Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise today to join Congressman Gallegly in mourning the loss of Donna Jevens, a dedicated and devoted servant of our state of California and of our nation.

I had the honor to work with Donna for a decade while I served in the California State Assembly. As my field representative, she attended to the needs of every constituent who sought our assistance and threw her heart and soul into the personal crises that they brought her. In a business where the standard advice is not to get emotionally involved, she cared deeply about everyone she dealt with and it showed.

In the highly pressurized atmosphere of a district office, she was always the positive, sunny and cheerful personality that kept everyone else in the office motivated and upbeat.

My heart goes out to her family. They do not mourn alone--the loss of Donna is keenly felt by all of us who knew her, who worked with her, or who number among the countless legion whom she helped during more than two decades of selfless public service.

Mr. Speaker, suppose your family is deeply in debt, bills are piling up, your credit card interest is eating you alive, and finally you seek the help of a financial counselor. What's the first thing that debt counselor is going to say? He's going to say, the first thing we've got to do is sit down and sketch out a family budget. We all know that. It's hard work, it's painful, but it's absolutely necessary if you're going to get your finances back under control.

Mr. Speaker, our national debt is fast approaching the size of our entire economy, yet while this House has all the time in the world to consider the most trivial matters, it can't spare the time to develop a national budget at the very moment in the life of our Nation when we need one the most, before we bury our children in debt.

Churchill once spoke of a locust generation. I wonder if that's what we've become.

I thank the gentlelady for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, the supporters of this bill tell us it's going to increase lending to small businesses. To do so, they're creating a $30 billion slush fund to make loans to smaller banks, therefore encouraging smaller banks to make loans to small businesses, or so they say. I believe it is a splendid example of what I like to call McClintock's Second Law of Political Physics: The more we invest in our mistakes, the less willing we are to correct them. It has apparently escaped the supporters' attention that we are already doing precisely what the proposed new Small Business Lending Fund would do through the existing TARP Capital Purchase Program.

Now that's not just my conclusion. That's the conclusion of the Special Inspector General of TARP, Neil Barofsky. He wrote to the Financial Services Committee on May 17, and observed, ``In terms of its basic design, its participants, its application process, and perhaps its funding source, from an oversight perspective, the Small Business Lending Fund would essentially be an extension of TARP's Capital Purchase Program.''

So if this scheme actually worked, we wouldn't need this bill, would we? Banks would already be lending like crazy.

The only problem is, it doesn't work. But some Members can't bear to face the American people and admit that they have squandered billions of dollars of working families' hard-earned money. So, instead, they bring us more of the same.

Now this places an additional $30 billion of taxpayer money at risk. We're told, Don't worry; we'll get that money back.

When have we heard this song before? Oh, yes. When they bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And according to the Congressional Budget Office, taxpayers have now lost $145 billion, heading to $400 billion.

Don't worry; it'll be paid back.

What is likely to happen to the $30 billion put at risk by this bill? Those banks with sound finances won't touch this money. They don't need it, and they don't need the Federal entanglements that come with it. Only those banks whose finances are unsound will accept these moneys, with little chance that they will actually be paid back. In fact, by removing the Special Inspector General from oversight of these funds, that risk is further aggravated.

And just to be clear, there's no guarantee that a dime of this money will actually be lent to small businesses in the first place. In fact, any commercial or industrial loan will count toward the requirements of this bill, not necessarily just loans to small businesses.

Now, after a failed $700 billion TARP, $30 billion might not sound like a lot of money. But let's put it in perspective. The combined cleanup and economic costs of the gulf oil spill are currently estimated around $17 billion. So in terms of economic damage, this bill could actually cost more than cleaning up the entire mess in the gulf. It's true that small businesses are having great difficulty getting loans. So are home buyers. Why is that? I suspect one of the principal reasons is that unprecedented public sector borrowing has crowded out the capital pool that would otherwise have been available to make private sector loans to small businesses and home buyers and consumers.

Under this administration and this Congress, the government is running a $1.5 trillion annual deficit. That's roughly $20,000 for every family of four in America. Well, where does that money come from? Well, we borrow it. From whom do we borrow it? We borrow it from the same capital pool that would otherwise have been available to loan to small businesses and other employers seeking to add jobs or loan to home buyers seeking to reenter the housing market or loan to consumers seeking to afford consumer purchases. And remember, two-thirds of economic growth directly depends upon those consumer purchases. But that money now is not available to loan to employers and to home buyers and to consumers to expand the economy because government has now borrowed it in order to expand government. That is the core of the problem.

Now, I've offered an amendment to forbid the use of this TARP III money in the presence of a deficit for a very simple reason: if the government borrows that money to loan to one business, that same money won't be available to loan to another business. Government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy until it has first taken that same dollar out of that same economy. But of course this amendment was forbidden under the rule we are now considering. Therefore, I oppose the rule, and I oppose the underlying bill.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Nevada City Fire Department (NCFD) on its 150th anniversary.

In the early history of Nevada City, the town was plagued by wide- reaching fires, which burned the central business district to the ground five times between 1851 and 1863.

The need for a firefighting force was clearly evident, and in June of 1860 the Nevada Hose Company, No. 1, the Eureka Hose Company, No. 2, and the Protection Hook & Ladder Company, No. 1 were formed. These companies were constituted entirely of volunteers and over the months that followed all three were consolidated into the Nevada City Fire Department.

Today, in partnership with the Nevada County Consolidated Fire Department, the NCFD maintains a fully-staffed professional fire station that provides much-needed fire protection and emergency services in Nevada County. As our community gathers to celebrate this auspicious occasion, I am proud to recognize NCFD's 150 years of service and excellence.

Mr. Speaker, the failure of this House to pass a budget at a time of unprecedented deficit spending speaks volumes of the House majority. In order to resolve a crisis, you must first be willing to face it; and if you can't face the problem, you can't deal with it. That is what the budget process is, the painful but necessary assessment of our financial affairs. Without it, there can't even be a theoretical solution.

I've seen this before in California. As left-wing majorities took control of our financial affairs and boosted spending at a reckless pace, we watched the orderly budget process disintegrate into a mere sham. Unable and unwilling to face up to the consequences of their out- of-control spending, they simply abandoned the budget process. Ultimately, they brought the most prosperous State in our Nation to the brink of bankruptcy.

Mr. Speaker, California is an example to be avoided, not imitated.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory of Joan Sue Huey.

Joan Huey was born on September 29, 1928 in a small farming village in China. In 1947, she married her life's love, Albert Huey, who served in the United States Army during World War II. In 1948 they welcomed the birth of their son, Dennis. They immigrated to the United States in 1951, settling in San Francisco to seek a better life for their growing family, which by then included two beautiful daughters, Dora and Diana.

Throughout the years, Joan juggled the hectic duties of being a wife and mother. She

helped manage the family finances and worked as a seamstress to provide extra income. But she was happiest when cooking traditional Chinese meals and delicacies; taking great pride in being an excellent chef and she especially looked forward to cooking for her grandsons. Joan was an accomplished orchid horticulturist, who proudly displayed her flowering orchids throughout her home and generously shared the lovely blooms with family and friends.

After the passing of her husband, Joan devoted her time to her family until her own passing on May 15, 2010 at the age of 81. The legacy embodied by her loving family is a testament to the ongoing story of American opportunity. Madam Speaker, Joan Huey was a devoted wife, mother, and grandmother and I am proud to rise today in remembrance of her life, and to express my condolences to her family.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to take strong exception to the speech by the President of Mexico here in this Chamber today. The Mexican Government has made it very clear for many years that it holds American sovereignty in contempt, and President Calderon's behavior as a guest of the Congress today confirms and underscores this attitude. It is highly inappropriate for the President of Mexico to lecture Americans on American immigration law, just as it would be for Americans to lecture Mexico on its own laws. It is obvious that President Calderon does not understand the nature of America or the purpose of our immigration law. Unlike Mexico's immigration law, which is brutally exclusionary, the purpose of America's law is not to keep people out. It is to assure that as people come to the United States, they do so with the intention of becoming Americans and of raising their children as Americans. Unlike Mexico, our Nation embraces legal immigration, and what makes that possible is assimilation.

A century ago, President Teddy Roosevelt put it this way. He said, ``In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American and nothing but an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language. And we have room for but one sole loyalty, and that is a loyalty to the American people.'' That is how we've created one great Nation from all the peoples of the world.

The largest group of immigrants now comes from Mexico. A recent RAND study found that during the 20th century, while our immigration laws were actually enforced, assimilation worked, and it made possible the swift attainment of the American Dream for millions of immigrants seeking to escape the conditions of Mexico. That is the broader meaning of our Nation's motto, ``e pluribus unum''--from many people, one people, the American people. But there is now an element in our political structure that seeks to undermine that concept of e pluribus unum. It seeks to hyphenate Americans, to develop linguistic divisions, to assign rights and preferences based on race and ethnicity, and to elevate devotion to foreign ideologies and traditions while at the same time denigrating American culture, American values, and American founding principles. In order to do so, they know that they have to stop the process of assimilation. And in order to do that, they have to undermine our immigration laws. It is an outrage that a foreign head of state would appear in this Chamber and actively seek to do so. And it is a disgrace that he would be cheered on from the left wing of the White House and from many Democrats here in Congress.

Arizona has not adopted a new immigration law. All it has done is to enforce existing law that this President refuses to enforce. It's hardly a radical policy to suggest that if an officer on a routine traffic stop encounters a driver with no driver's license, no passport, and who doesn't speak English, that maybe that individual might be here illegally. And to those who say we must reform our immigration laws, I reply, We don't need to reform them. We need to enforce them, just as every other government does, just as Mexico does. Above all, this is a debate of, by, and for the American people. If President Calderon wishes to participate in that debate, I invite him to obey our immigration laws, apply for citizenship, do what 600,000 legal immigrants to our Nation are doing right now, learn our history and our customs, and become an American, and then he will have every right to participate in that debate. Until then, I would politely invite him to have the courtesy while a guest of this Congress to abide by the fundamental rules of diplomacy between civilized nations not to meddle in each other's domestic debates.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This measure offers yet another example of how the Endangered Species Act has put a gun to the head of the West. The unreasonable effect of this

law is now impoverishing millions of people across the country. In California communities, it has devastated the agricultural sector of our economy, and it threatens us all with permanent water shortages, skyrocketing food prices, and chronic unemployment.

The measure before us today seeks to spend roughly $40 million through 2023 for research, management, operation, and maintenance and other annual noncapital expenditures in order to keep ESA litigation at bay in the Upper Colorado and San Juan River Basins. It's cosponsored by Representatives of both parties, not because it will produce a single drop of additional water for this region but, rather, because it will forestall additional endless ESA lawsuits.

These programs only exist and only command bipartisan support because these steps are mandated by the ESA under threat of the region losing further access to its own water. And at some point, we're going to have to consider major changes to the ESA before it further depresses our economy, strangles our agriculture, and depletes our Treasury.

Let me offer one of the examples of changes that I think needs to be made. The administration is now pursuing the deliberate destruction of four perfectly good hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River that generate 155 megawatts of the cleanest and cheapest electricity on the planet at the cost to ratepayers and taxpayers of nearly $500 million to tear down. This is to restore fish habitat for a few hundred salmon. When I visited the region a few weeks ago, I asked, If the salmon population was in decline, why don't we just build a fish hatchery? The Macaulay fish hatchery in Juneau, for example, produces 170 million salmon every year. And the answer was, We already have a fish hatchery below the dams at Iron Gate, but the Endangered Species Act doesn't allow us to count the millions of fish that it produces. This is insane.

In this case, it's going to cost us $40 million, according to the CBO, on a program that lacks explicit goals and is running outrageous overhead--22 percent in one case. Now, let me emphasize this: This program doesn't even set specific recovery goals, so there's no rational way of judging success or failure either now or in the future. It is simply a bureaucratic perpetual spending machine.

The good news is, this program does include fish hatcheries, but without any numerical standard for success, their production becomes irrelevant to the program. We're squandering the earnings of our citizens on bureaucratic paperwork and Rube Goldberg contraptions with no rational standard for success instead of investing that money for new water supplies.

This bill continues a folly that our Nation and our economy can no longer afford. I realize that many of the supporters feel that this is the path of least resistance within the current legal framework in order to continue to use the water projects that we've already paid for. Well, that may be the case. But the path of least resistance is destroying our economy, bankrupting our country, and perhaps it's time we took the path less well traveled, the path of common sense.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his kind words, but I do wonder how he can define success in a program that has no standards for success. I also need to correct him on one other point, and that is the claim that this will provide or produce 3 million acre-feet of water. It does no such thing. All it does is allow us to continue to use the 3 million acre-feet of water that we already produce and that we have already paid for without impediments posed by additional ESA litigation.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I readily concede that if you put a gun to somebody's head, you can get reasonable people to do unreasonable things. The ESA is a gun to the head of the people of the West. It's time we did something about that.

No one suggests that there's not an important mission for the ESA, but it has gotten completely out of control. It has breached all bounds of reason and logic, and it is time that we visited that issue rather than continue to squander tens of millions of dollars on programs like this, whose sole purpose is simply to keep that ESA litigation at bay.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Does the gentlelady have any additional speakers?

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, in my opinion, the most important role of the national parks is to provide a link to our Nation's proud history. I believe in American exceptionalism. The story of our Nation is the story of the uniquely American principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and how they shaped and molded what has become the most successful Republic in the history of human civilization.

One aspect of that story is exemplified by the Buffalo Soldiers, Americans of African descent who transcended the prejudices of the post-Civil War era to serve as the first peacetime Army units comprised of African Americans. They took the heroism and patriotism of the famous 54th Massachusetts and other Civil War units and made them into a proud and permanent fixture within the American Armed Forces. Their members included Medal of Honor winner Louis H. Carpenter and Henry O. Flipper, the first American of African descent to graduate from West Point.

The Buffalo Soldiers made immeasurable contributions to the continental expansion of our Nation, to the protection of our first national parks, but perhaps most important is their immortal contribution to the unification of our Nation as a free people.

As Shakespeare said, Their story should the good man teach his son. This bill would develop a plan to do precisely that within the national park system. I urge its adoption.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the East Bay Regional Park District serves the people of San

Francisco, and the test of their satisfaction is the fact that they have continued to support it with voter-approved bonds, each vote being a vote of confidence in its work and each vote backing that confidence with local funds.

It used to be that local projects that benefited local communities were paid for by those local communities, and the East Bay Regional Park is an example of this bygone era. Today the Federal Treasury is too often treated as a grab bag for local projects, literally robbing St. Petersburg to pay St. Paul. The success of the East Bay Regional Park District is a reminder that the most successful local projects are those that are paid for with local funds and superintended by local voters. It is a reminder that Federalism works and that we need to return to it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution honors the life, achievements and contributions of Mr. Floyd Dominy, the longest-serving commissioner in the history of the Bureau of Reclamation.

Our colleague, Congressman Adrian Smith, has introduced this bipartisan resolution because Mr. Dominy was a Nebraskan, having been born on a farm in the western part of that State. But while Mr. Dominy hailed from Nebraska, his achievements are known worldwide.

It was that hard scrabble life of eking out a living on a dry Nebraska farm that propelled Floyd Dominy into building the dams and water projects that have made possible the success of American agriculture in the western United States.

During his tenure at the Bureau of Reclamation, he played a major role in the authorization and construction of numerous Federal multi- purpose dams and water projects in the United States, including the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona, Flaming Gorge Dam in Utah, the San Luis Unit in Central California, the Central Arizona Project and the Trinity Division of the Central Valley Project in northern California.

To this day, these projects have created some of the most productive farmland in the world, they have provided water to a growing population in the arid West, and they've generated clean, renewable and emissions- free hydropower.

His contributions to the Nation's water, power and food supply, its recreation and its environment stand as monumental examples of how visionaries like Mr. Dominy have made this country the beacon of freedom and opportunity and prosperity. This resolution honors that legacy.

But more than a legacy, it is a lesson for our Nation. Floyd Dominy stood as a giant in an era when the central objective of our Federal water and power policy was to provide an abundance of both. The great dams and hydroelectric projects of that era, of which Floyd Dominy was a driving force, produced the water and electricity that made possible the prosperity of our Nation.

Imagine an era when water and power was so cheap that many communities didn't even bother to measure the stuff. But in the 1970s, a radical and retrograde ideology seeped into our water and power policy. This ideology rejected abundance as our principal objective and replaced it with the rationing of shortages that have been caused by our abandoning abundance as our principal objective.

The great builders like Floyd Dominy were cast aside and forgotten, even while we continued to rely on the great public works that they had produced. We've now lived a generation under this ideology and the results, chronic shortages of water and power, skyrocketing prices for electricity, withering agriculture and declining prosperity.

Floyd Dominy is an American hero. He deserves so much more than a resolution. But, in a sense, he has it. The great water and hydroelectric projects that he produced stand as a monument to his vision and foresight and dedication. And they stand as a road map for this Nation when we finally get serious about dealing with the chronic shortages that the current generation of policymakers has produced.

I'd urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan measure.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise in opposition to this measure, which they call Cash for Caulkers, since it's based on the Cash for Clunkers program, and maybe, before we go any further, somebody needs to ask, Well, how did that last one work out? In fact, economists at Edmunds.com did exactly that.

They discovered that of the 690,000 cars sold under Cash for Clunkers, 565,000 sales would have happened anyway, which means the taxpayers ended up paying about $24,000 for every genuine sale that it actually stimulated. But it gets worse. All the program accomplished was to entice people to move up their purchase decisions by a few months, which then caused below-normal sales in the months that followed. In other words, Congress spent $4 billion creating a car bubble. With that fresh economic wreckage just behind us, we're about to create a $6.6 billion home improvement bubble. We can now replace our ``Honk if you're making my car payments'' bumper sticker with ``Honk if you're paying for my home remodeling.''

What is this actually going to accomplish?

First, a lot of fraud. We already know that the Energy Star program approved 15 out of 20 fake products that were submitted to them by the GAO, including a gasoline-powered alarm clock. One can only imagine what home improvement scams taxpayers will fund from this one.

Second, it's going to pay for a lot of remodeling that would have been done anyway. That was the expensive lesson from Cash for Clunkers.

Third, it's going to be paying for remodeling that makes no economic sense except for the rebate. After all, when remodeling actually saves money, people do it on their own. Congressman Ehlers just pointed that out. And if it doesn't save money, why should taxpayers be forced to pay for it in the first place?

Madam Chair, I was just going to point out, Benjamin Franklin pointed out that ``experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.'' This bill today offers us a sobering corollary--that there are some people who cannot even learn from experience. We call these people ``Congressmen.''

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, the proponents have a problem. They want statehood for Puerto Rico, but the people of Puerto Rico keep voting ``no.'' Well, what to do. Well, they replace a straightforward up-or-down vote with a very clever two-step process. If 40 percent support the Commonwealth and only 20 percent favor each of three alternatives, the overwhelming plurality is defeated on the first ballot, and they're left only to choose among three options, none of which they support. And then, just to be sure, proponents stuff the ballot box by letting non-Puerto Ricans vote just as long as they were born there. Well, that means that, as a Californian, I should be entitled to vote in New York's elections because I was born there.

This bill isn't needed for a referendum. Puerto Rico can do that on its own. The purpose of this bill is to imply congressional support of this rigged election process that has no legal effect, that has surrendered any moral validity, and that promises only to set off bitter divisions within the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the service of Major Mark B. Hill of El Dorado Hills, California. Hill grew up in El Dorado Hills and after graduating from California State University- Sacramento, he was commissioned into the U.S. Air Force at Mather Air Force Base.

Major Hill has served with distinction for the last 20 years, flying over 4,500 hours and more than 130 combat support missions aboard the E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft and as a qualified Master Air Battle Manager. He has deployed in support of multiple operations, including: Desert Storm, Provide Comfort, Southern Watch, Deliberate Force, Allied Force, Enduring Freedom, and Noble Eagle. As a qualified Joint Service Officer, he left a NATO post for his current duty assignment as a Branch Chief within the Command and Control, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Division, Directorate of Requirements, Headquarters Air Combat Command, Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. As a former Eagle Scout, he remains a volunteer supporting the Boy Scouts of America and has done so throughout his military career. Hill's commendations include the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal (two oak leaf clusters), Air Force Commendation Medal, and the Joint Service Achievement Medal.

Madam Speaker, with his retirement from active duty in the United States Air Force on June 1, 2010, I am proud to recognize Major Mark B. Hill and thank him for over two decades of representing the finest of our values and for his long service in defense of our nation.

Mr. Speaker, during the recent health debate, the Speaker ominously said, We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it. Well, they passed the bill, and now we're finding out what's in it.

They told us it would keep costs down. Well, now they admit health costs will soar $311 billion, increasing to 21 percent of GDP by 2019.

They told us, If you like your plan, you can keep it. Well, now they admit that seniors on Medicare Advantage could lose their plans. Companies that offer health plans to their employees and retirees are now considering dropping them.

They told us it would be good for the economy. Now they admit employers were correct to downgrade their earnings by billions of dollars that ultimately will come out of employees' wages and benefits.

This issue is not going away. It will continue to plague those responsible until they replace it or until they themselves are replaced.