Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Moore's leading us here tonight. Indeed, a lot of important issues, but we know January is typically a month of action for people who believe in being pro-life or those who are pro-abortion.

As we know, January of 1973 is when the Roe v. Wade decision was arbitrarily legislated by the Supreme Court, I believe by a vote of 7- 2, to somehow make abortion a law instead of leaving that up to State legislators.

Well, that was overturned after many, many years. It is now in the hands of legislators to actually do the legislating and search their souls on whether they think an unborn baby is actually a life or something else.

Many people have stood up around this country to have their voices heard on the wrongness of that decision, and you find that in rallies and marches like happened all over the country and happened right here in D.C. in January. People have certainly made their voices heard, and I think it was successful in a Court that actually decided to interpret the Constitution.

Science supports the idea that life begins at conception. We know as early as 5 weeks in the womb, babies have a heartbeat. Some States, some jurisdictions are deciding that would be the point at least to start and acknowledge it is a life.

Their brain and circulatory systems are beginning to develop at 10 weeks in the womb. They have arms, legs, fingers and toes. They can jump and kick if startled.

At 15 weeks in the womb, babies have fully developed hearts and can taste, yawn, and hiccup. By this time, their brain is developed enough to feel and respond to pain. That is why we have seen pain-capable legislation at that level.

If this isn't life, then what is?

Thanks to advances in modern medicine and science, the humanity of a child in the womb is undeniable if it wasn't already common sensibly, and denying this reality undermines the very foundation of our ethical principles of science. Trust the science, we hear in other quarters.

I believe that each one of these innocent souls was created by God in his divine vision and that we must stand up against the left's radical, extreme, and immoral abortion agenda that wants to allow for discriminatory abortions at any point in a pregnancy, even on the basis of a baby's sex, race, and disability, even including late-term abortions for babies that would be able to survive perfectly fine outside of the womb, which that number is moving lower and lower in the number of weeks in which they have viability.

We must uphold the value, dignity, and potential for every person's life. Choosing life also means protecting women's health and their families. Yes, protecting health doesn't necessarily mean abortions that you would hear on the left because there are side effects that can affect the woman, as well.

This week, the House is considering two pro-life bills aimed at supporting expectant mothers, helping them choose life. H.R. 6918, the Supporting Pregnant and Parenting Women and Families Act would strike down the Department of Health and Human Services' proposed rule that would prohibit funding for pregnancy centers.

It speaks volumes that the Biden administration wants our tax dollars to go toward abortion but not pregnancy centers which provide invaluable services and resources to expectant mothers who want to keep their children. They provide both sides of the story to a prospective mother.

I have visited these centers before and seen the good work, the good cheer, the good attitude they have on actually helping a woman in a difficult decision to have all the facts, so that all the facts are known. They provide pregnancy counseling and information about pregnancy, offering free pregnancy testing and sometimes even clothing and supplies for the newborns.

The other bill, H.R. 6914, the Pregnant Students' Rights Act, requires higher-education institutions to provide prospective and enrolled pregnant students with a list of nearby resources for new and expectant mothers, as well as available accommodations on campus. Indeed, both sides of the story, not just the abortion one.

The bill is critical to ensure that mothers don't have to give up their education and can further their careers while, indeed, starting a family. Being pro-life means supporting initiatives that provide resources for pregnant women, promoting adoption as a loving option, and advocating for policies that protect the unborn, humans.

Abortion is a gruesome act that destroys families, harms women's health, and murders the innocent. I will fight for the unborn, the sanctity of life, and traditional family values because I think that is the right way to be in the eyes of God.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to report on the situation of California's water supply, which really is the Nation's water supply, as so much of our food source comes from California.

Mr. Speaker, 90 to 95 percent of our specialty crops--tomatoes, pistachios, almonds, walnuts--come from California if we are allowed to grow them.

Water supply is a core part of that.

We have a situation in northern California where each year it is a challenge to refill our lakes. Lake Oroville holds 3.5 million acre- feet; Lake Shasta, 4.5; Trinity Lake, 2.5 million--which is a total of about 10.5 million acre-feet. That is a lot of water.

We have the potential to build Sites Reservoir, another 1.5 million acre-feet. We could raise Shasta Dam and gain another 600,000 acre-feet for a total of 12.5 million acre-feet.

Yet, we aren't allowed to store that water. There is so much water now being devoted for other purposes that aren't for people, that are not for hydroelectric power. Indeed, they are tearing out hydroelectric dams in my district right now at a time when we want to go green with more CO2-free power and electrify everything.

We have to do much better with corralling and saving our water supply for people's needs in California so it benefits the whole country.

Mr. Speaker, there is a proposal by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, often coupled with EPA as well on this topic, regarding corporate average fuel economy. This is a standard that was developed many years ago in order to increase the fuel efficiency of automobiles and trucks sold in America.

They have been cranking up that standard over the years, including a giant leap during the Obama era, where the manufacturers basically came into hearings and acquiesced to these really far-reaching standards they would have. This basically means the fleet of vehicles that the manufacturers would sell has to meet a certain level of average miles per gallon for cars and for light trucks.

Years ago, when it was first established, these were within reach, with work, with new technology, with the efforts modern manufacturers were making. During the Obama era they wanted to raise it from the ultimate goal of, I believe, 27 miles per gallon by X year to 55 miles per gallon by, I believe, 2025 at the time. Think about that a minute, 55 miles per gallon. This is before any of this electric car mess we are talking about right now being forced upon consumers.

How many cars do you know of today that get 55 miles per gallon that are not electric assist or electric in total, which gets, I guess, infinite miles per gallon in that sense? Now, the electricity still comes from somewhere, whether it is a coal plant, a natural gas plant, or a windmill that runs only when the wind blows or a solar plant that is taking up many hundreds of acres of land that only works when it is daylight or not cloudy or rainy or snow covering the solar panels, but I digress a bit.

Basically, during the Obama era they wanted to double it to 54. There are not a lot of cars that most people want to drive day in and day out that get 54, 55 miles per gallon. Indeed, right now, the fleet, when you average trucks and cars, at this moment is about 26.4 miles per gallon across the board. This is after some years of fuel efficiency since this first came out. Consumers have voted for what they want. They vote with their wallets, and that is where the average is right now.

Some folks want a high-mileage car for their commute or that is what they use every day, or what have you. Some folks want electric cars. They think they are being part of an ecological solution. However, a lot of Americans have shown already that they don't want to have electric cars forced upon them, the EVs. Indeed, we are seeing the manufacturers, after all this enthusiasm, the CEOs coming out and saying, Oh, it is the wave, it is the future; they are finding that after an initial jolt of people buying these vehicles, that market has more or less become saturated for this moment.

It has taken a lot of incentives, a lot of government money thrown around to help manufacturers put these out, and then giant incentives to buyers to buy these electric cars. Now we have the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration trying yet again to push even harder on these fuel standards to be what might take 58 miles per gallon to reach the goals that they set out.

They say ``our'' goals. Whose goals are these? This is government, this is not people's goals. You are going to be even availed less choice of vehicle to drive and use, and it has shown by sales. People are less inclined to want to buy an electric vehicle unless they are forced to. They like internal combustion engines.

What has not really been given a whole lot of credit is that in the last 30, 40, 50 years there has been an incremental gain. When electronic fuel injection really started hitting in the 1990s on more and more, and pretty much all vehicles, the efficiency jumped up as far as MPG; it improved. Emissions dramatically improved, as well. However, nobody really gives credit for that.

It is like, oh, no, that doesn't count because we have the California Air Resources Board in California just dreaming up a new regulation every month because that is what they do. They just grind them out. Other States follow along blindly and say, oh, let's be like California, the so-called progressive States. We find out that we are going to have fewer choices. We find out that we are going to have an issue where people can't buy what they need.

If a person needs an F-150, F-250 truck to do their job, it is not going to be solved by buying four Priuses, okay? Other people just like what they like. I personally am a car enthusiast. I like a Mustang with a V-8. It feels good, and it is fun to drive. I don't want that taken away from me or even the people who drive Camaros. They may not have as good a taste. I am kidding.

It is a deal where the car enthusiasts have this thing they like to do together, whether it is a rivalry, but it all works together, car shows, the whole thing. That is an important part of Americana, including politicians who like to ride in these cars in parades. Who doesn't like a 1972 Cadillac convertible to use in a parade? No, I am going to go back to using my Prius or acting like I am later on.

This corporate average fuel economy is going to take away choices that people want, that people can afford. This forced mandate of electric vehicles by NHTSA is basically what they are doing here. They are not even supposed to be using electric vehicles in calculating the corporate average fuel economy standard, yet they are sneaking that in there in this proposal. They take away consumer choice via this.

Mr. Speaker, yet another California law forbidding residents of the State from carrying guns in most public areas has, thankfully, been blocked from taking effect, at least for now. This is good news for California, for other States that tend to copy our bad ideas, and for the constitutional right to bear arms.

This is not, however, Governor Newsom's first unconstitutional attack on our Second Amendment, and it is certainly not going to be his last. The law, SB 2, would increase California's requirements for trying to lawfully obtain a concealed carry permit and also ban carrying concealed weapons in most public areas.

Many county sheriff's offices throughout the State, including in northern California, opposed the law. Sutter and Yuba Counties made the decision to ``exercise [their] common sense and discretion to ensure the law is not enforced in a way that would violate the rights of our citizens.'' Good on them.

As the Member of Congress representing Yuba and Sutter Counties, I applaud their decision to stand up against the State's unconstitutional attack on the Second Amendment. Law-abiding concealed carry permit holders are not the problem. It is the criminals that are the problem. Start going after the bad guys and leave the good guys alone.

Mr. Speaker, other States that are watching this should not act like we do in California.

Mr. Speaker, I guess the question here is: Yes, is it going to be buy American or not?

Now, these components we are talking about are, indeed, being force- fed upon the public with the whole big push for electrifying vehicles.

As we are seeing, the market has softened dramatically since the additional influx of electric vehicles has been pushed forward.

We are seeing them sitting on dealers' lots, so chargers probably still need to be made to catch up, to a certain point.

We don't need to be in such a giant hurry that we have to instead send all this business to the manufacturing leaders in China. Let's let Americans catch up to this.

Indeed, since we are going to spend the money that is in the trough anyway from the measure I did not vote for--that many of us did not vote for--at least spend it on American jobs and keep the spirit of producing electric vehicle chargers in the United States.

We can catch up and we will catch up, especially if these artificial mandates to force electric cars are relaxed somewhat.

Now, we see the Biden administration setting the goal of half a million chargers by the year 2030--and they say that their goal has been met so far--but a recent article says that they have only built one charger under this program in the last 2 years. There is a long way to go to get to half a million.

Instead of realizing that the goals are unworkable and let the rules be what they have been on keeping Buy America, Make It In America as the priority, they are force-feeding something in such a hurry that hasn't been thought out for a market that is dramatically softening after the initial wave of electric vehicles.

Instead, let Americans work and not favor the Chinese Communist Party and their workers.

Madam Speaker, for the new year, I have done a survey with my constituents and asked what the issues are that they want to be focused on in 2024. The top answer they submitted in my northern California district was the border crisis, a Biden and Democratic Party-created crisis.

Republicans and Democrats agree there is a crisis at our border, and it is President Joe Biden's fault. During his first 100 days in office, he took 94 executive actions on immigration, including halting the construction of the border fence.

Under his administration, there have been 8 million illegal border crossings nationwide and over 6.7 million encounters at our southern border. The Biden administration's continuous open border policies are to blame for this historic crisis.

We need action now. We need it yesterday. We must pass, over in the Senate, H.R. 2, the strongest border security bill in congressional history, immediately. We must complete the wall, change the asylum rules to not be such a joke and prevent millions of illegals from being attracted here by a magnet, streamline deportations, and end parole in the United States.

We cannot continue to allow this to stand any longer. It is killing our country and our economy.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time to be able to weigh in on these issues in a little more relaxed manner here and spend some time.

I want to talk a little bit about legislation we are working on here known as S.J. Res. 38. In this case, it would ensure our taxpayer dollars are used to buy American-made products, something that has had bipartisan support, nonpartisan support, in the past around here.

Certainly, when we are talking about having something domestically produced or buying it from a foreign competitor or ally, one thing we shouldn't be doing is buying more and more things from China.

What is the sense of exporting so many of our dollars over to somebody who is such an adversary in so many things on the world front, with the funding of countries that are helping to sponsor terrorism and the unrest they are helping fund in the Middle East? There are constant threats to Taiwan and the other islands in the South

China Sea that are possessions of Japan and others, constant aggression on that. They sink many other smaller countries into huge debt by dangling out loans they know they can't repay, and pretty soon, they can take over the resources of that country.

As the United States of America, we can produce anything we want here. We can produce it well, usually of the best quality, using the best practices, by far, yet what are we doing? We are hamstringing our own ability to strengthen our own economy with the energy we need to produce in order to do that, with environmental policies that 50 years ago were well intentioned but have been completely weaponized against industries and farming, mining, and timber. The West burns each year massively. In California and Utah, it is endless.

A lot of this currently comes from Biden administration policies, and I jump back 3 years to 8 years to the Obama-era policies that have put us in this spot.

Currently, President Biden wants to shoot down the waiver to eliminate the buy in America requirements for, in this case, electric vehicle chargers. That is what this bill, S.J. Res. 38, is about, which would be purchased under the Infrastructure and Jobs Act, another boondoggle itself.

If the money is going to be forced to be spent, and we have to buy these electric chargers for electric cars, at least can we have them be American produced, American made.

Don't get me mixed up with the electric car crowd. I don't think we should be forcing that on anybody. At the same time, they are tearing down the California power grid with the dams they are removing on the Klamath River up in the north part of my district and one across the border, and then threatening the Snake River farther up and one down in Mendocino County.

It is just one thing after another, getting rid of hydroelectric power and also the ability to store water and for the water to be retained during flood control season and for some recreation--yes, even water available to let out for fish when they need to. When they tear these dams out, we lose that green, renewable, clean, CO2- free power by these policies.

An addendum to that, CO2 is not a problem. It is only 0.04 percent of our atmosphere. The left wants to keep playing these games like we are talking about here. They want to export jobs to China to build these electric car chargers. They want to tear down the dams that produce CO2-free, green, renewable power and try and build even more batteries and more windmills that chop up the birds and only run when there is a little bit of wind and the solar plants that only run during the daytime when it is not a cloudy or rainy or snow-covered day. It is amazing how dumb these ideas are.

In 2021, the Democrats included $7.5 billion of taxpayer money for electric vehicle charging stations in their pie-in-the-sky idea that we are going to electrify everything in the next few years. This is the Infrastructure and Jobs Act.

I don't support the forced purchase and proliferation of electric vehicles, but doggone it, if we are going to do this, we need to buy American.

Why do we have to steamroll our own laws? Why is the administration backstabbing our American manufacturers and sending billions over to China and other Asian markets?

In the process, it also destroys our immigration laws and fosters more chaos at the border when we have this continued policy by the Biden administration of basically ignoring the border.

As mentioned earlier, 64 of my colleagues went to the border. I have paid a couple of visits myself in Arizona and California and such. It is indeed chaos. They are just walking right past you when you go visit the border. Some of these are nice folks from Central America, families and such. We keep putting out the magnet, the green light to come across.

We have talked many times about the numbers coming across the border, like 10,000 per day just in the month of December, 300,000 for a month.

The burden is being borne even by our Democrat-run cities, even they are starting to cry uncle. We have the Governor of New Jersey saying we need to check with these bus companies and see where they are all coming from. No, you need to check over here at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That is where the policy is coming from. It isn't bus companies from Texas or Florida or something. That is who you need to be talking to because that is where the problem is.

Indeed, the administration is shifting from pushing our jobs overseas to then having our jobs here filled by people who are coming here illegally. It is the chaos they have had at the border coupled with these other policies and fentanyl coming across the border.

Who knows what kind of terror cells are being built by people coming across the border illegally and the gunrunning and everything else that can happen? It has even resulted in the housing of illegal immigrants in our National Park System, including a national park right there in New York City, so people can't use it.

Now, you have seen the stories more and more recently that they are going to be housing them in schools. Kids are getting kicked out of schools in New York right now because they have a supposedly temporary problem where they have to house them in the gym. The kids can go online, back to Zoom learning, like during the height of COVID, which was manipulated in my own home State of California, which took an extra year to allow kids back into school.

What a mess. Why are these people entrusted with power?

When you talk to the American public, this is all preventable. We don't have to live like this, when we are talking energy, when we are talking domestic production. No, we would rather export it, I guess, and have kids in Africa mine the products in order to have your electric car and electric gadgetry.

The National Park Police have testified that these encampments on our National Park lands endanger the people that would normally enjoy and use them. Also, in the wintertime, these areas can end up being a floodplain, like the one in New York City, endangering the illegal immigrants that are being attracted--until recently, when it seems maybe the light is starting to turn around for the Governor of New York and the mayor of New York City and such.

I don't know. I don't know.

Mr. Speaker, we have a porous border. We have a massive problem with the encounters that we have at the border here that are overwhelming our demoralized Border Patrol folks. How are they supposed to do their job?

On my visit down to Arizona, they actually had, and still have today, government-provided vans go over and just pick people up at the gaps in the border and get them to the processing center sooner. We know that 85 percent of them are not going to be heard at their asylum trial any time soon.

One thing after another is wrecking our economy, wrecking people's confidence in government, and the ability just to conduct their own lives. There is no reason we need to have such costly ways of doing business with energy, with procuring food; everything else that is happening under this Biden administration.

Mr. Speaker, just 3 years ago, things were looking pretty good on the cost of fuel, cost of groceries, and employment until they used COVID as a weapon to attack our economy at that time and tried to make it look bad in order to win the 2020 election.

We have a lot of complex issues, but the solutions really aren't that tough when you get down to it: enforce the border laws that we have.

We don't need comprehensive immigration reform. We already know what we are supposed to do about the border. We just need to enforce the laws that we have and have common sense applied to asylum.

At the same time, let's not exploit American jobs that we could be doing if we have to produce these electric vehicle charging stations. At least let Americans produce them instead of sending them to China.

Mr. Speaker, the Biden administration's proposal to federally limit milk options to the unpopular fat-free and low-fat types and prohibit students from drinking flavored milk only starts our children off on the wrong foot.

Whole milk contains 3.25 percent fat, making it 96.75 percent fat- free as compared to the common 2 percent or 1 percent or skim that we see. This is not an incredibly great amount of fat for what the perception would be out there.

Whole milk is nutritious and simple. Whole milk doesn't contain any more sugar or carbs than skim or low-fat milk, but it does contain essential nutrients that children need to grow.

Mr. Speaker, 8 ounces of whole milk provides 8 grams of protein. That is 16 percent of the daily recommended value. This high-quality protein builds and repairs muscle, keeps us fuller longer, provides energy and focus, and helps maintain bone health and a healthy weight while supporting a healthy immune system.

An 8-ounce serving of milk, flavored or not, gives children the same amount of calcium as 10 cups of spinach, the same amount of potassium as in one small banana, the same amount of vitamin A as in three- quarters of a cup of broccoli, and the same amount of vitamin D as in three-quarters of an ounce of cooked salmon. Parents of picky eaters know how hard it is to convince their kids to eat that every day.

Whole milk is a good thing.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, Mr. Calvert, for leading this appropriate time here today.

Mr. Speaker, it is with a heavy heart that I come forward to be part of this. It is also with optimism because I have known Kevin for 21 years, and he was always and is always the optimistic one in the room. He always sees what we can do.

He always sees the vision for each of us as elected Representatives and, more importantly, the country. He always thinks of the country. He always thinks how we are going to better the institution, whether it was in the California State Assembly as we were cutting our teeth in politics there or here on this national and international stage.

Mr. Speaker, I am somber right now because what has happened really is a waste, as my good friend and colleague, Mr. McClintock, mentioned. There were only 269 days of what could have been a really great thing.

Kevin will be part of everything we do in a different form and in a different venue because he still loves and cares about this country. He still is a great friend to his colleagues, even though he exits this area for a time.

I am grateful to him for his friendship. Anything I have ever asked, he has always helped in his leadership role for me as a Member in either one of the bodies, the State Assembly or here. He is always optimistic and has a smile. He has a lot of funny stories to go with it that I can't tell here.

He has always reached out to our families, making sure they are included. He always thinks of everybody. He is an amazing talent and will go far in leading his next enterprise, which is going to be based on our values and making our country stronger yet again. We will get there.

I am proud to call him a friend. I hope I can always have his friendship, his guidance, and his playing a major role as we go forward in saving and strengthening our great country.

Kevin McCarthy, I thank you for everything you have ever done for me, and for all of us, as a friend. I am blessed to know you.

To Judy, Connor, and Meghan, the sacrifice has been big, but we are always very grateful. My family understands that, as well. God bless you.

Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague has been covering a lot of very important subjects here. I know he is frequently in the area of immigration and the invasion of our border, so I appreciate Mr. Grothman's strong efforts on highlighting that so the American people understand.

It really boils down to when we are looking at the border invasion that we have quite a battle. I do not understand why the Biden White House is simply sitting by watching it happen, even having personnel propping the gates open to allow this to happen.

We do not understand fully who is coming in. It is not just people from Mexico or even Central America. There is a lot of very dangerous people coming across the border. They apprehend many people on the known terrorist or mayhem list, at the very least, and I wonder whose side are they on. Whose side is the administration on when they allow this to happen? Whether it is the drugs coming across, the fentanyl, the people who are setting up and going to be the potential terrorist cells that are going to hit this country at some point, and we see all these protests going on over Palestine.

Mr. Speaker, they are just waiting for the green light on this. It is completely irresponsible and antithetical to the constitutional vows we take what is going on with the Biden administration and their nonenforcement of the border. Much work needs to be done.

Mr. Speaker, it can't be overestimated the value and the need for water in our lives, in what we consume foodwise and what it provides in flood control, what it provides in hydroelectric power, just water at the tap, and even environmental water.

As a Representative from California, we certainly go through a lot of gyrations and a lot of fights over water. Mark Twain is quoted as saying: ``Whisky is for drinking, and water is for fighting over.'' There is plenty of that in California.

What is going on?

Back in the 1930s and the 1960s, two major projects were built to turn California into the blooming land that it is of so much bounty, so much great agriculture, so much opportunity, with the Federal water project started in the 1930s and the State water project conceived in the 1950s and much of it built in the 1960s.

In my own district, we have two very large dams--Shasta Dam at 4\1/2\ million acre-feet and Lake Oroville at 3\1/2\ million acre-feet. Those have made so much possibility for people in California, but not just California. It has helped the whole country.

I will tell you why. Because agriculture is a key element of the sustainability for this country. It is strategic for being able to feed itself, defend itself. You can't overestimate how important that is as well.

What we currently have happening in California and in the Western States is the extreme environmental left is moving to remove more and more dams as we speak. Right now in the Klamath River, up in the north end of my district, there are four dams in the target sites for that. They make hydroelectric power.

Now, as a sidebar here, what do we hear constantly in this Chamber? Almost every conversation is filtered through climate change. When you have sources of power that are zero CO2, such as hydroelectric power, as well as nuclear power, and very clean efficient power such as natural gas, which is being phased out or pushed out by the Biden administration as we can't explore or build pipelines for it, where are we going to get the power if you tear these dams out?

Why would you take all of these inputs for producing electricity in this country, while at the same time, you are forcing more and more things to be powered by electricity, vehicles, big trucks?

I see on the internet there is a major cargo carrier saying we need to electrify our aircrafts. How heavy will an airplane be when you load it up with batteries? Will it have any cargo capacity remaining? A big semi-rig for the highways is 80,000 pounds GVW. By the time they electrify it and add two 8,000-pound batteries to that, that is 16,000 more pounds of cargo you will have to take off. That means five trucks will have to now do the job of four trucks. This is where we are going.

Hydroelectric power is extremely important to fuel whatever levels of electricity we are going to be using. They want to ban gas stoves. They want to ban gas heaters. If we are going to have more and more of a reliability on the electric grid, which I hope we don't go through with these crazy policies, we are going to continue to need this power.

Why are we tearing dams out? They want to tear them out in the State of Washington. We just visited the Colorado River, the Western Caucus, over the weekend. The Hoover Dam, what a mighty structure that is, with eight great big power plant turbines in there. Above that, Lake Powell; they are talking about maybe we don't really need Lake Powell anymore because we are in the middle of a drought situation. We are in a tough drought, but what if we didn't have those to begin with? We wouldn't have stored that water that has helped us sustain through many years of drought, actually.

Back in my own district with a full Lake Shasta and a full Lake Oroville, under the regional conditions, that would get you through 5 years' worth of drought. Still storing water for agriculture, for people at the tap, for hydroelectric power, and even recreation.

What is the agenda? They want to force more and more electric vehicles and electric everything, but at the same time, they want to rip out the means to make the power. It doesn't make a lick of sense.

I just see where Ford Motor Company lost about $4\1/2\ billion last year electrifying. They had the original influx of people buying those electric vehicles, but now that has fallen off because once the incentives go away or once you can get a sticker to drive it in the fast lanes in certain areas in California, the rest of the market probably isn't too interested in that.

Their F-150 Lightning, they are pulling back production by at least half, maybe more, because people aren't buying these vehicles like they supposedly are projecting.

Stored water is an incredibly good thing. Why it matters to the rest of the country as well is California has grown so many amazing crops over the years with the innovation and ability to farm the lands that we have had in the San Joaquin Valley. We would not have the food that the whole country eats since 90 percent to 99 percent of these crops are grown in California.

Mr. Speaker, there is a saying in the trucking business: If you got it, a truck brought it.

We need to work to make the ability to deliver the products, the raw materials, all the interactions of commerce that trucks bring easier and more streamlined. The regulatory load that the Biden administration as well as my home State wants makes it harder to buy trucks.

They have had an unnecessary Federal excise tax since World War I on trucks to help pay for the war that costs $20,000 to $30,000 for every new vehicle, yet we want them to replace trucks, so they are cleaner, more efficient, and safer.

They want burdensome regulations on driver duty time, putting speed limiters on them so that trucks can't stay with traffic. All these burdens make it much more difficult to deliver what you want.

We need to reel in the Biden administration and have them actually listen to the people out there on the roads, the truckers and the people that rely on them to deliver raw materials and finished products.

More regulations are not going to help that. Taking away the internal combustion engine is not going to help that. Electrifying every truck is not going to help that. Let them truck.

Mr. Speaker, several hundred private aircraft have left Dubai after a couple of weeks of wining and dining in the hot climate there in order to tell us how we should live our lives. They want to tell us how we should cut back or eliminate meat in our diets and how we should change our agriculture in this country to just be less of it. I guess they want to put us all on a forced diet, according to their view of the world.

What does that really mean for us here? Less agriculture and fewer products grown in this country and in the European countries that want to play along with the Paris accords and such.

One interesting little fact that gets in the way of all that is that the U.S. and Europe have already reduced their CO2 emissions down 10 to 15 percent in the last 2 years. This is without the Paris accord even having come fully into effect yet.

It is other countries, like Asia, where numbers are dramatically increasing on CO2.

That assumes that CO2 is actually a problem. CO2, carbon dioxide, is only represented by 0.04 percent of our atmosphere. That is 4/100ths of 1 percent is what CO2 makes up.

I talk to people on the street or at gatherings and events where I am speaking. How much of the air do you think is actually CO2? They have been hyped so much since grade school. They have kids scared to death. They say that CO2 is somewhere between 20 and 50 percent. No. It is 0.04 percent.

It is not a poisonous gas. I have had the argument of, well, it is like having fentanyl in your cereal or something like that. No, it is a necessary gas for plant life. We are all breathing it in right now. We are exhaling it right now. There are plants somewhere gladly absorbing it.

If we go below 0.02 percent, plant life starts dying off. We would be in a pretty bad way. Yet, the hype over CO2 continues as they have the COP28 in Dubai. They sit there hatching plans to control our lives, especially in the Western countries.

The plans for China and places like that continue to ramp up with more coal power plants and much more use of oil and gas. Oil and gas have been villainized by California, the EPA, and so many, including an idea over there that the Arab countries have produced so much petroleum, so they were supposed to have that conversation at COP28. They kind of put that off as getting rid of oil and gas.

If we were even to contemplate that, you couldn't do it for at least four or five decades because we are so engrained with using that product to do anything--planting crops or transporting anything. If you got it, a truck

brought it. It is probably a diesel-powered truck.

You see so many failed efforts to electrify vehicles, cars, trucks, et cetera. There are a few out there getting around, yes, but not on a dependable basis to keep our supply chain going.

What we keep learning is that you have elites over at conferences like this saying that we need to cut back on meat, cut out agriculture. They want us to cut 30 percent of our agriculture. There is already a food shortage in much of the world, and even in some of our urban areas in this country, what we call food deserts.

What is their reality with that? There is no reality to this. This is a way to control our lives, our choices, as they want to phase out meat and agricultural products grown in this country.

Do you want to depend on it coming from somewhere else? That works really great. Wait until they have a food embargo like the fuel embargoes we had in the 1970s. The rest of the world does not look out for the needs of the United States like we do ourselves.

It is about time we put aside this nonsense of getting to some kind of zero output of carbon by 2035 or 2050 or whatever round number they dream up as a goal. Like my home State of California, they do it all the time.

At the same time that they are saying less carbon, they are also taking away the means to produce carbon-free electricity, such as tearing out the dams on the Klamath River and other dams up in Oregon and Washington that make clean hydroelectric power, low-cost power.

Why do we need to have our electricity cost so much because of some people's wild dream, and controlling dream, on eliminating CO2, which is really not a problem? It is not a poisonous gas. It is not negative. Carbon is a building block of all of what we have and what we do.

That isn't talked about a lot. Instead, we hear this side of the room half the time--it is all about carbon. Every conversation, every committee has to filter something through climate change. Climate change is a constant in our lives and on our planet. That reality doesn't get talked about, it is just hype, hype, hype.

Czar Kerry comes back with more and more ideas on how to control us and take away the basic sustenance that makes this country strong with its energy and self-provision of food that keep us strong.

Mr. Speaker, it should be obvious and common sense, but border security is national security. President Biden's open border policies have incentivized this historic surge in illegal immigration at our southern and northern borders.

Since taking office, over 6.4 million illegal crossings have happened at our southern border; 1.7 million known got-aways have evaded U.S. Border Patrol and are now in our country.

Every State is now a border State. Every town is now a border town. They are living in New York. Democrats are proposing that our national parks be used not for people to enjoy but to house illegal immigrants, which will only further encourage this crisis.

Republicans and Democrats alike have condemned Biden's border crisis, but we must stop incentivizing further waves of illegal immigrants by providing them with free housing.

House Republicans will continue to fight to secure our border and eliminate the financial burden illegal immigrants are putting on American taxpayers and our institutions, our towns, our States. That is why we passed H.R. 2 to secure the border, which is the strongest border security package in American history.

Mr. Speaker, the United States' debt has grown by $2.5 trillion over the last year. Over the last 20 months, thanks to Biden- led policies, $4.8 trillion. This is a massive driver of inflation and lack of credit on the market out there for regular people.

On top of the omnibus bill done a year ago and many other big spending ideas that were gotten through in the previous Congress, now the President wants to add $6 billion more for high-speed rail in California, $3 billion for the project, that is already 15 years late and four times its budget price, and $3 billion more now for what was going to be a private concern from LA to Las Vegas, the gambler special.

We need highways to be rebuilt. We need less debt causing people to not be able to make ends meet. Why are we putting it on these boondoggles in southern California? It is crazy. Put it toward highways that people can use or something else.