Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, our subject here tonight is about California's high-speed rail project, a project that was voted in in 2008 by the voters of California with approximately $9 billion worth of bonds to help fund what would be a project that would seek outside private investment as well, a project that would link San Francisco to Los Angeles with possible additional spurs to Sacramento and San Diego. It has run into large funding problems and such. So the subject of our time tonight is that we see that there are huge problems with the funding and where will the funding come from.

I have my colleagues here from California, as well, who would like to speak on this subject. First of all, I would like to yield to my good friend and colleague from the north San Joaquin Valley, Congressman Jeff Denham, who has been a leader on this issue here in Congress as well as chairs the Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which deals directly with rail and this issue. So, Congressman Denham, I would love to hear from you tonight.

Thank you, Congressman Denham.

Indeed, the more time that goes by on this issue, the more problems and flaws are exposed in this. This is a measure that passed in 2008, was put in front of the voters, known as ``Prop 1(a)'' at the time that passed by a 52-48 margin. I think the voters were sold something completely different than what we are actually seeing as Californians in the project.

Congressman Denham mentioned that the price has ballooned from approximately what people saw on the ballot, $33 billion for that initial San Francisco to L.A. segment; and just 1 year later, it was revised up after the voters had voted on it to $42 billion. And then we saw that the Sacramento segments, the San Diego segments were dropped off as even options.

Interestingly, we have all been in the State legislature--Congressman Denham and myself and another gentleman who will be speaking here in a moment--and we saw these numbers go past us at a time. And at a hearing that was held in the California State Senate in November of 2011, it was finally exposed that their numbers were way off, and they admitted that the project that voters expected would be right near $100 billion to do the San Francisco to Los Angeles segment if it was going to be truly a high-speed rail from port to port. And also during that time, in order to build up and say what an economic boom it would be, they were advertising that 1 million jobs would be created by this.

We pinned them down in that Senate hearing that it wasn't really 1 million jobs. It was a term called 1 million job years, which really translates out to perhaps 20,000 jobs of building the entire system. So we have seen a lot of very creative--I would say phony--numbers on costs, on benefits, and even some of the very highly optimistic ridership numbers as well.

So, Congressman Denham, what does that mean in your district here as far as what you really think the jobs would translate out to? And then what are some of the impacts on the property involved, as well?

Indeed, I attempted that in 2012 with legislation at the time called SB 95 in California to place that back in front of the voters, give people the option, now that they have more information, to say do they really want to go through with this with California's other issues. You mentioned, Mr. Denham, the challenges we have had with water supply. Even our Governor is saying that this is a huge priority and a huge problem for California to face in 2014, and yet we have a very difficult time allocating a few billion dollars to enhance our water storage in California and instead are faced with this.

What would that mean for jobs in the valley if we are able to turn the water, turn the tap back on to agriculture at a fraction of the price of high-speed rail?

I yield to my friend.

Indeed, when we look at the project in totality here, what ended up being $100 billion to be legal under Proposition 1A, to have a true high-speed rail--which is required--to go from San Francisco to L.A. at a high speed, 2 hours and 40 minutes, a $100 billion project was revised now down to a $68 billion project, which does not include high-speed all the way to San Francisco in the north. It would stop at the San Jose area, and then you are required to use local transportation, local light rail, what have you, to get all the way up to San Francisco. And at the southern end, you have, in L.A. County, it doesn't go to downtown Los Angeles under the new plan. It would stop somewhere in the north, remote north L.A. County portion. So it isn't truly high-speed rail anymore.

As you mentioned, too, Mr. Denham, on that, if they take the Palmdale route, they probably can't even sustain those speeds. So it is illegal on that count that it probably can't make a 2-hour-and-40-minute ride. And with that, you have three different segments. So if you have to buy three different tickets, I don't know how the customers are being suited by three different stops like that, as well.

We were told back in the day that the price of a ticket would somehow be tied to 85 percent of what an airline ticket was to go from north to south or south to north; and a real estimate, if this were self- sustaining, it would be somewhere maybe triple of that.

So the impacts of that, again, California agriculturally with water supply is struggling this year. So for a fraction of the amount of money it would take to bolster California's storage, we are going to spend perhaps what would have been $100 billion--in the revised number, $68 billion--to do an illegal Prop 1A version from south San Jose to north Los Angeles. That is a $55 billion gap on the entire project right there.

We can only point to $13 billion worth of funding, the 9.9 from the bond. Bonds have consequences. They have to be paid back by an already financially strapped State. As well, the 3.5 billion or so that is promised from the Federal Government under the 2009 stimulus has strings, too. It has an expiration period.

Please embellish on that a little bit, Mr. Denham, because we know there are some very important deadlines coming on that as well, if we can.

California just passed a recent tax known as Prop 30 last year, 2012, that was going to pay for a whole lot of things, go for a lot of different measures with perhaps schools and other infrastructure. We had talked about cap-and-trade. You can even point to truck fees, that they are all now trying to be shifted towards high- speed rail instead of other priorities. I wonder if that is what the voters' intentions were on Prop 30 or on their truck fees or weight fees, et cetera.

So I think there has been a lot of deception around this, again, on cost and on ridership. As I mentioned a minute ago, if it has been revised down to a $68 billion plan, we can only point to, for sure, approximately $13 billion from Fed stimulus and the State bond. Where does the other $55 billion go to build what is really an illegal plan? Where is it going to come from?

Mr. Denham, you mentioned we haven't seen the private-sector money from anywhere, yet you can point to, recently, a proposal came out for an east coast plan to build a maglev, magnetic levitation train, that would link east coast urban centers, and there are already interested investors from Japan on that with much more modern technology. You can say that rail isn't new technology because it is wheels still running on a steel rail. And in California, which is supposed to lead the way in technology and innovation, we are really not leading on this at all.

So what do you see as far as the problems with that bigger funding gap? And then, bringing that back, what is that going to do for our economy?

Indeed, when the stimulus money first started coming available, there were other States that applied for high-speed rail money, such as Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin. I believe that after they looked at their numbers, ran the figures on projects that were eligible for that stimulus money, they turned that money back and went back into this pool. Of course, California said it wants it; but interestingly, it would have been a much smaller portion had California been sharing with those other States what Federal money would have come to the State. So the other ones said, We have looked at the numbers, and we are turning that money back in.

I think we ought to apply some of the same logic as the other States looked at when they had Federal money available, eligible funds, that they indeed turned back.

So I really appreciate your leadership on this, Congressman Denham, and we will be doing a lot more to make sure this is held accountable to the public here. I look forward to your hearing tomorrow on this matter.

We are also joined by a colleague from the lower San Joaquin Valley area of the State for whom this issue is very important, very key to his district as well, on the impact of the

rail route as well as the economy, as well as what it means for the taxpayers of the State and the entire country. Indeed, this has an effect on national taxpayers and the budget as well. So people in other 49 States are looking at what is going on here and saying, Why is our Federal money going into something that can't possibly work out?

And so I know we are all willing to help people in other States with sensible infrastructure projects. That is the way it works in this country with our interstate system that President Eisenhower had the vision for back in the day. And yes, there might have been naysayers there, but you could actually point to positive results in something that works long term and other infrastructure projects that were invested in, but this one here, the numbers just don't run.

So my colleague, David Valadao from the valley, has got very great concerns and has been very strong in leading in his area too, as well, on what are the impacts going to be, what are the costs.

I would like to yield to Congressman David Valadao.

One question: a commission, a board in California, recently moved to the three-person board to authorize the rail authority to start condemning property under eminent domain. Of course, there is going to be a lot of resistance. Kings County is a hot bed of resistance to this project. The eminent domain procedures are not easy or cheap to get through a court process. They are already moved to condemn two pieces of property, I believe, in Fresno County, and I believe there are at least 380 that may have to go through this process. How do your constituents feel about the forced taking of land and an alignment that doesn't make a lot of sense and some of the infrastructure that might be lost in these communities?

Indeed. Let me ask you, too: How easy is to relocate a rendering plant? A rendering plant, that is a facility that processes dead agricultural animals, which happens, and so they need to be taken to be processed, and one of those is right in your district, I understand.

Is the high-speed rail authority guaranteeing to help or see through as part of the environmental documents to help make sure this is replaced or other infrastructure is replaced? There are dairies in line. Again, in California, securing a permit for a new dairy has become nearly an impossibility, as my colleague in the dairy industry would probably report. So there are a lot of people weighing in on that. Relocating the dairy, these are facilities and lands that have been for generations of families that have been there. Is anything being taken into account on the authority helping with these processes as part of the impact they are having?

Indeed. We are both from long time farming families. I think when you are a farmer, or any business that is multi- generational, but especially on the land, you develop a bond. You develop a love of the land that you don't really put a price on. I think most farmers will farm until they can't farm any more, either due to age or regulations taking it away from them, or whatever. So how do you put a price on my family, raising the fifth generation, and you and your neighbors, you have multi-generations as well. How do you put a market price on your legacy? Someone is coming in from Sacramento or Washington saying we think it is worth that. It may be worth infinitely more to you and your family and the generations behind you. How do you quantify that?

Certainly. Eminent domain is something that governments should use very reluctantly, very rarely, and only when there is no other option available. My farm has been affected by that as well with the large towers, the power lines that move basically from hydroelectric projects in the northeast part of the State down to the San Francisco Bay area. It is something that affects our fields, but it is part of the greater good. Our tractors have to drive around those now and figure out how to still keep straight lines going through towers running at an angle, and you have ag aircraft that have to tangle with avoiding wires and flying over the towers at 200 feet and trying to drop seed or fertilizer, things like that. So we get some pretty strange streaks in our fields because of that infrastructure, but it is important. We want the folks in the Bay area to have that.

Eminent domain isn't always very fair. What I am seeing here is the promises, if there are any promises made by the high-speed rail authority, to truly keep people whole on this and give them options, and as you mentioned, the alignment changes frequently. We are not even sure if they have a full 520-mile alignment decided yet. They could have gone for a more low-impact route, perhaps putting it down the middle of Interstate 5 or adjacent to it, using parts of 99, perhaps.

Certainly you can make an argument that the first places you should look are the urban areas where you can have the potential ridership. Here on the east coast, you have a lot of ridership between Washington, D.C., on up all the way to Boston. I don't know about the financial viability of that, but at least you can make a case there. Here, as was reported just a couple of years ago, they wanted to start in the Valley because, as was quoted, they had the least amount of resistance to building the rail starting in the rural Valley as opposed to what it was going to take to run through the South Bay area, places like Palo Alto and others, that some people are feverishly opposed to what that would do and what that infrastructure tends to bring to high- value communities like that as well.

But, again, the promise lies in the Central Valley for us in what we do well already. My portion in northern Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley, these are strong agricultural areas.

I am wondering--and maybe you can touch on this as well--we have had different ideas for water projects that for a fraction of the money we are talking about with the high-speed rail system, how far could we go to do one or two water storage projects and what would that mean for especially communities like you have down there that have seen a huge economic impact with the cutoff of water due to the delta smelt and those other problems? What would that mean in real jobs for the people that have the skills and education level that likely aren't going to be working on a high-speed rail project, but have a strong background in agriculture? What do you see that doing to help your area?

I think everybody in California in the midst of this drought probably find agreement with that. Our own Governor was underlying that in a speech the other day, and yet still so wedded to this high-speed rail project, which the funding for is highly questionable. Indeed, a judge handed down a decision the other day ordering California not to spend any of the State bond money because it wouldn't be legal to do so under the lack of a plan they have.

We both served in the State legislature. And is California's financial situation such that it can get out there on its own somehow with new funding? If the Federal money falls short or no private investment comes out, where will it come from?

What doesn't get talked about much are different impacts like the high-speed rail. In order to sustain a high-speed, you have got to build a very long elliptical form in order to make turns with a train going 220 miles per hour. It is kind of like the angled towers running at angled lines on my property that we farm. It doesn't fit in real well with a grid that is set up on straight lines and squares like that.

So when an elliptical-shaped rail comes through your community through agricultural zones, as well as high-speed rail having to cut off all the crossings, can you build enough overpasses to not stop the flow of traffic, whether that is cars or trucks or even a farmer on a tractor who now may have to drive his tractor instead of just across 6 miles down the road and back up to get around. I mean, there are a lot of impacts that are really not meeting the eye here when you line them out.

Well, indeed, it does appear that they are hell-bent on

spending that approximately $3.5 billion that has Federal deadlines on it in order to get the project started; and then at that point, well, we are invested in the project, we can't stop now, even though the judge ruled it is illegal to spend the State dollars because it is not fulfilling the plan. So, indeed, big impact on the Valley and on taxpayers.

Mr. Valadao, I really appreciate your time and your leadership on this here tonight. Let's keep putting the message out that there are better ways. Most anything might be better than investing in this at this point. So I thank you for your help here tonight.

So, indeed, the investors that were supposed to come in, private investment for what had been billed to voters as a $33 billion project, up to $45 billion if you built the San Diego and Sacramento link, they have not materialized. When you see that the price for a time went up to $98.5 billion--hence California's Senate bill 985--it scared everybody away from this.

You see, in a Baltimore to Washington proposal to do a maglev project here locally that has outside investors that want to come in on that, nobody is touching California's high-speed rail.

So in the absence of this outside investment, California has moved in many different ways to try and find other pots of money. The Governor plans on diverting truck weight fees that are collected from commercial truckers away from repairing California's aging roads.

Just try and drive in the right-hand lane of any freeway--I get to enjoy Interstate 5 a lot--and see what the condition of that road is. Some areas have been repaired. Caltrans had a pretty good year last year. Other areas it is still pretty rough. Interstate 80, near Sacramento, they are doing repairs now; but the potholes on that were pretty bad.

Yet we are seeing the effort by the State to shift funding away from repairing roads that everybody uses versus a project that maybe few can afford to actually use. My colleagues from the Valley here would probably tell you that there is not going to be a whole lot of people that jump on high-speed rail to ride from Bakersfield to Fresno because it doesn't make any sense for them.

The promise of a low-cost ticket being 85 percent initially of an airline ticket from L.A. to San Francisco or vice versa, how can that be met without having the tickets subsidized at these costs? $85 we were told, $90. It was revised later maybe $120 when we had a hearing about it. Try $300 if it is not going to be underwritten by the taxpayers for ridership on this.

How many people are going to spend $300 on that trip? Other than those that might do it for the novelty of the train ride from north to south or south to north. We saw pie-in-the-sky numbers on what the amount of ridership would be, numbers that at one time were greater than the entirety of Amtrak across the 48 continental States. They have had to revise them down to some other vague number.

So there is not a lot of trust in anything being put forward by the California High-Speed Rail Authority on costs, on ridership, on impact, promises made or not made to those that are impacted in the line of many different proposals of where the route is. Yet they are still trying to move forward and start condemning people's property, at who- knows-what price of reimbursement, in order to spend as quickly as they can this $3 billion-plus of Federal stimulus money put in place almost 5 years ago.

It is really looking more like a fraudulent enterprise from what the voters saw in 2008 to now. Indeed, polling out there shows that now that people have heard about this the last couple of years and what it really means and the other choices they have to make on schools, on water, on their actual highways, that they have a whole lot of different opinion on it. A lot of editorial pages around the State are saying at the very least if you are not going to stop it, you should put it back on the ballot.

I attempted that in 2012. The mood wasn't there in the State legislature to do that. My former colleague there that I served with, Assemblyman Jeff Gorell from the Santa Barbara area, he is putting forward legislation to put it back on the ballot and re-vote the rail. So I hope that catches fire and that the legislature will look at this project and decide maybe that would be worth a vote of the people of California to decide if this is still a priority at these prices.

So Assemblyman Gorell has got a pretty big task to put that in front of the legislature and achieve the votes. But interestingly--still talking State politics here--but in the State Senate, to put forward the first segment of funding in late 2012, it received the bare majority of votes to fund that. In our California State Senate, there are 40 Members. They have got a vote of 21-19. All the Republicans voted ``no'' and four of the Democrats, who up to that point had been pretty favorable on high-speed rail. It barely got out of the State Senate floor.

I think that is saying a lot, that the opinions have changed, certainly amongst the voters. Now we just have to put the State legislature in a figurative headlock and get them to think about it and do that.

So I hope Assemblyman Gorell is successful in this measure because it would be proper to put this back in front of the voters and ask them again: would you rather have this or water projects, highway projects, school projects, any number of things that could be done to help move California forward instead of this boondoggle that has no way of paying for itself or sustaining itself?

We see, again, with the court handing down a ruling, that the plan is diverted so far from what was initially voted on and approved by the voters that it is now illegal. Why should State government be doing things that are illegal? Because they are right now in such a hurry to get the money spent, the Federal money. If the Federal money was to stop, the State money also has to. They both have to have a match with each other; but if there is not the match happening, then there are giant legal problems.

Congressman Denham mentioned a while ago: What is the payback procedure if Federal money is misspent, improperly spent? Because California had the capacity to do that if it doesn't meet its timelines, it doesn't meet the goals, it doesn't meet the tenets laid out in proposition 1(a). It would be in a true high-speed rail system all the way from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which so far that plan is not. You have to ride three different train types to accomplish that under this current plan.

Now we know the folks in the Bay Area and parts of Los Angeles are interested in seeing some of their tracks electrified as beneficiaries of some of the money that will be coming from this. I get that, I understand that. That probably would be a benefit for them, some upgrades in their local infrastructure. I don't know why you could not support that separately from this. If it helps to get Caltrain in the Bay Area electrified, then that should be a separate question, a separate set of funding, because right now this is illegal.

The people in the Bay Area do not want to be part of an illegal project, likely, and maybe perhaps lose that funding they are depending on to electrify and upgrade their system. I don't think so. That is a lot of money when it gets around to doing that above what is going on in the valley, with the condemnation of the land, and building in an area where they said would have the least amount of resistance for the project, let alone the Bay Area and perhaps parts of north L.A. County.

So it is very problematic. It is really time, as I proposed back in my senate days, to slow down the project and really get some real numbers. That was my first bill in the State Senate, SB 22. It was a no spending, no doing anything, until we have fully vetted and thought out a plan.

Honestly, this reminds me of ObamaCare. I have been calling this around my neighbors ObamaCare, Jr., because it is so poorly thought out; and the plan for funding it looks largely the same, pie in the sky. Investors won't touch it. Federal Government, are they going to come in and bridge the gap of the other $55 billion that is missing, if we believe a $68 billion plan, or on up to the approximately 100, let alone the inflation things that might drive a real project all the way to $150 billion? All for what?

What could really be seen as an outdated technology and something that a lot of people can't afford to assess, nor even make sense for them to use in short segments within the valley. Yes, it may make sense possibly if you had a fast train that could go all the way from San Francisco to L.A. and complete that.

One of the things brought up is that in order for the project to be technically legal, they would only have to send one train per day in each direction at full, nonstop length. They would have other trains perhaps that are making all these stops, stopping at every little burg along the way. That is not high-speed rail. That is glorified Amtrak, glorified local commuters. That is not the intent of voters or anybody on this measure, or for that funding which is scarce money these days in California. The huge problems we have in trying to get a budget done and move eventually towards the balance in our Federal budget, it isn't a priority that we should be doing.

So, Mr. Speaker, I just want to note that again Congressman Denham will be having a hearing tomorrow in his Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on rail that will be at 10 a.m. in Washington time, developing more on this situation. So I would invite you to participate, or watch that, and expose what really needs to happen with Federal funding as well as maybe perhaps the people in California have an opportunity to weigh in on Assemblyman Gorell's proposal to have this back on the ballot and maybe perhaps shift our scarce funds to other things.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the time here tonight, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 50 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, January 15, 2014, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, during the month of December, we oftentimes take time to memorialize what happened on December 7, 1941. Unfortunately, the survivors of Pearl Harbor, we are losing them more and more each year.

Today I would like to memorialize a friend from the Shasta County area of Northern California, Hank Reynolds, who we lost just recently. He was a gentleman who faithfully turned out each year to memorialize Pearl Harbor on the courthouse steps in Redding, California.

He was, at one time, the chairman of the California Pearl Harbor Survivors Association and always was there with a sharp salute. Even though these gentlemen are in their late eighties and early nineties now, they always would turn out and encourage us, encourage the youth that day to memorialize and remember that.

Hank served on the USS Detroit and was right in the middle of it there, ships on either side of him being attacked. They were about to go out on leave that Sunday morning, and he returned back to his post and helped fight that battle that day.

So I will miss Hank. I really enjoyed his company and seeing him at those events. I know our country is greater for having had them serve for us at that time, and we memorialize them here today.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to memorialize a friend who just passed away recently here in northern California. I knew her from Paradise, California. Her name was Hazel Reed. Everybody referred to her as Haze, and that is kind of the part of the fun of who she was.

I know she enjoyed visiting our ranch on occasion and was always very active in our community with political-type issues and the standing up for the freedom and values that this country is founded on. And so I always appreciated her greatly for her spirit, her feistiness, and that she would take the time out of her life to be involved in the political process and more importantly standing up for our community and its values.

So again, I'm happy to at least at this date memorialize her, though we will miss her. Hazel Reed known as Haze from Paradise, California. So God bless her.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate an extraordinary milestone of Durham resident Eric Larrabee, as he celebrates his 50th birthday today, November 14, 2013.

A fourth generation Californian, Eric is an active member in the communities of Butte City, Chico and Durham. Eric and his wife, Treasa, are busy raising their twin daughters--Abigail and Jillian--in Durham, while simultaneously running a thriving agricultural operation and giving back to the communities he works and lives through volunteer efforts and serving on boards.

Eric currently serves on the boards of the Association of California Water Agencies, as a trustee to the Enloe Medical Center, and a director at Western Canal Water District. He has also served on the Glenn Country Farm Services Agency County Commission, California Rice Research Board, Levee District Three, Butte City Volunteer Fire Department, and the Glenn County Planning Commission.

Eric is also owner and partner of Larrabee Farms in Butte City, where he works alongside two of his brothers growing rice, pecans, walnuts and various row crops. Farming has been a part of Eric's entire life, being born in Chico and raised on a family farm his great grandfather originally started in 1918 in Clarks Valley in western Glenn County of the California coastal range.

Eric enjoys spending time with his family, skiing in the winter, hunting and fishing throughout the year and enjoying the beautiful landscapes all of Northern California has to offer. As a proud father and husband, family is a strong part of his character. His dedication to community service, family and a life in farming is to be commended.

Mr. Speaker, please join me in congratulating Eric on this special day, November 14, 2013, and in wishing him a Happy 50th Birthday. May he have many, many more.

Mr. Speaker, the Republican side of the House has put out everything that the other side wants except for what America doesn't want--and that is ObamaCare. Instead, people are going to be railroaded into a program that fines them for not buying a product that they don't want and from a Web site that doesn't work.

Is this America or is this something a whole lot different?

Choices are being taken away, and people are being forced into a program they don't want. That is why our side fights for liberty and fights for one's choice of determining one's own health care system and health care plan.

Would my colleagues on the other side of the aisle please join us in putting out what we need to do to get done since we agree on almost everything in the CR except for the continued forcing of people into the ObamaCare program.

I appreciate my colleague, Mr. Gohmert, here on pointing out really the hypocrisy of what's going on with the public's lands, the public's parks, the way this is being used as leverage by the folks higher up in this administration to try and extract from the American people, from those of us in this House, perhaps, what they want.

He mentioned the thing in South Dakota there. Now, there is a lot of suffering going on in South Dakota where a lot of ranchers have lost a lot of livestock. And if anything, if your government has the ability to do something, it should be finding ways to help people, instead of putting up cones where they aren't supposed to be on a State highway they claim is on Federal land.

So if all those cones are in the bottom of the canyon that they may have had to rent or what have you, similar to the barricades they are putting up around the monuments and memorials here in this town, where they have to go out and rent barricades on company time with furloughed employees even to set them up and put sandbags in place, this an insult to the American people. It is an insult to all of our Honor Flight folks that have been coming in to town, anybody that would use what would normally be 24-hour memorials, 24-hour monuments.

So what gives? I don't understand.

You know, getting to the bottom of this here, we have this impasse in the Congress here in Washington. Mr. Speaker, it is about time this is ended because we are hurting the American people by the actions of this White House, by the impasse, the Senate.

We have sent over various, either all-inclusive CRs, or the bits and pieces we are doing to try and fund things as a priority, one at a time, that are very important to the American people. Funding our veterans, funding the basic ability when we have had fallen soldiers come home here in this recent news story, that their families can't even go pick them up because of an unyielding-ness by this administration, by those in the various bureaucracies to instead work to help American people in a time of fiscal straits that we are in, to help as much as possible, they are looking for ways to instead hurt them as much as possible.

What is with this?

We can even go back to previous impasses where, at least, President Clinton would sit down with the Republican House or Republican Senate or, after a while, it was a Republican House and Democrat-controlled Senate. There has been a mixture, over time, of putting aside the bitter partisanship and figuring out how we are going to hammer this out.

If we can do it with President Clinton, we can do it in previous Presidencies. This isn't the first time there has been this kind of impasse or this type of slowdown or shutdown. Yet this time seems to be unique in the meanness and the bitterness that's coming down from the intractability at the White House level and over on the Senate side as we have put forward solution after solution.

Yes, thank you. Yes, we have had unanimous votes go off this floor with nearly 200 Democrats joining us on two of the pieces of legislation, and anywhere from 25 to 35 to 40 on many of the other pieces that have gone out. So it has been a bipartisan effort. I think both sides of the aisle see this is really a nonpartisan issue on these issues we are working on.

And so why do they have to rest on Senator Reid's desk over on the Senate side?

Why do we get threats of vetoes from the White House when we find agreement?

We would find agreement on almost the entire CR if we got that one provision there, where even some of the Senators themselves, and now we are seeing it in the press where, I think you mentioned Wolf Blitzer has now joined with Senator Manchin as well as Senator Baucus in thinking the Obama health care take over is a train wreck, that we are seeing a pretty diverse group of people saying, you know, a 1-year delay would not be an unreasonable thing.

As we have seen the exchanges rolling out, they are not working very well. And people, when they are looking finally to find out what the prices are, what it is going to cost them, maybe people thought they were going to get it for free. They were going to get a rebate; they were going to get a lower price. A lot of Americans, especially the youth, are going to see higher prices. They are not going to see the savings.

And if you look at the track record of the government operating things, government generally doesn't do things cheaper, and we are going to learn this in a very detrimental way to our economy, to the health care for the people of this country as this Obama health care takeover continues to roll out.

Exactly. Now, who are the navigators?

Weren't they supposed to be vetted as to who they are, go through security?

And as well, look at the track record of the IRS. Do the American people really want 18,000 or so IRS individuals helping with their important personal health data?

I mean, there have been laws passed to make sure that that is a very secure thing. Sometimes even inconvenient to the patient, where you might be at the doctor and say, well, don't you already have this information from my other doctor?

There are very strict guidelines in how your information is traded around. Now it is going to be in the hands of navigators that are unvetted and with IRS agents that have some very huge security issues already with the way that is being used against certain organizations.

The most outrageous thing for most folks, though, is that the waivers, many individuals in this country are asked for and got to be outside of this as it was coming together; and more and more are asking for it, some are being turned down.

But especially, I guess, buying off Members of Congress through the OPM, allowing Congress and Capitol Hill to be exempt from this. If it is such a great program, if it is going to work so well, why would we be subject to a waiver?

Why are they talking about there would be a brain drain on Capitol Hill because everybody would be leaving because they can't afford the health insurance?

How does that work?

Well, Mr. Speaker, it's late back here, but I'm from the west coast, so ``let's play two.''

I'm really disappointed with the rhetoric that's been flying out of here in recent days. You hear all Republicans this, or Tea Party that, or you're in the hold of the Tea Party.

You know, we're in the hold of the American people here because we see this Obama health care plan is not affordable; it's not going to work. We're just trying to go back and take another bite and see if we can revise, delay, or do something different than foist these costs and an unworkable program that's going to ruin people's health care. Let's go back to the table.

Instead, we get ``no'' from the President, we get ``no'' from the Senate, we get a lot of ``no'' from the other side of the aisle.

Aren't we supposed to have a negotiation? Aren't we supposed to have a discussion here? The American people demand that. They're seeing that this program is not going to work. It's going to cost them; it's going to cost their jobs; it's going to make their health care less accessible. And yet all we get are ``no.''

So if we want to look at who's causing this government shutdown, listen to the people yelling the most about it over on the other side of the aisle--yes, yelling.

So we're here. We're ready to play two here tonight if we need to.

I greatly appreciate the gentlelady from Minnesota for her efforts here and for the great lady she is.

Mr. Speaker, again, here we are, discussing an issue where this has taken away choices from the American people.

Now, as promised, we saw the President himself say, if you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away.

One of my colleagues on this floor yesterday, counter to that, said how he had had his plan canceled as of the end of this year. People all over this country are now starting to get cancellations on their health care insurance plan that they've chosen with their families, around their kitchen table, probably agonized over how they're deciding to afford it, what level of deductible, what kind of coverage they're going to have. And that's being swept away by what really feels, to a lot of people--a lot of my constituents are telling me it feels like a very oppressive plan that's being pushed upon them.

It's really unbelievable in the United States of America that you can be forced into being a part of this system. It blows my mind that the Supreme Court would agree and rule that people should be forced into purchasing something of this personal choice.

We talked a little bit earlier about how people's privacy is going to be so greatly affected by all this information being dumped into a pool, and government bureaucrats are going to be in charge of that. Look at the leaks we've already seen with other people's information being leaked out by the NSA, or things accidentally put on the Internet by who knows all the different agencies involved.

Yet, this is going to manage one-seventh of our economy, and a very important, very personal thing with people's health and their family's health care. I really, really shudder to think--if this measure cannot be slowed down or stopped by the efforts we're doing in the House and in the next few days around here, it's going to be devastating to people's personal choices, to the economy, to their jobs.

Look at the part-time jobs that are being made out of full-time jobs because people have to react. There are true costs to what the Obama health care takeover is going to do to the people of this country, their families, their livelihood.

So that's why we dig in so hard to do this. This isn't politics for us. No, it isn't. It's about doing the right thing for the American people. A document that really was not well-read or well-vetted, done here just about three or four short years ago here, now is coming home to roost, in its ineptness, in its incompleteness and the overall oppression it's causing for Americans who are feeling that they're out of choices.

In my own home area, for example, people had up to approximately 130 different choices of health care plans through 8 to 10 different providers. They will be limited to two in my part of northern California, with maybe 8 to 10 total plans that they can choose from.

And the way this is rolling out right now, you might get only one plan if you're in certain sectors for perhaps a full year. How is this improving anything?

How is this making health care more affordable, more options, more anything?

We've got to repeal this. But, in the meantime, at the very least, we ask our colleagues in the Senate to not strip out the provision we put in place that would allow for a 1-year delay, which is the least we would need, as a country, to see something made better than what it is right now.

Exemptions, one after the other, are being dropped on us. And why do people that work in the public sector want exemptions if this is such a great plan? Pretty soon there'll be nobody left in it except for the taxpayers themselves.

So I thank you for the time. I thank my colleague, Mrs. Bachmann, for allowing this time here today. And let's do the right thing here the next few days in this Congress.

Mr. Speaker, it is kind of interesting to hear all the chatter about a government shutdown here, chatter that seems to be coming from the other side. I think they, maybe, protesteth too loudly, because Republicans have acted to give the Senate and the President the tools, the means, to avoid a government shutdown. We've acted on two occasions to pass the language of the Full Faith and Credit Act to ensure the government continues paying its bills in the event of an impasse in budget negotiations.

However, the Senate has failed to act on a commonsense proposal which would preserve our Nation's credit rating, continue paying the military, protect Social Security and other essential services.

Where is the Senate's action on this measure? What is the President doing to help? He is, instead, more willing to meet with foreign leaders and is unwilling to talk to us in the House.

Mr. Speaker, is this what the American people asked for--that we have an impasse amongst the three legs of the legislative process in this country, that we can't even talk to each other and we'd rather talk to foreign leaders first on the important, key issues like what we have coming up: the continuing resolution, the sequester, the debt limit, and the impending ObamaCare takeover of our health system?

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in full support of H.R. 3102.

This commonsense bill reforms the SNAP program and simply requires that able-bodied adults without dependents obtain employment, participate in job training activities, or perform voluntary community service activities in exchange for continued benefits.

I've been hearing a lot of chatter these days about how there aren't any jobs out there to get people back to work. Perhaps if government weren't killing businesses through overregulation, increased taxes, and bureaucratic delays, it might be easier to get people back to work.

The President did state 3 days ago that the economy was improving and jobs were being created, so it seems reasonable to get people into job training programs in order to get these job openings filled. Let's say the President is wrong about these. Even in the most economically challenged areas of this Nation, there are opportunities to better one's community through volunteerism.

Who in this body can argue with work or volunteer requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents? When did asking able-bodied adults to look for work become an unrealistic or a demeaning request?

This bill preserves the SNAP program for those who need the assistance while also helping them to find employment and live the American Dream.

How does any of that sound unreasonable?

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

I appreciate working with the chairman of the committee, Doc Hastings, on the amendments to this legislation.

This amendment seeks to prevent the Department of Justice from seeking excessive, unquantifiable damages from property owners who have fires accidentally escape from their property onto public lands.

We have seen U.S. Attorneys sue landowners for hundreds of millions of dollars above the damage to national forests and the costs of firefighting based on very speculative claims about the value of habitat--claims which appear to be based not on science, not on fact, but only on the desire to generate revenue for the government.

When the Forest Service gains as much revenue from lawsuits as it does from timber receipts from an actual working forest, something is surely wrong with the system. This language would help to end that problem in many Western States. However, I plan to continue working on this issue until we develop a 50-State solution to this problem. So it is for these reasons that I respectfully ask unanimous consent to withdraw this amendment at this time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, disasters like the massive Rim fire that impacts my colleague's, Mr. McClintock's, district in Yosemite National Park, which many people believe is a national treasure, and I agree, not only threaten residents, homes, and other structures, they also destroy valuable public property: forests that provide jobs in rural communities, revenue for local governments, and recreation for Americans.

Unfortunately, planning and procedural hurdles often prevent the Forest Service from salvaging usable timber and returning the land to a healthy condition.

This amendment enables the Forest Service to rapidly undertake salvage, rehabilitation, and replanting by allowing those activities to be included in fire suppression operational and funding plans.

When wildfires impact private timberland, owners know that salvage and restoration work must be conducted immediately. The window before decay and insects eliminates timber's value can be only weeks. Site rehabilitation must be done before the rainy season to prevent landslides and sediment from clogging waterways. However, the Forest Service's ability to conduct these operations on public lands is so restricted that timber which could generate jobs and revenue literally rots on the ground, even as adjacent private timberland is rapidly rehabilitated.

After the 46,000 Bagley fire in my district last year, private landowners sprang into action and, it is my understanding, that salvage and rehab operations are already complete on nearly all these private lands. These areas have been replanted and rehabilitated and soon will once again be healthy, productive forests. The Forest Service lands, however, lie nearly untouched as the value of the burned timber disappears.

In Trinity County, in northern California, 13 lightning-sparked fires burned over 250,000 acres during the memorable 2008 fire season and caused $150 million in suppression costs. However, the Forest Service conducted salvage and rehabilitation on just a few hundred acres, leaving an area one-third the size of Rhode Island blackened and scarred.

This amendment speeds the salvage and rehabilitation process by allowing the Forest Service to plan this work in conjunction with suppression plans and removes procedural hurdles by defining these activities as part of suppression efforts. The amendment allows, but does not mandate, the use of suppression funds for these efforts. Again, it does not mandate, but allows, the use of suppression funds for these efforts. The CBO has stated this amendment has no impact on overall Federal spending.

Finally, this language will offset firefighting costs by generating revenue for local communities and the Federal Government through salvage operations. Federal agencies spent over $1.9 billion on firefighting in 2012, and every dollar derived from salvaged timber is one less dollar diverted from other programs.

As you may know, I have cosponsored an amendment with Representative McClintock streamlining judicial delays that slow salvage operations. This amendment complements that language by accelerating the salvage and rehabilitation planning progress but functions independently.

I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I respectfully request your support, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in memory of a great Californian, a man who was known all up and down the State as ``Go See Cal''--Cal Worthington. If you're a Californian, you have probably seen his ads starting back in the fifties of Cal and his dog Spot. He was also a great hero as a World War II airman and pilot.

We know him in northern California for his ranch he has in the Orland area, the ``Big W Ranch.'' In most recent years--he never quit giving-- he helped out at the Glen Medical Center with an annual event we called ``Splendor in the Valley'' that he hosted at his ranch, which was a huge success for the hospital and just goes to show Cal's big heart.

We miss him already in northern California, as does all the State, because he's just a one-of-a-kind man that you will never replace his character, his humor, and what he does to keep giving to the community.

We lost Cal the other day at the age of 92, and we will always remember him. And Splendor in the Valley will go on with its 10th anniversary this year in his honor.

I ask this place to adjourn in his memory today.

Mr. Speaker, every year, rural America, especially the western States and areas like mine in northern California, are in the news. It's not for something good, but for something like we see going on with so many of the wildfires around the country. There's no reason for this. That's why I support this bill here today that would actually make our forests perform for us, instead of being a detriment to us and our health in California and the western States.

We can have either the type of air quality problems that are happening--like in the central valley of California, for example, one of my colleagues was talking about, although we've had challenges there in recent years, they've actually improved things. The air quality right now is much worse because of these fires than anything going on by people or after the improvements that have gone on with other air quality issues. In my own part of the State back in 2008, the whole summer and into the fall, brown, dirty--including the areas close to the fire--kids couldn't go outside because the quality was 10 times above health levels for them to be safe.

We see our small communities that are devastated by an economy that has shifted away due to forest management and Forest Service policies that don't work for them. This legislation would allow our forests to perform for us and help these economies, help the health of the forest, the health of the people, and the health of the local economies to be strong once again, and, as was mentioned earlier, our rural schools.

So let's do commonsense legislation instead of watching our forests burn. I urge you to support this.

Madam Chairman, I'm pleased to be able to present this amendment here. I thank the chairman of the committee for allowing this.

We have a situation here where section 404(f)(1) of the Clean Water Act exempts certain activities from the permitting requirements under section 404, including normal farming, forestry, and ranching activities, and construction and maintenance of farm and forest roads, irrigation ditches, and farm ponds.

In 1977, Congress made a deliberate policy choice to amend the Clean Water Act to provide carefully tailored exemptions for these ordinary activities of farmers, ranchers, and foresters from the costly and burdensome requirements to obtain Clean Water Act permits.

Despite this clear expression of congressional intent, however, the Corps of Engineers and the EPA in recent years have been trying to circumvent the 404(f)(1) permitting exemptions by attempting to interpret a limited ``recapture'' provision in section 404(f)(2) in such an expansive way as to virtually swallow up the exemptions in 404(f)(1).

As a result, we have a situation where Congress clearly provided a regulatory exemption from permitting in one paragraph of the Clean Water Act, only to have the Corps and EPA now take it away through a creative interpretation of the next paragraph.

The Corps and EPA cannot take away administratively what Congress gave legislatively. These administrative efforts to undermine congressional intent have resulted in excessive and overzealous efforts to expand regulatory powers into farming and ranching activities exempted from regulation.

In one instance, a family farm attempted to convert pastureland irrigated by ditch to a piped irrigation system to improve their water efficiency--a laudable goal from any perspective. This is an activity clearly exempted from regulation by section 404(f)(1), yet the Corps' argument that potential runoff from this work, which would run into a man-made drainage ditch and eventually into a terminal man-made pond with no outlet, would impact somehow the navigable waterway, the Sacramento River, which is over 6 miles away, which really bears no relation to reality, this regulation. This claim by the Corps turned a 1-day, $2,500 project into, now, a multiyear legal battle resulting in over $100,000 in legal costs to the family farm, all with no improvement or protection of the environment.

This amendment is intended to make it clear that the Corps is not to use any funds to regulate activities that are already excluded from regulation under section 404(f)(1)(A) and (C) of the Clean Water Act, and that the ``recapture'' provision in section 404(f)(2) is not to be used to undermine those section 404(f)(1) permitting exemptions. The amendment allows the permitting exemptions to stand on their own merits, without the Corps and EPA negating their use through clever legal interpretations.

In no way does this amendment attack or limit regulation of wetlands or our Nation's waterways. As a rancher myself, with wetlands, ducks, other wildlife on my land, I know full well the importance and value of reasonable protections for our natural resources.

Today, farms in California and elsewhere are being targeted for simply changing crops or irrigation methods. They are doing their best to follow every law, the spirit of the law, but are being targeted for something Congress explicitly exempted.

This amendment simply limits funds to ensure that agencies of government only spend money to follow the laws as Congress wrote them. I urge all Members to please support this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

I yield to my colleague from Iowa (Mr. King).

I yield back the balance of my time.