Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the retirement of Placer County

Sheriff Ed Bonner after 42 dedicated years of service to Northern California with the Placer County Sheriff's Department.

I have been fortunate enough to call Ed a friend for some time, and I know firsthand that he has long been considered one of the most respected members of the community since becoming Sheriff in 1995. What truly makes him special is the praise and admiration he receives from his peers. According to those who have worked for him, he set a high standard for taking care of his own and is a man of great integrity and honor. In his 22 year career as Sheriff, he has earned the respect and admiration of Placer County and many others throughout the state of California.

Many talk about creating a family atmosphere at work, but few truly achieve it. As Sheriff, Ed Bonner made the families of his officers and staff a priority. He is with them from the best of times to the worst, from the births of their children to family tragedies. Ed cares about all of those who he worked with, and it showed. Under Ed Bonner's leadership, he made the Placer County Sheriff's office a close knit family and that is a rare achievement.

Ed has earned many professional certificates related to law enforcement, proof that he is truly dedicated to his craft, and he furthers that knowledge by teaching classes at Sierra College and the California Command College. He graduated from California, Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts in Criminology in 1973, then returned to school to earn a Master's Degree in Management Science at Cal Poly, Pomona, in 1992. Before his law enforcement days, Ed Bonner was a gifted athlete who excelled at track and field, where he still holds multiple state high school records and was inducted into the Del Oro High School Athletics Hall of Fame in 2010. At the University of California, he became the first four year letterman for track and field in the school's history.

As an elected official and an outstanding community member, Ed Bonner is active in all things Placer County. He and his family are very active in the Loomis community, as well as the entire county. He helped found and lead Explorer Post 901, a co-ed youth program teaching vocational skills with an emphasis on law enforcement. He is the liaison between Scout Troop 12, where he achieved the rank of Eagle Scout in 1965, and their chartering organization, the Loomis Lions Club. He also serves on advisory boards including Sutter Health, PRIDE Industries and the Boys and Girls Club of Auburn.

After a distinguished career which included serving as President of the California State Sheriff's Association in 2008, Sheriff Bonner's skills as a law enforcement administrator will be greatly missed by his community. His resume as a law enforcement officer is extensive, but more impressive is Ed Bonner as a man, a husband and a father. While the community he has protected for 42 years could not possibly replace his experience, it is now time for a much deserved retirement which he can spend with his loving family, his wife, Jeanne, his two adult sons, Andrew and Matthew, his daughter-in-law Holly and grandson Mason. It has been a pleasure to work with Sheriff Bonner during my time in public office and I would like to wish him a peaceful and happy retirement as he moves on to embark on a new journey in life.

I thank him for his friendship and service.

Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to recognize the service, and now the retirement, of our good friend from Placer County, Sheriff Ed Bonner, after 42 years of dedicated service to northern California and Placer County and its sheriff's department.

Many would talk about creating a family atmosphere at work, but few truly achieve it. Ed Bonner made the families of his officers and his staff a priority. He is with them in the best of times and in the worst, from the joy of the births of their children, or marriages, to the family tragedies, which indeed have been felt by the deputies and the brothers and the sisters of Placer County.

In his 22-year career as a sheriff, he has earned the respect and admiration of Placer County and many others throughout the State of California.

He graduated from Cal Berkeley, and has earned the respect of so many. He had a bachelor of arts in criminology, and earned a master's degree in management science at Cal Poly, Pomona.

Before his law enforcement days, Ed Bonner was a gifted athlete who excelled at track and field, where he still holds multiple State high school records. At the University of California, he became the first 4- year letterman for track and field in the school's history.

After a distinguished career, which included serving as president of the California State Sheriffs' Association, Sheriff Bonner's skills as a law enforcement administrator will be greatly missed by all of us in the community.

Now is time, though, for a much-deserved retirement which he can spend with his loving wife, Jeannie, his family, and his friends.

It has been such a pleasure to work with him. Indeed, the rigors of travel from the East Coast to the West Coast don't allow me to spend the kind of time I would like to with a good friend like Ed Bonner, but I wish him the best. I know he will have a good time in retirement, and I will see him around.

Mr. Speaker, my district is home to nearly 60,000 men and women who have served in our Nation's Armed Forces, and many more are still serving today. Yet for too long, veterans have had trouble receiving veterans medical care in our area, instead being forced to travel to Sacramento or farther from places like Redding, Chico, or Yreka.

So I am proud to announce that the Transportation Infrastructure Committee will authorize the VA to lease a new facility in Redding, California. This new lease will consolidate two buildings into one and will expand the regional VA square footage by over 50 percent in that consolidation, which will house an additional 17 mental health providers, a mammography division, and a second X-ray unit, significantly increasing the types of care available in Redding and in the north State.

Taxpayers will put up the money for the facility. Now it is time for the VA to ensure that this facility is properly staffed and these tax dollars are not wasted and instead respected, and, most importantly, that our veterans are respected with timely care.

Mr. Speaker, the relationship between the United States and Israel is a very important one, a moral one, and one beneficial to both sides.

I was very glad to see this week the President, so early on in his term, inviting and making welcome Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to this country and showing that the U.S. relation with Israel is as important to us as it is to them.

Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, through much of its history of this Earth has been a very strong one for their assertion for their rights to be part of the fiber of the Middle East. The United States needs to be on their side and a firm partner in what they need to do.

So, again, kudos to President Trump for making this establishment of this relationship early on in his term and sending that assurance to Prime Minister Netanyahu, the people of Israel, and the importance to the people of this country of that relationship.

Mr. Speaker, California has been blessed with a lot of rain this year, a lot of snowfall in order to alleviate a drought. It has gone a little extreme here, but we are still thankful for the water.

I would like to report that Lake Oroville is stable right now with the dam, and the spillway situation is such that they are working very hard to make sure that that will be something, if we get continued rainfall, we will be able to handle the new load.

I also want to commend and thank President Trump for his very rapid reaction to our request for emergency help from the Federal Government on Oroville Dam. His team responded very quickly to our ask, and he understands and is working for infrastructure needs and repairs across this whole country.

He also understands that it isn't just about building new things, but it is going back and repairing our aging infrastructure, whether that is our highways, our bridges, or what needs to be done, like on Oroville Dam spillway. So I appreciate that.

Again, my full thanks to President Trump's staff, as well as the President himself, on his speedy response to our need.

Mr. Speaker, you know when we swear to uphold an oath to our country and to our States, a lot goes with that responsibility. We have a very sacred covenant in protecting private property rights, the cornerstone of the founding of this Nation.

So to see that after many decades or even centuries of people feeling secure in their property, in their land, how can one government agency come along and defy two entire States in a process they have used, the gradient boundary survey method, in this case, along the Red River between Texas and Oklahoma? How can you have one rogue Federal agency coming in and saying we supersede what these two States and decades and decades of tradition and security that these families have had along here is completely wrong?

That is why H.R. 428 would send the right signal and give certainty back to these families. We are talking about a court process. Well, for private parties to have to go to a court, it is not the same as the government with its endless resources, endless time to slog through court in this case after 8 years. This is a lot of wear and tear on families when their property and their longtime traditions are in question here.

I go back to a case some years ago, the Kilo v. New London decision, where it was deemed that government can just take property if it was deemed beneficial to the government or to the tax base, indeed, trampling on property rights. At least, in that case, you can count on that there might be some compensation for having that land taken.

Will that even happen here? They are over a mile off in some of their surveys where the BLM believes the land line is. So the true border needs to be made certain and needs to be respectful of Texas and Oklahoma in their process in this property right discussion.

Indeed, an 8-year-long nightmare, imagine what this does to families. It happens in my district as well when regulators come in and decide they are going to change the water rights. It is not even good for their health. People, when they are going through this legal process, it is painful for them.

So H.R. 428 is a very important method of doing, through the gradient boundary survey, a fair way--one that is recognized by Texas and Oklahoma for many decades as the correct way--to survey and finally put this issue to rest after many, many more years than what it should have been.

Indeed, private property rights are the cornerstone of part of why this country was even founded. Why do we continue to do this to the families who have, in good faith, paid taxes, made their land payments, and been part of the fiber of Texas and Oklahoma around the Red River for so many, many years?

Instead of confusion, let's give them certainty. I urge us to all support H.R. 428 and go to a survey method that is fair and recognized by two States, not by one Federal agency that wishes to override that process.

Mr. Speaker, well, it has been national news, the situation going on in northern California, where the Oroville Dam is. Obviously, there has been some damage and destruction to the main concrete spillway, as well as the situation with the lake rising and finally going for the first time in 48 years over the emergency spillway.

The dam itself, the earthen structure, 770 feet tall is solid. The emergency spillway is being evaluated, but so far it looks stable itself. It is the issue of the soil in front of it that needs to be stabilized during these days where there is dry weather, where it can be stabilized with rock and concrete.

So what we need to know is: Why did this happen?

This would be what we do later on. First, we need to take care of the emergency situation, the State resources and Federal resources pulling together to make sure people are safe and that the dam remains sound and that we don't lose the structure.

It looks good. I think things are stable for right now. We also need prayer for no more rain for a while, or at least not overwhelming amounts of rain. So it looks good.

We just need patience also from the people that are in the flood plain that have been evacuated to listen to their emergency personnel and follow with that so that they are kept safe during this time of the emergency.

So I think good efforts are underway, and we will investigate later on what went wrong.

Mr. Speaker, thank you to my colleague from Wyoming for the time and ability to weigh in on this.

Today, I rise in support of the measure for congressional disapproval under the Congressional Review Act for disapproving of the BLM's 2.0 rule.

It is another midnight regulation passed in the final days of the previous administration which undercuts the resource management planning process on public lands by stripping local community input and centralizing, again, in Washington, D.C., the decisionmaking.

California holds some of the largest amounts of public land in the U.S. The Federal Government has approximately 46 percent of the total land in California, amounting to about 46 million acres. BLM oversees about 15 million acres of those public lands, or about 15 percent of the State's total land mass.

The abundance of natural resources and diversity of landscapes within California creates unique challenges for BLM to even fulfill its multiple-use mandate. It is essential that development of these resource management plans include close coordination with local, State, and tribal governments--the people who actually grew up and know those lands the best for all of the potential these lands could bring, whether it is for development of potential energy or timber management. Whatever those ideas are that they would have, let the locals have the input on it. These decisions need to be made with that local input so that everyone's voice is heard.

In strong rural areas like my own, the First District of California, close coordination between the Federal Government and local groups is vital to have good decisions be made regarding public land management. Unfortunately, what we have is nonmanagement, and we suffer for that each summer and fall with a forestry that is not managed and the inability to have an economic opportunity for those people in those areas.

The 2.0 rule does just the opposite with that collaboration. It strengthens BLM's power once again in Washington, marginalizing Western counties and districts, eliminating their ability to coordinate or challenge BLM's proposed plans in an open setting.

Under the pretext of climate change and landscape scale management, the agency's rule undermines federalism and allows for the implementation of a previous era environmental agenda. No wonder Modoc County, in my own district, as well as other counties from Western States have sued BLM for its failure to properly engage and coordinate with the public and fulfill what the law requires for the BLM in managing these lands.

It is time to put an end to the previous administration's legacy to shut out local input by forcing through a rule abrogating for public lands decisions based on unelected bureaucrats in D.C.

Mr. Speaker, again, I thank my colleague for yielding me time, and I ask for support of this measure.

Mr. Speaker, over the weekend, I had a chance to go out in the district and look at the conditions of our flood control system in northern California, which, I am sure, is reflective of a lot of the systems across this country. One particular area I was shown has had 10 feet of levee eaten away just since the end of December. This points out, with recent legislation that has been passed--good legislation-- that we still aren't, by any means, close to fulfilling our infrastructure needs.

Our flood control systems all over the country and in my own district in northern California need immediate results. We expect a great amount of rain. I know we complain about drought in California--feast or famine--but we need to continue to shore up these systems here because, otherwise, it will place communities in danger from the high flows we could get.

With so much rain forecasted in the near future and with our lakes getting full, there won't be a place to put that water. We need this infrastructure, and we need the Army Corps and everybody to be on board with fully developing and permitting these projects and getting the money going. Urgency is needed.

Mr. Speaker, this week many people and leaders from the USA and all around the world converged on Washington, D.C., for the National Prayer Breakfast.

Its tradition started 65 years ago under President Eisenhower and with partners in the Congress to take a little time to come together as leaders and a people in prayer and fellowship. It is a bipartisan effort--indeed, ideally, a nonpartisan coming together. Some might say a bunch of politicians coming together, well, but some very powerful testimonies come from this time together.

This year, from right here in this building, Senate Chaplain Barry Black, who also served as a Navy admiral, gave a strong message on the power of prayer, that our prayers are, indeed, heard in Heaven.

Two years ago, an amazing, humble, personal testimony delivered by NASCAR race driver Darrell Waltrip had everyone talking later. I would recommend anyone to find this video and enjoy that moving personal message of the lows and the highs, the lows and the highs of fame and celebrity and that you need God in your life.

This can also happen, and does, in local communities as tens of thousands of prayer breakfasts happen on the National Day of Prayer, which this year will be May 4, as it is always the first Thursday of May, as proclaimed by President Reagan.

I urge you as Americans, if you don't have one in your community, start one. If you do have one, please participate.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the measure for congressional disapproval of the BLM's methane rule under this Congressional Review Act. This egregious rule passed in the last few days of the previous administration is yet another regulatory blow to responsible energy development on lands held by the Federal Government for the American people.

I think the American people have a right to expect that their Federal Government is not only holding these lands, but that it is utilizing this asset, an asset that can gain income to the Federal Government on their behalf to maintain more lands, and also to utilize the energy at low cost from domestically produced energy that comes from their lands, instead of importing it from somewhere else, et cetera. It goes without question that producing it here in this country is a giant benefit to the U.S. and its economy.

As a strong proponent of an all-of-the-above energy approach, I believe natural gas will continue to significantly transform and modernize our Nation's energy infrastructure. Domestically produced energy has so many positive effects it should be a no-brainer.

The BLM claims that this rule helps capture methane waste, resulting in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Let's face some facts. According to a report by the EPA, methane emissions from natural gas production have decreased by 38 percent in the last 10 years, while gas production on Federal lands has increased by 33 percent. Believe it or not, this reduction was done through voluntary action on behalf of industry, without changes to Federal regulations, in capturing and utilizing this asset.

Even in my home State of California, the oil and gas industry has created

tremendous opportunity for our workforce. A recent report shows that total economic contribution of oil and gas in California, in 2013, resulted in the creation of 455,000 jobs and $72 billion in value added to the State economy, approximately 3.4 percent of State GDP; indeed, no small numbers when the State of California is in big trouble fiscally, as it pursues more things like high speed rail and other nonsense.

Stifling this vibrant and booming economic driver in my State and others would be detrimental to the U.S. economy as a whole, while making us more reliant upon energy from unstable regions of the globe and the higher costs to consumers at home and in their workplace.

Furthermore, the BLM falsely claims it has authority under existing law to regulate oil and gas emissions. Such authority already belongs to the EPA and the States under the Clean Air Act, not the BLM.

Indeed, the BLM needs to get its priorities and its jurisdiction in order. The agency spends valuable taxpayer resources developing a rule to prevent methane flaring, yet denies rights-of-way permitting for pipelines, which would help eliminate these kinds of releases altogether. That is one of the important benefits of the Congressional Review Act is accountability by an elected Congress over a bureaucracy.

Failure to reverse this rule would result in a net loss in royalties that would negatively impact not just the Federal Government but Indian tribes as well which rely on energy revenue to meet their health care, housing, and other needs of their members on their lands.

The abuses and overreach by a previous Obama administration have gone long enough. It is time we put an end to the senseless, counterproductive regulations, and restore commonsense solutions to energy development on the people's Federal lands.

The administration taking credit for increased gas production is disingenuous, as most of it occurred on private lands, leaving our public assets and potential unused.

Indeed, it would be a loss for the American public to continue along that path.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the efforts in bringing this forward and the opportunity to have a Congressional Review Act for the accountability.

Mr. Speaker, I am thankful we have in the process here as elected officials the ability to hold accountable Federal agencies and new rules that will be made at midnight. I am speaking of legislation passed today to allow, in many cases, seniors who might see their Second Amendment rights limited or taken away by a last-minute rule that would require them to be turned in to the national background check system in this country, thereby, because they might be on SSI or disability, losing their ability perhaps to own a firearm under their Second Amendment rights.

The House of Representatives took steps today to ensure their ability to not be singled out because they might be in a particular system and assumed to be a risk--unlike anybody else. So we can do good work sometimes, and we do when we strike out for protecting people's rights.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the measure for congressional disapproval of the Department of the Interior's stream protection rule, which was created under the guise of protecting the environment but, instead, has been very harmful to American jobs.

They have attempted to cripple an industry--energy--that has provided vast amounts of energy to States across this country for decades. My home State of California has had a long history of mining that has led to incredible economic growth and job opportunities for many of my local communities.

This one-size-fits-all approach fails to provide any regulatory certainty to industry and denies important tax revenue from energy extraction to the American taxpayer.

I appreciate my colleagues bringing this to the floor, and I hope we can sort through the rhetoric on this against energy jobs of a very important segment across the country that supplies so much of our energy currently, and can do it with safety and a mind for redeveloping our economy.

Madam Speaker, this week, House Republicans have undertaken the effort to scale back some of the burdensome regulations implemented by the previous administration.

The use of so-called midnight rules to slip in regulations at the last minute and without congressional approval was a favorite tool of the last President. Many of these regulations would negatively impact, and have, American people by destroying their jobs, hamstringing our economy, often for no good reason.

That is why, at the very start of the 115th Congress, we passed the Midnight Rules Relief Act, which utilizes the Congressional Review Act, to allow Congress to review multiple midnight rules en bloc.

Additionally, we now have the unique opportunity to utilize the CRA, Congressional Review Act, and express our disapproval for some of these harmful, burdensome regulations that hurt jobs and stunt the economy, in order to protect the American people from these harmful effects.

The regulatory state has been rapidly expanding in recent years for too long, and I am happy to see that Congress is taking action to reverse this destructive behavior.

Madam Speaker, while it might be raining lately in California, we still need additional water supply infrastructure to meet the needs of agriculture and a growing population. The Sites Reservoir is the only project in California that will improve the water supply for cities, farms, as well as for the environment.

If the Sites Reservoir were in place today, California would have an estimated additional 600,000 acre-feet of water stored so far this winter in addition to similar amounts from last year and even water that could have been impounded during the high flows during the drought years. Had we had this infrastructure in place, we would have had enough water to supply 4.8 million Californians for an entire year just on this winter's flows, and the winter is not even over yet. The Sites Reservoir will not only capture enough high winter flow, but it will also allow for the reuse of water released from Lake Shasta so that human and environmental water use are no longer mutually exclusive.

Madam Speaker, let's not lose this opportunity to conserve water and to not be delayed again and again.