Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, indeed, I spoke a little earlier about how we seem to have hopped from self-made crisis to self-made crisis in this Chamber, in this Capitol, in this town, whether it is by legislative action, executive action, or bureaucratic action, but what the American people are suffering from most is government caused.

It really isn't a condition of weather or nature or even so much our adversaries around the world--and those are all factors and they all can be factors--but they pale compared to crises that are, indeed, caused by the actions of the government in Washington, D.C., in my home State, and so many of them right there in Sacramento.

We are talking energy. We are talking fiscal. We are talking a business climate that is hampered by unreasonable regulations. We are talking about things as simple as women and girls' sports. Why should that be complicated? Yet it is.

And the one that is probably the most difficult and the greatest existential threat right now to our country immediately is the border problem. This porous border has been made that way pretty much since day two of the Biden administration. It certainly wasn't perfect before that, but my hat's off to President Trump in his term for trying as much as he can to do something about it, by building the wall, continuing to build the wall, repair old sections of the wall. He met resistance just about every step of the way.

Indeed that infrastructure makes it so much easier and simpler for our border personnel to be able to track who is coming across the border and basically funnel them to the areas where border entry can be properly processed with a plan in place, with rules in place, with laws in place that would make that expedient and actually beneficial to our country, and also less harmful to those that would wish to come here, to immigrate here, to seek jobs, to seek citizenship, what have you.

In an orderly society, we need to have control of the border and invite people to come be part of what this country has to offer. That is what immigration used to be many decades ago. It slipped away from us.

We hear all day long, oh, the immigration system is broken. Well, it is broken because it is not being enforced. Now, we could add to the laws that we have in the books there and refine them, such as the interpretation of asylum which is wide open these days. Asylum used to be more reserved for people that were being subject to abuse by a regime in the country they lived in. They would be subject to much persecution, religious persecution, political persecution, what have you.

We understand that. We saw that in World War II and pre-World War II in Europe with what happened to the Jews there. The United States didn't act quickly enough in that situation, but at least we understand what asylum should look like. What we have now is basically people presenting themselves at the border, if they are not just sneaking right past, and saying a few magic words to the personnel and then they are taken into custody temporarily, given a number and maybe even a fictitious name, and allowed to move on through.

I have been to that border. I have witnessed what that looks like. Indeed, we have buses going back and forth patrolling the border not to keep the border closed or enforced, but picking people up so they can sooner get them to processing centers. We are paying for that. It is like a giant welcome wagon that has been turned into such by this Biden administration.

Now President Trump, as I said, tried really hard to get a handle on this, and improvements were made with several hundred miles of new, strong border fence and repaired old fence. Also, the border personnel felt like we appreciated them. We appreciated their jobs. We appreciated the effort they are making.

Nowadays, I think they are just completely overwhelmed, and I can't imagine the morale is very good when they are basically told that they are to be part of running the welcome wagon and just letting people in. We hear anecdotes about them welding the gates open where they are, actually in Texas. Are you kidding me?

The State of Texas through their own National Guard has been making efforts to control parts of their border there, putting up wire and other measures that will help control some distance on their border.

You have the Biden administration threatening them and bringing lawsuits against them, and who knows, maybe even a confrontation with Federal troops versus Texas National Guard at some point in order for the Federal Government to be tearing down the barrier in order to preserve our border and have some semblance of order instead of the chaos that has been introduced and exacerbated by the Biden administration.

How does this make a lick of sense to anybody, to tear down the barrier that,

indeed, the Federal Government should have built up to begin with?

Now, let's talk about the barrier itself a little bit. We are not a country that is going to completely close it off. We welcome legal immigration. I shouldn't have to say that. It has always been who we are. Legal immigration, one that goes through process, one that our own people, our own government decides how many people we want to have enter under the different programs, under the different categories, how many should we have this year apply for citizenship.

That number is way up from what it was five, six decades ago where I believe the stats are somewhere around 800,000 or 900,000 new legal immigrants, new citizens per year as I think I have it, whereas the number might have been around 200,000 back 50 or 60 years ago. It is a dramatic increase of us welcoming legal citizens over that time.

Others that would apply for work permits, education visas, travel visas, different categories. All we ask is that you follow a set of rules. Go through a process. That is not unreasonable.

I always liken it to when you leave your home, most likely you probably lock your doors on your house. Maybe you even set an alarm. Maybe you have a fence around your house, your property. Is it because you hate your neighbors, because you hate somebody else that might come by? No, it is because it is your security, it is your responsibility.

There are people who are going to be led into temptation. Look how many packages get stolen off front porches because the deliverer just leaves it there. I guess that is the agreement. That is rampant these days. What if that door was unlocked? The same people who are bold enough to steal packages off your front porch wouldn't have any hesitation to go inside and clean you out at well.

Look what they are doing to retail stores while clerks and employees helplessly watch them cart off phones and watches and whatever other merchandise they can get while their corporate edict is don't dare talk to them, don't follow them with a camera, don't get their license plate. Heaven knows you wouldn't want to try to detain them in any way, as we see more and more of the corporate world become spineless in controlling the chaos.

We see this affecting mostly our very large cities, which politically tend to be the blue cities, Democrat-controlled mayors and city councils, supervisors, like that. They have chaos like hasn't ever been seen in this country when you talk about crisis. Part of this is soft on crime, part of it is soft on border, soft on what they call immigration. This isn't immigration, it is an invasion.

Immigration would imply that there is a legal process to it. Again, we still welcome legal immigration to this country. We always have. That is the part that gets caught up in the blatant misinformation placed out there, because Republicans want to have order. They want to have something that will preserve the sovereignty of this country and preserve all the infrastructure within it.

I mean, when you look at the cities here, take New York City, where they are filling up community centers and school rooms and gyms and national parks with--they use the term ``migrants.'' A migrant is a euphemism. This is an illegal immigrant invasion. They are getting angry because people are bussing them in from Texas, Florida, and wherever else. The border States are overloaded. California, which I represent a part of, is one of those border States along with Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Truly, though, it ends up pretty much all of our States in effect are border States because you have the Biden administration flying these folks around the country and placing them wherever they see fit.

It is interesting to see. They squawk about maybe the Governor of Texas and Florida and some others bussing them to their city where they proclaim they are a sanctuary city, we welcome you, we want you to come in, as the Governor of New York and the mayor of New York City have claimed in the past, and then are backtracking on now because the numbers have finally caught up to them even though they have been warned and warned and warned by those of us who can see what that is going to look like.

Why do we put in place people who allow a system like this to happen, to foster a system that is so, indeed, broken as it is? We have the laws. We have the rules, and we even passed in this House a good piece of legislation, H.R. 2, to refine those rules.

You hear people saying: Oh, you Republicans are full of hooey on that because you say, on the one hand, enforce the laws you have, but on the other, why do you want this new law to come in? Well, because they are not doing the job. Asylum needs to be refined, it looks like.

Now, if you had a different administration that was on the side of the American people and on the side of enforcing the law, you could probably interpret asylum as it was originally intended, for those who indeed are facing a crisis due to an oppressive government.

However, no, it has been interpreted to be just pretty much wide open. Our border is a sieve. When I visited the border, you see people coming through a coyote process or paying people big money, otherwise their lives might be harmed by the coyote system they have down there, the cartels.

I saw pretty nice people coming across. There were families and such like that. These aren't bad people at heart. They are breaking the law, but when you leave a great big green light there saying come on in, I guess I can't blame them, but the people you are talking about aren't necessarily persecuted by a government in such fashion but, more, they are seeking economic opportunity. Nine out of ten or more are seeking economic opportunity, seeking a job, seeking the promise.

You hear the Democrats, you hear people in the media saying: All they want is to come and seek a better life. Well, sure, but the life of this country, the lives of the citizens who are already here, those who came here legally, came here properly, and those who have been here, born here as citizens, they are paying the freight on all this because you are bringing folks in who haven't been brought up in the American way, haven't been educated in our ways, probably don't speak the language in many, many cases, may not even have a skill to bring so that they can self-sustain themselves and their family.

It will be maybe low-skilled labor that probably won't pay their own way. That is chaotic, and that is not how our immigration system used to work. One hundred years ago, however many decades ago, you had to offer something that is going to strengthen our country to be an immigrant here.

Now, again, we will hear, oh, that is so closed minded, it is so oppressive and so hateful because that is the only play they have. They keep going to the well on that, call it xenophobia or racism or whatever. No, the greatness of this country is in its process, in its Constitution, in its stability and people who respect that and uphold that, uphold the Constitution, uphold the laws.

The lawlessness we are seeing at the border, as untold numbers are coming across daily, I am glad to see this idea that was coming from the Senate on an immigration bill has pretty much lost any momentum because, at a minimum, according to the pieces I am reading on it, 5,000 people would be allowed across the border per day before they take any action on it.

Now, let's say you are a retailer, all right? You are seeing all the break-ins and the rip-offs and the looting going on. What if you had a rule in your city that said we have to let five thieves in per day to your retail center and they can fill up their bags as much as they want, but on the sixth one we will go ahead and start enforcing on it. We will call the police, detain, whatever.

What kind of crazy idea is that, as well as so many other holes that are in this package?

The first place we start: enforce the border, finish building the fence so that our border personnel are not so overwhelmed and put them back to their real jobs of not just processing people as fast as they can and turning them loose in our country, which maybe they will show up for an asylum hearing in 8 or 10 years and become so entrenched in the country illegally that you can't find them or you can't deport them if you wanted to. That is part of

it. That is part of the chaos that is being fostered.

Where I represent in California, which indeed is a border State, I represent the north end of it, which is about 600 miles from the border itself, but we see the secondary effects of illegal immigration, it keeps growing. When I say ``grow,'' it is literal because what we have in part of my district and some of the southern California districts as well is a proliferation of illegal marijuana grows, many, many acres of them.

There are hundreds of greenhouses that our rural counties are just overwhelmed trying to deal with. There has been a passive response by the Department of Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Biden administration, and our own California administration led by Governor Newsom with soft-on-crime policies.

This changes the landscape of a rural community, having all these marijuana grows and the cartels and all the filth that comes with that--the environmental damage, the people who are abused. Sometimes even slave labor is involved with people captive out there because nobody knows who they are, where they are, let alone having a permit to build these facilities or take the water from somewhere else in order to have the marijuana grow.

Today's marijuana, which is a much more powerful product, brings with it the whole litany of gang activity as this product is moved up and down, in my area, say, Interstate 5, but all over the West, all over the country even.

Illegal immigration has a lot of side effects. The marijuana proliferation, as I mentioned, of course the fentanyl is coming across the border and infecting and destroying so many lives. It goes on and on and on because this administration and our own Governor in California, that administration, continue to foster this lawlessness, soft-on-crime, soft-on-border policy that is doing us so much damage and is probably the biggest problem we face along with our massive deficit and the crunch that is coming from that.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) to talk more about that. I greatly respect him and the work he has done on this area on the border. He has been very diligent on putting this out in front of the people and pointing out what a crisis this is to our country and its existence.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 1 o'clock and 29 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Friday, February 9, 2024, at 10 a.m.

Madam Speaker, I rise before the House tonight in support of the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act.

Israel has been our longtime ally, and they need us more than ever at this point with the unwarranted, unprovoked attacks that happened on October 7 to many, many innocent people by the terrorist group Hamas and others that they are surrounded by in their country.

Israel has been under attack since the first moment of its existence in the 1940s, and even going back a millennia.

Israel is a fantastic partner in developing new technologies, improved medical technology, improved medicines, improved drip irrigation, and improved missile defense systems. They are a great partner with us and, indeed, a shining beacon in the Middle East as a representative republic unlike any other there.

Even Arab Israelis would rather live in Israel than in some of those other places because they know it is good, right, and just.

It is our obligation--indeed, it is our privilege--to stand with Israel as an ally in their time of great need.

Madam Speaker, we need to get over ourselves a little bit around here and step forward and get this work done.

Mr. Speaker, last week, the Biden administration furthered their assault on American energy production, deciding to essentially slash all pending and future liquefied natural gas export permits.

Limiting these permits and these exports doesn't do anything to curb natural gas usage here or around the world. Instead, it will be replaced by adversaries around the world. It kills U.S. jobs and processing and has the opposite, so-called climate-smart agenda, results than were intended.

The U.S. and the rest of the world will be forced to depend even more on global adversaries, such as Iran and Russia who have significantly looser emission standards than us, while lining their pockets, giving the ability in the case of Iran to fund terrorism, such as in Yemen, with weapons that have Iran's name on them.

The Biden administration has been doing this since the President's first day in office and look what we have got: Russia invaded Ukraine. Iran-backed terrorists launched an attack on one of our closest allies, Israel. They are wreaking havoc blasting missiles at U.S. vessels in Middle Eastern waters, such as the Red Sea; cutting commerce; and have killed three of our U.S. servicemembers this weekend in Jordan; and Yemen is wreaking havoc.

Energy security is national security. This decision jeopardizes our national security and global energy markets.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Joyce leading this Special Order here tonight. It is very important that we shed the positive spotlight on energy production that natural gas is and also shine the spotlight on what a horrific decision it is by Mr. Biden and his administration to shut down export, as well as the ongoing efforts to shut down capacity, exploration, and production of natural gas in this country.

Through the miracle of hydraulic fracturing, not that many years ago, it put the U.S. on the map internationally as a gigantic energy source in the world.

I remember about 20-plus years ago, we were looking at how we could find a way to import more liquefied natural gas, set up our ports for that so the big ships can come in from somewhere else and bring us this energy source. Hydraulic fracturing has made it possible that we are a gigantic source of energy around the world, and indeed other countries are looking to us and would look to us more if we were giving more of a positive signal.

This is the chart showing usage from about 2010 up to current. If you look at that on a global scale, energy usage on a global scale is going to increase massively as more and more countries come on board and become less Third World and more of a modern economy.

Oil and gas is going to be extremely important, so the U.S. should be leading the way. We should be stronger partners for our European allies. We have seen the debacle that the Russian pipeline is going to be and has been for Germany, in one case, and the reliance on Russian gas.

Don't they look back at how these alliances haven't been strong enough to rely on a neighbor like that for so much of your energy?

In Germany just 1\1/2\ years ago people were going out to the woods and cutting firewood to make sure they were going to get through the cold season. This was on top of their destroying so much of their nuclear generation.

So the Biden administration's approach to natural gas is very wrongheaded. So as you see, Mr. Speaker, increased demand in just a short amount of time of low-cost domestic energy has been, indeed, miraculous.

My next chart will show that the cost of natural gas, although peaking some years ago in the early 2000s, was getting quite expensive. This is right where hydraulic fracturing came in and made it a very, very low-cost and very clean form of energy. It was helping get us to energy independence until the Biden administration decided to come along and say: No, we are not going to do it here. We want Germany and Europe to rely on Russian gas, and we are going to be somehow more green than everybody else here.

So it is very dangerous for us. It is dangerous to our allies. As we have seen, it empowers those in Russia and in Iran to do the types of things that they are doing around the world to upset peace. Indeed, Iran is a major sponsor of terror helping out Yemen.

As I mentioned earlier, so many of the weapons that you will find, Mr. Speaker, missiles that maybe didn't completely fire or explode, what have you, you will find that Yemen has been using them and they have Iraqi signatures on them. So every time the rest of the world patronizes Iranian gas or Russian gas, it just helps them to undermine Western countries and those who are trying to be good neighbors.

So the more we go the wrong direction on this and follow the Biden model, the bigger trouble we will be in. Indeed, natural gas has been a miracle in how important it has been to our economy up until recently with the Biden crew.

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about an extremely important project, really a tragedy, that is happening in the very northern part of my district.

This evening, I am joined by my colleague, Cliff Bentz, to discuss the Klamath River and the hydroelectric dams that have been around for at least 60 to 100 years providing low-cost, reliable hydroelectric power for many, many residents and up to 70,000 homes.

Now we see the initiation of the destruction of these dams due to filling out the dreams, or what have you, of a handful of environmental groups that have enlisted efforts up there to destroy these dams, ostensibly, to establish a fish population of what is known to be a very warm lake with a lot of FOS feed in it on a very warm river.

Indeed, some of the things that happened to make this system up there work was over 100 years ago an original

reef up in the area there was blown up, and a pathway was carved so that water that would never have gone down the river now it does go down the river.

So there are a lot of facts that we can point out that show this system has actually benefited the river, as well as agriculture and hydroelectric power in the area.

Now there is this major push in this country and in my home State of California to electrify just about everything: Electric vehicles, electric stoves, electric appliances, electric yard equipment, leaf blowers, lawn mowers, everything. They think we are going to electrify all of that at the same time that we are destroying the ability to generate electricity and to deliver it, especially in my home State with these dams being removed, as well as precariously the nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon. They gave it just a 5-year extension recently; that is 9 percent.

So there is a lot of hypocrisy, talking out of both sides of their mouths, really on the issue.

Mr. Speaker, the area that Mr. Bentz and I represent will be deeply affected negatively by these removals.

My side of the California-Oregon line has three of the dams, and Mr. Bentz represents the area that has the one largest dam, the JC Boyle.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Bentz) to talk about some of the effects he is seeing in his district, as well as what that means for agriculture and other things.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Bentz for his time and leadership on his side of the lineup there. Indeed, it is good to work together and spotlight and fight the fight on this.

Indeed, it will not help the people in the area who have largely not been listened to. When seminars are held up there, they are excluded unless they are shown to be willing to go along with this, which is tragic and unjust.

Pictured here is one of the still existing dams. One is gone. This is one of the remaining Copco dams, as well as the Boyle up north of it a little more and then the Iron Gate farther south.

You can already see what they call dewatering, where they have drained the lake behind that. You can see--it may be hard on this camera here--this black plume of muck and crud that are on either side of the dam as the lake was drained. Eighty or 100 years' worth of silt have built up, and so now you see that building up all through the system of the Klamath River, the area they claim to be saving and making as a salmon habitat.

This is not an impressionist painting here. This is actually is a blown-up photograph of how the river looks presently. It is this black, rolling--basically black water. I am not talking about the Doobie Brothers song either. It is not that positive. This is a very ugly situation, full of sediment, full of algae and other things that have been sitting at the bottom of the lake for a long time.

Wherever this makes its way down to the plume--which is at least 130 miles now; 130 miles of the Klamath River looks like this. What it has done to the wildlife in the area, the fish or the wildlife that would come down to the water and drink from it--the fish kills on this are just appalling. Again, what we are talking about is the whole effort to ostensibly save fish and create a habitat for them.

You can see here in this photo; this is the main stem of the river. This is a tributary filling in here. This water is still off-color a little bit because it is wintertime flows, but you can see that greenish, bluish color there. This is the brown and black stuff that is coming

down the main stem where they have done the work already. It is appalling. It is unbelievable.

Yet, what do we hear from the authorities on this, from Fish and Game and the KRC, as it is known, the shell corporation that was created in order to take the liability from that? At least the FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, ruled that the shell corporation did not have the financial wherewithal to endure what was going to be the full aspect of the possible cost of this.

$450 million was put together more or less to do all this work; $250 million from the taxpayers of California as part of the so-called water bond, and $200 million from the ratepayers of PacifiCorp, mostly in Oregon, have kicked in extra money in their monthly bill to pay for this.

They are expecting cost overruns on something of this magnitude. The States of California and Oregon had to come in basically with a line of credit backing this up, so the taxpayers are going to be on the hook for even more as more and more of the disaster is unleashed upon the whole Klamath system here.

Here is the tragedy right here. As I was starting to mention, the entities involved, Fish and Game, the KRC, on one hand they are saying this loss of wildlife--right here in this photograph are three deer that went out there to drink and got caught in the muck and have basically died this miserable death because they couldn't extract themselves from that. A couple of them, Fish and Game came out and finally just shot them, because they didn't have the facilities to go out and rescue these animals. This is the cost here. This is the cost.

Now, they are claiming on one hand, well, this is unforeseen. How can it be unforeseen if you have a plan here? You say you have a plan. Well, everybody starts out with a plan, right? This isn't going according to plan.

Then, on the other hand, the same groups will tell you it was foreseen that a lot of the yellow perch and other things would be casualties in this, will be collateral damage. Indeed, they tell us they have a plan, but if you are a farmer in the area and you accidentally trap one of these threatened or endangered fish that happens to get into your stream, even though you have fish screens and this and that, in order to go out and water your crops, they come down on you like you are a felon. You lose one fish, and everybody loses their minds over that, but this is an acceptable damage here. This is acceptable to them because the agenda really is about the removal of the dams. It isn't so much about the fish, because you are going to find in the long term, this is not going to work out.

This tragedy you are seeing, this is really, really hurting obviously the wildlife but also really the mental effects to the people who live there, to see and hear these deer bawling out there just outside their homes they have on the Copco Lake area and such.

Here we have some more of the collateral damage. You can see scattered through here some of the dead fish along the shore there. This stuff is so nasty that they can't breathe very long in that. As soon as that plume hits them, as soon as it hits the whole 200 miles of this river, all the way out to the ocean, to the mouth of the Klamath, it is all going to be a killing habitat for them.

How long will it take for all this silt to--the folks involved estimate 6 to 7 million cubic yards. I think the number is going to be more like 20 million cubic yards. When you look at some of the photos there, there is still a lot of residual silt and stuff built up on the banks that has not been swept out of that initial volley when they blast the holes in the bottom of the dam where they had the original drains in construction.

There is much more silt to still affect the system. Guess what, these folks are running on guesses. A lot of this has been based on somebody's term paper a long time ago. When we have had these discussions with folks, they just gloss over the silt. Is it really about saving fish, or is it about collecting four of these trophies, as they brag on and on about this being the largest dam removal project in the history of the country?

They have more on the list. They have more targets. It is dominoes. The extremists in this environmental movement want to continue to topple dams. My colleagues up in Washington are seeing this discussion happening right now with the Snake River. As Mr. Bentz mentioned, Elwha has already been done, yet they are not seeing the recovered population of fish. Right now we are wiping out the population of fish in there. How long will it take for all of that silt to transition out 200 miles worth of river? How many years?

The lifecycle of the salmon is about 3 years. Will they be able to hold off for 3 years out in the ocean, or will they come back up and try to spawn? Once the entire lifecycle is wiped out, then you don't have that fish anymore.

The flaw in the thinking is indeed this is more about politics. It is political science, not actual science. These folks are hell-bent on removing a lot of infrastructure in this country in Oregon and California because they see this as a sign of progress.

We need to build more water storage in California. We need to have more projects that store the massive amounts of water that right now are escaping to the Pacific Ocean in our so-called atmospheric rivers that are occurring.

Now we are rating them on a number system like we do hurricanes on a 1 through 5 AR. What used to be for a big storm or tropical, pineapple express, now they have a scientific name in order to scare the public with it.

Yes, the conditions are serious. We have high winds right now, and a lot of water, but it is also partly a manipulation by government in order to exercise more control over the water supply and the infrastructure and keep people in just a little bit more fear.

Again, more of the fish they purport to be saving, preserving, and trying to build a population of is for how many years going to be damaged and destroyed by the destruction of just one dam so far?

One of the four is the only one that has been completely destroyed. Others, again, they have started draining from the bottom there, and that is where all this material is coming from.

It is, indeed, unscientific and much more about power and politics.

Over here a little farther away from me, Mr. Speaker, you see many dead fish laying on the shoreline here all through here. There are probably 40 in this picture if it is discernible enough on the camera there.

This is the same all the way up and down; so far about 130 miles of river.

Are we really doing any good here?

Politically, I guess we are, but as far as being real on helping species, I hope this is a case study because there are very few silver linings that we can find coming out of this. The loss of the hydroelectric power, the loss of the locals there, I have hardly even touched on the infrastructure damage locally there because with the drainage just so far in these lakes, people are losing their groundwater wells that have been supported by this water supply. We have wells drying up.

We have our roads all along the edge are having sloughing now. Mr. Speaker, you can see a big crack like an earthquake hit it and split it down the middle. That is sloughing off down there.

The KRC, as well as FERC, are overseeing them supposedly, and they are supposed to be mitigating this. So far, the mitigation fund has disappeared. It is gone. It is not that they spent the money, we can't find the money. We can't find anyone there to talk to. There is no 1- 800 number for people to talk about these damages.

As far as people's homes, one lady we are talking to, her home up on the hillside used to overlook beautiful Copco Lake but is now overlooking the mud flats there. It is subject to slippage as well. There are folks with big mortgages there, they still have payments. Also, they still have to pay their taxes, and they are not going to be able to recoup the cost of any of this because now property values have been basically destroyed with the dams.

What are they supposed to do?

KRC and FERC are not coming back in and, indeed, they are reneging on some of the things that were agreed to with FERC as part of this plan. Indeed, it is not a plan. It is political science forced upon these folks. It feels like the people of Siskiyou County and that

region up there, every time there is some great idea in Sacramento on species or on conservation, they are being subject to it.

I say great idea facetiously because these are folks who have been up there, in some cases, six and seven generations producing for all of us. They are producing the food on your table and are helping to be part of the process of producing electricity to keep your lights on. All they want to do is do it honorably and do it well. These aren't drug dealers. These aren't people doing bad things. These are people trying to produce things that Americans need. They are made to feel like criminals, they are made to feel like subjects, and they are made to feel like constant victims because of some idea coming out of an urban area and coming out of somebody wanting to say: Oh, let's conserve wolves now. Let's introduce wolves to the area and we can wipe out the cattle growers that way.

It is not a success so far. They say: Well, that is still to come. It will be better later.

How many years is this going to take?

How many fish generations are going to be wiped out to do this?

As Mr. Bentz was saying: At what cost?

Because this is still not an ideal river. This river was actually modified to make the flows happen down the river where it used to go to a different zone where there had been a refuge. It was an amazing area for ducks and other wildlife, the Lost River.

So we have lost a lot with this. People actually can do good things, and there is a balance before government steps in at the behest of environmentalists and environmental groups that are manipulating some of our folks in the Tribal community up there to be part of this.

So here, symbolically, this single dead fish, the thing that supposedly we are trying to save, is being wiped out.

A $450 million initial price tag, the loss of electric power, the loss of the people locally of their water supply, their roads, their infrastructure as the people destroying the dams are driving hell-bent all over this place with equipment much heavier than the roads can handle, and there is no plan.

KRC is reneging on what they told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission they would do. So we need to hold their feet to the fire on that.

However, in that the three dams are still existing there, I have this crazy idea: Why don't we just leave them alone?

We have seen just a microcosm, just a taste, of how bad it is going to be for the habitat and the destruction that they are causing by the destruction of the dams.

We are at a point right now that the environmental groups have a choke hold on Sacramento, much of Washington, D.C., the court system with liberal judges who have been appointed who don't listen to anybody and don't listen to science, instead they listen to a handful of folks and don't look at the balance of what it means to the entire community up there and other places around the country.

I only hope that maybe the Supreme Court rulings on some other decisions will help put balance back into the argument on how extreme either the Clean Water Act has been abused, the Endangered Species Act, and other codes and other things that have really not been codified by Congress but given broad powers to these agencies to do as they see fit. What is called the Chevron decision, the Supreme Court will be looking at pretty soon in order to reevaluate just because a Federal agency rules it a certain way doesn't mean they are necessarily infallible. These are human beings too with biases.

The way we see so many things politicized these days, how are we to trust them even more, especially when just common sense and science is showing that this ain't working?

It certainly doesn't work for people. It certainly doesn't work for those who are providing.

Where is the mitigation fund to help the folks?

FERC needs to be helping answer that question. KRC is the shell corporation that was created out of thin air so the utility could leave town and not have the liability. Instead, the liability created was put into a shell corporation, and once that money runs out, the $450 million is taken from taxpayers via the bond and ratepayers from PacifiCorp, and it will run out. They wasted the first $40 or $50 million just talking about and planning for it.

Where does it go from there?

People of the State of California and Oregon will have to follow up with the disaster that will undoubtedly be seen after this with more money out of their pockets for something that at the end of the day was created by their actions.

When this system was put in with the Klamath project which was dedicated to returning World War I veterans to foster agriculture in an area, and, indeed, it was amazing agriculture as long as it lasted, the water flows that come down the Klamath wouldn't even be possible without some of that work that was done. A lot of that water would be lost to basins where, again, it was good for other wildlife, but that water wouldn't be regulateable or getting down the river so you would have the luxury of year-round water flow to meet these demands of flush flows for fish during certain times of the year or for rituals further down the river. We don't have the luxury for that.

So the Klamath Lake is tied into that, the Klamath project is tied into that, and the benefit of having hydroelectric power, which is the greenest, cleanest, and most available baseload power we could get, and we are seeing that slowly being destroyed right now. They want to have it done before the end of the year probably because maybe there will be a change this coming election, and maybe there will be something to stall some of this destruction and nonsense.

If they complete it here, they will keep looking at other places. They will keep looking at the Snake River up there in Washington, another dam over in Mendocino County there which many people rely on in order to supply water to agricultural crops and give flexibility to the system there. They are not going to stop here. They are not going to stop here.

So the timeline, again, they hope to have it accomplished by September, but they are going to run into some problems with that as well with the destruction just on logistics.

We are basing this, again, on unproven science. Salmon populations in other places where dams have been destroyed have not rebounded like they would.

So what is the bang for the buck on this?

As Mr. Bentz was talking about, how much is happening down river out in the ocean to affect these fish populations that has nothing to do with what a farmer might be doing who might accidentally get a fish?

They have spent plenty of money and made a lot of effort to put fish screens on their intakes or destroying these dams. We are not getting the bang for the buck. People have a part of this too. People are part of the ecology. Hydroelectric power is a beautiful thing. This discussion isn't over by any stretch because they are going to be hell- bent on keeping on doing this and destroying the livelihoods, the economy, and the good that has been up in this area along the Klamath dam.

Now, instead, as I have shown you tonight, Mr. Speaker, is the destruction and the pollution that has come from unleashing this.

So with that, Mr. Speaker, we will be back, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, February 6, 2024, at noon.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from New Jersey for leading us here tonight and the opportunity to speak on several topics.

Tonight, indeed, we passed a very important tax-related legislation that will be instructive in so many aspects of our society with investments and job opportunities. Indeed, I think the tax bill we just passed probably will be responsible for over 600,000 new jobs in research and development. There are tax credits, as well, for small businesses that are going to have the accelerated appreciation that is important to them for, again, small businesses and farms to invest in equipment.

One of the things I wanted to dwell on here a little bit was the importance of the disaster relief aspect that is in this bill that my colleague, Mr. Steube, from Florida was also working very strongly on and my colleague from the wine country in northern California, Mr. Mike Thompson, helped us with.

We have had a situation where fire survivors or fire victims of destructive wildfires in northern California and other parts of the West, their taxation on the settlement money they had with the utility was deemed by IRS to be a taxable event.

Even though they are victims of fire and have lost their homes and much destruction to their property, the dollars that were coming for restitution from a lawsuit were deemed taxable by the IRS. This put people out to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars of taxes that they really can't afford because they still have to put their homes back in order and build new homes and all this entails. It really wasn't intended as a taxable event in that sense.

This package included important pieces of our original bill that was added as part of the tax package where folks have already, unfortunately, had to pay this tax because of the timing of things will be able to seek a refund. We will work with the IRS to make sure those refunds are expedited as best as possible but prevent future taxation on that and other disasters that have an award involved, like East Palestine and the issues in Florida.

It is, indeed, a big success on that, as well as the other aspects of this tax legislation tonight that are going to be helpful for boosting our economy, boosting small business, and large business with investment and bringing over 600,000 jobs back to their country in a time we really need that investment and we need that boost.

I am, indeed, very glad that we are able to accomplish that here tonight and look forward to the Senate taking it up and the President signing that legislation expeditiously. What is important about this nuance is that it be done before the upcoming tax season, April 15. Some have to file March 1 so they don't get caught, again, having to pay a tax prospectively for something they really aren't going to owe.

We need to get the language in place, the rules in place on that after the successful passage in the Senate and by the President's signature.

It was a great bipartisan effort; one we don't always see that often around here. We need to see more of that on both sides and having that big success.

For the folks that were the survivors of the Camp fire, the Zogg fire, the Carr fire in northern California and others are going to be affected, their patience has been rewarded.

Mr. Speaker, I thank them for their patience and for working with our office in giving us a chance to get it over the goal line. I would have liked to see it happen much faster, as well. Things have been tough around here and now we are able to have success with this tonight. We have a couple more steps to go, but I really strongly believe we are going to get there.

This is going to be great for not only disaster victims, but all Americans, and the boost it will be for the economy with the broad tax package.

Mr. Speaker, what you see here is the environmentalists' dream coming true. Environmentalists and the State of California are celebrating the largest dam removal project which is happening on the Upper Klamath River in California and Oregon.

Actually, their work is killing endangered species, it is causing roads to slough off because the lake has gone down and is disappearing, and it is threatening homes with bank collapse. We have already seen drinking water wells going dry.

The fish they purport to be saving are dying because of the nasty water and nasty effluent coming out of those dams.

Supposedly, they are trying to save fish. They purposely have made a disaster and now are leaving the locals to figure out how to clean up their mess.

Dam removal advocates have refused to see the big picture, all these years trusting a mere questionable master's thesis over the locals who actually knew better.

So we are seeing dead fish. This picture depicts three dead deer that went out into the muck that came out of the bottom of those dams and are stuck there. Nobody could rescue them, so the Fish and Game had to shoot them from a distance and leave them there.

This is only the beginning of the many miles of muck that will be going down that river causing death, destruction, and a smell to high heaven there that all the locals are having to deal with.

There is more to come on this topic. This is not a win for the environment, fish, or anybody else.

Mr. Speaker, as you know, the issue of wildfire in the West has been very devastating for several years now--many, many years--but there have been incredibly large fires in the last 5 and 7 to 10 years or so. So we have needed more and more help from FEMA post- fire.

So what we are working on is bipartisan legislation that is going to be called H.R. 7070 that will direct FEMA to update its regulations for the fire management assistance grant, public assistance, and mitigation programs.

This will help to respond to unique challenges of wildfires and improve wildfire mitigation after a fire, like debris removal, emergency protective measures, and impacts to drinking water sources. So it will help improve FEMA's cost-benefit analysis for wildfire projects to help them be more competitive for Federal funding.

I find this is extremely important in communities that are devastated after a fire, and it is still fairly new territory for FEMA when we are talking about the size and scope of fires we have had in recent years jumping from four- and five-digit size fires to six digits, hundreds of thousands, even 1 million acres like the Dixie fire in my district a couple years ago.

So this legislation will give FEMA more flexibility and better serve the people.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 32 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, January 30, 2024, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today, along with my colleague, Rep. Tom McClintock, to honor the nearly 30-year public safety career and service of Lassen County Sheriff Dean Growdon.

Sheriff Growdon's career began in 1994 as a Correctional Deputy for the Lassen County Sheriff's Office. He would serve there briefly before being promoted to Deputy Sheriff where he would serve as the resident Deputy in Big Valley and in the main office in Susanville. In 1998, Dean received the Law Enforcement Officer of the Year Award from the Susanville Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) No. 2381.

Dean was then promoted to Sergeant, supervising the jail, as a Patrol Supervisor, Commanded the Interagency Narcotics Force, and was appointed as team leader for the Sheriff's SWAT team. In 2005, Dean was recognized with a Certificate of Valor, the highest law enforcement award for valor in the State by the California State Attorney General Lockyear for his actions during a domestic violence incident.

Dean has been a vocal advocate for our first responders serving on many different Statewide boards where he impacted public safety policy. As a member of the California State Sheriff's Association, Dean served on

the legislative committee, influencing new laws. Dean was appointed and served as the Chair of the Detention and Corrections Committee and served on the Corrections Standards Authority and then the Board of State and Community Corrections.

Dean's public service career will be remembered fondly for his dedication to improving the Lassen County Sheriff's Office and the community. His commitment to mentoring his fellow employees, his compassion, his knowledge, and leadership have been impactful and will be greatly missed by our community.

On behalf of the people of Northern California, I thank Sheriff Dean Growdon for his service, and we wish him all the best in his retirement.

Mr. Speaker, whenever this subject gets brought up, it is like we just go into la-la land about what the facts are and what the intentions are.

For a female student that is in college, on campus, she needs options. She needs to understand what her options are. She needs information to do that. This legislation simply affords a broader amount of information and choices for her to do that.

How the folks on the other side could call this some kind of limitation or somehow against women just continues to foster the disinformation for 40 years about this subject.

Indeed, it is life that we are talking about. For women, we see in some of these cases, as many as 60 percent, they have gone on to have abortions because they believe that is the only option they have. They have been, in some cases, bullied into it, or closed off from other information. Sixty percent would have preferred to give birth had they known they had the security, the options, and maybe not even be discriminated against on campus to do so.

No, the left is always concerned about having the maximum number of abortions. It is appalling.

Students that are pregnant deserve support and dignity and the options that help them fulfill whatever their goals are going to be, whatever their life course is going to be. That isn't done by hiding information and hiding options from them. We know the trauma that women can feel when they only have that one option, and it is very real.

This bill is a simple step toward that support and helps keep more mothers on their desired path while still pursuing their college degree and getting a career. It is an important part of improving their life and their outlook.

It is unbelievable to me the rhetoric that is used to go up against these young women having options and having information.

Mr. Speaker, almost 1 year ago today, Aurora Regino of

Chico, California, sued the Chico Unified School District for trying to secretly socially transition her young daughter, alleging that a school counselor pressured her child to change her name and pronouns, dismissing the child's desire to inform her parents of the change.

Regino alleged that a parental secrecy policy is in place at Chico Unified and stipulated that the school district not disclose what was happening while her daughter was at school.

At first Chico Unified denied the existence of a parental secrecy policy, but later the school board actually voted 3-2 to publicly uphold it.

If that weren't bad enough, last week California Attorney General Rob Bonta led 16 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals in support of Chico Unified's parental secrecy policy

Shame on every single one of them for advocating for this horrible practice.

The child at the center of this case was subject to bullying by other children during her transition process. The counselor informed the child's teachers and peers of what was going on, but would not let the girl confer with her own parents while this was happening before announcing her new status to all the other kids.

She has since gone back and identified with her biological sex.

Mr. Speaker, in my home State of California, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle there, the Democrats there, just know how to tax and spend other people's money.

Our State's massive $100 billion budget surplus was wasted on far- left priorities. Now, California is facing at least a $40 billion, maybe even a $68 billion budget deficit in the coming year.

Instead of reckoning with these massive overspendings, our Governor Newsom is dipping into the State's reserves while delaying some of these program rollouts instead of making the necessary cuts and reductions in Big Government.

Governor Newsom is claiming California is in a fiscal emergency, yet he is still planning on giving millions of illegal immigrants free healthcare, including sex-change operations. He is not even delaying that idea, as well.

Of course, this healthcare for illegals won't actually be free. The taxpayers will pay, as you know. California has the highest top income tax rate of any State, some of the highest taxes in the country overall. Our tax dollars certainly don't go toward any projects that benefit Californians, such as much-needed water storage or fixing more of our crumbling freeways. Instead, we see more blackouts, wildfires, crumbling infrastructure, and social breakdowns in our cities. We must do better.