Floor Statements

Offered By: Mr. LaMalfa

Amendment No. 39: At the end of the bill, before the short

title, insert the following:

Madam Chairman, I rise today in support of H.R. 1947.

Is this farm bill perfect? No. Would I like for it to have done more? Yes. Is this still a bill that modernizes and moves farm bill reform forward? Yes.

We've made many landmark improvements and modernized many programs within this bill. The farm bill provides logical reforms that would streamline our Federal Government and cut spending and protect our farmers, ranchers, and rural communities.

We indeed are reducing spending in the farm bill by $40 billion, including $6 million in sequestration. We're streamlining the conservation programs to the tune of $13.2 billion by repealing direct payments, also. We are also saving money in the food stamp area by $20.5 billion.

The farm bill offers the first reforms and savings to the SNAP law since the Clinton-era welfare reforms in 1996, modernizing SNAP programs while eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.

In the House Agriculture Committee, I'm proud to say we added further reforms to SNAP by preventing the USDA and States from engaging in SNAP recruitment activities and prohibiting the USDA from advertising SNAP on TV, radio, and billboards.

This is a farm bill we need to pass to move in the right direction. I urge a ``yes'' vote.

Greetings to my friend Jim Withrow, whom I would like to recognize today, and I would just remind everybody of how important it is that we participate in this Memorial Day weekend in order to remember those who have fallen and honor those they've left behind.

It's a lot of times thought of as a weekend to go out and have barbecues or watch car races on TV or sports like that, but it's really rewarding for the heart for us to go participate on Monday in one of our communities. For those watching, just take that time in the morning to go out and honor those veterans. It will make you feel better as an American. Then our obligation as citizens is to fulfill our role as voters, as people who hold our government officials accountable, because when you hear veterans say that they don't recognize the America they once fought for 50, 60 years ago, it really hurts.

So let's uphold the honor of our Nation that they fought for and be participants in our government in the process and hold all of that accountable and honor them in that ultimate way. We give thanks for their service, and God bless them. Please participate on Memorial Day this weekend.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 1412, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chair, I appreciate the opportunity to rise today and speak in favor of my amendment to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. This is an example of the process working. A lot of folks have expressed concerns about the measure here, not only on the cyber intelligence side but as well the privacy and personal security side. I think this amendment and many others that we have seen today, and will see, are addressing that issue so we get the right balance between cybersecurity and individual liberties and freedoms, Fourth Amendment concerns.

The threat we face today in the cyber realm is nothing short of a serious threat to our national security. Nation-states like China and Russia are targeting the American government and the American private sector alike for cyber espionage, and potentially for cyber attack.

Chinese espionage targeting the American private sector to steal core research and development information--at the very heart of American innovations and jobs--represents an unprecedented threat to our very way of life.

While strongly supporting this legislation, I am pleased to have worked with Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Ruppersberger to further clarify that nothing in the legislation should be construed to be a surveillance program directed at American citizens.

The amendment is very concise yet extremely important. Titled the ``Limitation on Surveillance,'' it simply reads as follows:

Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize the

Department of Defense or the National Security Agency or any

other element of the intelligence community to target a

United States person for surveillance.

As we act to protect the United States from cyber attack by foreign countries and terrorist groups, we must ensure that our constitutional rights and privacy are maintained. The term ``United States person'' includes U.S. citizens and legal residents or legal visitors to the country, limiting the surveillance powers of this bill to foreign nationals and those entering the Nation illegally.

This amendment helps to strike the balance this measure strives for, granting our government the means to defend the Nation while, importantly, preventing any inappropriate use of these powers.

Again, I am pleased to support legislation that creates no new regulatory regime and does not create additional Federal bureaucracy or require significant additional spending.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Chairman, once in awhile a bill comes through that even makes great sense in Washington, D.C., and this is a really commonsense measure. I live on a farm in northern California where I'm surrounded by canals and ditches and water moving all about in my daily life in producing rice, and so there's all these opportunities we would have on installations like that. But we're talking today about Bureau installations to put renewable power in place that, according to this chart here, would affect many, many States with many installations and provide many American jobs.

The opportunities of this bill, just putting the bureaucracy and the red tape aside, for a commonsense measure to take advantage of an opportunity to do something that, on the heels of March Madness here, really, installations would be no harm, no foul. These facilities already exist. It would be easy to put in place. If we could put aside the red tape of NEPA requirements, it would be unnecessary.

As I drive up and down my canals and my ditches, again, no harm, no foul here. We're looking at an easy installation that would be a very valuable thing for, where I come from in California, a renewable energy portfolio, which is 33 percent kicking in. It's pretty hard to find renewable energy, especially when most of those sources are required to be solar or wind.

Hydropower is a very important component in my part of the State here. We have so much water that we can take advantage of to produce, why aren't we doing it in the commonsense areas?

H.R. 678--and I commend the chairman and Mr. Tipton for bringing this bill forward. This is, again, something that's going to be very positive for rural America, for our renewable energy portfolio, which is affecting, I think, a lot of the country these days, because renewable energy in most cases is very expensive. So the same people that are saying we can't do this without NEPA, the same people that are saying we can't have fracturing, which is bringing very cost-effective electricity to many, many Americans now, the same people that want to remove hydroelectric dams in my part of the district in northern California are now wanting to oppose a commonsense measure like this.

Sometimes I just don't get it, but this one here is really an opportunity to move forward with opportunity for our rural States, for rural areas to produce these projects with American know-how and more American jobs. We hear a lot about that here today. Let's put Americans to work with commonsense, reachable measures that are environmentally sound and certainly good for our economy.

We passed the CR today. We've seen the sequester go through this week, unfortunately. So here we are.

We ask the President to not scare the country and put everybody on notice that he's going to make it as painless as possible, to do the positive things that are going to make this thing work. We have to rein in spending in the United States. It's going to be for our children and our future. So instead of threatening things such as guided tours that don't cost anything becoming part of the past, why don't we move forward with things that we can agree on and that are going to be helpful for balancing our budget and taking the small step towards a future. Yes, it's going to be painful. But it doesn't have to be as painful as when we hear directives to Federal agencies to make it as painful as possible. It's a very disingenuous process.

So let's stay here and get this thing done right and find real things that we can make in reductions to help our country and not threaten it.

For almost 4 years, the Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to pass a budget--the most basic responsibility of governing. This shameful record must end this year. We must set up a broader debate about spending that forces the Senate to finally join the House in confronting the government's spending problem. The House and Senate must each pass a budget. If they fail, Member pay should be withheld. The principle is as simple as the bill: no budget, no pay.

I'm a California legislator, having served in our State legislature for 8 years. The people of California finally got tired of late, ineffective budgets and passed legislation on their own via the initiative process to force the State legislature to get the job done. The first time that happened, right after that election, the budget got done on time. Amazing.

Therefore, I hope the American people will join the effort the U.S. House Republicans are taking up and force the United States Senate to get the job done to get a budget, as is their responsibility.