Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, world leaders have been warning of imminent food shortages, including our own President.

Two of the largest producers of wheat and oilseed are embroiled at war. Ukrainian civilians are fighting to protect their homes and their self-sovereignty. They aren't out planting crops as normal.

Meanwhile, there are breaking reports of Russian soldiers stealing Ukrainian wheat, selling it at marked-up costs to nations facing food insecurity in Africa.

Meanwhile, the Russian Navy has blocked grain carriers from leaving Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odessa in an effort to blackmail the world into supporting Putin's war.

The U.N. is trying to broker a deal that will enable Ukraine's grain to be shipped from ports such as Odessa, but Russia has said it wants Western sanctions lifted as part of the deal. Twenty million tons of Ukrainian grain is stuck in Ukraine, at risk of being stolen by Russians.

What are we doing in this country? We are not producing the way we could in California. Waters are being shifted away from farmers, and so our own wheat crops in northern California are dying out.

The Biden administration must roll back the regulations that are making it hard for farmers in this country to do what they need to do to be a part of this world solution for food, as famine will soon be upon us, especially in the 2023 crop year.

Madam Speaker, so what have we had so far under the Biden plan? Well, what we have heard about lately is that for Republicans trying to be more fiscally responsible, we hear that he is complaining that we are worried about deficits and spending.

He says we are affecting lives. Boy, are we affecting lives with the policy coming out of Washington, D.C. Inflation. Energy crisis. But that is part of the incredible transition, we are told, that is being forced upon us to put us out of our vehicles or not being able to use gas appliances, if they have their way.

On the Republican side, crisis acting is the new term. We are crisis acting. Well, I guess if we want to talk about crisis acting, let me remind everybody that carbon dioxide is only 0.04 percent of our atmosphere, right. You would think it is 40 or 50 percent by the way the hype is on that, and everybody has to change their lives in this incredible transition as we get forced into electric cars and have our appliances taken away, and who knows what else, as part of the Green New Deal that is being forced upon us, indeed, by executive action because it is not passing Congress.

So when you are looking at the American people out there, they think of you in Washington, D.C. as the great reset. You are the spring in the great reset button. You are not being listened to. Your pain is not being felt by Washington, D.C.

Inflation? Oh, not a big deal. It was 8.6 percent this month, right. Wages--though some of them have gone up for some people or are being forced up by legislation--are being outstripped by inflation. Wages up a little bit, inflation up a lot more.

Why? Trillions and trillions of spending and policies that take energy options away from Americans being productive. Oh. Well, let's get it from Russia--until we finally banned that. Let's get more from Saudi Arabia.

Why don't we get it here? Why don't we do more here instead of cutting off leases, cutting off permits for known reserves we have in this country? No, no. We are going to have the incredible transition forced upon us by these policies.

It doesn't matter what it costs. It doesn't matter what it is taking off the table. So live with it. Inflation and wages. Let them eat cake, as Senators drive past in an electric car, laughing at what the costs are at the gas stations.

Well, not everybody can turn around and go buy an electric car at $50,000 or $70,000, or even any new car right now with the way they are living paycheck to paycheck, and it is going to be more and more so.

So what is the Federal Government's answer? Well, we are doing something about inflation and the deficit. Yeah. Instead of borrowing trillions and trillions, I guess by not borrowing the trillions, it makes the deficit go lower.

So let's put things back on track, have our energy policy be one that actually produces in the United States of America by our American workers producing more things in the USA.

Food, for example. In my home State of California, as the water gets cut off more and more so they can flush water out to the ocean, hundreds of thousands of acres of food crops are being left out, not grown.

It isn't all because of a drought. We still get lots of rainfall. We had an incredible amount of rainfall and snow in December. Of course, the planters decided well, we are going to go ahead and let all the water run out through the delta in northern California instead of being able to cut back some of it and keep it in storage, although our lakes were at record lows last year. No, no, no. We will keep doing the environmental thing on that, saving nonexistent fish.

In the meantime, the price for food keeps going up. In America, we see empty store shelves in the land of plenty. It is an incredibly dumb policy that has been put in place, piled on by energy that is almost unaffordable.

Ask any trucker when the price of diesel has gone basically from 3 bucks a gallon to 6 or 7, even, in my home State, what does that mean?

That means all the input costs of bringing fertilizer and seed to a field to grow your food and bringing the finished product from the harvest to the mill and from the mill to the store shelf, it all has to be passed along. There is no free lunch.

So we haven't even seen the full effects of this yet because in 2022, some of the people had these inputs carried into the crop year. It hasn't been fully felt yet.

Wait until 2023 when the price of a bale of hay, that you need in order to feed cattle or what have you, kicks into place. Wait until that all happens because then, chicken might triple in price from today, beef, or maybe even just a loaf of bread.

So what are we supposed to think about that? Oh, Americans can afford that. We can just cut back on other disposable income or disposable items, you know, maybe less frivolous spending.

Well, is your government telling you what you can spend on? Basically, they are dictating that by these policies, yes.

When your energy goes up, when your water gets taken away, you will feel it all the way through, all the way through your whole economy, and your wages will be outstripped by inflation.

Madam Speaker, gas prices have doubled under President Biden's failed anti-American energy policies. But I don't know which is worse, that the national average per gallon of gas is 5 bucks or that-- in my home State of California, we would like to see 5 bucks once again. Prices are well over $7, thanks to decades' worth of regulatory assault on American gas in California and now at the Washington level.

While the American people are struggling to keep up financially, the Secretary of Energy and the Secretary of Transportation tell them to go buy electric vehicles. If American families are struggling to afford these outrageous gas prices, what makes these bureaucrats think that they can afford a brand-new $50,000 electric vehicle? Enough of this ``let them eat cake'' attitude.

These gas prices weren't caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They were caused by regulatory assault on our energy industry and domestic production being killed.

President Biden, take responsibility for your failed energy policies. Stand down from your war on American energy, and unleash American energy independence and help our people for a change.

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Louisiana for leading these important topics here.

There is such a broad range of things we can be talking about, but one of the key issues that finally we got action on was the issue with the crazy radicals that have illegally protested outside of the Supreme Court Justices' homes, threatening them, going so far as even implicating that they are going to have an assassination attempt on a Supreme Court Justice.

What kind of system of government will we have if they have to worry about whether they are going to be assaulted or even killed over doing their job?

After weeks of twiddling their thumbs as this violence escalated, finally, we were able to pass the Supreme Court Police Parity Act.

Meanwhile, inflation rates have skyrocketed for months, and prices on everything are going up dramatically because of supply chain issues that could be fixed if the administration and this Congress were focused on the American people instead of pie-in-the-sky things like the Green New Deal or others.

We have seen little action from the left on these issues. It looks like we will be too busy to bring to the floor these solutions that we have been working on in the Committee on Agriculture and others. Instead, we get the soap opera, complete with prime time and production from ABC News executives, otherwise known as the January 6th Select Committee. Select what?

The hearings are being broadcasted in prime time, although the ratings are actually going in the toilet for that, as reruns from other programs are outstripping them, including the TV show called ``Young Sheldon,'' which is actually kind of entertaining, I guess. What it really shows is that viewers would rather watch paint dry than watch a bunch of lawmakers using teleprompters in their made-for-TV drama.

We didn't need a whole partisan production when Bennie Thompson objected to the 2004 Presidential election, and we had a Senator join in on that, to bring that to a vote. I guess that all is different when it is a Republican coming in.

We need to look into the security failures of the day, on January 6, and ask the real questions that need to be asked. The select committee is, instead, doctoring evidence, texts, and other things to make it look like a one-sided deal. If we had balance on the committee, we would actually be getting to ask the real questions and get down to real solutions.

With many reviews conducted of the security vulnerabilities in the Capitol, we have a lot to do in order to make it more secure and something that people can have confidence in, in the process we are supposed to have here, including on that day, January 6, when we were supposed to constitutionally complete our work, though I had colleagues saying: ``Are we going to actually go back in there and complete it?'' Yes, we have to do our job. We have those duties on January 6 following each Presidential election.

Is it politics or is it solutions? Soaring gas prices; baby formula shortages, for crying out loud; sky-high inflation; rising crime rates; illegal aliens flooding across our border.

The only thing the Dems really want to run on is bashing President Trump. Well, he is not President anymore. Even though he is living rent-free inside their heads, we need to move on to something else, getting the work done, the job done, for the American people, who are suffering right now because of the policies and the inattention to the details that would help them.

Let's get to work on the real things.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Yes.

Mr. Speaker, as the 4-day tour occurs inside the Capitol on January 6, where a loaded, biased committee attempts to parse the words of the President on the day, we have many other crises to deal with in this country that are directly affecting and harming the American people, their ability to do their basic day-to-day operation of their homes, get to their jobs, get their kids to school.

So what are we doing? What are we doing? Chasing January 6. Look at our border right now, where under the current Biden policies, we are attracting the largest caravan ever of illegal aliens heading toward our border. The idea that we are going to get rid of title 42 or just the general porosity of the border anyway. It has been a giant magnet ever since January 20, 2021, when this President came in and started shredding our border policy.

We had success under President Trump, where we had the best control of the border we had in quite a while, with approximately 450 additional miles of rebuilt or new fence that was very effective in those zones.

So what do we have now? We have warehouses and stacks and pallets of fence material, millions of dollars' worth of it, lying about on our southern border being stored instead of installed.

We heard some chatter here a couple months ago from the Biden administration, well, maybe we should just go ahead and put up those additional pieces there where there are some obvious gaps.

I had a chance to visit Yuma, Arizona a few weeks ago. It was pretty incredible because there would be miles of fence, but there would be these gaps occasionally, and that is where people would pour through illegally. Amazing.

We could rectify that by just filling a lot of the gaps, thereby making our Customs and Border Patrol job much easier by being able to focus on fewer areas instead of wide-open spaces or gaps all along our border.

But, no, it seems to be about some other agenda. 15,000 people possibly will crowd the border here soon under the idea that we are going to possibly let title 42 go. Thankfully, two different courts have stopped that.

So what are we doing? The terrorists come across our border really almost unchecked. They capture a handful of them, but how many are getting by that get away? We don't know that. Are they starting cells right here in our country? Why not?

As we know, in April, there were over 230,000 encounters, they call them, at the southern border. That is the highest in U.S. history for one month. Why is this? Because we have a giant magnet, again, turned on by this administration saying, come on across. You only need to have a sliver of an excuse for asylum.

The asylum law needs to be changed if that is how they are going to enforce it because it has to be for a true threat. You also have to seek asylum in the country closest to you, if you are an asylum seeker and that is what you are really after, but one closest to you, not pick and choose what country you are going to move up to, basically the United States with all the benefits it hands out.

According to polling, when you ask the American people, who are worried about gas and groceries or whether another load of formula is going to come in from Europe on a military transport in time for their small children to be able to have the type of food that they are accustomed to, the majority of Americans disapprove of the Biden administration's operation of our borders, especially the elimination of title 42, which is a health risk issue.

When you talk about the issue of formula, we are putting Americans last, when the Biden administration prioritized shipments of pallets of baby formula to the border holding stations instead of across the fruited plain. It is pretty pathetic. Indeed, it was this administration whose FDA stepped in on the major producer of formula and said: We are going to shut you down because we had a couple of incidents that have been reported.

So what happens? The FDA didn't call back when the company that is the major producer of formula asks, What is it we need to do to be in compliance in your eyes? The administration knew about this, yet they prioritized what

formula was available to go down to the border stations there. Thankfully, recently, we passed legislation so that we could release more supplies to have them be eligible for those who are on assistance.

As we see the disaster on the border, I don't see a single remedy even being talked about by the Biden administration. They don't really care about the American people.

Madam Speaker, as we endure more and more of the Biden- induced energy crisis in this country, I have to point out another aspect of that which is very important that we get a handle on soon. Our ability for our trucks to deliver the goods, the products we expect to be in the stores, is going to be hampered even more not just in my home State of California $7 diesel or $6 in the rest of the country, and the ability to get truck drivers, but also, interestingly enough, there is a product called diesel exhaust fluid that is part of the newer truck engines that is going to run out.

It is already in short supply. The railroads are having a hard time shipping it. It is not even produced enough in this country. We have to rely on one important component, urea, that the major exporters of it are China, Russia, and Qatar. We are going to run out of the DEF that you put in the trucks. The trucks will not run without it because the computers will not let the truck run without this fluid, which is a component in the diesel exhaust system.

If we run out of DEF, the trucks can't move, and they will not move the products you need, your food, your other supplies to the stores for you to purchase. So we have yet another crisis within a crisis if we run out of DEF. DEF needs to be produced in this country. We need to produce the urea in this country.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate my neighbor from Pennsylvania for the time here today and for this effort.

I also oppose the previous question and want to, instead, bring forward H.R. 6858, the American Energy Independence from Russia Act. It really begs the question: With what is going on in the world, why are we dependent upon Russia for anything, especially our energy?

If the number was somewhere around 7 percent of the barrels of oil we use, we can easily make it up by our own production in this country, the amazing hydraulic fracturing that put America back on the map for being an exporter of natural gas and all the other development that we can be doing to bring prices back down.

This administration just seems impervious to the suffering of the American people right now on the cost of energy and the cost of just about everything else.

Well, there is another crisis that is going to be coming out of this, too. We are dependent on Russia and China for a product called urea. Now, what is that? Well, it is made into a fertilizer, basically, that is used extensively in American crops. Also, urea has a use as a component in what is called diesel exhaust fluid. That is a part of making our diesel engines run clean on our trucks and tractors and whatever else uses a diesel engine with DEF in it.

We are going to run out of DEF pretty soon. The railroads are having a hard time delivering it. When that happens, that means our trucks don't run anymore because they will not run without this fluid.

So, we are dependent on Russia for urea, dependent on Russia for energy, and want to blame Russia for everything. No. We blame this administration because we are not doing the steps it takes to make ourselves independent that we easily have within our grasp to do in order to go for what is this great reset or the incredible transition the President talks about.

We are being transitioned by this administration, and it is very dangerous. It is harmful to families, harmful to people's bottom lines on running their households, going to work, getting their kids to school, all because we don't have an energy policy that works.

Whether the trucks don't have DEF to be able to deliver the goods to the store or get it out of the field, whatever it is, because we are dependent on Russia for energy and all these things, we are putting ourselves in a real bad spot.

Madam Speaker, it is no secret that America is facing many crises today, most unnecessary, on the border, fuel, inflation, even baby formula shortages.

But one thing that is not being talked about a lot is that we have a worldwide shortage of urea, which is a component in fertilizer, as well as fluid called DEF used in diesel engines for trucks, tractors, et cetera, made after 2010.

It is very important that we have this essential element because if we don't have our trucks and tractors and even trains running, then we are going to have even bigger supply crises than what we have now.

China and Russia are two of the major exporters of this urea product, and they are actually cutting their exportations of them in order to take care of themselves.

What we need to do in this country is step up our own production once again. After Hurricane Ida--down on the Gulf Coast a few years ago-- caused suspension of operations of some of these plants that we have, we have to get it back going again because we need urea for our fertilizer to continue to grow food and to have our diesel engines that require DEF, the diesel exhaust fluid, to keep going and deliver the items we need.

Why do we need yet another crisis of running out and messing up the supply chain?

Madam Speaker, tonight starts the latest development in this political circus otherwise known as the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. In prime time.

Instead of working to combat issues facing Americans, such as skyrocketing inflation, decreases in real wages, gas prices barreling towards $7 a gallon or $8--if you are a lucky Californian--or the invasion of our southern border, House Democrats are continuing their witch hunt against former President Trump, who seems to still be living rent-free inside their heads.

This time, in a certain boost to their own vanity, the committee has hired former ABC News president, James Goldston, to produce it.

They aren't interested in the truth. They aren't interested in justice; not even the intel that was available ahead of the possible Capitol break-in that they knew about.

The committee is putting on a spectacle, a Hollywood produced, prime- time television soap opera to distract viewers from the real policy- made disasters.

How out of touch are they with the American people? Do you think the young mother desperately trying to find formula for her newborn cares about this hearing?

Do you think the farmer who can't plant this year due to the water shortage, the water being taken away, or the trucker who can't use his equipment because diesel is over $7 or $8 cares about this hearing?

Even liberal San Francisco recalled their radical DA because he stopped caring about the people and opened up the city to a crime wave they haven't seen in decades.

People want answers and change, and it isn't about this January 6 deal.

Mr. Speaker, it is not just American oil and natural gas energies that are under attack. Another one of the Nation's top sources of energy, nuclear generation, has faced repeated operational obstacles and is facing threats of extinction.

Nuclear power is one of the best choices for renewable energy we have. It is consistent, it runs 24/7, and it isn't intermittent or dependent on the weather like wind or solar. It takes up a small physical footprint, such as California's sole remaining reactors at Diablo Canyon, take up only 900 acres of land and provides nearly 10 percent of California's energy portfolio and 23 percent of our carbon- free generation that everybody is so worried about.

It is affordable. Although power plants are expensive to build, like most things are, they are relatively cheap to run.

Interestingly, nuclear generation has recently garnered widespread bipartisan support. Recently, last month, the Biden administration launched a $6 billion Federal effort to keep nuclear power plants open that are at risk of closing. Even California Governor Gavin Newsom seems to have reversed his opinion on nuclear energy and has expressed some level of support to keep Diablo Canyon open.

Nuclear energy has had an unfair bad rap from past incidents, most notably Chernobyl. Well, this isn't the 1980s Soviet Union. This is the United States. We have the innovation and technological advances to make nuclear energy a cornerstone of our future in energy independence. We need to hang on to it.

Mr. Speaker, President Biden recently promised us food shortages in the United States. This is the country that leads the world in production. Well, that is one heck of a campaign promise being kept. Food shortages, along with energy skyrocketing; what a reset.

Indeed, my home State of California, which produces so much of what America relies on, due to Federal and State policies, the water has been taken away. Up on the Klamath Basin, zero water allocation.

I just drove around part of my west side of the district the other day, and there are miles and miles of open land that is not growing rice; that they are trying to put all that water toward trying to keep orchards alive. The waterfowl are not coming in. The jobs are not happening; all because of a backwards campaign promise, evidently, to put food shortages out there for people.

Empty shelves in the supermarket; it is unbelievable that this is what this administration--and what are they doing? What are they doing?

We are not getting more water facilities built. We are not getting more storage made. No, we are just continuing down the same path to try and save fish that don't exist in the delta, or that are being marketed by people catching them up on the rivers and out in the ocean.

I guess that is why everybody is leading the charge these days in cheering for: Let's go, Brandon.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding.

Tonight, I join my colleagues in support of this year's Water Resources Development Act. While it may not be readily apparent, the threat of storm damage and floods remains front and center, despite the prolonged drought across the Western United States.

In the wake of wildfires, mudslides will bring vegetation down from mountainsides into our public waterways. With fewer but more intense storms seen this year, the risk of flash floods has increased.

Now, as with many bipartisan bills, there are policies and provisions that I believe are missing from this measure. That work is not done. I will continue to push for more control over project construction to be given to local water agencies; more up-front inclusion of Tribes so we can avoid ruining their cultural and burial sites, literally crushing skulls while working on levees--this is about basic respect; and for the Army Corps and EPA to work with our constituents, rather than against them, such as penalties for when farmers plow their fields or change crops.

Indeed, we need to keep this conversation going, but I appreciate the legislation and the direction we are going.

Mr. Speaker, this gas price surge we are seeing at the pump wasn't caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It wasn't caused by COVID-19. It isn't transitory.

It is not even caused by price gouging some are alleging by oil companies or gas stations. Indeed, the U.S. Secretary of Energy said there is no gouging due to that.

No, they are all excuses President Biden has tried to use to shift blame for the increasing prices that he is causing himself.

Mr. President, we know the truth. The American people know the truth. Sir, your price hike was caused by day one anti-American energy policies.

Gas prices have increased every single month under the Biden administration, from his first day in office canceling Keystone, suspending oil and gas leasing on Federal lands, and draining our Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

He has also emboldened Putin by removing sanctions on the Nord Stream 2, therefore making Europe more dependent on Soviet-style energy.

President Biden hasn't taken responsibility for his failed policies. Instead, he is trying to cover them up or blame others.

We must flip the switch on American energy production and reverse the Biden failed energy agenda. Putin is making a killing because of this.

We have the wherewithal in this country to influence world prices by producing ourselves.

Madam Speaker, a country without borders might as well just not be a country.

The chaos that this current Biden border policy is causing is damaging American families, American schools, and American healthcare, and it is not even good for the so-called immigrants themselves.

Witness the way children are used and abused in order to get people across the border to please the cartels, to pay off the cartels. Kids are rented, rented out by families. To get a fake family group across the border, kids are often left by the river--children left by the river when they are done with them and recycled back across like you would an empty pop bottle.

Is this the kind of humanity this administration is about? It certainly isn't for us on this side of the aisle.

We need to enforce our border. We need to continue building the fence so it is effective for our border personnel to be able to process ones that really are coming here on what would be true asylum.

Asylum laws need to be changed because they have been made a joke. Indeed, some of the newest cases won't be heard until 2024. There is such a backlog.

Madam Speaker, it has become painfully obvious in recent months how important energy and the energy supply is in all aspects of our lives here in the United States and to our allies around the world.

The effect of not enough energy indeed has been very harmful to our economy, yet we are at a space where

we have so much abundance, so much potential, and so much we were doing just before this administration came into place. We are sitting on the largest untapped oil reserve in the world--amazingly enough--here in the United States.

If we had been utilizing this properly, instead of launching an assault on domestic energy production, our Union would be in a much better state. As we know, on the first day in office, President Biden shut down the Keystone Pipeline, on and off, on and off over the years, suspended pending oil and gas leases, halted domestic energy production, which stopped exports on liquefied natural gas to our allies overseas.

We have seen how important that is when Europe has become so reliant on Russian natural gas. Poland recently just cut off supply buying from Russia so they would not be so dependent, as well as the Germans and other Eastern European countries.

Now, what we have seen since all this lack of exploration and shortness of supply is the prices have skyrocketed on everybody. It is really hurting rural America, especially with the need for farming crops, fertilizer, all the different aspects that go into food production, and that in return causes food shortages.

We are really putting ourselves in a bad, bad position by having a lack of energy policy or one that is really an anti-energy policy. We have seen the national average for a gallon of gas up to $4.48. In California, it is getting closer to $6 on average.

What bothers me is that over time do people get lulled into this as being normal? No, folks, this is not normal, and it is not necessary. It doesn't need to be this way because, as I mentioned, we have so much untapped energy in this country. The miracle of hydraulic fracturing has made natural gas so abundant that we have been able to be a strong exporter of it.

I remember not too many years ago we were figuring out, are we going to have to find a way to have our gas imported and upgrade our ports to bring it in? No. Hydraulic fracturing has made possible cheap natural gas to export to our allies, such as in Western Europe. We need to be doing much, much more of that so we don't have our friends, the Germans, and Poland, and others, that are reliant upon energy coming from Russia.

With the regulatory and tax policies that have discouraged gas production, California only produces, for example, a fraction of what it is capable of when it was once one of the leading oil and gas- producing States.

What would our Nation look like if we were producing to our full potential? It would probably look a lot like what we were 15-16 months ago when we had abundance in everything; energy, and food wasn't emptying off the shelves. We would be in a much better space.

Indeed, these short-sighted policies are harming regular, everyday Americans. Food production, I can't emphasize enough, when we are running short on the shelves already--and this is before the 2022 crop has even been completely planted or come in--in my home State of California, probably half of agriculture is going to be shut down: half of agriculture. Why? Water policy. With that lack of water policy, all the water rushing out to the ocean in order to try to save an already missing fish or something called Delta salinity, we are not going to plant half of our agriculture in our home State. That has effects on American food: costs, availability, and quality.

Are we just going to import it all? No, it is not going to work that way. It all strings together. It is all interrelated. With that water policy, it also negatively affects energy because we are not going to make hydroelectric power like we can.

This administration is hell-bent on getting rid of some of our dams in California and others around the West that make hydroelectric power. Hydroelectric power is CO2-free, no carbon dioxide. Our last nuclear power plant in California, they want to shut that down; CO2-free.

The energy policy on all different aspects is collapsing. Indeed, 20 percent of the Nation's power is from nuclear source, and about 25 percent of that power is threatened, that it will be shut down within the next 10 or 15 years if things aren't done to make up for that. We need an energy policy that makes sense.