Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, more than a year after it happened, Americans still have not heard the truth about President Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. It seems this administration would rather pretend the whole affair never happened.

The disastrous, ill-executed withdrawal cost the lives of 13 American servicemen. Despite this horrific failure, not one person in the State Department, military, or any Federal agency that planned and executed the withdrawal from Afghanistan has resigned in disgrace. No one has apologized. No one has owned up to their mistake.

Now, the State Department is ignoring a congressional subpoena from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The American people sacrificed blood and treasure in Afghanistan for almost two decades. They deserve the truth about what happened, but trying to hide requested information by the State Department is preventing the accountability that we should demand.

Mr. Speaker, we have to get to the bottom of how the withdrawal from Afghanistan went off the rails, so our Nation does not repeat such things in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time this evening. Thank you to my colleague from Michigan for leading us on this and for being a fighter in the trenches on what we are talking about.

Indeed, we are talking about the Nation's debt issues, the necessary measure we have of having to extend the debt limit as the dollars have already been committed. They have already been spent. We have to pay for them.

The Limit, Save, Grow Act is, indeed, a responsible way to try and turn the tide on what had been much spending over the last few years that has extended our national debt to just unthought of numbers; over $31 trillion.

In this measure that we are speaking of this evening here--really, since January, the Democrats and the President have tried to claim falsely that Republicans have no plan.

We have been talking about a plan the whole time. The difference is they don't want to sit down and talk with us about how to meld their ideas with ours.

This week we released our plan, and today we passed it. As always, House Republicans have consistently argued for reasonable, responsible debt limit increases, coupled with spending reductions in order to move toward eventually balancing this budget.

It is absurd that the Democrats now demand unilateral increases to our Nation's debt and balk at Republicans for asking for something in a negotiation.

Our plan, the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023, saves American taxpayers $4.5 trillion over the next decade. It will limit Federal spending to fiscal year 2022 levels, which our government operated on just 4 months ago. It does allow for 1 percent annual growth in Federal spending over the next 10 years. For those that want to spend more, it is still built in but at a flatter rate, flattening the curve on spending. If we had been able to hold that for the last 10 years, we would be really close to a balanced budget.

Also included in the bill are important clawbacks for $60 billion in unspent COVID funds. When people see that these unspent COVID funds are sitting there, then they covet them. You get everybody coming in asking if they can shift these COVID relief funds to some other pet project. That is not what was intended at the time we had a crisis, however much of that crisis might have been exacerbated by false information or what have you, but indeed, the opportunity to take $60 billion of unspent funds and pull them back, and indeed, have better conversations in a budget and appropriation process, not an emergency as was COVID, it would be much better for all of us.

As we know, the pandemic is over. This money has not been spent, and it should be rescinded without delay. That is what we did today in this piece of legislation, the Limit, Save, Grow Act.

Also included in the bill is our Lower Energy Costs Act, which has already passed this Chamber with bipartisan support previously. It lowers energy costs for American families and modernizes our outdated permitting process.

The House Republicans' plan is economically sound, financially wise, and allows for a debt limit increase of $1.5 trillion to pay our bills. It is a reasonable, responsible plan that will benefit all Americans.

This body deliberated on the merits of this legislation and has passed this legislation. The U.S. responsibly did its job on a debt ceiling to pay its already incurred bills. The profligate spending of the past years cannot become the permanent way of business of this House or of Washington, D.C.

We cannot afford even more high-speed debt on bills pretending to be COVID fixes about infrastructure that actually isn't infrastructure, or masquerading as a fix for inflation.

It is now on the Democrats in the Senate and the White House to meet with House Republicans at the negotiation table to actually come to a solution.

The stall tactics by Senate Leader Schumer and President Biden to run out the clock and do a last-minute crisis debt limit bill with a Christmas tree of goodies that will only cause more crushing debt cannot be the way of doing business here.

Never before in our Nation's history has a debt ceiling been raised without spending reductions to go along with it. It is a negotiation. This time should be no different. We must demand that the Senate come to the table and the White House negotiate.

By us getting legislation out of this body here now, the ball is in their corner. It is time for them to look at our document and come up with their ideas and sit down and do as these bodies are supposed to do in front of the American people, not on Zoom, not behind masks, not remotely, but in front of everybody and make a product that we can all be proud of and at least live with and move towards balancing our budget longer term.

This is what House Republicans are trying to do, not all the caterwauling we heard about, how it is going take away from this and that and the poor and every other group you can name here. It doesn't even touch all that. We have already spent the money. We have to have the debt ceiling increased and be responsible with the spending reductions as we go along.

What could be wrong with that?

I appreciate the effort of my colleagues, our leadership, and Speaker McCarthy to get this thing through and get everybody at the table on our side and hopefully be successful with the Senate and the White House to see the logic of what we are trying to do here.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Bergman for leading us here, and I am actually fairly excited and optimistic that we can get this document out.

Mr. Speaker, since January, Democrats and the President have tried to falsely claim that House Republicans have no plan regarding the Nation's debt ceiling crisis.

This week, we released our plan. As always, House Republicans have consistently argued for reasonable, responsible debt limit increases coupled with spending cuts.

Every debt limit debate in this body has been achieved via compromise. It is absurd to think that our Democrat colleagues now demand unilateral increases to our Nation's debt and balk at Republicans for asking for something in return.

Our plan, the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023, will save the American taxpayers $4.5 trillion over the next decade. We will limit Federal spending to fiscal year 2022 levels, which our government operated on just 4 months ago.

In exchange, we will allow for a 1 percent annual growth in Federal spending over the next 10 years, which is a compromise.

Included in the bill are clawbacks for around $60 billion in unspent COVID funds. The pandemic is over, and this money that has not been spent should be rescinded without delay.

Also included in the bill is our Lower Energy Costs Act, which has already passed this Chamber with bipartisan support, lowering energy costs for American families.

House Republicans' plan is economically sound, financially wise, and still allows for a debt limit increase of $1.5 trillion. This is a reasonable and responsible plan that will benefit all Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to rise today in support of Congressman Steube's H.R. 734. It is amazing how contorted this argument has become.

This is simply about protecting women and girls in sports. We have seen what has happened when we don't. We have seen in women's cage fighting, where you have a biological male cracking the heads of the women in there. It is so uncompetitive.

Girls in college sports or women's sports when they step up to the starting line in track meets feel already defeated because there are two biological males running against them.

Are we going to protect women and girls in sports and the rest of life or not?

This legislation simply goes in the direction of allowing sports to be competitive once again for women and

girls. This legislation is not about all the other things that the folks on the other side of the aisle are trying to turn it into.

It is simple and it is really essential if we want to have our women and our girls not feel defeated right out of the chute.

I don't know where the feminists are, but there are a lot of us men that feel strongly about this, supporting this, and supporting Title IX, and the whole concept that men and women are different. Girls and women deserve the same chance as everybody else.

Mr. Speaker, during a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing yesterday, former Director of National Intelligence Ratcliffe testified that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science, and by common sense.

On Monday morning, a new Senate report concluded there were two leaks from the Wuhan lab in 2019 and this Nation had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

At the same Tuesday hearing, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Feith revealed that the State Department tried hiding evidence of U.S. funded gain-of-function research, arguing it could open a Pandora's box.

In other words, they concluded it would be easier to lie, therefore, endanger the American people and the world because telling the truth would expose a lot of difficult questions.

These revelations are further proof of what many Americans already know to be true: Dr. Anthony Fauci misled the public continuously during the pandemic about the origins of this virus and the risk of gain-of-function research.

People in our own government aided this for various reasons, selfishly wanting to defraud and endanger the public while they pursued their own goals. Director Ratcliffe's and Mr. Feith's testimony, as well as the Senate report, should disturb every lawmaker in this Chamber.

Thank you, again, to my colleague from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson), for leading this time for us to further inform the American people on these key matters.

Really, this is what House Republicans have demonstrated so far in this majority here in the last 3 months or so.

The priorities of the American people are our priorities for their well-being, their prosperity, and we are achieving that in the legislation we are pushing through.

Unfortunately, that priority is not shared by our President, and a lot of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are focused on a lot of other things that are very destructive to our economy, destructive to the well-being of what has really made this country strong economically and morally.

Our economic base pivots mainly on energy, continued development of it, developing newer, better technologies which in this country, when we have the entrepreneurship, the freedom and means to continue to innovate instead of getting railroaded into things that don't work.

A lot of that is this massive bent toward electrifying all of our energy-consuming devices, whether they be automobiles or appliances, things that we use for manufacturing, industry, what have you.

I just have to tell you, remind you, that our power grid, our electricity grid, especially in my home State, is this close, especially on a hot summer day, toward collapsing.

It is not enough, certainly, to take into account the big ideas there are to electrify cars, trucks, leaf blowers, stoves, and this is over the protests of the very people who are going to be expected to buy them and replace them.

Have you seen cities and municipalities moving in the direction of banning all new gas stoves? Well, gas stoves work awfully well for people, for homeowners that wish to have that choice.

When we see government continuing to take choices away from people, you are not seeing it from House Republicans.

You are seeing it from the left. You are seeing it from this White House. You are seeing it from the policies that come from the Democrat leadership. People need to realize where this comes from.

Legislation that was passed in the seventies, NEPA as part of Endangered Species Act, as part of the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, those are good things, were good things at the time.

They have been weaponized over the last 30 or 40 years to stop projects that people want from getting done, whether it is widening their highways to have better transportation infrastructure; whether it is agriculture. You

know, incredibly, we are seeing that in this country, we might have empty store shelves of certain products that people come to expect; certainly we are seeing much higher prices for food.

What is the key to this? Energy. We don't have low-cost energy, reasonable energy, and we have stopped exploring for new oil and gas.

We stopped building power plants. Indeed, in my district, they are trying to tear down hydroelectric plants that make CO2-free power.

We all love CO2-free stuff, and they want to tear out this infrastructure. Our only nuclear power plant left in California, Diablo Canyon, got a 5-year reprieve by the legislature recently.

There are people already trying to put a stop to that 5-year reprieve of it being shut down--more CO2-free power, 9 percent of the grid.

So the weaponization of the environment has been pretty successful so far in stopping important projects. Instead, we get red tape, bloat, all sorts of things from the government instead of the projects people need in order to continue.

Western civilization is defined by our ability to produce not only what we need but to help others around the world. We are unable to do that effectively if we keep going in this direction.

A bill we passed last week, H.R. 1, was critical toward moving back this 2\1/2\ to 3-year funk we had under President Biden and also pivoting off of COVID shutting down our lives, largely.

I can even extend that to the importance of forest management because the smoke plume from that affects the whole country when you have a million-acre fire like I had in my district.

H.R. 1 has these key components toward helping with energy. One key component to help with forest management is to be able to do the types of thinning and work that is going to make the forests healthy. When you are talking about the Forest Service lands, they are an asset of the American people and they need to be saved.

The lunacy we have seen with the extremists manipulating environmental laws and, of course, court decisions that aren't really based so much on what the intent of the law was 50 years ago is really harming our country. It is really harming the people, causing unnecessarily high costs of everything, and taking choices off your table, taking choices out of your garage, et cetera, et cetera.

H.R. 1 is a good start on that. We need our colleagues in the Senate to pass that and get it to the White House and, hopefully, convince the President to do the right thing; not just shut down more energy.

Folks, we have got to have you pay attention to this stuff and be on our side on this because we are actually on your side and not trying to take away your choices, your livelihoods, and harm you economically.

Mr. Speaker, today, the House will vote to decide whether to overturn another bad decision by President Biden.

His veto of H.J. Res. 27, which overturned the EPA's and Army Corps of Engineers' overreaching definition of

``waters of the United States,'' in yet another rule change to that law, keeps the new expanded definition of WOTUS in place.

This change to one of most abused and litigated Federal statutes on the books allows the EPA to regulate every single ditch, every little puddle, every ephemeral stream in America, as if they were somehow the Mississippi River or the Sacramento River, in my home State.

Of course, this is ludicrous, as our Nation's commerce, agriculture, and natural beauty are not dependent on a farmer's self-made ditch or irrigation canal or these ephemeral streams.

With the expanded WOTUS rule, the Federal Government can now regulate almost any activity, from farming to landscaping, which occurs on private property.

Treating Americans' private property as sacrosanct has been a core principle of this Nation for over two centuries.

Our Founders would be horrified to see a United States Government agency, headquartered here in Washington, D.C., granting itself broad power to regulate every single American on their own land.

We have seen the EPA abuse WOTUS before to regulate everything from farming to home building. Ridiculous interpretations on whether you can even plant a fallow field back to a wheat crop that previously had one without a permit can often take 3 years because there is no motivation from the Army Corps or other regulators to get the job done and tell the farmer: Yes, you may farm your ground the way you did it once before. They sued them for it, they fined them, and basically put them out of business over a farming activity that has occurred.

Another example is the couple that are being sued over WOTUS, and it is being used as a weapon to prevent a married couple from building their dream home near the shore of a lake, all within the rules.

I guarantee you, when the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Act were passed in the early seventies by this Congress, they did not have the intent, nor would they have gotten away with, passing legislation that would have been so far-reaching as this.

These are about, yes, clean water. They are about protecting species and some of the habitat for them, not every possible piece of ground in the world that might host one, even though they don't currently.

They would not have been able to pass that through Congress because people would have run them out of here on a rail. Yet, through court interpretations over time, rulemaking, and guidance, this is where we have gotten to. The administration, and the previous Democratic administration, have been hyperaggressive in putting waters of the United States rules in place that have little to do with what the measurement used to be, that it was a navigable stream.

Well, ``navigable'' used to mean you could actually drive a boat up and down that particular river or what have you. Now, if you can float a rubber duck in it for a half hour after a rain in a pond or a stream or what have you, then they seem to believe that should be a good enough definition for ``navigable waterways.''

It is ridiculous. With the increasing cost of food to Americans and fewer food choices on our shelves, and even empty shelves in this country, this is the move they make, to restore to previous aggressive limits of waters of the United States and take away the ability to farm our products, already safely, already reliably, already ecologically sound.

This is not needed under the Biden interpretation or the previous Obama interpretation. These are property rights, and these are land rights that are a cornerstone of our country's founding. Indeed, it is a way to take more control and put Washington, D.C., and put bureaucrats in greater charge of things that used to be good rural issues, rural values, which are keeping food on the table for Americans, thereby positioning us to be independent of having to import food, which keeps us strong.

Food is strategic. Food is a security issue. We are seeing our security dissipate rapidly under the weight of crazy regulations like this and others that are so negatively affecting our ability to produce energy in this country. WOTUS is used to stop that, too. If we don't produce our own energy, are we going to import more from the Saudis or other areas?

We have seen these embargoes twice in our past. It doesn't work very well. Energy is the core for everything in a civilized society. As we see our energy dissipating along domestic production, we are seeing the high cost of everything.

WOTUS needs to be repealed, and I hope the House does that today.

Mr. Speaker, today, I honor the memory of Miles Isbell. Today would have been Miles' 12th birthday.

At the age of 9, Miles was diagnosed with brain cancer. While undergoing treatment, he refused to stop living his life to the fullest extent possible. He stayed active in school while undergoing treatment. He became a real-life trouper and outspoken candidate for cancer research while, in one night, raising $3 million for a brain cancer research facility.

Last September, the players on the San Francisco Giants baseball team wore pediatric cancer bracelets in Miles' honor. They brought him to several games, and he was able to meet several of the team's star players.

Miles had a tenacity that few of us could match. Despite the difficulty of his diagnosis and treatments, he never once uttered the word ``cancer.'' Indeed, this hat says: ``Smiles for Miles.''

Sadly, he passed away on October 21, 2022. The mark he left behind is indelible. He touched many lives. He showed everyone around him what courage and strength in the face of darkness looks like. May we honor his memory and remember his bravery.

Miles is now resting peacefully in the arms of the Lord. We in northern California mourn his passing. He will be missed every day. I can think of no better person to honor on this floor.

Madam Speaker, California has gotten a heck of a lot of rain and snow this year. We are very grateful for that. After several dry years, Mother Nature and God have been good to us. Billions of gallons of water have flooded California in some areas, including the newly created Tulare Lake, as in previous decades.

Our snowpack is indeed at near-record levels, but so much of this water is being lost out to the ocean. California's water infrastructure hasn't been really added to in over 40 years. Now, we have a 1.5 million acre-foot project called Sites Reservoir that has been talked about for about 40 years. Endless environmental studies and other hang- ups have kept the permitting process from being completed.

All Californians--indeed all Americans--suffer because the food crops that we are growing in our State feed 90 percent of our country in certain types of crops.

In 2014, Californians voted in favor of a bond to increase our water storage if the money gets spent on tearing down dams and taking away hydroelectric power.

If Sites Reservoir was in place this year, it would be half full in just one season with 750,000 acre-feet of water. That opportunity has been lost.

Madam Speaker, we need to get these projects done.

Madam Speaker, yesterday the House included two of my

amendments into H.R. 1. Both amendments are important fire prevention measures that make northern California and rural America safer.

While we can't prevent the outbreak of every fire, we can certainly take steps to reduce the likelihood and severity of wildfire outbreaks.

The first of the amendments was called the CARR Act, which would allow the Forest Service, National Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management to thin forests and manage vegetation within 300 feet of roadways along these Federal lands.

This amendment is in response to the 2018 Carr fire, which happened near Redding, California. It spread rapidly due to overgrown vegetation near the road on Park Service land. Even the term ``firenado'' came from that fire.

The second amendment, the CLEAR Zones Act, allows us to easily clear unhealthy or hazardous trees within 50 feet of power lines. It is especially important for my district, as several fires in the past, most notably the devastating 2018 Camp Fire which devoured Paradise, California, started near power lines--in these cases either by trees falling into power lines or by equipment that is faulty.

Both of these amendments are prudent fire prevention measures that reduce the risk of fire outbreaks. They will help keep our air and water clean, our wildlife safe, and our forests green. This is good reform to help keep our forests as we would see them.

Mr. Speaker, on Sunday, ESPN celebrated Women's History Month by putting out a tweet celebrating swimmer Lia Thomas. The only problem, Lia Thomas is not a woman.

Lia, whose real name is William, is a man pretending to be a woman, ranked about 400 in men's swimming, but now about number 1 in women's.

This individual identifying as a woman was allowed to compete in women's swimming for the University of Pennsylvania. Consequently, this

person won a national title that should have gone to a female athlete.

Instead of denouncing this farcical nonsense, ESPN decided to celebrate it. It is a sad day for women's sports when our Nation's premier sports broadcaster chooses to celebrate biological males competing in women's sports.

The evidence is overwhelming that males have competitive athletic advantage over females. It, therefore, makes zero sense to allow men to compete in women's sports.

Do you call this progress? Certainly not for women athletes.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, I thank our chairman for his diligent work on H.R. 1 and the amendments that are going with it. I appreciate it.

Madam Chair, I rise today not only to support H.R. 1, that will make long overdue changes to our permitting system and allow time-sensitive projects to be considered and approved in a reasonable timeframe, but I am also in support of two amendments that I am very pleased to see included.

The first amendment is No. 23, otherwise known as the Combustion Avoidance along Rural Roads Act, or the CARR Act. The CARR Act is named after the 2018 devastating wildfire that occurred in Redding, California, that started from a flat trailer tire igniting roadside vegetation. This fire coined the term ``firenado'' as it occurred there with the deadly winds that whipped that fire into what became a 230,000-acre blaze that also took eight lives.

This bill would waive time-consuming requirements under NEPA and the ESA for wildfire mitigation activities conducted within 300 feet of a roadway. These wildfire mitigation activities would include thinning, hazardous fuels reduction, prescribed burning, and vegetation management, and be overseen by the Department of the Interior or USDA, and be conducted on Federal land as administered by the National Park system, the Bureau of Land Management, or the Forest Service.

Roadways, of course, can be a higher risk area for combustion. It only makes sense to do the type of thinning and management along roadways to vastly reduce that risk. Had this been in practice already, the Carr fire likely would not have happened.

I hope we can have this kind of common sense be applied toward our roadsides under the CARR Act.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I am disappointed that this would be deemed a wish list item, indeed, when the eight lives lost and the families affected in the Redding area would look at this as something critical.

The categorical exclusions do not go far enough, obviously, or they would have been utilized in a fashion that would be making a wide enough swath around our roadways to make them safe from fire and our forests safe from fire.

Madam Chair, I urge, please, an ``aye'' vote on this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman).

Madam Chair, I conclude by asking that we not have more scenes that look like this--similar to this--that happened in Redding, and that we be allowed to do the work effectively along our roadways, which are risk zones with traffic, et cetera.

Madam Chair, I ask for an ``aye'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, amendment No. 24, also known also the CLEAR Zones Act, is an enhancement of the Electricity Reliability and Forest Protection Act. This amendment would extend the hazard zone around power lines to allow utility companies to clear trees that pose a danger to transmission infrastructure.

It also gives automatic approval of vegetation management plans after 60 days, which keeps these plans moving forward while still giving adequate time for reasonable review instead of needless delays in these critical fire risk zones.

During debate, I have heard some of my colleagues refer to this amendment and other proposals in H.R. 1 as a giveaway, in this case, to utility companies, or a trashing of the environment. That is offensively untrue. Indeed, the environment suffers much more by the massive amount of fire we are talking about.

Both of my amendments are a direct response to wildfires that have already occurred in my district. Had they been in place, largely, the Camp fire that destroyed the town of Paradise, 153,000 acres and took 85 lives, would not have happened, as a fire caught from foliage that was underneath a power line.

Also, the million-acre Dixie fire that occurred in my district from what looked like a healthy tree falling into

a power line, destroyed two towns additionally, Greenville and Canyondam. I was there at Canyondam 5 minutes before it was lost completely.

Unlike most environmental regulations, this policy is not just about potential future effects, it is also about the fires that have already happened. They have already destroyed homes, already taken lives. This is a message to those folks that your suffering was not needless.

It is about stopping these wildfires from happening again by having wise management around our power lines so that the odds of fire occurring from these power lines existing in our rural areas is reduced greatly.

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

Madam Chair, I ask unanimous consent to reclaim my time.

Madam Chair, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman).

Madam Chair, I ask that people really stop and think about what we are asking here. This is not unreasonable where power lines interface with forested areas. Precautions like we are talking about would have directly, in these two cases, saved three towns, over 1.1 million acres, and at least 85 lives had they had the ability to thin properly around power lines. It is that basic.

As long as we are going to have electricity come from rural areas, we are going to have these needs to be able to have safety around our power lines by doing commonsense management around them.

Madam Chair, I ask Members to vote ``aye'' on amendment No. 24, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I appreciate the time here tonight to talk about this key issue.

I think, just as a reminder as we start, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are trying to make this bill into something that it isn't. The atmosphere is made up of only 0.04 percent carbon dioxide, so the hysteria, since it is raised from 0.03 for the last couple of decades, is really misplaced as we try to have an energy source that is reasonable and secure for the American people.

The Energy Information Administration predicts a 50 percent increase in global energy consumption by the year 2050.

Currently, America is the world's leading producer of natural gas. Petroleum and other fuels remain the largest energy source for Americans, and natural gas consumption increases globally are expected, as well.

We have, over time, the reality that no matter what the U.S. is doing, the rest of the world is going to be increasing its energy consumption.

You see on top here that all the renewables are great. They are only going to remain a tiny part around the world while we are contorting our economy to try to put our own selves out of business by meeting these ridiculous goals.

We must promote more domestic energy production and open more Federal lands for exploration and drilling. H.R. 1 is a tiny piece of legislation that will do that.

Give the American people what they want. Yes, they want clean air and clean water, but they also want reasonable energy. We know how to do it cleanly and efficiently.

We must not forget that, in the clean energy conversation, America's energy is cleaner than other top producers that will keep producing, like China and Russia. American energy is clean energy.

I am glad to see this bill making the reforms that are necessary to help on energy, as well as forestry, with the burdensome NEPA process that is delaying the U.S. Forest Service doing needed thinning projects, like in my district where they have had the Camp fire that burned down most of the town of Paradise and a million-acre fire known as the Dixie fire.

NEPA reform will make it where we can save our forests, have them be cleaner, have them not put so much pollution in the air that it even reaches the East Coast with smoke plumes, and, instead, have our wood and paper products coming from our forests instead of having to import them.

It makes a heck of a lot more sense to have a process to work through NEPA and others that still is accountable ecologically but is something you can get done so you can get ahead of the curve with better forest management and energy that is cleaner and that comes from our country.

I am glad to be part of this bill. I thank the chairman for running it.

Mr. Speaker, recently the California Department of Water Resources announced that water deliveries throughout the State Water Project would be increased to 75 percent of requested amounts. Also, the Bureau of Reclamation made a similar announcement on 100 percent in certain districts in northern California.

The State levels have increased from an announced 35 percent earlier on. These increases are possible due to the massive amount of rain and snowpack California has received from a series of winter storms.

Many of our State's reservoirs, once teetering on the brink of being empty, are rapidly filling. While these increased water allocations are good news, there is still a pressing need for more water storage in California.

Sites Reservoir in my district, a project that should already have been built, would already have 1\1/2\ million acre-feet of water in it. Raising Shasta Dam farther north only 18 feet would result in 630,000 more acre-feet. One acre-foot of water, for example, is enough to sustain two California families for a whole year.

Improving the flood controls and modernizing some of our water infrastructure would allow us to keep more stormwater. Storage is key for California's ability to weather droughts for more than 1 year. Store the water we get in the winter and we will have it when we need it in the summer.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for hosting tonight and for his great work on mining in this country that we need so desperately, especially with some of the ideas that are being pushed forward in the name of climate change.

I appreciate Chairman Newhouse, as well, for organizing this.

What do we know about H.R. 1, the bill that was discussed here all afternoon, known as the Lower Energy Costs Act? It will reform the permitting process across industries, cut down on needless red tape, and help drive down energy costs for Americans.

We heard all afternoon, though, that it is going to be a handout to oil and gas companies--no, it is not; it is going to strip away environmental laws--no, it is not; it will give companies free rein to poison rivers and streams--yes, that is really what we are about here-- no, it doesn't do that either.

It is a monumental win for any American who wants to produce energy, use energy, have their costs lowered, have a secure energy supply long term instead of importing it from OPEC, China, or Russia.

The legislation we are talking about, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, these were signed in the early 1970s by a Republican, Richard Nixon. Republicans know how to do things ecologically soundly, as well. You wouldn't know it from the other side of the aisle, or even the press, but, yes, we are interested in doing things correctly.

Also, there is the reality that people need things. People need energy. People need to stay warm. We need to produce crops in this country instead of importing everything and exporting environmental problems, if they are that, to other countries that do things much dirtier than we ever thought about doing--to the Pacific Rim, China, where have you.

Our natural gas that we produce in this country is extracted during a cleaner process that is even cleaner fuel than what comes out of Russia. That is why it is good if we were partners with Western Europe, exporting natural gas to them instead of them getting it from a pipeline from the Russian bear.

Despite this critical need for an increase in energy supply--the need for the world is going to continue to go up. You may have seen the chart earlier we were using where it keeps going higher and higher. Oil and gas in the rest of the world are going to be part of that.

They are trying to clamp it down in this country. We are the only ones that are going to be economically disadvantaged, compared to other countries around the world, by doing so.

They yell at us about NEPA being untouchable and what we are talking about in H.R. 1 being a heyday for polluters. It is not that at all.

What it does point out is it takes more than a decade to permit a mine, more than a decade to get a new mine

going in America, for all these batteries they are going to want, for all this electrical they are going to want. Canada and Australia can do one in less than 3 years, and they are not ecologically unsound.

These delays and litigation make domestic energy production unprofitable and time consuming, and it is just not going to happen here, okay?

Critical minerals found in our mines are essential for renewable energy infrastructure. Solar panels, vehicle batteries, and charging stations are built with the minerals that are going to have to be either mined in China or, with the help of Mr. Stauber, maybe they can be mined in this country.

America always has some of the strongest environmental standards. We are not going to shake those. We are just going to make a NEPA process that is cleaner and smoother.

I haven't even got to talk about our forests in California and the West yet. You have to have a NEPA to do the smallest thing, to have access to the forests so you can tend to them, thin them, make them safe, make them long-term healthy, or be able to get at them when fires do start, which they will.

The current process is so cumbersome that it is a barrier to proper management. That is why the smoke plumes that start in my State on a million-acre fire end up on the East Coast, where people have to have health days where they can't go outdoors.

We saw that million-acre Dixie fire in my district. We have seen 70,000 wildfires per year. NEPA does not help the process of thinning timber or even putting a culvert in a forest road without having to do this long study that doesn't tell anybody anything, other than a way to stall things.

I am encouraging my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to break away from the status quo. Don't buy into all these scare tactics that it is going to poison the river, the air, and everything else. It doesn't do that.

The regulations are still in place. It just streamlines the process so you can reasonably get something done still with oversight from the Federal agencies, as well as the industries themselves that understand that, these days, it is a really bad idea to go polluting like we did 150 years ago.

I appreciate the time here tonight and the effort everybody is making on H.R. 1.