Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise in sadness to remember a personal friend from home in the district. Wallace Clark Roney, who everyone knows as Wally Roney, passed recently due to health issues.

Wally was a fifth-generation cattle rancher, lifelong steward of the land, and, indeed, a towering, imposing figure--a big guy in California agriculture.

Yet, that big guy, as imposing as he was, was also like a big bear cub. He loved what he did. He loved helping his neighbors. He loved helping the cattle industry and sticking up for agriculture. You won't find a better friend.

Wally and his wife, Billie Jean, are good friends of mine. As we remember him today and feel that sadness, know that his spirit of fighting for agriculture, as a fellow Cal Poly Mustang graduate, will also be remembered and appreciated.

Wally was a respected leader, of course, in his field in all those areas, blending old-school ranching with a sharp business sense and a deep understanding of land management.

Wally grew up alongside seasoned hands, learning the value of grit, responsibility, and persistence. He trained horses, rodeoed, raised cattle, and never hesitated to speak up when it was important to help preserve his industry and preserve a lifestyle not just for him but for his neighbors and everybody who depends on us as a food supply, making America stronger.

God bless Wally and his wife, Billie Jean. We will miss him. He was a good friend, and he will never be replaced but will always be remembered.

Mr. Speaker, I heartily applaud Secretary Duffy's decision the other day to repeal and rescind the $4 billion that the Federal Government has put in at the end of the Biden administration for the high-speed rail in California. Indeed, it has been a clown show. The thing is off the rails with any kind of goal it was ever going to meet.

It was supposed to have been completed by 2020, and at best now it would be completed by 2040, 2045, with just one segment between Bakersfield and Merced completed by 2033 they hope.

Instead, let's move that $4 billion to something useful such as expanding State Route 99 in California, I-15, I-5, Interstate 395, Interstate 80. That money could be used to repair roadways designated as farm-to-market roads or State Route 152. By raising it a little bit, we would be able to add more water supply to the San Luis Reservoir or the bridge over I-5 over the Shasta Lake. In doing so, that would allow us to raise the level of that lake and provide much more water for the State of California in order to grow crops which would bring inflation down on the food prices by rechanneling money into something useful instead of something useless like this clown show that is the high- speed rail for 20 years.

Mr. Speaker, we are heading into the peak of the fire season in the West. The last thing California and other Western States need is even more red tape stopping firefighters from doing their jobs. Our State and most of the West burns every year. We have seen entire towns wiped out time and again, people killed, with homes, power lines, forests, wildlife gone.

Now, right when we should be preparing to fight fires faster and smarter, environmental extremists are trying to ban the aerial fire retardant that the aircraft drops onto the fires by dragging them into a Clean Water Act debate.

This is insane. These airdrops save lives using this retardant. It is a well-known product, a known product, that has had a long time in use. All of a sudden they want to sue over it. This product helped slow the fires down, giving the firefighters a chance to set up and stop them from spreading even more to tens of thousands more acres.

We are not talking a theory here. We are talking about something that has been used in practice, real tools that have been used safely for decades. The smoke alone from one major wildfire does more harm than a targeted retardant drop ever could.

The PERMIT Act, coming to the floor this week, cuts through this bureaucracy, allowing firefighters to have this material they need to effectively fight fire.

Mr. Speaker, California's high-speed rail system has been in existence as an entity for 17 years. Mr. Speaker, about $17 billion has been raised to build what is now costing $128 billion. It is about $112 billion short, and it wants to come to the Federal Government and demand even more money for something that is so far off track, so far off of its timeline it is almost funny.

They want to build a line from a place called Merced to Bakersfield. They are calling that the early operating system, which is already 12 years behind on just that segment.

It is time to cut the ties to the California high-speed rail. I appreciate Secretary Duffy of Transportation taking a look at this and saying the 50 States' taxpayers should not be funding it any more in the effort to claw back about $3.5 billion or so that the Biden administration approved as they exited.

I think the high-speed rail is nice to take a look at and look at the concept and determine if it is going to work, but in California, it is not going to work. It is a boondoggle. We don't have the money for it. They sure as heck shouldn't get any more Federal dollars for it.

Mr. Speaker, with the budget reconciliation package now signed into law, we are finally taking real steps to fix our forests. This is something we have needed for many years in California and all over the West.

The law directs the Forest Service to increase timber sales by 250 million board feet each year and the Bureau of Land Management by another 20 million.

My colleagues might wonder: Wow, 250 million sounds like a lot. It would

sound like a lot, but if my friends knew that our forests are growing ten times the amount of board feet versus what is being taken out each year, they would know we are going to fall farther and farther behind unless we get more aggressive on forest management policy.

Therefore, we will get many more million-acre wildfires and smoke plumes coming all the way to the East Coast, as came for my district in what was known as the Dixie fire just a few years ago.

We will get more and more dead trees coming out of the forest. We will get more logs heading to our local mills. Why is the U.S. the number one importer of wood products when we are burning it in our own Western States? There will be less fields sitting there, waiting to burn if we take this stuff out of the forest.

It is very important in northern California, and in the Western States it is very important. We have lived through these devastating wildfires time and time again, and we are getting really tired of it.

Better forest management isn't an option. It is a necessity. This is the people's lands and the people's asset. If the Federal Government isn't going to take care of it, we need to find more partners to do it otherwise.

This requires long-term contracts, giving the industry more continuity. They will know that if they invest tens of millions of dollars building a mill, they will be able to pay for that mill over the years by having a continuous flow of timber to them.

It is important for our small towns and for the jobs that used to be in them and for the businesses that are now boarded up because of the issues of crime and domestic abuse when people don't have work. They need that work. They need those jobs. We need that for our economy. Make it in the USA.

Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of talk, just flat-out deception--you can even call it lies--about the big, beautiful bill and that we would be cutting aid to mothers, kids, seniors, and people with disabilities.

That is just flat wrong. That is a deception being pulled on the American people to get them to panic about us trying to take corrective action on our massive Federal deficit and set things on a good course for all Americans.

We are making sure that Medicaid stays strong for the people who truly count on it. In my home State of California, for example, Governor Newsom and the State legislature have stretched Medicaid way beyond intention and even sustainability.

In California, it is called Medi-Cal. It had run an additional $12 billion worth of deficit on the State budget because they want to hand it out to illegal immigrants in our home State. That is the effect on our State budget, $12 billion in the hole. They wanted to raise taxes to fix that.

Also, by waiving work requirements for able-bodied adults who choose not to work, it drains resources from people who are actually the intended recipients of the program.

With this new law, we are cutting waste, fraud, and red tape so States can zero in on helping people actually qualified, as designed. We are putting billions into long-term care, which means more care at home for people or keeping them close by.

Don't buy the lies. This Medicaid package is going to be helpful long term.

Mr. Speaker, in my home State of California, gas, fuel, is about $1.44 more than the national average. Let's talk about where that money goes based on this graphic we have from California Energy.

Right here at the top, over a third of the costs are imposed by the State.

Let's go to the bottom here. Let's see what it takes to get a gallon of fuel to a station.

Down here at the bottom, we have the crude oil cost itself, to explore and get it out of the field. Next, we have the refinery costs. We see at the bottom it is about $1.83 or so in California and 86 cents for the refinery. Then it is 47 cents on top of that to get it to the retailer and be able to pump it into the vehicles.

Then we get into the litany of taxes on top of that. We have a cap- and-trade tax of 24 cents and the low carbon fuel standard of 18 cents. We have the Federal excise tax, which is 18 cents on the Federal side, of course. We have the State excise tax of 60 cents, and State and local sales tax of about 10 cents. Then we have an underground storage usage fee which is another 2 cents.

That is not all. With all these out-of-pocket costs, the wisdom in California is we need to add more tax to that. There is an automatic ratchet up of one of these taxes of another 1.6 cents that will happen in July.

The new one is going to be a brand new environmental tax. Some estimates are it will be 65 cents per gallon. That is 65 cents of a new tax per gallon on top of all the other fees on the most expensive State to buy fuel in already.

It is amazing how out of touch Sacramento is on that. What is Sacramento doing? Why is that important? There are many other States trying to emulate what California does with California's CARB rules, the California Air Resources Board.

For example, recently we were able to turn back an electric vehicle mandate via the CRA process that President Trump signed. California had sought a waiver for this, but also 16 other States want to be part of it, as well.

New Jersey, Colorado, Maryland, Oregon, Illinois, Rhode Island, Vermont, D.C., Massachusetts, Minnesota, Washington, and others want to join that parade with California on being forced to have electric vehicles.

The State's mandate would be 35 percent of all vehicles sold in California by the end of next year would have to be electric. Cars will sit on the lots that they can't sell, and the consumer won't be able to buy the vehicles they want because those lots have to sell those as mandated.

We are in a situation where not only do we have bad ideas coming from California, but other States think it is a good idea to follow those. It is detrimental to auto manufacturing and the market in this country and, most importantly, the choices for people.

On top of that, in California, we have two State refineries that are slated to close unless they get some help in the eleventh hour. Phillips 66 will shut down a plant this fall, and Valero up in Benicia will shut down a plant next spring.

That will take 21 percent of refinery capacity out of the State of California. We have our own special blend of fuel that we can't get from anywhere else unless the Governor might give a waiver in an emergency and allow it to be brought in by train or truck from some other State that has refineries.

We are going to see one-fifth of our available fuel disappear at the end of the year due to mandates. No matter how many electric vehicles will be built between now and then, that is going to have a very, very detrimental effect on industry, on agriculture, on mining, on timber, as well as families and schoolbuses. Mr. Speaker, you name it, the price of fuel won't go down. It will continue to go up.

A study by USC, University of Southern California, which is independent of us, says we could see a daily shortfall of up to 13.1 million gallons of gas because of these closures.

With all of this stacked together--the tax hikes, the CARB rule, the refineries shutting down--that same study says we could see fuel hit $8.43 a gallon in California. Isn't that a neat reality?

I have a farm at home. We have to buy a lot of diesel in order to make things happen and grow our crop. I can't imagine my fuel going up another 50 percent.

The wages are forced to go up by State mandate, as well. We like paying our guys, but people need to have some say in what they pay. They have mandated the McDonald's workers get $20, plus a ratchet on that. We now see more kiosks at McDonald's.

Other States want to copy California on clean air rules, clean car rules, and things like that. I mentioned some of them on this list. We don't want to go there unless we can enjoy this sort of thing.

California until recently had a $12 billion deficit because they are giving $12 billion to illegal immigrants for Medicaid. They are going to make that up on the backs of people with taxes like this and give us things like high-speed rail.

Mr. Speaker, nuclear power is almost an untapped source from what it could be in this country. It is just under 20 percent of the power grid. Yet, when we are talking about trying to eliminate CO2 to get our numbers down from 0.04 percent of CO2, nuclear power presents one of the best ways we can accomplish that. Nuclear power also has a baseload power that you can rely on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week instead of waiting for the Sun to come up or for the wind to blow.

It is, indeed, something that needs to be embraced much more, but we all have other things to do. In just a couple years, imported uranium from Russia is going to be cut off. Therefore, 20 percent of our uranium stocks are going to go down when it is no longer being imported from Russia.

What does that mean for us? We need to get to mining in this country again. We need to produce it here in the USA. We need to get cracking on making uranium a useable part of our power grid because power is going to increase in its demand with data centers and with California trying to electrify everything. We will need a heck of a lot more power, and nuclear power is going to be a very important component for baseload reliable power to do so.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor the outstanding military service career of Colonel James R. Bartran, II of the United States Air Force (USAF). Colonel Bartran currently serves as the Deputy Commander of the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base in Wheatland, California.

As Deputy Commander of the 9th Reconnaissance Wing, Colonel Bartran is responsible for approximately 7,000 military, civilian, and contract personnel, and the entire Air Force high altitude reconnaissance fleet of the U-2 Dragon Lady aircraft at the base. Prior to his deployment at Beale AFB, Colonel Bartran was a student at the Army War College.

Colonel Bartran was first commissioned in May of 2001, and since that time he has served dutifully in the USAF defending our Nation's homeland from overseas threats.

Colonel Bartran has logged over 4,800 flight hours in a wide assortment of aircraft including: B-1B, T-38A, T-38C, T-34C, TU-2S, UH- 60, TH-57, and others. He has flown 78 combat missions with 700 hours of combat time. His combat experience includes deployments in support of Operations: Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom as well as multiple non-combat deployments in support of: US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), US European Command (USEUCOM), US Africa Command (USAFRICOM), US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), and US Central Command (USCENTCOM) conducting sensitive reconnaissance operations.

During Colonel Bartran's distinguished military career, he would also serve as the Commander of the 5th Reconnaissance Wing in the USINDOPACOM leading 250 personnel and executing manned high altitude reconnaissance missions.

Colonel Bartran earned a BA Degree in Business Management & Finance from Washington State University in 2001, and a Master of Military Operational Art and Science (MMAS) degree from the Air Command and Staff College (ACSC) in 2010. In addition, he has earned numerous awards and decorations such as: Meritorious Service Medal with six Oak Leaf Clusters, Air Medal with one Oak Leaf Cluster, Aerial Achievement Medal with six Oak Leaf Clusters, and the Air Force Achievement Medal.

Colonel Bartran lives with his wife Jackie, and their three children Lillian, James, and Joseph. It has been a pleasure to get to know Colonel Bartran in his last few years of service at Beale AFB. I found him to be a man of faith, honor, and integrity. I thank him for the work he has done with myself and my team to protect and expand the Air Force's many missions at Beale AFB.

Colonel Bartran will be retiring from the USAF after 24 years of military service in defense of the United State of America. On behalf of the citizens of Northern California and a grateful Nation, we thank Colonel Bartran for his outstanding military career and service in the defense of freedom around the globe. We wish him all the best in his retirement and hope our paths do continue to cross. I thank him for his service. May God bless him and his family.

Mr. Speaker, it is the time of year with a lot of fretting over heat waves. We are calling it a heat dome now. What does that really mean?

It usually means that the next step by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle typically is to say: Oh, my gosh, it is more climate change. We have to put out another tax for climate change.

California is getting ready to do that on gasoline starting on July 1. It is estimated anywhere from 47 cents to 65 cents per gallon. What are we talking about? It is CO2, which is carbon dioxide.

Look at these charts. This is 1970 and 2025. Yellow is nitrogen. Blue is oxygen. Here is argon, and here is carbon dioxide. Look at that little sliver right there. Look at that one. It is the same.

It is an infinitesimal amount of the percentage of gases in our atmosphere. Yet we are spending trillions and changing our lifestyle in this country. We are chasing the number of CO2 from 0.04 percent down to 0.035 or whatever the number of the week is.

We are harming ourselves while the rest of the world keeps moving forward. Oil and gas by other developing countries is going to skyrocket while we live in caves.

Mr. Speaker, the Forest Service is beginning the process to repeal the 2001 Roadless Rule, a move that has been long overdue.

I commend Secretary Rollins, as she pointed out that this rule has been disastrous for the West, blocking forest thinning, logging, and road construction. As you can see from the map here, about 640 million acres are controlled by the Federal Government across our country, about half of that in the Forest Service.

These restrictions made it harder to fight wildfires, protect public safety, and manage our forests responsibly. When government puts up gates and keeps people out from doing forest practices that are positive or even being able to get in and fight fires because the roads are disappearing, it is a bad deal for all of us.

The rule was pushed through in the final days of the Clinton administration, backed by environmental activists in Washington, not the people who actually live near these forests and suffer from the smoke and the threat. It has led to overgrown, unhealthy forests, and prevented rural counties from using this land to create jobs which generate the income for their local governments, schools, and roads and reduced fire risk.

Repealing the Roadless Rule is an important step toward restoring this entry we need to our lands, improving wildfire response, and bringing back common sense to forest management.

Mr. Speaker, lately there has been one heck of a lot of misinformation--which would be the kind term--flat-out lies about the land that is held in control by the Federal Government and proposals to perhaps sell a part of it.

What are we looking at here? There are really a lot of people on the left talking about an idea, a concept that hasn't even been completely fleshed out over on the Senate side, as part of the big, beautiful bill.

If you have listened to their talking points, you would think we are selling off Yosemite and bulldozing national parks, which, of course, is nonsense. No one is proposing that. They know it but they keep saying it anyway.

Groups are putting out deliberately misleading maps, showing entire national forests and mountain ranges being at risk, even though the bill explicitly protects any land with a designation such as national parks, monuments, recreation areas, wilderness, and more.

It also excludes land with valid existing rights, which means grazing leases and mining claims stay in place, and backcountry roads and trails will be protected.

I am disappointed with some of the people that I tend to hang with generally on falling to that category, as well.

What is actually being considered are isolated, orphaned parcels near existing development. These are parcels the Federal Government doesn't maintain and usually has no use for. A lot of times the Federal land is held in checkerboard patterns.

Let me refer to the map here a little bit. You see this bright orange in the Western States, west of the Rockies, that is dominated as federally controlled land. The East much less so. That is probably why folks in the Eastern part of the country don't think this is a big deal. They think we will just let the Federal Government control more and more of these lands.

Let's look at Nevada here. It is almost solid orange, as well as Utah. My district in northern California is dominated by Federal land.

Is that good or is that bad?

Well, when we continue to have million-acre fires, hundreds of thousands of acres of fires, whichever year it is occurring, it is a pretty bad deal, as well.

We used to have a good, strong timber industry in my part of the State, as well as the West, that has been replaced by us having to come hat in hand every year to ask for what is called Secure Rural Schools funding, which is a replacement for what used to go to counties and local schools from timber harvest receipts. That was knocked out years ago due to the spotted owl and environmental stuff that has gone along with that for so many years. What we get then is Federal lands that are held and hardly even managed or touched.

I gave you all the exclusions a moment ago on areas that wouldn't even be part of a proposal, which is still a proposal over on the Senate side, on what Federal lands might be for sale. The Federal Government controls 640 million acres. What is even being talked about over there is a tiny fraction of that. The last number I heard was somewhere around 3 million. I don't know if that will hold up in the bill or not. New proposals are coming on that, but at least we can talk about it. We are talking about the sale of maybe one-half of 1 percent of all this

land dominated and not managed well by the Forest Service, not managed well by BLM, and not managed well by others, the national parks even.

The National Park Service is years and years and billions of dollars behind on their maintenance, and sometimes they want to even buy up more land. We talk about once in a while rejiggering that a little bit or having a reset. Maybe there are some lands that would be appropriate to be sold off. Oh, my gosh. It is the end of the world. No, it isn't.

In my area of northern California, we are tired of it. We are tired of the lands not being managed. They are going up in smoke, burning out wildlife, burning out the watersheds, which means all that ash and then later on erosion ends up in our waterways and in our water supply. It is not a win.

When are we going to have this discussion? I am not sure if it is going to come out over in the Senate in a final bill that we are going to vote on to affirm or not. We should, at least, have an honest discussion about what is going on with the Federal land that the government controls, 640 million acres. We are talking about maybe one- half of 1 percent.

Our counties and our local tax bases are eroded from so much. I mentioned the Secure Rural Schools. There is also another one called PILT. It is called Payments in Lieu of Taxes. That means when there is so much land owned by the Federal Government that the counties don't gain a property tax base from that. We have to come hat in hand, once again, to the Federal Government and say: Would you please send us our PILT money. They take a long time to get it out, or you have to fight to get it into a bill.

The people in the Eastern States or in the urban areas wonder: Why are we sending this money? Why do we care about SRS, or Secure Rural Schools? Why do we care about PILT? That is because you took that stuff away from us a long time ago.

The Founders had no concept that this much land would be federally controlled, yet here we are. We are getting bad results from it on the way it is mismanaged or nonmanaged, all of the above.

With that much being owned or controlled by the Federal Government, it is at least okay to have a conversation once in a while about whether this is appropriate. I think in the sense we are talking about, yes, we want to preserve the wetlands. We want to take care of those lands, but there are lands that are appropriate to talk about any possible situation like this.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in sadness at the loss of a friend from Siskiyou County in northern California. Sam Jackson, known as Samuel Berling Jackson, was a lifelong rancher in Siskiyou County. The legacy of the Jackson family just goes on for generations.

He was a Navy veteran and a lifelong rancher who was very dedicated to the ranching life up there, as well as making it a stronger agricultural and ranching industry for others with the service he did on the various committees and associations that he was part of.

Born in Weed in 1932 and raised on the Jackson Ranch in Edgewood, California, he was the fourth Samuel Jackson at that time. My understanding now, with the latest, there are actually eight Sam Jacksons in the family.

Sam served in the Navy during the Korean war. He earned his degree in animal husbandry at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and returned home to raise a family and build a life rooted in faith, hard work, and stewardship of the land.

Sam was a fierce advocate for agriculture as I mentioned, protecting water rights, ranching traditions, and farmland.

With his beloved wife, Erlene, he raised 4 children and 10 grandchildren, leaving a legacy of love and leadership.

He was just a great friend personally to me at the barbecues and such. I might end up behind the barbecue wagon there, maybe having an Early Times with a little 7UP in it. What a great friend he was. He was a guy that loved life and loved to share it with others and stand up for what was right as an American. We greatly appreciated him.

Here is the picture I want everybody to think of him, as well. I think it is magnificent there in his home county in Siskiyou on his lands. He was a great leader and a great man. I am better for having known him.

God bless Sam.

Mr. Speaker, in the futile chase to try to reduce the amount of CO2, carbon dioxide, in our atmosphere, many trillions of dollars around the U.S. and other western countries, the enlightened countries, are going to be wasted chasing this endeavor.

When I ask the average person how much CO2 do they believe there is in the atmosphere, with all the hype, with all the fear that has been put on for the last couple of decades by the left, by the environmental groups, I get numbers like 20 percent, 50 percent, 70 percent. Even people I ask in committee that are supposed to know, that are supposed to be experts, give me numbers that are way out of line with the actual number.

My graph right here shows what really is in the atmosphere: Nitrogen, 78 percent; oxygen, 21 percent. It doesn't leave a whole lot left for the CO2 threat to mankind, does it? You actually find that skinny one right there, 0.04 percent. We are going to ruin our economy in order to sequester carbon, to spend all of this money and not run power plants, like in California, for example, because they have to have permission to operate only if they capture CO2 out of the atmosphere or out of their exhaust and shove it underground and store it for who knows how long and to what effect.

The CO2 thing is a scam. This climate change talk is harmful to our country and other Western countries that have bought into it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is going to develop and use more oil and gas than ever. The trends are going to skyrocket up in developing countries. China builds more coal-fired power plants than you can shake a stick at. Only the U.S. is going to be the ones suffering from chasing the CO2 thing, to reduce it from 0.04 percent to 0.035 percent.

Mr. Speaker, here is something to get excited about in the month of June--ice cream. National Dairy Month is a good time to recognize the work of our Nation's dairy farmers.

My home State of California leads the Nation in dairy production, with thousands of family-run farms that have been at it for generations. These farmers aren't just producing milk. They are driving a big part of our local economy and providing jobs in rural agricultural areas.

Dairies are also making strides in using modernized processes to keep the land and water healthy. However, dairies are often under fire from environmental groups, such as those in Point Reyes, that are trying to push them out using fake environmental pronouncements and basically running them out of business in Point Reyes. They deserve a lot better than that.

Remember, when you enjoy a glass of milk, a slice of cheese, or one of your favorite ice creams, there are real people doing the really good, sustainable, and responsible work of operating these dairies, many of them organic, to keep it on the table for all of us.

Let's celebrate and remember during National Dairy Month the work that these farmers put in and what it means to all of us.