Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, California is suffering one of the worse droughts in its history. More than a half-million acres of the most fertile farmland in the Nation have been devastated. Some Central Valley farmers have been notified that they will receive zero water allocations from the Federal system. The owners of long-held water rights are being cut off.

In some communities ``water police'' go from door to door to enforce water restrictions. Homeowners are forbidden to water their lawns, except under the most rigid constraints. Sacramento offers an app so they can turn in their neighbors to the water authorities.

And yet, knowing full well that we are facing a devastating drought and that our dwindling water supply will be desperately needed by our people this summer, over the past several weeks the Bureau of Reclamation has released 70,000 acre-feet of water from dams on the American and Stanislaus Rivers to meet environmental demands that place fish above people.

This is enough water to meet the annual needs of a city of half a million people, all sacrificed in order to flush salmon smolts to the ocean, where they tend to swim anyway, and keep the river at the right temperature for the comfort of the fish.

The releases of this water are so enormous they are called ``pulse flows.'' Citizens are warned to exercise extreme caution on rivers undergoing pulse flows, so swift is the water current they produce as the water rushes toward the ocean.

Four months ago, Folsom Lake on the American River was almost empty. Yet on April 21, the Bureau of Reclamation more than tripled the water releases from Folsom and Nimbus Dams from 500 cubic feet per second to more than 1,500 cubic feet per second for 3 days. That is about 7,000 acre-feet of water.

On April 14, a 16-day pulse flow drained nearly 63,000 acre-feet of water from New Melones and Goodwin Dams on the Stanislaus. The irony is that if we hadn't built these dams, these rivers would be nearly dry in this drought and there wouldn't be any fish.

We cannot demand that our people discriminate and save and stretch and ration every drop of water in their parched homes while at the same time this government treats our remaining water supply so recklessly, so irresponsibly, and so wastefully.

This conduct utterly destroys the credibility of government demands for stringent conservation and sacrifice by our people, and it thoroughly undermines its moral authority to make these demands.

Inflexible laws administered by ideologically driven officials have taken this wastage of water to ridiculous extremes, and it cries out for fundamental reform. The House twice has passed such a reform bill, most recently as H.R. 3964, but the Senate refuses to act on it or to pass its own alternative.

Nevertheless, the administration has the authority to stop these releases through provisions in the Endangered Species Act but has failed to do so.

Mr. Speaker, we use the word ``outrage'' too often on this floor, but in this case it is an understatement. If a homeowner is caught with a 1-gallon puddle on his lawn on the wrong day, he can be fined. But the government thinks nothing of flushing 23 billion of gallons of desperately needed water for the comfort and convenience of the fish.

How much longer will the people tolerate this kind of mismanagement from their government? How much longer will we allow these policies to threaten the health, safety, and prosperity of the human population throughout these drought-afflicted lands?

California's chronic water shortages won't be addressed without additional storage. There are plenty of suitable sites, but current laws have delayed them indefinitely and made them cost-prohibitive.

Until those laws are changed and new dam construction can begin, our State and Federal Government have a responsibility to manage our dwindling water supply as carefully as we ask our citizens to do.

The wildly frivolous and extravagant water releases from our dams last month make a mockery of the extraordinary sacrifices that our citizens are making to stretch supplies in this crisis.

Perhaps, at least, these releases will serve to educate the public on just how unreasonable these environmental laws are--and the policymakers responsible for them.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding to a dissenting opinion.

Mr. Speaker, one of the biggest complaints I hear is the practice of forcing taxpayers to underwrite the losses and risks of politically well-connected companies. Companies reap the profits; taxpayers pay for the losses.

Today the House considers a bill that perpetuates this policy with the objective of creating jobs not in America, but overseas. Quietly tucked into this bill is a provision to reauthorize the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, or OPIC, for another 3 years.

OPIC provides political risk insurance, loan guarantees, and direct loans to U.S. companies for their overseas investments, making U.S. taxpayers responsible for their losses. Recent beneficiaries include the Ritz-Carlton in Istanbul; Citibank branches in Pakistan, Jordan, and Egypt; and a SunEdison solar farm in South Africa.

According to the Congressional Research Service, this does nothing to help our economy. We are told it doesn't cost taxpayers because recent losses have been minimal and covered by fees. I remember similar assurances about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Such assurances are good only until they are not good, and taxpayer exposure is monumental and growing.

This measure directs OPIC ``to prioritize investment in the sub- Saharan electricity sector.'' Yet one company doing so, Symbion, recently warned the Senate that it was owed $70 million at the end of February by utilities in just one African country.

Reviewing OPIC's $10 billion portfolio in Africa, the Center for Global Development reported that if the money had been used for natural gas plants rather than renewables, an additional 60 million people would have had electricity. But that is not politically correct.

OPIC pays for the bad business decisions of large corporations and underwrites job creation abroad, all ultimately underwritten by hardworking American taxpayers. What is not to like about that?

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 6 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, the budget substitute offered by the Congressional Black Caucus is a good faith effort to lift a growing portion of our population out of chronic poverty and despair, a goal all of us share. It attempts to do so over the next 10 years by raising $2.3 trillion of taxes on corporations and the wealthy and running up an additional $4.3 trillion of debt to increase overall Federal spending by $6.7 trillion to fund so-called stimulus spending relative to the Republican budget. My fear is that it will accomplish exactly the opposite of what it intends, harming the very people it is trying to help.

Let's start with some fundamentals on tax policy.

First, we need to understand that businesses do not pay business taxes. There are only three possible ways for business taxes to be paid: they are paid by consumers as higher prices; they are paid by employees as lower wages; and they are paid by investors as lower earnings--your 401(k) or pension plan, for example.

Secondly, we need to understand what a trillion dollars is. Divided by the number of U.S. households, it comes to about $8,200 for every family in America.

As much as we like talking about taxing the wealthy, there aren't enough wealthy people in this country to make more than a dent in these numbers. Indeed, many of the so-called wealthy are actually small businesses filing under subchapter S.

Raising taxes by $2.3 trillion ultimately, then, means that families, on average, will have $18,000 less to spend on their own needs that they will pay through higher prices in stores, through lower wages at work, or as lower retirement savings.

In addition, the CBC budget would plunge our Nation $4.3 trillion further into debt after 10 years relative to the House Republican budget. That is more than $35,000 per household. That is not a theoretical number. That amount, plus interest, will have to be paid back in future taxes just as surely as if it appeared on your credit card statement. In fact, families will be required to pay this debt back before they pay their credit card, and the IRS is quite insistent that they do.

Again, not all of that will be direct taxes. Much of it will be hidden in higher prices, lower wages, and lower retirement savings for families. But make no mistake; it must all be paid back, and families will bear that burden.

Let's look at the massive increase in spending designed to jump-start the economy. That policy has already failed us, and failed us miserably, and here is why:

Government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy until it has first taken that dollar out of the economy. If I take a dollar from Peter and give it to Paul, it is true Paul is going to have an extra dollar to spend. He is going to take it into a store. The storekeeper is going to order more inventory, the manufacturer is going to order more resources, and that dollar will ripple through the economy.

But we have completely forgotten the other half of that equation. Peter now has one less dollar to spend in that economy--one less dollar to ripple through it. So, in the end, we have not stimulated the economy at all. That is why the trillions of dollars we have already spent trying to stimulate the economy have not worked.

Indeed, this does great damage to the economy because we are transferring huge amounts of capital from the productive sector, which invests its money based on the highest economic return of a dollar, to the public sector, which invests based on the highest political return of the dollar. Those are two very different things. Indeed, that is the difference between FedEx and the post office; it is the difference between Apple Computer and Solyndra; it is the difference between the Reagan recovery and the Obama recovery.

So I beg my colleagues to reconsider. We have tried these policies and they do not work. Under this administration, we have seen record tax increases, record spending increases, and record debt. The result is tragic.

The poverty rate for Americans of African heritage has grown from 12 percent in 2008 to 16.1 percent today. Median income for White households has declined by 3.6 percent during this administration, but it has dropped by 10.9 percent for African American households. Compare that to the Reagan years, when median income increased for all Americans by 4.4 percent but grew by 4.5 percent for African American households.

No one doubts the sincerity of the Congressional Black Caucus in bringing this budget substitute to the floor, but there is an old saying: You can't fix a broken bucket by pouring more water in it; at some point, you have to fix the bucket.

The House Republican budget does this by reducing the tax and regulatory burdens that are choking investment in job creation and that are causing the long, cold winter that our country has endured. If we want to see morning again in America, we need to restore the policies that have produced it before.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I am now pleased to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford), the former Governor.

Mr. Chairman, it has been the honor of a lifetime to serve on the Budget Committee under the leadership of our distinguished chairman, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan), to whom I yield such time as he may consume.

Mr. Chairman, we are ready to close when the gentlelady has finished her presentation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, it is human nature, I think, to resist concluding that our beliefs have been disproven by experience. The more we invest in our mistakes, the less willing we often are to recognize and correct them; but sooner than later, we have to acknowledge from our own experience that certain policies work and certain policies don't, whether they are tried by Republicans or Democrats.

My Democratic colleagues are right to praise the Clinton administration's handling of the economy; but we must ask: What were those policies?

In 1995, he announced that the era of Big Government is over. Working in cooperation with the Republican Congress, they reduced Federal spending by a miraculous 4 percent of GDP. They enacted what amounted to the biggest capital gains tax cut in American history.

They reformed entitlement spending by abolishing the open-ended welfare system. They produced four budget surpluses in a row, and the economy flourished, and it expanded for all Americans.

My colleagues are also right to heap scorn on George W. Bush's handling of the economy; but we have to ask again: What were those policies?

Well, he increased Federal spending by 2 percent of GDP. He enacted the biggest expansion of entitlement spending since the Great Society. He began the era of stimulus spending. He ran up what, at the time, were record budget deficits. Don't my colleagues see that they are advocating the same policies that got us into this mess?

My objection to President Obama is not that he has changed Bush's policies, but, rather, that he has not changed them. He has taken the worst of them and doubled down on them. The CBC substitute takes us further down this path of debt and doubt and despair.

In 1862, Abraham Lincoln sent this message to the Congress--and I think that they are words meant for us today. He said:

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy

present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we

must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must

think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and

then we shall save our country.

I invite my friends to think anew and act anew; to disenthrall ourselves from the policies that have failed; and to return to the policies of individual liberty, constitutionally limited government, and personal responsibility that produced the most prosperous, happy, and free society in the history of civilization. In short, freedom works, and it is time that we put it and our country back to work.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, our Constitution assigns the principal responsibility over the public purse to the House of Representatives. Under that constitutional doctrine, a dollar can't be spent by this government unless the House says it gets spent. Yet today, spending increasingly seems to be out of our hands, driven automatically by a variety of provisions and practices that thwart the very design of the Constitution. Roughly two-thirds of our spending is for entitlements, over which we have lost any direct control in the appropriations process. That is the big problem.

But there are other reasons for this problem as well that this bill addresses. One of them is the current process by which we calculate the baseline from which we begin our annual budget negotiations. Any family would begin its budget process by asking, for example: What did we spend for groceries last year? Once it has that baseline, then it would begin to adjust for changing circumstances. The price of milk is going up. Should we cut back or look for substitutes? Or should we cut back on something else to afford that increase?

That is the rational process known to every reasonably well-managed family. This process gives budgeters, whether they are a household or the House of Representatives, the ability to adjust for changing priorities, needs, and conditions. Yet the Federal budget process

builds in a variety of spending increases above and beyond what we had previously agreed we could afford--before our budget deliberations even begin.

That same family doesn't begin its budget process by building in assumptions of how it might change its spending in the future. For example, if it took vacations the last several years, it doesn't automatically budget for a vacation next year until it has met its other needs, that is, it doesn't budget for decisions that it has not yet made. But we do, quite routinely.

Thus, we begin the budget process with a baseline that hides the many tough decisions that a budget requires: How do we cope with price increases? Should we continue to deviate from our spending plan next year just because we did last year?

The current budget process denies us the perspective that any family has when prices go up or conditions change. It often prevents us from asking the questions that a family would ask under these circumstances. Instead, we sweep these issues under the rug--or, more precisely, we sweep them into the baseline.

Does this bill make our job harder? Yes, because it requires us to figure out how to cope with changing conditions. Right now, we start our budget by assuming that we are hostages to our spending. This measure makes us the masters of that spending. That is a harder job, but that is our job.

Mr. Chairman, in August of 2010, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs warned that the greatest threat to our national security was our national debt. That was $4 trillion of debt ago. In fact, since the inauguration in 2009, we have accumulated more total government debt than we have run up from the very first day of the Washington administration through the third year of the George W. Bush administration.

We were told this would jump-start the economy. It hasn't. Instead, it has deprived markets of the capital that would otherwise be loaned to businesses seeking to expand jobs, to consumers seeking to make purchases, and to home buyers seeking to reenter the housing market.

I would remind the House that we cannot provide for the common defense or promote the general welfare if we cannot pay for them, and the ability of our government to do so is being slowly and surely destroyed by our debt. Balancing this budget and ultimately paying down the national debt is a national security imperative, it is an economic imperative, and it is a moral imperative.

Under Chairman Ryan's leadership, the House is about to pass the fourth budget in a row to balance. It stands in stark contrast to the President's budget that never balances and that condemns our Nation to a debt spiral that will consume our future. It reforms and reorganizes our social safety nets. It prevents their impending bankruptcy, and it restores them to financial sound foundations for the generations to come.

This is not beyond our ability. President Clinton, working in cooperation with a Republican Congress, delivered four balanced budgets in a row. Together, a Democratic President and a Republican Congress cut Federal spending by 4 percent of GDP. They enacted what amounted to the biggest capital gains tax cut in American history. They reformed entitlement spending by abolishing the open-ended welfare system. The economy blossomed.

In the years since, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, we have veered far from these policies of fiscal responsibility and economic expansion, and the economy languishes.

The budget before us combines the policies necessary not only to restore solvency to the government and save the social safety net, but it also restores prosperity to the American people. All we lack is the same cooperation from the President and the Senate that we had just two decades ago.

Time is not our ally. Every day we delay, the problem becomes more intractable and the road back becomes more difficult, protracted, and perilous.

I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his kind words.

Mr. Chairman, the question before the House is whether we are going to continue to ignore the economic consequences of the major actions that we take or whether we are going to start recognizing that incentives matter and that the legislation we pass has profound economic consequences that must be taken into account.

Why does Amsterdam have the narrowest houses on Earth? It is because they tax by street frontage.

Incentives matter.

What happens to our revenues if we tax all of a person's $100,000 income? The static scoring on which we now exclusively depend says that that would raise us $100,000, but we all know the correct answer is that we would raise zero dollars because that person now has no incentive to work.

Macroeconomics gives us tools to anticipate the real-world effect of major policy changes, and we ought not to be blind to them. It is not perfect, but it comes far closer to the mark than does a static model that assumes that people are mindless automatons whose behavior never varies despite major changes in the economic environment that our laws create.

This measure doesn't presume to tell the CBO how to do its job or what formula to use in its analysis. We will still get all of the static scoring the same as before, but on major legislation that greatly impacts the overall economy, this bill says: give us the complete picture. If a proposal is going to affect the economy by more than a quarter percent for good or ill, then

tell us. Tell us what you think, and show us why you think so.

For too long, Congress has blundered from one economic policy to another with its eyes wide shut, and it is time we got the complete picture and took into account the real-world consequences of our actions.

Madam Chairman, people need to understand exactly what is going on here. The U.S. Forest Service and other Federal agencies have begun demanding that privately-owned businesses surrender their long-held water rights simply as a condition of receiving routine renewals in their special use permit so that they can continue to operate on public land.

This is a radical departure from more than 100 years of Federal deference to State law on this issue. It amounts to an uncompensated taking and is a violation of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, and it is an affront to State law, under which the Federal Government must acquire water rights through the proper channels as would any other user.

Now, there are 121 ski areas on Federal public lands that are affected by this practice; 14 of them are in my district. These businesses rely on their water rights for snowmaking. They use this water as collateral for financing to build and maintain their facilities and for supplying water to the local communities they support.

In 2011, the Forest Service issued a directive that would effectively take these private property rights without compensation, in violation of State law, while jeopardizing these enterprises all together and all the direct employment, spinoff economic activity, and tax revenues that they provide.

This involved far more than ski resorts. Our Subcommittee on Water and Power has also received reports of similar tactics directed against farm and ranch operations that rely on State-recognized water rights for irrigation and stock watering.

Mr. Tipton's bill simply directs Federal agencies to stop perverting what should be a routine permitting process into an excuse to extract long-held water rights from private owners.

Madam Chairman, this amendment creates two different classes of citizens: ski resorts and everybody else.

It leaves the portion of the bill that protects ski resorts from being forced to relinquish their water rights as a condition of continuing to operate in the Federal forests, and that is good, but then it creates a tier of second class citizens.

Unless you own a ski resort, you are fair game for the same demands by these Federal agencies to either give up your water rights or be forced out of business.

For example, our subcommittee heard testimony from Randy Parker. He is the CEO of the Utah Farm Bureau. He told us that the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have threatened to force farmers that have grazing allotments to give up their water rights as a condition of continuing to use the public lands.

In some cases, these are permits that family businesses have held for generations. The water rights are accorded to them under State law. The Federal Government has no right to usurp that law or to force anybody into the Hobson's choice of closing their business or surrendering their water rights.

This amendment is an affront to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, as well as to the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. These rights are fundamental constitutional rights that are unalienable for every American, not just those who happen to operate ski resorts.

Let's not take the Orwellian position that all Americans are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Mr. Speaker, as we begin the annual budget process, we need to stop thinking in terms of Democratic and Republican policies and start thinking in terms of what policies have worked and what policies have not. The successes and failures of both parties could teach us much.

We are now in the sixth year of policies that promise to restore prosperity to America by radically increasing government spending and government intervention in our economy. These 6 years have not been happy ones for our Nation.

When people say this is the worst economy since the depression, I remember a time much more recently when we suffered double-digit unemployment, double-digit inflation, mile-long lines around gas stations, and the prime interest rate at 20.5 percent. Perhaps we don't remember these times as vividly because they didn't last very long.

That was the end of the Carter administration. We elected Ronald Reagan who declared that: ``Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.''

He reduced the tax and regulatory burdens that were crushing the economy and produced one of the most prosperous periods in our Nation's history. In doing so, he was following the precedent of successful presidencies from both parties, including Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s, Harry S. Truman in the mid-1940s, and John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s.

Lest we forget, in 1995, President Bill Clinton proclaimed: ``The era of big government is over.'' He dramatically reduced Federal spending as a percentage of GDP.

He signed what amounted to the biggest capital gains tax cut in American history. He reduced entitlement spending by reforming the open-ended welfare system. He produced 4 years of budget surpluses, and the economy blossomed.

George W. Bush pursued the opposite policies with the opposite results. He dramatically increased Federal spending as a percentage of GDP. He pushed through the biggest expansion of entitlement spending since the Great Society. He began the folly of stimulus spending. He turned in massive budget deficits, and the economy tanked.

The problem with Barack Obama is not that he changed Bush's policies, but, rather, that he did not change them. He took the worst of them and doubled down.

He has added $6.8 trillion to the national debt, meaning that today's young people will have to pay back $56,000, plus interest, per household through their future taxes for nothing more than to pay for this administration's overspending.

He seized one-sixth of the American economy that provides our health care and is well on the way to wrecking it for millions of American families, costing them their health plans, their doctors, their savings, and their security. He has increased annual taxes by $551 billion. That averages about $4,600 for every household in America.

He made a lot of promises that turned out not to be true. He promised that massive government spending would produce prosperity. Instead, average personal incomes declined $2,600 during his presidency, and food stamp dependency is at an all-time high.

Nearly one in six Americans is now living in poverty, including 22 percent of all children. The workforce has shrunk to a smaller proportion of the population, as it was during the disastrous Carter years.

He promised a government takeover of our health care would reduce our health costs and increase coverage for Americans. It has done exactly the opposite. Millions more American families have lost their health plans and their doctors than have gained them, and the overwhelming majority has suffered ruinous increases in their health care costs.

The result is a declining standard of living at home, a declining respect for America abroad, and a generation in danger of becoming the first in our history to be less well off than their parents.

Mr. Speaker, our own experience should now tell us that these policies don't work. They didn't work under George W. Bush, and they certainly haven't worked under Barack Obama. We know what does work, reducing the financial and regulatory burdens that government has placed on the economy, as both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton proved.

It is time that we abandon these policies of debt, doubt, and despair. It is time we recognize that this government has grown too big and too powerful at the expense of hardworking taxpayers. It is time we restored those uniquely American principles of individual liberty, constitutionally limited government, and personal responsibility that have always been the foundation of our Nation's freedom, its prosperity, and its happiness.

Mr. Speaker, 2 weeks ago, President Obama visited the drought-stricken Central Valley of California. He announced his administration's response: he wants to spend another billion dollars to study climate change.

Well, I think I can save him the trouble. The planet has been warming, on and off, since the last Ice Age, when glaciers covered much of North America. The climate has been changing since the planet formed, often much more abruptly than it has in recent millennia.

Until the planet begins moving into its next ice age, we can reasonably expect it will continue to warm, on and off. That is going to mean less water that can be stored in snowpacks and, therefore, more dams will need to be constructed to store that water.

There, I just saved a billion dollars. You are welcome.

Everyone thinks that the Colorado River is the mother lode of all water in the Western United States, but the Colorado is a junior system to the mighty Sacramento River system.

The difference is this: we store 70 million acre-feet of water on the Colorado and only 10 million acre-feet on the Sacramento. The rest is lost to the ocean.

Droughts are nature's fault. They are beyond our control. Water shortages, on the other hand, are our fault.

We have not built major water storage on the Sacramento system since 1979 because of opposition from the environmental left and, most recently, from this administration. Indeed, we have had to fight back against its attempts to tear down perfectly good existing dams, including four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River.

Even in years of plenty, this administration has insisted on diverting 200 billion gallons of water from Central Valley agriculture for the amusement of the delta smelt, devastating the economy, drying up a quarter million acres of fertile farmland, and throwing thousands of California families into unemployment.

Because of opposition from the environmental left, we have been unable to even raise the spillway of the Exchequer Dam by a lousy 10 feet in order to add 70,000 acre-feet of storage at Lake McClure.

Because of radical environmental regulations, 800,000 acre-feet of desperately needed water--that is a 1-acre column of water, 150 miles deep--was drained from Shasta, Oroville, and Folsom Lakes last fall, knowing full well that we were heading into a potentially catastrophic drought.

Now, Governor Brown proposes to spend $14 billion for cross-delta tunnels that will produce exactly zero additional storage and exactly zero additional hydroelectricity.

Yet, for a fraction of that cost, roughly $6 billion, we could complete the Shasta Dam to its design elevation, which would mean 9 million acre-feet of additional water storage, nearly doubling the storage capacity of the Sacramento River system.

Everyone has seen the eerie pictures of Folsom Dam as its lake lay almost completely empty. For just a few billion dollars, we could complete the Auburn Dam, upriver of Folsom, that would hold enough water to fill and refill Folsom Lake nearly 2\1/2\ times.

That is in addition to 800 megawatts of electricity for the region and 400-year flood protection for the Sacramento Delta. The billions we are currently spending on delta levee repairs is to protect against a 200-year flood.

Both projects have been stalled for decades because of environmental opposition. Enough is enough.

Mr. Speaker, we are at a crossroads, and it is time to choose between two very different visions of water policy.

One is the nihilistic vision of the environmental left, increasingly severe government-induced shortages, higher and higher electricity and water prices, massive taxpayer subsidies to politically well-connected and favored industries, and a permanently declining quality of life for our children, who will be required to stretch and ration every drop of water and every watt of electricity in their bleak and dimly lit homes.

The other is a vision of abundance, a new era of clean, cheap, and abundant hydroelectricity, great new reservoirs to store water in wet years to assure abundance in dry ones, a future in which families can enjoy the prosperity that abundant water and electricity provide, and the quality of life that comes from that prosperity.

It is a society whose children can look forward to a green lawn, a backyard garden, affordable air-conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter, brightly lit homes in cities, and abundant and affordable groceries from America's agricultural cornucopia.

This is a time of choosing.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and particularly want to thank him for his work on the Natural Resources Committee and for his invaluable assistance on this bill.

This summer, the biggest fire in the history of the Sierra Nevada mountains burned 400 square miles of forestland. The fire left behind an unprecedented swath of environmental devastation that threatens the loss not only of the affected forestland for generations to come, but sets events in motion that could destroy the surrounding forest for many years to come.

The fire also left behind hundreds of millions of board feet of dead timber that is on Federal land that could be sold to raise millions of dollars, money that could then be used to replant and reforest our devastated lands. In addition, processing that timber would help to revive the economy of a stricken region.

But time is already running out. Within a year, the value of the timber declines rapidly as the wood is devoured by insects and rot. That is the problem. Cumbersome environmental reviews and litigation that inevitably follow will run up the clock of this valuable asset until it becomes absolutely worthless.

Indeed, it becomes worse than worthless--it becomes hazardous. Bark and wood-boring beetles are already moving in to feast on the dead and dying timber, and a population explosion of pestilence can be expected if those dead trees remain. The beetles won't confine themselves to the fire areas, posing a mortal threat to the adjacent forests.

By the time the normal bureaucratic reviews and lawsuits have run their course, what was once forestland will have already begun converting to brushland, and by the following year, reforestation will have become infinitely more difficult and expensive. Within just a few years, several feet of dry brush will have built up, and the smaller trees will have begun toppling on this tinder. It is not possible to build a more perfect fire stack than that. That means that intense second-generation fires will take advantage of this fuel, sterilizing the soil, eroding the landscape, fouling the watersheds, and jeopardizing surrounding forests.

Without timely salvage and reforestation, we know the fate of the Sierras because we have seen the result of neglect after previous fires. The trees don't come back for many, many generations. Instead, thick brush takes over the land that was once shaded by towering forests. It quickly overwhelms any seedlings struggling to make a start. It replaces the diverse ecosystems supported by the forests with scrub brush.

For this reason, I introduced H.R. 3188, which waives the time- consuming environmental review process and prevents the endless litigation that always follows. It authorizes Federal forest managers, following well-established environmental protocols for salvage, to sell the dead timber and to supervise its careful removal while there is still time. The millions of dollars raised can then be directed toward replanting the region before layers of brush choke off any chance of forest regrowth in the foreseeable future.

It was modeled on legislation authored by Democratic Senator Tom Daschle for salvaging dead and dying trees in the Black Hills National Forest, a measure credited with speeding the preservation and recovery of that forest. Unfortunately, the bill spawned lurid tales from the activist left of uncontrolled logging in the Sierras. Nothing could be further from the truth. The legislation vests full control of the salvage plans with Federal forest managers, not the logging companies. It leaves Federal foresters in charge of enforcing salvage plans that fully protect the environment.

Because of the opposition--and we heard a little bit of it just a moment ago--in a few minutes, I will offer an amendment that was worked out in consultation with the U.S. Forest Service and with several Democratic offices, and I hope it will receive bipartisan support. It preserves the EIS process and the environmental and judicial reviews, but it expedites them and assures that salvage under the direction of the Forest Service can begin this spring.

There is plenty of room for compromise, but there is absolutely no excuse for inaction. The left wants a policy of benign neglect--to let a quarter of a million acres of destroyed timber rot in place, to surrender the ravaged land to beetles and to watch contentedly as the forest ecosystem is replaced by scrub brush. It is true that without human intervention the forests will eventually return in about a century from now but certainly not in the lifetimes of ourselves, of our children or of our children's children. If we want to stop the loss of this forestland and if we want to control the beetle infestation before it explodes out of control, the dead timber has to come out soon.

If we take it up now, we can generate the funds necessary to suppress brush buildup, to plant new seedlings and to restore these forests for the use and enjoyment of our children. If we wait for the normal bureaucratic reviews and litigation and delays, we will have lost these forests for the next several generations.

The irony is that 16,000 acres of that same forest were destroyed but were on private land. The owner, Sierra Pacific Industries, is in the process of salvaging the timber on their lands. They will be done by this summer, and then they will begin reforesting from a portion of those proceeds. Meanwhile, the public lands lay unattended. Let me tell you something. Within a couple of years, the difference is going to be dramatic. We will have fully salvaged and reforested private lands next to neglected, overgrown public lands that are dry with scrub brush and just waiting for the next fire.

The public management of our lands will be judged in comparison with the management of the private lands, and if we maintain current law, we will have been held in the balance and found wonting.

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

Mr. Chairman, last August, the Rim Fire destroyed 400 square miles of timber in the Sierra Nevada. It left behind hundreds of millions of board feet of dead timber that can still be salvaged, but, as I pointed out earlier, time is of the essence. Within a year, the fire-killed timber loses much of its value. Yet the current environmental review process takes a year to complete, and then litigation starts and runs out the clock on what remains of that perishable resource.

Sixteen thousand acres of the destroyed timber is on private land owned by Sierra Pacific Industries. It does not face the bureaucratic obstacles that we face on the public land. SPI is already halfway through its salvage. It will be completed by summer. They will use a portion of those proceeds to replant their devastated acreage.

Meanwhile, the timber on the public land continues to rot and decay. The earliest the Forest Service can conclude its environmental review is August, and then the litigation process will start, and then it will be too late. The cost will be hundreds of jobs, millions of dollars of lost economic activity, and millions of dollars of lost salvage revenues that could otherwise have been used by the Federal Government for reforestation of the public lands.

Now, title IX of the bill in its current form was based on bipartisan language introduced by Senator Tom Daschle to expedite salvage in the Black Hills National Forest, but these provisions were opposed from the other side of the aisle. So I sat down with the Forest Service and opposition offices to work out a process that will assure that salvage can begin by spring, while maintaining both environmental and judicial review. And I particularly want to thank Chief Tom Tidwell for his technical assistance and that of his office. This amendment is the product of these talks.

It authorizes the Forest Service to select acreage for salvage where there is no wilderness, ESA, historic, or other legal restrictions. It authorizes them to implement the draft EIS that is expected to be completed by April and deems the draft is compliant with all applicable environmental reviews. This will allow salvage to begin under their direction in April.

It authorizes the Forest Service to modify the draft EIS in response to public comment and allows for judicial review of the final EIS based on ecological impacts. It merely bars litigation based on process, and it bars temporary restraining orders. This will allow the timely salvage of a portion of the public lands destroyed by the fire while the final EIS is prepared and while any judicial review proceeds. Finally, it authorizes the Forest Service to use the millions of dollars raised by the salvage for forest restoration in the devastated Sierra.

This compromise language assures compliance with all environmental laws and maintains judicial review while assuring that salvage can begin this spring. It is also important to the economy of the region that has been devastated by the fire and by increasingly stringent Federal restrictions and land acquisitions that have ravaged the timber, livestock, mineral, and tourist industries upon which these mountain communities depend. It means jobs for hundreds of lumberjacks, mill workers, truckers, and all those who support them.

I yield to the gentleman.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, if the opposition prevails, the Sierra, 400 square miles of it anyway, will be consigned to scrub brush and disease for generations to come. We have bent over backwards with the opposition to work out this compromise, and their continued opposition is quite disappointing.

I repeat that time is of the essence. I beg the Senate and the Democrats to take up these provisions without further delay. These provisions were developed with the full input of the administration and Democratic offices. But if they are still not acceptable, then tell us what is, but please don't just sit there and do nothing.

The Forest Service estimates that 2.2 million board feet can be processed per day. That means every day we dither and delay, $250 million of Federal revenue is lost. That is enough to reforest more than 1,000 every day. But every day we delay, we lose that revenue, we lose those jobs, the salvage value deteriorates with the wood, and that window will start to close even before the litigation begins under current law.

The private lands destroyed by the fire will have been fully salvaged and replanted a few years from now. They are going to host a thriving, young forest. If we don't change current law now, the public lands will remain unsalvaged and the millions of dollars we could have raised for reforestation will have been forfeited. Dry brush and dead trees will be the legacy of the Sierra that we leave our children.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Marine Staff Sergeant Sky Mote, a man who faithfully served and then made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation. He was recently awarded the Navy's second highest commendation for valor, the Navy Cross.

Growing up in El Dorado, California, Sky enjoyed 4-H, Civil Air Patrol, and loved camping with his family. At Union Mine High School, he lettered in track and cross country. From an early age, Sky was motivated to join the military by a deep desire serve his country. Upon graduation, he promptly enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Sky spent nine years serving his country in the United States Marine Corps, including a deployment to Iraq and two deployments to Afghanistan. To those who knew him, it is no surprise that Sky not only served, but served with gallantry and meritorious distinction. Sky was awarded the Navy Cross, a Purple Heart, the Navy-Marine Corps Commendation Medal, a Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medal, two Combat Action Ribbons and three Good Conduct Medals.

On August 10, 2012, Sky was serving with the prestigious 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion as an Explosive Ordnance expert in Helmand Province of Afghanistan. During an attack inside the base perimeter by a rogue Afghan policeman, SSgt. Mote rushed into action rather than escaping to safety. Sky's courage and initiative in engaging the gunman, while exposing himself to mortal gunfire, halted the enemy assault and undoubtedly saved lives that day.

Sky Mote will be deeply and sorely missed. He leaves behind his mother and father, as well as four brothers. The United States is blessed to have young men of character and heroism to defend our freedoms.

Mr. Speaker, SSgt. Sky Mote lived and died as an embodiment of the virtues that built and continue to preserve our country and it is my privilege to rise to honor his memory today.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, the opposition has erupted into a veritable Mount Vesuvius of misinformation on the California water bill, and I would like to address a couple of the major points that they have raised.

This does not preempt State water rights. It specifically invokes and protects the water rights against infringement by any bureaucracy-- local, State, or Federal. This is a legitimate constitutional function of the Federal Government that dates back to the 14th Amendment, and it is made essential by the unique relationship between the Federal and State governments with respect to California water policy, the mixture of both the Central Valley project and the State water project.

To the ridiculous comment that this is a theft of northern California water and that northern California is united in its opposition, nothing could be further from the truth. On the contrary, this bill protects the north from any attempt to override established California water rights law in reallocating water from the north.

Just to illustrate this, I would point out that it was these provisions in the last session of Congress that the California Association of Water Agencies specifically pointed to in support. They said this: The bill, if enacted, now contains provisions that would not only protect the interests of senior water rights holders in the Sacramento Valley but would also provide significant material water policy improvements to current Federal law. The bill, if enacted, would provide an unprecedented Federal statutory express recognition of and commitment to California's State water rights priority system and area of origin protections.

Finally, to the argument that we cannot make it rain, there is not enough water to go around. Well, that is true. One of the reasons is because in this third year of drought, we have dumped a total of 1.6 million acre-feet of water into the Pacific Ocean that was desperately needed to support the threatened human population of California.

Mr. Chairman, California's drought is nature's fault, but our failure to prepare for it is our fault.

In California, the ruling Democrats have not only obstructed the construction of new dams for the past 35 years but they have also actively sought to tear down existing ones. They have substituted conservation for desperately needed storage, and now that we face drought, we find that our few reservoirs are empty, and our conservation options are already exhausted.

Worse, in the first years of this drought, 1.6 million acre-feet of water was dumped into the Pacific Ocean for the care and amusement of the delta smelt. Mr. Chairman, 800,000 acre-feet--enough for 4 million Californians--was deliberately drained from our now empty reservoirs just several months ago, knowing that that water was desperately needed to support the threatened human population. Part of that water was taken from Central Valley farmers, who now face economic extinction. This bill corrects these tragic policies.

It is true, we cannot make it rain, but we can take measures to stop this lunacy, increase storage capacity, reinforce existing water rights, and ensure that we never again must face a crisis of this magnitude.

This bill allows for the expansion of Lake McClure by 70,000 acre- feet. It gives local water agencies the ability to store additional water at New Melones. It sets deadlines for additional storage. It authorizes local water districts to partner with the Federal Government to expedite expansion of existing reservoirs and construction of new ones, and it reverses

the policies that put the delta smelt ahead of the needs of thousands of farmworkers and millions of consumers.

Now, the people responsible for these policies say that this steals water from northern California. It does not. This is only water that would otherwise be lost to the Pacific Ocean. This bill restores the bipartisan Bay Delta Accord that guarantees the delta the water that it needs and grants a portion of any excess to the Central Valley. This historic accord was broken when Central Valley water was expropriated for the delta smelt. This bill restores that accord while making provisions to increase the overall supply.

The other outlandish charge is that this measure overrides State water rights. It does exactly the opposite. It specifically protects State water rights against infringement by any bureaucracy--local, State, or Federal.

We have listened to the environmental left for 40 years, and this is where it has gotten us. It is time to reject these voices and return to the commonsense and proven policies of abundance that produced the prosperity that we once enjoyed.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment was rejected on a bipartisan vote of 174-250 when the gentlelady introduced it in 2012, and it deserves a similar fate on the floor today. Let's be clear about what it does.

It singles out Central Valley Project participants who pay their Federal loans off early to a punitive surtax that is imposed on no other Bureau of Reclamation project in the United States. Their surtaxes will be passed on to consumers through higher prices. Now, the Central Valley Project was already singled out for a punitive tax-- about $50 million annually--by Congress in 1992 to fund an array of environmental slush funds.

I believe that beneficiaries should pay the cost of water projects but that they should pay only the costs of those projects and no more. These are not cash cows for the Federal Government to milk until they are dry. When the left speaks of corporate farms, they leave out the fact that virtually every family farm is incorporated, and that is who we would be singling out for this special tax. That tax is then paid in only one of two ways: by employees through lower wages or by consumers through higher prices.

I have a modest suggestion. Perhaps we should start putting people back to work rather than running them out of business.

I have often criticized the gentlelady and her colleagues for policies that have created the conditions that indirectly send water prices through the roof, but this proposal does so quite directly and dramatically. I think that is why so many of her colleagues on the Democratic side abandoned her 2 years ago and why they would be well advised to do so again.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, it ought to be obvious to everyone that, once you have paid off a loan, you don't keep paying interest on that loan. Why? Because you have already paid it off. That is what every project managed by the Bureau of Reclamation does. When they are given permission to prepay the loan--to pay off the loan just the way you would pay off your home loan early--they no longer are charged interest for it.

The gentlelady would single out the Central Valley--and the Central Valley alone--for this punitive surtax. I have often wondered why the policy seemed to be aimed at the Central Valley. I don't know what it is that my friends in the opposition have against the thousands of farmworkers whose livelihoods depend upon farming in that region, but they have been waging war on that hapless and helpless group for far too long. This is another example of singling them out for a special punitive tax paid by no one else in all of the Bureau of Reclamation experience.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment, more than any other, focuses on the central issue surrounding this bill: What comes first-- families or fish?

In 1992, the Central Valley Project Improvement Act carved out 800,000 acre-feet to be dedicated for fish and wildlife purposes. That water came out of the allocations for the Central Valley that all sides had agreed to. At the time, it was promised that the water would be replaced. That promise is unfulfilled to this day.

Worse, the Federal Government began treating this allotment as a floor rather than as a ceiling. In the mid-1990s, a zealous official in the Department of the Interior preempted State water rights and ordered that more than 1 million acre-feet of water appropriated by the Central Valley Project be used for purposes not authorized under water rights permits issued by the State of California.

This bill reestablished the 800,000 acre-foot allotment agreed to by all sides when Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt promised: ``A deal is a deal, and if it turns out there is a need for additional water, it will come at the expense of the Federal Government.'' This provision redeems the promise that was broken by Mr. Babbitt's deputy, and the provision that the gentlelady is offering would have us delete that provision.

I might add that, also under this bill, the 800,000 acre-feet can be recycled by communities once it has met its environmental purpose rather than being lost to the ocean. To those who tell us they like recycling, this is the ultimate recycling bill. I might also point out that an amendment that had a very similar effect 2 years ago was rejected on a bipartisan vote of 178-247 in this House. I would recommend that we do so again today.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague from California (Mr. Rohrabacher).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to my distinguished colleague from the Central Valley (Mr. Valadao), the author of this measure.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, like Tennyson's rotting mackerel in the moonlight, this amendment shines and stinks.

It states the obvious: the bill will not harm delta drinking water supplies. Well, of course it won't. After all, the delta counties are senior to the Central Valley in their water rights and so they have first call on that water. Under this bill, no agency of the State or Federal Government can take that right away.

Furthermore, under this bill, the delta counties can also reuse environmental water that otherwise would have been lost to the ocean, making this the ultimate water recycling bill.

This bill in no way affects the quality of drinking water in the delta or anywhere else. The proof of that is the fact that in the years following adoption of the Bay Delta Accord, which H.R. 3964 merely restores, never was it suggested by any water agency that drinking water or agricultural water was adversely affected in any way, shape, or form.

By placing this provision in the bill, it immediately opens it up to litigation that could tie it up in the courts for years. The mere allegation by a single litigant, no matter how outlandish, no matter how contorted, could stall these vitally needed reforms. It would also give this administration the ability to claim a right to nullify this law based on such a fiction.

A few years ago, when Central Valley water was being diverted for the delta smelt, I confronted the Secretary of the Interior in the Natural Resources Committee. I pointed out that with thousands of farmworkers unemployed, with a quarter-million acres of prime farmland destroyed, with food lines in the agricultural capital of the West, with unemployment in some of these communities reaching 45 percent, he had the authority to suspend the diversions and restore that water to the Valley to stop this human tragedy. He acknowledged that he had that authority, but he wouldn't use it, he said, because doing so ``would be like admitting failure.''

The amendment before us would give the same administration the excuse to ignore reality and act on ideological whim.

When this amendment was offered 2 years ago, it was rejected on a bipartisan vote of 177-243 in this House.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2\3/4\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Nunes), who introduced the predecessor to this bill 2 years ago.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment seeks to impose yet another environmental study that could lead to more water being diverted away from families and farmers and flushed out into the ocean. If you support throwing more stored water out to the ocean and making this crisis worse, then this amendment is another step toward that end.

Now, those who speak of ``resiliency'' and ``adaptability'' are using these terms to propose that dams evacuate more water storage earlier in the water year to account for faster snowmelt from the mountains and rain-based inflows. Now, just today, the East Bay Express reported that water managers deliberately dumped 800,000 acre-feet--as I said earlier, enough for 4 million Californians--into the Pacific Ocean that they knew was desperately needed as the drought continued to worsen.

Folsom Lake, the principal source of water storage for Sacramento and its suburbs, is nearly empty now because of those releases. We watched the Sacramento River at full flood all autumn and wondered what in the world were they thinking.

The fact is a hydrology consensus does not exist on this, and we should not be asking the GAO to investigate terms that are based on a lack of scientific consensus.

This amendment does nothing to restore water that continues to be lost to punitive Federal regulations and may, in fact, contribute to new regulatory overreach.

Californians are in a drought crisis now. It is time for action, not another bureaucratic study with no end in sight. This is why we must not impose studies in this bill or create steps to further erode water storage. We need to build more storage and capture more water, and that is precisely what this bill does. This bill is aimed at implementing a permanent solution to California's water crises so we can put people back to work permanently and restore balance back to California's water supply.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, we are ready to close when the gentlewoman is.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California for making the point. I want people to look at the pictures of the empty reservoir at Folsom, the near-empty reservoir at Oroville and remember 800,000 acre-feet that could have been retained behind those dams was released by water officials for the environmental regulations that the gentleman defends. I think people need to reflect on that water that should right now be sitting behind those dams but for these regulations and realize what is exacerbating this terrible drought.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa), my friend and neighbor.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, my objection to this amendment is similar to others of its ilk. It would allow litigation to block implementation of this bill indefinitely. There is, of course, nothing in this bill that would interfere with the State's water bond or its groundwater monitoring or groundwater conservation. Indeed, it will improve groundwater conservation since it brings balance back to surface water deliveries and restores the incentives for groundwater recharging.

The poison pill is not only the prospect of indefinite delay based upon the allegation of a single individual that can find the ear of a sympathetic judge. It is introducing the subjective standard of coequal goals for the delta.

The term ``coequal goals'' is something that is subjective. A term like this is subject to litigation not only at the State level but will be used as a means, if this amendment is adopted, to litigate this bill and delay the balance that it restores.

That balance was established by the bipartisan Bay Delta Accord that was hailed by all sides as a historic agreement to serve the coequal goals of human prosperity and environmental protection. When that agreement was signed, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt assured all parties that ``a deal is a deal, and if it turns out there is a need for additional water, it will come at the expense of the Federal Government.'' The water diversions for the delta smelt, based upon the same opportunity to litigate that this amendment renews, shattered that promise. This bill redeems it. The amendment should be rejected.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, we are ready to close when the gentleman from California is.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from California (Mr. Nunes).

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman has it exactly backwards. This prevents water from being stolen from northern California in violation of State water rights. It strengthens the water rights that exist in current law. It means that water cannot be stolen from northern California even by the State itself.

This amendment offered by my friend is a variation of the amendment offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Bera) earlier. It gives the Secretary of the Interior the ability to suspend most provisions of this law until she certifies it will have no adverse effect on delta agricultural water. Well, the same points apply. Despite the fact that this bill strengthens water rights in which the delta is senior to the Central Valley, this bill would give the Secretary, on whim, the power to ignore this law even in wet years, an authority her predecessor has already emphatically proven can and will be abused.

I will challenge the gentleman to cite one example of a complaint that agricultural water in the delta was adversely affected during all the years the Bay Delta Accord was in effect. This bill merely restores the Bay Delta Accord while strengthening northern California water rights. If he cannot cite even one example, he must admit that this amendment is a hoax designed to nullify the law.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, we are ready to close if the gentleman is.

Mr. Chairman, I remind the House that this same amendment was brought up 2 years ago and rejected, once again, on a bipartisan vote of 177-243.

I now yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from California (Mr. Valadao), the author of this important legislation.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, California has been plagued by litigation and regulation, delay and obfuscation on its water policy, and we are now living with the result of that.

The gentleman offers us an amendment that is more of the same--in fact, in this case, delaying the bill until the Federal Government measures the water content of clouds. Enough is enough. It is a time now for action, and this bill calls for action.

I now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Nunes).

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from California (Mr. Valadao), the author of the measure.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the House is scheduled to take up the omnibus appropriations bill for 2014, and I rise this morning to outline my objections to this measure.

This is not the ``regular order'' promised to the American people in which each of the 12 appropriations bills is painstakingly vetted. It is all 12 bills rolled into one, with no opportunity for meaningful debate or amendment. True, it adheres to the budget that was passed in December, but that budget is nothing to brag about. That budget destroyed the only meaningful constraint on Federal spending that we have.

One Member said he is surprised by opposition because ``this bill, for the 4th year in a row, cuts discretionary spending.'' Well, it only cuts it by Washington math. Last year, the discretionary spending of the United States Government was $986 billion. The measure appropriates $1,012 billion. That is an increase. And it is $45 billion more than the sequester would have allowed. After all, they didn't blow the lid off the sequester because they wanted to cut spending, now did they?

So what is this money going for?

Well, it increases money for Head Start by $600 million, despite the fact that every credible study has concluded that this program provides no lasting benefit for children;

It continues wasteful TIGER grants, which, under the guise of transportation, puts money into projects like a 6-mile pedestrian mall in Fresno and streets that actually discourage automobile traffic;

It continues funding for the scandalous essential air service that pays to fly empty and near-empty planes across the country;

It continues to throw money at all manner of expensive and failed green energy programs and other forms of corporate welfare.

We are told to be grateful that it doesn't fund other wasteful programs, like high-speed rail. But when we vote for these appropriations, we are responsible for the money that we waste, not the money that we don't waste. The regular order would at least give the House a chance to examine and debate these questionable programs before we cast our vote. But not this process.

But do not believe for a moment they won't be debated after we have cast our votes. This measure will face the full light of public scrutiny in the days ahead, and that may prove to be very harsh, indeed.

True, the measure makes some cuts, but in many cases it makes the wrong cuts.

For example, although this bill reverses the cuts made to disabled military veterans' pensions, it maintains the pension reductions for all other military veterans--about 82 percent of our military retirees. According to published reports, over a 20-year period a retired enlisted servicemember will lose an average of $72,000 of promised pension payments and commissioned officers will lose $124,000.

The Payments in Lieu of Taxes, or PILT, is not funded at all. That is the program that makes up a small portion of the revenues that the Federal Government has cost our rural communities as it has appropriated vast tracts of their land.

To add insult to injury, this bill adds roughly $200 million to pay for more Federal land grabs, which will cost local communities still more of their local revenues and economic activity.

We are promised that PILT funding will be restored in the farm bill, which is little consolation. That is the bill that continues to provide massive subsidies to agribusiness at the expense of both taxpayers and consumers.

I am not unmindful of the challenges that faced the Appropriations Committee--not the least of which is that the measure must ultimately have the consent of the Senate and the President, which are responsible for the most fiscally irresponsible period of our Nation's history. I understand that.

Under our Constitution, a dollar cannot be spent by this government unless the House says it gets spent. The buck literally starts here. As long as we continue to increase spending on frivolous programs at the expense of working families, and at a time when our accumulated debt threatens to sink what is left of our economy, we are clearly moving this Nation in the wrong direction.

I appreciate the fact this is a bipartisan agreement, but a bipartisan agreement that moves our country in the wrong direction is still wrong.

With all due respect, I must dissent.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Thomas O. Boorman, a man who dedicated much of his life to serving others. Thomas spent four years serving on a mine sweeper in the Navy. He went on to serve for twenty-six years in the United States Air Force, flying over five hundred missions in a B-52.

Upon his retirement from military service, Thomas felt the call to continue serving his community. He first joined the Placer County Sheriffs office and then worked as a control officer at Folsom State Prison.

Thomas Boorman was an avid sportsman and adventurist and a devoted supporter of the Second Amendment. He would speak openly about his love for his country, his community and the unique freedoms that Americans enjoy. His commitment to our freedoms was consistently illustrated by his lifetime of military and public service. Please join me in honoring Thomas Boorman, a man of lifelong service who will be sorely missed by so many.