Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, as we take on the continuing resolution, once again it is not the best way of doing business around here. We should be grinding through the twelve different points that the appropriations process has.

At least there is good news as CRs go in that part of it that is being plussed up includes the issue with our military.

A lot of times when CRs occur, our military is the one that gets shorted on that. They have to plan for the long term for weapons systems, what they need in upgraded facilities, and take care of the personnel in the process. This does boost up our military needs to an extent in the CR.

It will upgrade all four branches--Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines-- that are on the front lines. It will strengthen their readiness and help modernize some of their infrastructure. Delays, of course, put these projects at risk. That is why it is important that the CR be done timely.

As I mentioned, family housing is a very important aspect for the comfort and efficiency of our personnel. It is directed towards improvements in the living conditions for the servicemembers and their families. Stable funding makes sure these projects stay on track.

The Arlington National Cemetery, of course, has amazing meaning to our whole country, especially those that have fallen and would be interred there. There are improvements there for a better process for people to be able to get in and out of the facility, as well as the ceremonies that might be held there.

We have a significant improvement in veterans' healthcare, medical services, community care, and facility improvements to ensure veterans can get the good healthcare that they need and deserve. Uncertainty does not help that to remain. That is why passing the CR at this time is important.

For retirement homes for veterans, it ensures they will have facilities that continue to stay on track, whether new ones are built or continued upgrades and maintenance is not passed over.

One of the aspects that we are disappointed with not getting into the continuing resolution has bipartisan support. I am pleased to work with my colleague from Colorado (Mr. Neguse) on what is known as Secure Rural Schools. That is a fund that we do every single year. It is nothing new. It is nothing that is going to plus-up spending around here or require additional budget effort. It is something that is basically there to supplement the income at the local level, for counties.

It is called SRS, Secure Rural Schools. A large part of it goes to help local schools, as well as county roads. This funding used to come from the timber industry which overlaps so many of the areas that the SRS fund would go to.

With the decimation of the timber industry starting really in the late seventies and the eighties, and the spotted owl movement and other environmental concerns that have made it just nearly impossible in some cases to do the timber harvest that is really needed to be done, this program came along and replaced those receipts.

It is fairly tough every year to come here. Our county supervisors come here hat in hand every year and ask us to support the SRS one more time. These are dollars that have to come from the U.S. Treasury rather than from the forest and the industry.

Until such point as we can get a much more viable timber industry going again in this country with a much more streamlined process of permitting, especially on Federal Forest Service land, why should it be difficult to do things that make good sense as far as thinning our forests and harvesting from it? It is a renewable resource. We plant it back, and the trees grow again.

What we do instead is we seem to ignore that fact and just let them burn year after year, especially in the Western States. In my own district, we had a million-acre fire 3 years ago; a 400,000-acre fire last year; a 600,000-acre fire a couple of years before that, time after time.

All my colleagues in the Western States pretty much can point to that same thing happening in their States as well, millions of acres burned every year in the West. For some reason, the U.S. is now the number one importer of wood and paper products and the number one importer of lumber. What are we doing here?

We have to come hat in hand each year and ask for funding from the Treasury to replace an industry that we need and to replace wood and paper products that we use regularly in our daily lives. Heaven knows, this place goes through a lot of paper. Why should we have that come from foreign forests somewhere?

When I am at the railroad crossing back home waiting on a train, I see all these loads of lumber and Canadian wheat coming south. Why aren't we doing that at home? We need to get SRS in the next round.

Mr. Speaker, one of the good aspects in the continuing resolution for California, and nationally for those who like California-grown food, is a portion that will be in there through the WIIN Act regarding Bureau of Reclamation funding for water projects in California, mainly the Sites Reservoir.

What you see here is the Shasta Reservoir and all that water going over that is actually going nowhere except out to the Pacific Ocean. Sites Reservoir's existence will mean we will have the ability to impound up to 1.5 million acre-feet of saved water that the whole State can use instead of being lost.

We have lost so much water this year due to, I think, not great management of that resource. At least 800,000 acre-feet, maybe up to 2 million acre-feet, have been lost just from Lake Shasta down the river out to the ocean.

This funding here will help build a good project. It will help California's water supply go much further than what we see happening right now. We see farms being cut to 35 percent of their allocation. We see people in urban areas being cut to 42 gallons per day because we can't manage this water supply.

Build the storage, manage the water better, and we will get a lot more wins.

Mr. Speaker, we will be taking on the continuing resolution soon this week. Although it is the way we don't really like doing business around here, I would much rather we grind through the Appropriations Committee process, which is a lot more open, it is a necessary evil we have to get done in order to keep the government funded and keep things moving forward.

With what President Trump and his team have been laying out for us here, I think it is something that we can certainly deal with and get a good result as we grind through the following fiscal year on appropriations. Again, it is not ideal, but it is the way to keep things operating, and it does have some good pluses in it as well.

I also want to point out, as several colleagues did here tonight, the moving on of a good friend, James Min, who I first knew working in the Kevin McCarthy office when he was whip. He helped our team get up to speed here in this place when I was a new Member and my new staff as well. I really appreciate him and wish him all the best across the street, wherever he is going to be in those endeavors.

I thank James Min a lot for his effort and for just being a good, fun guy. We will see him.

Mr. Speaker, the costs of illegal immigration to this country and to my home State of California according to a 2023 report, the benefits and services provided to the estimated 3.23 million illegal aliens just in California costs local taxpayers just under $23 billion annually. Factoring in about 1.15 million U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, sometimes known as anchor babies, adds more than $8 billion in costs making it roughly $31 billion total.

This total cost under these findings of $31 billion works out to a per capita cost to Californians of $7,074 annually.

This report pegs the combined Federal, State, and local costs nationwide associated with illegal immigration at $182 billion annually, and that is probably a low number.

State and local taxes paid by Californians accounts for one-sixth just in my home State of the nationwide costs associated with illegal immigration, including in K-12 education, housing, and nutrition assistance, in-State tuition at public colleges and universities, health coverage under the State's Medi-Cal program, which is the trouble, and sweeping sanctuary policies that make our cities less safe.

Mr. Speaker, when my colleagues contemplate inflation, Members can really boil it down to two main drivers of inflation.

One would be profligate government spending. We have a $2 trillion deficit the last couple of years, post-COVID. We need to get back, of course, to pre-COVID levels of government spending and get back on a better track.

Importantly, the other driver is the cost of energy because energy affects everything from the production side. Whether you are in the farm fields, in a mine, in a manufacturing plant, anything that is being made requires energy.

When you mine those products, take those raw materials, and turn them into something, there is energy consumed at every step of the chain.

Finally, delivery from factory or mill or whatever to the store shelf requires energy. Whether it is by a truck, train, or ship, what have you, they are all brought here because of energy.

The electricity in the plants that are producing things, sawing up timber, milling grain, whatever it is, all requires energy.

When those costs go up, I would say unnecessarily the last few years, then, of course, the price of everything has to go up. It would not be just at the store shelf, but at every step of the chain to when it finally reaches the store shelf. When people get in their vehicles and go get those items or order in when they have a grocery delivery, it still takes energy to get there.

With these prices driving everything, it really isn't just some abstract, where inflation comes from. These are the real-life consequences of policies that make it harder and more expensive to produce, transport, and buy these things that everyday families need.

The Biden administration's regulatory agenda imposed these costly mandates on energy production, and I am seeing it in my home State of California, which seems to be anti-energy, as well. Governor Newsom and the new State legislature are making it more and more impossible to locate and have fueling stations, as well as California's oil-rich holds it has underground, especially in that Kern County area.

Mr. Speaker, the Biden agenda has caused these things to go up. These rules don't just squeeze businesses or big, evil corporations and things like that. They hurt every American family and every American's bank account.

This week, we are taking action to reverse some of the most damaging regulations and restore some commonsense policies that actually work for Americans, that will lower costs for families, farmers, miners, timber people, manufacturers, and small businesses.

H. Res. 42 aims to stop the Department of Energy's overreach on household appliances and commercial equipment. The Biden administration imposed stricter efficiency standards for making everything from dishwashers to industrial equipment. It just drives up the cost and makes it more difficult for families when they want to replace something.

These regulations limit choices and drive up prices. If people want a new gas water heater, they are going to have to get one that doesn't fit in the same spot as the old one because it is going to be a lot thicker from more insulation and stuff in the idea of efficiency. The regulations make it more difficult to do that.

If Democrats take away the gas water heaters and gas stoves and make them electric, people will have a whole other set of problems.

Outside in people's yards, my Democratic colleagues want to ban their gas lawnmowers and their gas leaf blowers. My favorite is when my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to ban, like in California, gas- or diesel-powered generators.

Mr. Speaker, when the power goes out, tell me what people are going to power a generator with if they don't have these fuels available and generators that use those fuels.

How do people turn a generator on if they don't have fuel to do it? Are they going to plug it into a battery or something like that? What fueled the battery? What if it is several days, like sometimes when we are having these ice storms in the mountainous areas like what happened in my district?

These mandates don't make a lick of sense, so we want to have, with H. Res. 42, the ability for families and businesses to purchase reliable and affordable products without bureaucratic interference and whatever the whim of the day is by a stroke of a pen.

H. Res. 61 seeks to reverse EPA's excessive emissions rule targeting rubber tire manufacturers. Mr. Speaker, can you believe that? The mandate drove up the cost of manufacturing tires, making essential goods more expensive because a lot of things we get come on a vehicle with tires, as well as the cost of tires on the vehicle itself.

Whether it is higher prices for tires or increased costs for transportation, this rule added a burden on families and businesses already struggling with inflation. Reversing this regulation protects manufacturers, safeguards jobs, and keeps products affordable for manufacturers, small businesses, and families.

S.J. Res. 11 aims to eliminate an unnecessary rule from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that slowed down oil and gas development. The Biden administration required excessive archeological reports that make more energy production almost impossible.

Mr. Speaker, I was in my office for a meeting and the roll was closed sooner than normal and I didn't get to cast my vote. Had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 58.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Newhouse for leading this. It is a regrettable situation we are in. It is not one we enjoy at all.

I have been disappointed over the years at outbursts that come from this Chamber at whoever the President is. I know people on my side of the aisle have done it. In the case I am thinking of, that person later regretted it and apologized for it. That person understands that we have to have decorum in this place.

It is hard to contain emotions, perhaps, but we are in the business to be leaders. We are in a business that we are supposed to be able to contain our emotions and contain ourselves in such a way that we are good leaders and good examples for the American people; that they can be proud of us and what we are doing. They may disagree with us on our policies, and they may disagree strenuously.

I consider Mr. Green a friend, at least an acquaintance. We don't hang out a lot or are on the same committees, but we chat together in the hallways. I like him, and I hope he likes me too. We have probably extremely different views on some issues, and I know he expresses himself in some pretty strong views and emotions, as well. That is fine when we are doing that in debate and we are doing that in the proper format here.

However, decorum in this hallowed Chamber and for what this has stood for for well over 200 years requires us to be able to operate much better than that.

I wasn't so much mad last night as I sat just a few chairs over from Mr. Green. I was really mostly disappointed that it had to come to that.

I have had Presidents who I have strongly disagreed with over their rhetoric or their policies, and I think they have been, in my view, very harmful to the country.

Members don't act that way and completely disrupt the operations of this Chamber and the joint session last night for their own theater. That is what I am afraid it was.

Did the gentleman feel strongly? Certainly he did, but Members of Congress don't act that way. We don't wave a walking stick around at people like that. It is just not good. It is improper. It is not the way we are supposed to conduct ourselves in this place or at any public forum, city council level, what have you, including townhalls.

Mr. Speaker, I enjoy having townhalls, by and large, but if they are going to be advertised as a forum as a free-for-all for people to come out and do screaming matches, what should we do? Should we just turn on the clock for 90 minutes and have at it?

I would like that the interactions at our local level could be constructive and both sides can hear each other to understand what is going on.

In this Chamber here, during that hallowed event, when the whole country and the whole world was watching, for someone to be able to single out their own interests or their own theater because they disagreed strongly with a President whom they don't like, it is really, really bad decorum and a really bad way of doing business.

I tell the gentleman that I don't enjoy casting this vote at all if it should come up tomorrow. I personally like my colleague on the other side of the aisle. I wish we could have done better last night.

I hope we can count each other as friends after this. I don't hold any long-term anger or angst, but it just wasn't good. I wish I could have taken the gentleman aside last night and said: Let's not do this.

Unfortunately, it happened. This is a proper reaction. We can't just let this stand. It has to be done correctly. We have to have a decorum for this House, and this censure is what is necessary to hit that reset and do so.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding time to me.

Mr. Speaker, before President Trump got into office recently, America's security was really, really in doubt, especially on our border, so the actions taken by us in this House as well as, very importantly, what President Trump has done to secure our border is incredible. The numbers are down dramatically from the amount of people coming across illegally daily to the mere small number that is still doing so now until such point as we complete the border fence and the other measures taken to have the border completely secure. It is a pretty amazing turnaround.

Tomorrow, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will question the mayors of several of our large cities who seem to be just more concerned about the benefits of illegal immigrants than of those of the American people. The mayors of Boston, Chicago, Denver, and New York who have been harboring illegal immigrants as sanctuary areas and have jeopardized the public safety of their own constituents and drained taxpayer resources will be held accountable in this hearing.

These so-called leaders have chosen to ignore Federal immigration laws. They are breaking the law. They brag about it, and they say they will continue to do so. They chose to shield the illegal immigrants, including criminals, rather than protect the people they were actually elected to serve.

They chose policies that have overwhelmed law enforcement, strained public services, and put American families at risk. They don't seem to care that these tax dollars come from the hardworking people who actually did have eligibility to vote for them.

We House Republicans refuse to let this continue and have continued to take action.

President Trump declared a national emergency and deployed the military to the border to slow down that massive tide. Indeed, it has worked.

He has ended catch and release where basically law enforcement catches somebody at the border, processes them as fast as they can, and turns them loose in the country maybe to come back for a hearing on asylum supposedly within a couple years.

He reestablished the remain in Mexico policy so they are not to just come into the country. If Mexico is going to let them in from the south, then they can deal with it. Remain in Mexico is not automatic passage into the U.S.

He has restarted the border wall construction. Indeed, that makes it so much easier for our law enforcement personnel, our border personnel, to be able to narrow down the tide coming in and focus on what is going to happen there.

He shut down the CBP One app. He has terminated taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal immigrants. We still have States like my home State of California who can't give it away fast enough, at one point $9.5 billion for illegal immigrants in their health care program at the same time that the State is asking for $40 billion to get bailed out after the horrific fire situation in southern California.

He has terminated taxpayer benefits overall for illegal immigrants via executive order. We need to back him up on that.

He began transferring criminal aliens to Guantanamo Bay so they don't get away. He classified cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and indeed they are.

He suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. He has clawed back DHS funds that were being used for the benefit of housing illegal immigrants while at the same time we have people suffering from disasters.

Here we were able to pass the Laken Riley Act to keep violent criminals off our streets, especially those who are here as illegal immigrants. We passed the Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act to protect these innocent lives.

We passed the HALT Fentanyl Act to stop deadly drugs from flowing across our border. Fentanyl is an existential crisis in this country for so many people. It is so deadly and yet so prevalent. It is sent through Mexico so much by China. Mexico is not being a good neighbor when they keep allowing this.

We passed the Agent Raul Gonzalez Officer Safety Act to give law enforcement the tools they need, as well.

The results are that illegal border crossings, as I mentioned, have dropped dramatically. Apprehensions have fallen by 93 percent because they don't have to apprehend this 93 percent, which is a major victory for border security.

We will not back down. I know President Trump will not back down. We need to move forward because we raise our right hand and swear allegiance to this country and its Constitution. It is our job to make our country strong, to make our country safe, and to serve our own citizens who are already struggling enough with inflation and with choking regulations in some cases. So much is going against the grain of what the founding of this country was about.

I am proud of the work we have been trying to do here on the House floor. I hope we can get more of a bipartisan effort on that as we see the common sense of what we are trying to do. The Senate can take this up and support the leadership President Trump has provided and the results we have seen so strongly so far.

Mr. Speaker, unhinged bureaucrats have stood in the way of American energy for too long. Overregulation, job-killing policies, and reliance on foreign nations have driven up costs and hurt American families, businesses, and farms.

That changes now as we take measures to unleash America's full energy potential. President Trump has already taken decisive action by declaring a national energy emergency to cut through the bureaucracy, red tape, and nonsense to finally get back on track.

He has rolled back the Biden administration's crippling regulations, ending the so-called Green New Deal policies, and withdrawn from agreements, such as the Paris climate accord, that put other countries first while holding us back and exporting our jobs to the Pacific Rim and others.

We are opening back up the 625 million acres for offshore drilling that were put in recklessly via a last-minute monument. That is a 1,000- by 1,000-mile square, to say no more. The President is opening that back up.

Lifting Biden's ban on liquefied natural gas exports helps get energy flowing again to Europe, helping our allies not be dependent on Russian gas.

We are backing it up in Congress. We are passing legislation to protect domestic energy production and ensure we never face these kinds of restrictions again, including three pieces of legislation this week alone that will be done.

The results are clear: Crude oil prices will have dropped 5 percent and will continue to drop.

Mr. Speaker, we welcome President Trump tomorrow to the Capitol for his joint address here in Congress.

It is more than just a speech. It is an opportunity to lay out the successes so far of this administration and the important work ahead to restore American strength, the economy, as well as world affairs.

In just a short time, President Trump has delivered real results, ending the taxpayer-funded DEI programs and stopping the government from wasting money on divisive policies.

He took decisive action to secure our border. The numbers have been dropping dramatically from those who were illegally crossing just a couple of months ago to just a couple hundred a day. This puts the safety of American citizens first.

The President is cutting through bloated bureaucracy and the alarming waste and missed priorities of programs that the American taxpayers don't even want any part of. This makes government work for the people, not against them, which respects taxpayers.

On the world stage, he has proven that peace comes through strength, rejecting the weak leadership that left America vulnerable and our adversaries emboldened, which helps to prevent wars that would happen and end current wars.

Mr. Speaker, this week, we made an important step in passing the budget resolution in order to carry out the business of the House for the American people.

As we get into the budget reconciliation process, which is going to be a positive one for getting spending under control, we also need to have a lot more truth surrounding what is going to be happening in that process.

For more than I would like to have heard the last week, week and a half, 2 weeks, we keep hearing the same rhetoric that Republicans are going to cut Medicare, SNAP, Medicaid, Social Security, all of these things. Nowhere in that budget reconciliation document does it say that. In the resolution, nowhere does it say that.

We need not lie about what we are doing around here in order to gain political points. We actually should be sitting down at the table together and looking at how we can make these programs work better for longer.

Social Security is going to be in big trouble within 7 or 8 years. If we want to have solutions to that, why don't we sit at the table together and figure

these things out instead of lying about it?

We are trying to achieve better budgets and get closer to balancing the budget than what we have had the last 4 years. Why don't we be truthful in this process instead of the nonsense?

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time and effort to make this time available so that we can communicate directly with the American public about what is going on in Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed that I sometimes hear a lot of misinformation going out, including several presentations just a few minutes ago on the distortion of what the intentions are under the budget resolution and ultimately budget reconciliation and how we are going to return the United States back in the direction of a balanced budget, which has ballooned to be so unbalanced in the last few years. At least let's get back to the pre-COVID numbers instead of $2 trillion annually.

We will resolve that, and we will talk about that. We will talk about it publicly in the upcoming weeks, and the people can tune right into the committee hearings and see for themselves rather than having to believe lies made by politicians and by the media.

Mr. Speaker, I also will share this time and this hour here with colleagues, including my new colleague here from Indiana (Mr. Shreve), who would like to give his comments and thoughts here.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Shreve).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for participating and letting us know what is going on in the gentleman's district. I wish the gentleman the best in his first term and new term as a Member of Congress.

Mr. Speaker, just in quick review once again here, in passing the budget resolution this week, H. Con. Res. 14, it is a 60-page document, I invite people to look it up for themselves and reconcile for themselves between what they are hearing and what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are trying to scare the public with on things that are going to be cut because of it. They are not in there.

Again, Medicaid, no cuts. Medicare, no cuts. Social Security, no cuts. SNAP, none. We even heard a bit ago about veterans. No. We want to make these things better for them. We want to make them more effective.

Our veterans deserve to have the best possible care and the best possible services for them. It isn't going to come from the type of rhetoric of what we are hearing here.

As I mentioned before, Social Security. No one is going to reduce Social Security, but looking forward in the long term, it is going to be in big trouble in 7 or 8 years. Shouldn't we be working together in a bipartisan way to make sure that that program can sustain itself beyond that when the trust fund runs out, at such a point when more money will have to be paid in by workers or having less benefits or things like that because it just flat runs out?

That is not good. Let's have an honest debate on that and how Medicaid is going to go forward, as well. All of these programs need to be looked at in order to keep them on a solid fiscal course. That doesn't happen when lies get told about what we are trying to do here in sight of running $2 trillion budget deficits.

Mr. Speaker, with so many different issues for us to be looking at in Congress, we also have to revitalize our economy. A growing economy will help a lot in solving our deficit problem.

Two big drivers of inflation are overspending by Federal Government and the cost of energy, which is integral to so much of our economy, to every aspect of production and transportation and delivery and what we do in our daily lives. The cost of energy, from electricity in our homes and businesses, manufacturing, and fuel for vehicles, trains, and aircraft. Those are the two main drivers.

As we have seen in the last several years, when the Federal Government has basically put a giant vacuum on the available money supply, prices go up on everything. The energy to produce those things causes higher prices.

I am a farmer in my real life at home. A couple of years ago, I saw the tripling of the cost of fertilizer as an input for our crops and the doubling of the cost of fuel. Where is that going to be made up? It is in the price of food. Everybody is kind of mad about the price of eggs right now. I get it. I understand that.

A couple of points that factor into that is that we have California regulations, especially on how eggs are to be produced and the chickens are to be raised. We have seen all those things that drive inflation affect the egg growers and the poultry folks.

Also, I believe there is an overreaction on the bird flu. The last number I saw was 160 million chickens have been exterminated because of the idea or perception on that. Yes, there is a real deal out there, but I think the Biden administration took it way too far. When you have these things going on, that is going to affect the price of eggs.

The Trump administration is working diligently on that. I spoke with the Secretary of Agriculture just yesterday, and they are looking at remedies for that. We will be soon getting a handle on that and other things that are inflationary if we are allowed to have our economy thrive and be open enough to take care of these things.

I am encouraged by this direction. There is a lot of talk about DOGE and what it is doing. It is, indeed, flipping over rocks and finding a lot of cockroaches scurrying away on some things that the American public cares zero about on what is being spent in foreign areas. At USAID, at the beginning, there were some good aspects of USAID, but it sure turned into something that the public doesn't care about or want. There are effects from these costs and of these actions of government.

Mr. Speaker, we should then look at the regulatory side. We have had so much being expended on climate change, in my home State of California especially. What actually is climate change, and let's look at long-term trends.

There is a lot of science behind that being ignored, I believe. What are the trends on temperatures? What are the trends on CO2? There are so many different aspects that are a lot more scientific than politicians, me included, who are trying to expound upon that.

We have seen very difficult regulations come down the pike on the regulations especially of CO2. My colleagues have probably seen this poster of mine in the past, where I have pointed out the makeup of CO2 in our atmosphere, one of the greenhouse gases that are the main concern by several administrations now.

The main gas is nitrogen, oxygen, and these trace gases. We put right over here, especially carbon dioxide. Look at that very narrow strip which that represents.

When I actually show them this stuff, people are astounded at how little CO2 is in the atmosphere because they have been scared and had so much fear instilled in them by media, by politicians, and by regulatory agencies who say that CO2 is going to be the end of mankind. It is an existential threat. It is the biggest threat we have according to John Kerry and others. It is not the actions of China and others in the promoting of war and terrorism around the world.

Let me show my updated chart here. This one points out the same one I just showed here. This is currently in 2025. This is what it looked like back in 1970, back when I was a kid in school and they were instilling fear in us that we were going to have an ice age. Those are the days of the ice age. Those are the days of global cooling.

Look at the two charts. They are a bit smaller than the first poster here, but they are the same ratios. There is CO2 once again, that little, skinny, purple piece of pie in that chart here. There it is right here. It is the same ratios. Yes, CO2 is bumped up a little bit over that time, but that can be defined by so many things besides human activity.

Mr. Speaker, the credit that we would get as a nation isn't very often forthcoming that we have actually already done a lot of good things in this timeline. There is the Paris climate accord. Only the U.S. and one other country have actually seen their CO2 numbers go down in that period of time and leading up to it. Everyone else's is going up.

When efforts are being made to so dramatically regulate carbon dioxide, it is killing our economy. It is killing people's choices.

Look at my home State of California, where they want to ban vehicles that are gas or diesel powered by 2035. They are coming after locomotives. More and more, they have forced aircraft into using different types of fuels.

That is fine. If you can develop the fuel and it is a better fuel, let's look at it, but is it really going to produce? Instead of where the rubber meets the road, I guess where the wing meets the air, are we going to see dramatic savings in the different pollutants that are being focused on, or is it going to be offset by such tremendously high costs that it is never worth doing it?

When you look at the CO2, so many things are being done to try and avoid CO2, such as, again, vehicles. They want to take away gas stoves and gas water heaters. We have had legislation recently to address that, no, this isn't something that should just be done by whim, by the stroke of a pen in executive orders by EPA or others.

We have had CRAs, referring to the Congressional Review Act, to say, no, we are going to let people keep what they have because it really hasn't been shown that there is going to be a dramatic positive effect by taking away people's appliances, their gas stoves, vehicles, what have you.

Let's go back a little bit. I want to talk about greenhouse gas and the efforts by the EPA in different administrations.

In 2003, under the Bush administration, there was a petition submitted to the EPA for the agency to regulate greenhouse gases and CO2 under the Clean Air Act. It led to litigation that went all the way up to the Supreme

Court, which ruled, in 2007, that the Clean Air Act was written broadly enough, at least in that Court's decision, for EPA to regulate greenhouse gases, which include CO2 supposedly as a greenhouse gas--you can debate that if you want--and that EPA must decide if emissions from new motor vehicles endangered public health or welfare.

Once the Supreme Court made that ruling in 2007, 2 years later, the Obama administration, under their EPA, jumped to issue a 2009 finding that CO2 greenhouse gas endangered public health and that these emissions from new motor vehicles contribute to that endangerment. That is the endangerment clause that we talked about.

With these actions, the EPA is now required to establish CO2 standards for new motor vehicles for upcoming years. Up until that 2007 ruling, EPA generally did not regulate CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. We saw that, in '09, as I mentioned, the Obama administration moved in that direction, and we have been hearing about CO2 as a pollutant ever since.

Let's go back to basic school chemistry and science on that. CO2 is an important element in the atmosphere, even though it is only this tiny fraction at 0.04 percent. It is enough to sustain plant life. It is an important element, a key element.

We breathe oxygen, basically. We breathe all this, but oxygen is what we carry in our bloodstreams. CO2 is basically the same oxygen for plant life, tree life, all of it.

Interestingly, if we are too successful at reducing CO2 below the 0.02 percent level, you will see plant life starting to die off. You will see, with certain agricultural and horticultural operations, some will put up greenhouses in order to get the new developed plants to grow faster. Maybe for retail sales, so you can buy your tomatoes at the market to plant in your garden, they will inject extra CO2 into that to boost the speed of the plants. That shows right there firsthand that CO2 is essential to plant life and tree life.

If we are making that an existential threat, then we are really missing an important key to the science. Even though back in '09, in that area, everybody wanted to say that the science was settled. This is a catastrophe waiting to happen, that has been happening ever since, especially in my home State of California, where they are hell-bent on taking away people's choices on their vehicles, gas stoves, gas leaf blowers, and whatever you can think of, even--catch this--generators.

Think of what a generator does during an emergency. Generally, they are pretty portable and are needed when there is no electricity available in an area. A lot of times, this might be up in the hills or in the woods where there is no electricity anyway or in a remote area, maybe out on a farm. Maybe you need to weld something on your farm equipment, so there is a generator on the truck that can hook to the welder. A lot of people have home generators that are fuel powered, frequently gas powered, some diesel powered.

Let's say they get their way and ban fuel-powered generators of all types. Hospitals have backup generators when the power goes out there. Lord knows, in my part of the State here, we have seen plenty of power outages where we have what is called public safety power shutoffs in northern California because we have so many forest fires. Some of them have been started by the interaction of trees and tree branches and such with power lines. You get two bad results when that happens. A tree falling into a power line or a large branch, et cetera, sparks and causes fire.

The two bad outcomes frequently will cause a blackout. The power will be knocked out, but the things that are more dramatic and more noticeable in the long term are the fires that could come from that and then torch tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands and, in one case, a million acres. In my district, a perfectly healthy-looking tree that had been inspected and deemed to be okay fell into a power line. That is how the Dixie fire started and burned 1 million acres.

What are the effects of that fire on CO2, air quality, and all that? It is really bad.

The Dixie fire, for example, was, as I mentioned, 1 million acres of such concentrated smoke that that smoke plume got up into the atmosphere in such density that it made it up into the jet stream that comes across west to east in this country and affected the East Coast.

People in New York, Philadelphia, and even here in D.C. were advised for a several-day period to not go out and do physical athletic activities outside because the smoke was seen as above healthy levels.

This isn't just in my backyard, where it happens so often that people are almost used to having brown skies because of burning forests. Our fire is affecting the East Coast.

You noticed it a year or two ago with the Canadian fires, where it was coming down from either Ontario or Quebec, much more close by, and suffering those effects, too. That came all the way from back there. That is a result of regulations not allowing us to manage the forest in such a way that you can put fire out much more simply and sooner.

You are always going to have fires. You are always going to have burning forests. The last 50 years or so, because of the way they have not been managed, the forests are now so dense, so full of burnable material, burnable fuels, that it is extremely difficult to put a fire out.

We need what is called shaded fuel breaks, which in plain English means thinning areas of the forest. We should prioritize around towns and cities, of course, but any area that you can do that means that you are going to have a lower density of trees per acre. A lot of the brush and other material that gathers on the bottom of the forest, that biomaterial can actually be used for positive things.

There are folks talking to us even more about expanding the use of that for pellets to export, positive export, positive for our economy and our trade deficit, but also for cleaning up our forests and putting jobs back in our forests.

For some reason, we are the number one importer of wood products of the Western countries. Let's get some wins on that. Let's get some wins for everybody on the management of the forest and the negative environmental effects you have on air quality as well as water quality. You have all the ash that is left behind on these catastrophic fires that basically leave you a moonscape that is washed into the streams, brooks, and rivers, and eventually the lakes, such as lakes in northern California that store mass amounts of water--4.5 million acre-feet in Lake Shasta, 3.5 million acre-feet in Lake Oroville, when they are allowed to be full. That is the water supply for most of the rest of California. It is the drinking water for L.A. It is important.

What do you do with that water quality with all that stuff flowing in there because we are not managing the forest lands? When we harm ourselves with CO2 information that really isn't accurate or proportional, we hamper our ability to do much of anything.

I am excited to see that our new EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, is taking a look at this again. We are not just accepting that, back in 2009, the Obama administration was able to just say that the science is settled.

What do you know about science? Science is never settled. Science is constantly evolving at some level or another as new information is found. I don't know how many things you can really decide are the final word in the area of science, biology, or what have you. We are always learning more, so how you can have the whole equation on whether it is mankind's involvement or what nature does with forests and trees--in the rain forest, for example, as plant life grows and dies, as it absorbs oxygen doing so, it releases CO2 when it dies off.

What is happening in the ocean? There are a lot of sources where CO2 could be happening. That is under the assumption that we think CO2 is bad, but ask a tree. CO2 is good. Pretty much everything is carbon-based anyway in our world and our lives.

If we are going to eliminate CO2, which I don't know that we can eliminate that much, down to 0.02 percent, that would be really dangerous to do so.

I am pleased that under the executive order that President Trump put out, the EPA Administrator is going to look at recommendations on the 2009 endangerment finding as it was called

at the EPA under the Obama administration. It has been the basis for many climate-related regulations. This executive order will determine whether this really aligns with what the energy policies, legal interpretations, and, more importantly, the needs of Americans are for energy and all the things that come from energy.

Remember, I talked about the main cost drivers of inflation and why everything is so expensive now, including eggs and fuel. Our fuel in California is about $1.25 or $1.50 a gallon higher than the national average. That is another thing we get to enjoy under the regime in California.

Taking a look at this endangerment finding and saying the science isn't settled is going to be extremely important. We can actually get some more science involved back in how we are going to look at

Mr. Speaker, let's be very clear about something. Last night, the House budget resolution passed, unfortunately on a very partisan, party-line vote, but indeed it did pass.

One thing it does not do is cut Medicaid. It is right here in this document. There is no mention of cutting Medicaid or even the words ``Medicaid,''

``Medicare,'' ``SNAP,'' or ``Social Security'' in this document that passed last night.

Any claim to the contrary is actually fear-mongering, plain and simple, or I guess in my neighborhood it would be known as a lie that is being perpetuated to put fear in people and to drive anger at the majority party and have unruly townhalls because people are being fed lies.

It needs to come to a stop. We need to have an honest debate, an honest conversation, around here about how we are going to get our government back on a track that doesn't lead us to endless, massive deficits in our budget each year. We are still on track for $2 trillion, upside down, following COVID spending.

COVID is over with. We need to get back to at least pre-COVID levels of spending with an opportunity to actually balance our budget, where it might be only $700 billion, $800 billion, or $900 billion upside down.

The only way we are going to take a bite out of the national debt is to actually bring the lines together and have our budget balanced. We can do that with limited spending and a strong economy. My understanding from years ago is that if the growth of spending was only 1 percent, these two lines would meet.

We need to have a little bit of discipline around here. That is what was being sought in the budget resolution.

This budget resolution is not the final say. It actually is a roadmap for moving forward on the fiscal year `25 budget. It does not make final spending decisions. Those are still to be debated and heard in committee on TV in front of the people on C-SPAN and in the committee process that folks can attend.

It includes instructions for committees to review and adjust spending and revenue priorities, but it does not dictate specific program cuts, unlike the lies that are being spread all over in this Chamber, in committees, and in the media.

Reconciliation is indeed a standard budget process that will be taken up. The resolution instructs 11 committees to find ways to either reduce wasteful spending or invest in key priorities.

These committees have until March 27 to develop their proposals, so nothing is set in stone yet. No lies are needed. This is how budgeting has always worked. Democrats know that. Republicans know it. Unfortunately, on the other side of the aisle, they would rather scare people than be honest about this process, and indeed, honesty is very much needed in order to get a harness back on the profligate spending that has happened in this place over the last few years.

We need to have honest conversations about these programs. My good colleague, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert), speaks about this frequently. Social Security will be on the rocks by 2031, 2032, 2033, when that trust fund actually goes empty. Are we going to do something about it, or are we going to have lies and distortions about what is actually happening with that? Do we want to fix it as much as we can ahead of time while we still have some runway to do so, or do we want to just have lies about this and not try to do anything about it?

I think we were instructed by the voters to do something about it and try to have these programs be salvaged so they aren't on the rocks in just 5, 6, or 7 years.

We need to have the allocations of taxpayer dollars that come from the hardworking taxpayers. Frequently these are called ``contributions.'' These are not contributions. They are compelled. Otherwise, people come take your stuff, and maybe you go to jail.

These tax dollars need to be respected as the work of the people. When we make these allocations, whether it is for national defense, border security, or tax relief for hardworking Americans, let's be honest about it and get it done.

This legislation is indeed focused on that and is an ongoing effort with budget reconciliation and the work of DOGE. We are hearing all this bad stuff about DOGE. It has had a few fits and starts, but doggone it, it is getting to the bottom of a lot of wasteful spending.

Each time they flip over the rocks, more cockroaches run out, and we find more things with bad contracts or spending that is not even a priority that any normal American can even think up.

In my home State of California, they are still seeking more money for that high-speed rail system that started out in 2008 for a price of $33 billion. The price has quadrupled now to $130 billion. Is that a bargain for Americans? Is that a bargain for Californians?

They have already tapped all the money they can at the local level, $9 billion of State money and about $3.5 billion of that ARRA money. Remember that shovel-ready so-called stimulus money back in 2009? They already tapped that.

They have what is called the cap-and-trade tax in California, which raises about a billion dollars per year. It is like a new currency now. It taps into the producers of carbon dioxide in the State and makes them pay a ransom to continue to produce whatever manufacturing they do.

This budget resolution is a good start, but it is not the final document. We will be working on that in the light of day in front of the people.

Mr. Speaker, in the budget resolution document there is no mention of Medicaid or any cuts to it or Social Security or Medicare, any of them. That is a lie that continues to be told on this floor and in the media. People shouldn't buy into it and then swamp their Member of Congress as a result of these lies and have these aggressive townhalls.

Constituents are being lied to when they say this stuff. We are going to contemplate this budget resolution in the budget reconciliation process, and that will be in front of the people so they can see.

I did want to talk about the situation in Israel a little bit and Hamas and the way they have so brutally murdered and abused people there.

It has been 500 days. It is time that we recognize Hamas for what they are because they are not wearing any ``Coexist'' stickers on themselves or the bumpers of their cars. They do not want to get along with Israel.

The goal in much of that world is to destroy Israel. This is what we are dealing with. We need to remember that as negotiations go forward and as we get the hostages back.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague yielding me the time here and the effort on this review.

We see that this is an eleventh hour rule put in at the end of the Biden administration, like many, that was contained in the Inflation Reduction Act, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. That is a pretty funny name.

What we have is a situation here where there are a couple of main drivers of inflation in this country: government overspending and energy costs that have been driven so high during the Biden administration. It hasn't helped.

What we are doing, in effect, is that we are punishing the people with the reduction of methane by imposing these strict financial charges on the facilities. Due to that rewrite of the greenhouse gas reporting rule, the natural gas tax will capture many more producers than the so-called Inflation Reduction Act actually authorized. It is already being misapplied.

When you look at the whole issue, H.J. Res. 35 is important to get back to energy independence and also not drive our partners in Europe into the arms of--not yet another Russian hoax, it sounds like here today--Russian natural gas dependence.

If anybody would view the history of those areas of the world, why would they want to be dependent on Russian gas? Why would we do things to help foster that by driving up the price and lowering the availability?

Indeed, with the miracle of hydraulic fracturing, we made natural gas so incredibly available for our country to lower the cost of energy. We enjoyed that for a while until the Biden policies have put us where we are.

We have to take a step back, repeal that horrific rule made by rule, not by a discussion in Congress, but by the stroke of a pen in the Biden era. Let's repeal this. Let's put us back on energy independence that will make our economy stronger, our country stronger, and also help us be better trading partners with those around the world that can rely on cheap American gas instead of Russian gas.