. It is heaven because the water is flowing through there, and we have lost that hydroelectric power that the dams used to generate. It is becoming someone else's problem farther down the stream with the silt. If it doesn't wash out within 3 years, that is an entire salmon life cycle. It will actually wipe out the population of water that is sourced from what is actually a warm lake and is not ideal for salmon.

We see it time and again. The government overreach is affecting the smart use of water in California. Right now they are dumping water out of Shasta Dam and Oroville Dam in northern California. The water coming out of Shasta is actually flooding part of the town of Redding and then areas of Glenn County farther down the line along the Sacramento River because there is so much water going out. Yet there is still ample storage space behind Shasta. There is 600,000 or maybe 700,000 acre- feet behind that.

The problem is they don't use up-to-date weather forecasting in order to determine whether we should dump water or could we keep some of it a little longer because we are not going to get

that much rain between now and the target date of April 1 when they stop the so-called conservation of space for flood control.

We all get it. Flood control needs to be provided for behind these dams. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, that is their charge. It seems like their hair trigger is to dump water instead of also trying to conserve it. This is really based not just on the ideal of flood control but also fish passage and fish water because we are receding down in the delta. They are limited in the Bay Delta to being able to only move about 6,000 cubic feet per second via the lift pumps into San Luis Reservoir and other places where they could be stashing this water.

We have a capacity of doing 15,000 cubic feet per second, which over 24 hours means 30,000 acre-feet of saved water. We are not going to have that opportunity soon once this rainy season is over with. Yet, we have a number of somewhere around 180,000 to 200,000 cubic feet per second flowing out through the delta that isn't being trapped and isn't being captured.

Do you think we would miss 9,000 more cubic feet per second out of the delta going into water storage for California than what is happening now out of 180,000 to 200,000, when you have got 60,000 flowing out of Shasta Dam flooding down areas and we have got huge amounts coming out of Oroville and other projects around the State?

We are not capturing the water. We are doing harm to ourselves. No wonder the people of southern California are actually getting really angry about what is happening as their eyes are being opened to how our State is being run and what is being done by government overreach by these last-minute regulations, these last-minute things that come in that declare yet another national monument. In my district, that means nearly a quarter million acres are now off limits for fire management on the forested lands or for other public uses.

The ideal for forest service land used to be--you would see the signs, ``land of many uses.'' Now, this boils down to land only being cut off from the people and from wise management of our forests.

If you enjoy million-acre fires, that is going to continue to be the prescription because of last-minute, eleventh-hour pronouncements such as these national monuments that the Biden administration did on the way out the door.

We have the power in Congress, under what is called the Congressional Review Act, to review regulations that are made by the stroke of a pen. The legislative process is supposed to have all of us here in the light of day, on TV, in committee, where the people can watch us do what we do instead of so much power being vested in the executive, such as under the Antiquities Act, which is where part of the abuses come from, all at the last minute, all at the stroke of a pen.

Madam Speaker, yesterday, I had a chance to participate in the Border Security Caucus discussion with Chief Mike Banks of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

With over 25 years of experience securing the border, he gave us a clear look at CBP's operations and challenges they face.

One thing was very obvious, though. Under President Trump, morale has improved dramatically and illegal crossings have dropped dramatically into the low hundreds, numbers they haven't seen in many, many years.

Strong leadership and real enforcement policies have made a big difference there. Chief Banks made it clear that CBP has a solid plan to finish the border fence, along with all of the attending technology and equipment that needs to go with that. However, without proper funding, that plan will not work out. That is not an option.

Securing the border means enforcing the law, stopping horrific traffickers, and holding illegal immigrants accountable for breaking the law. If we are serious about border security, we need to back CBP 100 percent with the resources they need to get the job done.

No more delays. No more excuses. It is time to act. Indeed, you can see by the improved morale that things are moving in the right direction.

Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Moore for yielding. I appreciate his leadership in putting the spotlight on the important issues and important legislation that will help us to better serve the American public with what they have asked for.

On the whole concept of government overreach and last-minute declarations that have really put a kink in Federal land use, which is important for people, for energy production, and for being able to utilize and enjoy them, what have you, it was very dramatic and very aggressive at the end of the Biden administration.

Madam Speaker, 674 million acres of U.S. lands and waters were cut off right at the end of the Biden administration from good uses.

The U.S. Forest Service signs at least used to say: ``Land of Many Uses.'' Now, they seem to be restricted down to just whatever a handful in government or environmental organizations want.

We have seen Antiquities Act abuse under President Biden. The Antiquities Act was used to set aside 6 million acres of national land as national monuments. Some of the big examples include, once again, the Bears Ears National Monument at 1.63 million acres, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah at 1.9 million acres, and the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in New Mexico at 242,000 acres.

A total of 15 national monuments were either created, expanded, or re-created after they had been rightsized in the previous Trump administration. They cover 9 million acres, including also the Chuckwalla and Sattitla Highlands National Monuments at 848,000 acres.

These are dramatic stretches of land that are basically being cut off from human use or usage of the resources, in some cases even the ability to effectively fight or prevent fire.

Madam Speaker, you have the Moab to Mojave Conservation Corridor, for example, covering 18 million acres across California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. They say they are protecting these lands. You would have to ask the question: Protecting from what?

Any type of operation you seek to do out there, whether it is going to be mineral extraction, energy, oil and gas, or timber, they all require permits. When they eventually are successful, these permits and processes can be extremely lengthy. It can take many years in some cases to get them. Still, we keep plowing on.

The 100 million acres of Federal lands that have been cut off through executive orders without approval from Congress also include, in Alaska, ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which was expanded, limiting even more energy exploration. In Arizona, the Sonoran Desert National Monument, at 496,000 acres, is restricting activities like ranching and energy development.

Other concerns for rural areas include restrictions on land use for industries, as I mentioned, logging, ranching, and energy production. They have hurt rural economies. Montana has dramatic limits on timber and grazing. Wyoming has increased regulatory hurdles for energy development.

What are the economic drivers and especially the inflation drivers of this in this country? High energy costs are a big part of that. President Trump wants to turn that back around, and I hope we can be successful soon.

Idaho, again, has diminished access to public lands for ranching and timber.

There are impacts on wildfire management as more lands are being designated as national monuments, like the new chunk up in my district that is protected, as they call it, under Federal rules. It makes it harder to manage forests and wildfires and access them with the fire equipment we need to get out there. When they take away the roads and make them roadless areas, we have that much less ability to be able to properly put people and equipment out there where they can be effective at firefighting.

It does worsen wildfire risks. In my home State of California, in my own district, a couple of years ago, we had a 1 million-acre fire. Year after year, there are six-digit fires.

Again, another 28 million acres in Alaska were limited, so it just makes energy production that much harder.

Then, the oceans, with the coastline marine conservation aspect of it, here is the big number: 625 million acres of U.S. ocean were withdrawn from future conversation about future oil and gas leasing, restricting, once again, energy development, which would help so much with our economy and lowering inflation.

Madam Speaker, 625 million acres translate into 1 million square miles--rounded off, 1 million. If you want a further illustration, that would be a 1,000- by 1,000-mile square--1,000 miles this way, this way, this way, and this way. It is a 1,000-mile square that Biden, by the whim and stroke of a pen, says no more.

The efforts we are making in Congress this week with the Midnight Rules Relief Act, and also through the ability to use the Congressional Review Act, are very important to stop out-of-control regulators from taking away the ability for us to produce in a way that is going to have America be energy independent and energy dominant and to have our economy be strong once again.

That is why we are fighting back on this. We can still do things very ecologically soundly. We want to take care of the environment, as well, but these things have been weaponized against the types of things Americans need and stand for, for the strength of our economy and for our independence.

I appreciate the opportunities and the good work my colleagues are doing on advancing this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, what we are dealing with once again is a power grab tracing back to the last administration.

President Biden's administration, before leaving office, put through a whole wave of last-minute regulations knowing they wouldn't have to deal with the consequences themselves.

The EPA led the charge, rolling out extreme rules targeting the production of fuel and electricity, driving up our energy costs even more, hitting American industry and families hard.

The White House also used NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, to slow down critical infrastructure and energy projects with excessive red tape, putting politics over progress.

NEPA was also weaponized to stop important timber harvests, which would help prevent wildfire and would help prevent fires like we saw in southern California, if more brush and such was removed and power lines could be moved and upgraded. They ran into one problem after another with NEPA, the Endangered Species Act, et cetera, especially last- minute ones. All through the West, there were last-minute additions to national monuments or wilderness areas. This means pretty much hands off by people going in and being able to use those areas, whether it is for recreation, for hunting, or for important things like timber management so that we don't have such horrific fires zones that come from Federal lands like that.

Also, there are other important objectives, like being able to find more energy in our vast national reserves and the ability to continue with agriculture--new opportunities to store water for agriculture, as we see pictured here.

With Shasta Dam, in my district in northern California, we have an opportunity to add to that dam and bring another 600,000 acre-feet, which is desperately needed. We keep running into more and more environmental problems brought up by that with the weaponization of NEPA and, again, these last-minute rules done basically at the midnight hour at the last of the Biden administration.

The courts indeed are finding that these are overstepping. A judge recently ruled that the White House Council on Environmental Quality overstepped its authority with its NEPA regulations proving what we already knew. Biden bureaucrats had no problem rewriting the rules to fit their agenda.

Congress, we, the people,--and this is the people's House--need to fight back. We have the ability to do that with one tool known as the Congressional Review Act, which would slow down the efforts of bureaucracies that seem to be more and more unaccountable, by Congress being able to push back and say: No, these rules that you made are out of line.

My colleague Andy Biggs from Arizona has brought forth the Midnight Rules Relief Act legislation to the floor so Congress can block multiple last-minute regulations instead of having to do them one at a time. When an outgoing administration uses a scattergun approach with all sorts of bad rules and things that are harmful to the economy and harmful to our water supply, then we need to be able to have that ability to move more quickly in Congress, as well. That is why the Midnight Rules Relief Act is going to be important.

For example, what does this mean for individuals? We have one example here that my colleague Harriet Hageman from Wyoming is helping Dusty Johnson in South Dakota with. There is a 75-year-old fence dispute there on ranchland that the Forest Service is adjacent to.

Instead of just resolving it, the Forest Service and the Department of Justice are coming in and threatening giant, 10-year sentences in prison and $250,000 fines, when the solution would be just getting a land survey done and solving the dispute on where the fence line is supposed to be. They are trying to intimidate people into giving up their rights on their property.

We see time and again people with stock ponds and watering holes that

people built many years ago for agriculture, watering their cattle and such. Someone comes along and decides you didn't get the right permit for that many years ago or somehow it is affecting a watershed, and they want to take it away and fine the heck out of them for that.

With water-taking, like what is happening in my district in northern California, we have an emergency drought declaration, even though we have plenty of rainfall and snowpack these days. The drought declaration is still in place, harming people in Siskiyou County.

People on the coast, in Marin County, have been bullied off their land by NEPA and the environmental groups are suing them time after time so they don't get their grazing permits they need long-term. They can't afford to do any upgrades if they want to do the right thing.

Our water supply is in peril and our agriculture is in peril when you look at how important these crops are to the Nation, what is grown just in my home State of California. These things would not happen if this was not allowed to keep going with the weaponization of NEPA and the weaponization of the Endangered Species Act.

Time and time again, people finally give up. We have seen that with the Point Reyes Seashore Park, where people have been bullied off their land using NEPA and environmental organizations suing them to death.

Mr. Speaker, this week, we have a chance to send a clear message: Break the law, put Americans in danger, and there will be consequences.

Congressman Ciscomani's Agent Raul Gonzalez Officer Safety Act holds traffickers and illegal immigrants accountable for reckless actions, especially those who flee from Border Patrol agents and create deadly high-speed chase incidents.

This bill makes evading law enforcement within 100 miles of the southern border a serious crime, with heavy jail time and a lifetime ban on ever gaining legal status in the U.S.

If you put American lives at risk, you will face the full force of the law.

It is time to pass this bill and show that putting Americans lives in jeopardy will not be tolerated, and you will be held fully accountable.

This is the type of leadership that we have had under President Trump and we need to continue to have here in this House to keep our borders secure and not unnecessarily subject our citizens to this needless risk of deadly tragedies.

Mr. Speaker, the Ivanpah Solar Plant in southern California was sold to the taxpayers and to the people as a shining example of green energy innovation.

But what did the taxpayers actually get? A $2.2 billion price tag propped up by massive government loans for a solar plant that has underdelivered from the start. It is supposed to power 130,000 homes, but it never met expectations, struggling to produce consistent energy while relying on natural gas just to get the plant running each morning.

Let's not forgot the environmental cost that the left claims to care so much about. Thousands of birds have literally incinerated as they happen to fly over this project mid-flight. This is what happens when the government throws billions at feel-good projects instead of letting the free market drive innovation.

The plant was erected in 2014. Mr. Speaker, next year, 10 years later, two-thirds of it is going to be shut down. We will see what happens to the other third soon after that.

If we want true energy independence, we need to do what we can to develop reliable American energy with nuclear power, hydroelectric power, and oil and natural gas from the miracle of hydraulic fracturing.

Mr. Speaker, for years, America led the world in energy production, thanks in large part to the miracle of hydraulic fracturing. This innovation not only created jobs and boosted our economy but also made the U.S. the top producer of oil and gas.

The last administration has given us dangerous policies that drive up these costs, threaten the jobs, and make us much more dependent on foreign adversaries for our energy.

Instead of supporting domestic production, those policies have prioritized extreme climate agendas that weaken our energy security and raise costs for American families, which is one of the main drivers of inflation.

I am pleased to see the Protecting Energy Production Act come to the House floor this week. This bill ensures no President can unilaterally ban fracking and keep States in control of their own energy production.

Democratic administrations and radical activists have long pushed policies that would cripple domestic production, send our jobs overseas, and make life much more expensive for Americans and our allies. We cannot afford to let that happen.

Protecting domestic energy production means lower costs, stronger national security, and a future where America remains an energy powerhouse. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation later and stand for energy American independence.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak a little bit about the amazing asset we have available to us in this country of nuclear power and nuclear generation. We are not taking advantage of that technology as well as we should for how efficient it is and the multiplier effect it has.

Right now, in this country, we do have 93 commercial nuclear reactors, and they generate approximately 20 percent of the Nation's electricity. We are indeed a very large producer of nuclear power in the world scheme of things, but we have some very good partners around the world, such as France, Japan, and some of the other Western countries that are really good at it, as well.

Within the U.S., we have reactors in 28 different States. Illinois leads with 11 reactors. Pennsylvania has nine. California has one. It used to have two. We are lucky we have the one, as they just had a recent 5-year extension on the life of what is called Diablo Canyon. Its usable life is 20, 30, or maybe 40 more years or beyond that with retrofitting.

I hope we can hang on to that because that alone represents in my home State, California, 9 percent of the grid with just one plant. Can we imagine knocking that out and removing 9 percent off the grid? It provides power 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. We don't have to wait for the wind to blow. We don't have to wait for the Sun to come up or the clouds to part. It is reliable electricity. Indeed, it has a capacity factor of about 92 percent, which indicates how reliable it is and how efficient it is.

It is also used extensively in our Navy, providing amazing performance for our aircraft carriers and especially our submarines. The old style of submarines used to have to surface to recharge batteries and run diesel at that point. Our nuclear submarines can stay underwater for as long as they strategically need to.

That is a great asset for carriers, as well, because those are very large craft, and the amount of fuel they would need otherwise, except for this really small ball of energy that is within that nuclear reactor, propels those for years and years at a time. It is amazing how much power comes from that concentrated area.

When we talk about nuclear power plants and this conversation about carbon dioxide, the plants we have in this country avoid the production of about 476 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. I am not going to be the guy that stands here and complains about carbon dioxide. I think it is an essential building block. For those who are, why aren't we doing more nuclear if carbon is a big concern? Why aren't we doing more in that department to make carbon-free power, which is nuclear as well as hydroelectric power?

We have a fair amount of that in northern California, in my district, and other Western States, as well, except for the fact they tore down four hydroelectric dams just during this past year because of, ostensibly, a fish issue. We have lost that source of CO2- free power.

Moving toward the use of uranium, that amazing metal that can generate so much power, we need to do all we can here in Congress to help fund and incentivize more nuclear power for this country because it is going to be a very important part of our grid.

We are right on the cusp of the ability to expand that technology. Some of my colleagues are doing some very good work on that. The United States should move forward on that and take advantage of that, as well as develop the uranium supplies that we need for nuclear generation as well as the amazing uses that there are in medical technology.

Why aren't we producing more of it in this country where we have reserves and can find more reserves? We have that ability to be self- sufficient on energy, and nuclear power can play a big role in that in the coming years if we in Congress will help expedite that process.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission can look for ways to expedite getting more permits, getting more online, as well as approving new technologies, which are out there, that are even more efficient.

With the concern about the nuclear waste, there are ways that are out there that are being developed that could be so much better for how we would store waste or even reuse it. Why are we not recycling those fuel rods in this country? Why do we have arbitrary laws against the ability to recycle the rods where we are able to reduce the amount of that material by an additional 90 percent and put it back to work for us?

Mr. Speaker, it is because of hangups with the idea of what side effects it might have. It is not a problem. It would be very good.

Mr. Speaker, the issue of fentanyl is not getting any better in this country. We hear more and more stories about yet another big cache of it being found, enough to kill millions of Americans.

Thankfully, President Trump is doing what needs to be done to control our border and make sure that Mexico and Canada are stepping up to do their part.

What we have available to us is the HALT Fentanyl Act, critical legislation to keep fentanyl-related substances permanently classified as schedule I drugs so law enforcement has an extra tool to help stop this poison from flooding into our country.

Right now, fentanyl is the leading cause of deaths for Americans aged 18 to 45. I will say that again: The leading cause of deaths for Americans aged 18 to 45 is the fentanyl coming across our border. It is being disguised as prescription pills. One mistake or one touch can be fatal.

This crisis has been fueled by years of the Biden administration's open-border policies. They are made in Mexico with chemicals from China, and traffickers are bringing them across the border with little resistance, at least until now.

Mr. Speaker, if Congress does not act, the schedule I classification will expire, making it harder for law enforcement to crack down on traffickers and stop these deadly drugs. The House needs to pass this bill immediately to get it done.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time and the opportunity to shed light on several subjects that we will cover here tonight. Indeed, there is much going on and much to be excited about, as well.

In my home State of California, we have several issues I will touch upon that have to deal with water, water supply, fire and forestry, and some rebuilding that will need to be done around our State.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman), my colleague and good friend, who is also here tonight. He has been a strong leader on immigration and, more specifically, controlling our border. He has also been sticking up for our families in this country and the values it is going to take to have strong families and maintain the founding values that will make our country strong. I appreciate his work and articulation on that.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) on that, for sticking up for families, and in other conversations on sensible border policy, which is going to keep our country safe and strong and our employees of this country more likely to be employed. It is appreciated.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the topic of this Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, picking up on a little bit of what Mr. Grothman was saying here a moment ago, I would like to point out as well that I think a real national heroine, a young woman who has really stepped up, out of necessity, but also out of a strong desire to do the right thing and have the right thing, is Riley Gaines, a collegiate swimmer who swam so successfully and did much winning at the University of Kentucky.

She is the one who also had to face off in competition against a basically 6'4" male and was denied opportunities, denied recognition, because of the unfairness and imbalance of girls and

women in their sports having to face boys and men in their sports as well as all the discomfort from shared changing areas and the unfairness of losing out on the ability to win competitions that might put them in a position to win medals that might ultimately win them a scholarship from high school into college or put them in a national competition or an international competition if you are at the collegiate level or at the Olympic level.

We saw some horrific things, in my view, in this last Olympics, where the young woman who was a female boxer, I believe she was from Italy, how humiliated she was when she had to face basically a male boxer with a clear physical advantage and just get the heck beat out of her in the process.

One of the saddest things I have seen in a long time was her collapsing on her knees just in tears at that Olympic event afterward because of the unfairness of it all and how hard she trained for years and years to be in that position only to have, in this case, the Olympic committee say that we will let anybody compete against the women in this case.

I know Riley Gaines personally and just find her to be a dynamic young woman who will stand up for the right things. She didn't ask for this position. She was a competitor and doing her thing. She was thrust into this position because she saw what needed to be done, what needed to be made right on this, and stuck up for other women and girls in their sports and in their other domains.

Riley has gotten a lot of good work done, including, today, the Presidential declaration that this would no longer go on in this country, especially things that the Federal Government might have involvement in or sanction. I congratulate President Trump for straightening things back out a little bit and putting some common sense back into that area.

Mr. Speaker, I also heard the debate here tonight on Federal workers and the opportunity that has been put in place here, if they seek and so choose--and there is the word ``choose,'' ``choice''--to take advantage of an opportunity if the job they are in is not meeting where they want to be, or you might see reduction in some of these government programs, in some of these government agencies.

It is a pretty generous exit of 8 months of pay and such to retire from that job or move on from that one and go seek other opportunities. We heard a lot of caterwauling about that tonight, about, I guess, the essentialness of every single government agency and every single worker.

Now, there are plenty of really good workers willing to work hard and do a good job in so many of our Federal agencies, but there are also quite a few who aren't as motivated. We see this battle over them returning to work, as is being mandated.

We saw President Biden, just before leaving office, trying to give out super-generous contracts and extend the term of not having to be at the workplace based still upon, basically, the COVID era and getting used to that concept, to that way of doing things.

It is proper for people to show up to work. It is essential. Around here, we had proxy voting, and our committees were not meeting in person. Doggone it, it is essential in this place that we sit across from each other, that we sit next to each other and have these real debates in front of the American public to allow true public debate on the things that are going to affect over 300 million Americans through the decisions made here.

I am certainly glad we got rid of proxy voting here and got back to work doing things after the COVID era finally ended and a lot of manipulation that happened in that era. Still, we haven't completely recovered in our workforce and the attitudes, I think, of certain people who feel like they are entitled to just have the government send them checks, and the attitude of not having to show up to work.

We found that certain people can do a certain amount of work from home, but the battle here in town, where some really high percentage--I have heard a number as high as 92; I don't know if it is accurate or not--92 percent aren't showing up here. Some of these buildings are almost ghost towns from the workforce not coming in there. This needs to be looked at.

What is being looked at by the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, and Elon Musk is basically saying, hey, American taxpayers, we know you work hard for what you earn and what government takes from you.

These aren't contributions. We heard talk about these contributions. They aren't contributions. They are compelled payments of taxes here. You don't have a choice. They come start taking things away from you, auctioning off your home or your car or your farm or whatever, if you don't pay your taxes. It is not voluntary. It is not contributions, as these guys talk about. It is not an investment. They take it from you.

I think any taxpayer, any working person, has the right to demand that government is looking at things and is being efficient with what it is using.

The stones they are flipping over and what they are uncovering so far with USAID, and many other aspects I can't list here tonight, confirms what I think normal people know, that there is a lot of money being wasted in government by many entities.

Look at the situation in Ukraine. Now Zelenskyy is claiming that of about $177 billion that has been transferred over there, he thinks only $75 billion of it actually got to him or the causes they were working on over there in Ukraine. Where has $102 billion gone? Are these real numbers? Let's investigate. Let's find out.

That is what we need to do, respectfully, with tax dollars that are taken from people not voluntarily. Every aspect of government needs to have that accountability. It is okay to audit. It is okay to ask these questions. It is not against something or against a certain group of people. When we are talking about, in this case, the opportunity for employees to find other opportunities, then what would be wrong with that if they so choose and if agencies are going to be downsized?

Everybody is mad at Elon Musk now, at least on that side of the aisle. When he took over Twitter, now known as X, he cleared out about 85 percent of the employees there. A lot of them were just hanging on and going for the party there. He seems to be able to run that entity a lot more efficiently. That should be an example for government instead of the scourge that we are hearing that it is awful, terrible.

We appreciate those who do the things that we as Americans ask the government agencies to do, and they do them efficiently and with cheerfulness and remembering that the customers are the taxpayers, the people who come to the counter and say, hey, I need a permit to do this, or I need this or that service. These are the customers.

Getting a passport has been a problem. We have had horrific stories coming out of my own office during the height of COVID and such that you could hardly get anybody to process a passport for you, at least very timely.

In my home State of California, just a simple thing like a personalized license plate at the State level from the DMV takes 9 months now. It takes 9 months to get a personalized plate. Supposedly that is a revenue generator for the State.

We have got to really check and see what the attitudes of the people are who work and serve in government at any level, whether you are elected, whether you are hired, whether you are an agency head, what have you. These are good conversations to have, not the cattle rolling we are hearing about: Oh, my gosh, they might be displacing somebody. Well, maybe we need to have a little downsizing. I believe we do. That is what I have to say on that debate.

I am going to return back to issues going on in the West. I am privileged to chair the Western Caucus in the House here, and the important issues that it has addressed over the years, and a lot of that revolves around energy.

I will tell you what: The issue with energy in this country when we see skyrocketing prices of all types of fuel, that has been a major inflation driver. Really, two aspects of why we are suffering from inflation is government overspending beyond anywhere close to what revenue was and the trillions we have seen being spent by the government during the COVID era and beyond and the end of the Biden administration.

We are going to have to take some medicine on that and how about get

back to a concept of pre-COVID level of spending, maybe even adjusted for inflation, old inflation, not just massive inflation.

We have the right and the obligation to be looking at it this way. Inflation driven by massive government spending, eating up the pool of available currency and credit, as well as the cost of doing business driven by issues such as energy.

In farming, for example, on my own farm, a couple years ago we saw that our price on fertilizer tripled and our price of fuel doubled in that season. What does that mean for a farmer like me or any other farmer growing a crop?

They still have to be in the black at the end of the year. They still have to make profit. Those costs are going to be passed on somewhere, aren't they? It always comes back to the consumer. It always comes back to the taxpayer having to pay for these things. On one hand, government massive overspending here at the Federal level, and things that drive inflation, such as the cost of fuel and all of the things that are related. There is so much that depends on energy. Any type of production that depends on energy is going to have an impact on price. As an example, take diesel fuel, take a food product.

As a farmer, when you start out in the spring, you need fuel to start tilling the land and getting it ready for preparing the seedbed to plant that crop. Someone has to bring you the diesel to run your equipment. Soon after, someone delivers that fertilizer, likely with the diesel vehicle, someone delivers that seed.

At that point you planted, and you have irrigation of one type or another depending on your crop. In some cases, it is going to be fuel that is required to run the pumps or electricity to run wells, fuel for lift pumps. In some cases, you are fortunate, you have gravity-fed water much like we do in northern California. We do the storage of water.

What is our energy policy? I guarantee you, under President Trump it is going to improve. With that, we are going to see improved prices on energy. That will help us to tame inflation.

On the other side of the coin here with the work of Elon Musk and others on the Department of Government Efficiency, prices can go down if we are not doing so much massive spending and sucking up all the credit and all the currency out there by government action. It is a pretty good recipe.

Why don't we allow success to happen. The American people are clamoring for that as they have had their eyes opened on what is going on and where their tax dollars are going. I say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, you might just slow down a little bit and look and see what is really happening here and how people are feeling about that. How they are thinking about it. How they felt it for several years in their wallets with inflation and wondering: Why do I no longer have money left over to do some of the things I want?

At the same time, where there are these mandates coming down the pike in my home State of California and affecting things nationally here. You can't buy a gas-powered vehicle anymore or a diesel-powered pickup in just a few years because we want to ban them because of