Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, California's Governor is seeking billions of dollars of additional Federal funds in order to fill his ever-widening budget deficits.

Last April, he imposed the biggest tax increase by any State in American history, despite repeated warnings of the damage it would do to the State's economy. California already had the highest sales and income taxes in the Nation. He increased both.

The taxes were supposed to produce $13 billion of additional revenue. But after 9 months, California's sales tax collections are down $270 million; income tax collections are down $10 billion. The only major tax not raised, the corporate tax, is the only tax that is producing more revenue. That is up $2.4 billion in the same period.

I have a modest suggestion to Governor Schwarzenegger: rescind the tax increase that has crushed California's economy and its revenues. And to my House colleagues, let's not repeat Governor Schwarzenegger's folly nationally.

Madam Speaker, I rise to applaud the passage today of H.R. 2194, the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009.

Iran's regime has consistently lied to the world over its nuclear ambitions. Yesterday's revelation that Iran has been working on nuclear bomb detonators should convince even the most naive officials within our government of Iran's ultimate intention.

I do not believe that petroleum sanctions alone will dissuade the Iranian regime from its obvious intention to acquire nuclear weapons, or from its stated goal of wiping Israel off the map, or from its unremitting hostility toward our own country; but I do believe that it will send a vital message of growing Western resolve at a critical moment in world history.

Iran should interpret the House action today as an overwhelming expression of American commitment that spans the wide spectrum of political views within our Nation.

Madam Speaker, it is my distinct honor to recognize a heroic resident of the 4th District of California, Thomas Dugan of Roseville. This 11-year-old boy scout displayed courage and selflessness when he dove into a pool to save his young neighbor.

On September 20, 2008, while attending a neighbor's birthday party, Tom heard his 2-year-old neighbor, Cine, fall into his neighbor's pool. Without hesitation, Tom dove into the pool to save the drowning girl. Barely able to keep his head above water to breathe, Tom treaded water until he was able to push young Cine out of the pool and onto the deck.

For his bravery, Tom has been awarded the Boys Scouts of America Heroism Award. I am privileged and humbled to represent great constituents like Tom, and I wanted to take this brief opportunity today, Madam Speaker, to let my colleagues know of his great act of courage.

Mr. Speaker, the unfolding scandal of phony or inflated job claims from the so-called stimulus bill should shock the conscience of the Nation and permanently stain the reputation of this Congress and this President.

But it gets even worse if we take them at their word. As of this morning, the administration claims that in my Fourth Congressional District of California, the brain trust at the Treasury has spent $182 million to save or create all of 168 jobs. That is $1.1 million per job. They claim to have saved or created 110,000 jobs in California. But 75,000 of those 110,000 jobs occur in a single ZIP code, 95814. What's 95814? That's the ZIP code that encompasses the State capitol building and the State bureaucracies.

Stimulating the economy? Mr. Speaker, all we're stimulating is government at the expense of the economy.

Mr. Speaker, the question before us comes to this: Will Congress force American families to surrender control of their health care to the Federal bureaucracy? There is nothing optional about this law. The word ``shall'' appears 3,400 times in it, each time backed with the full force of the government.

You shall only get your health care through the government exchange.

You shall only select among the health care plans that the government czar has approved for you, whether they fit your family's needs or not.

You shall buy a government-approved plan and pay for every government-imposed mandate in it through higher premiums, lower wages or higher taxes, and you will face steep fines and even Federal prison if you decline to do so.

You ``shall'' 3,400 times.

Whenever such a system is imposed, the result is always the same: massive cost overruns, followed by a brutal rationing of care.

Instead of destroying everything that is good about American health, shouldn't we first repair what is wrong? Primum non nocere--first, do no harm.

Mr. Speaker, this week, the House passed H.R. 3548, which extends unemployment benefits in States with high unemployment rates, and it continues and expands the popular tax credit to encourage home buyers into the market.

Mr. Speaker, I know these are very popular programs, but I believe that they are taking us in exactly the wrong direction. By increasing taxes to finance these programs, the government is placing increasing burdens on the economy which I believe are actually making the recession worse.

I am concerned that, by raising taxes, we end up making more people unemployed, and I believe that, by paying people to buy homes, we are creating yet another housing bubble that will continue to drain the resources of our Nation until it bursts. Let me walk through both of those concerns.

Under this bill, unemployed workers in States like my home State of California can draw up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits--almost 2 full years. Now, I realize the quiet panic that haunts every waking and sleeping moment of unemployed families as they wonder from one day to the next how they're going to get by. I've known that feeling myself.

Yet there is a reason that California suffers one of the highest unemployment rates in the Nation. It has one of the highest tax and regulatory burdens in the Nation. Business and investment and the jobs that they create flee such hostile environments and seek out less expensive and less burdensome places. One needs only to watch the domestic migration within our own Nation from high-tax, high-regulated States to low-tax, low-regulated States to see this happening right now before our very eyes.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill imposes a net tax increase of $2.5 billion on our economy at a time when we can least afford it. It contributes to a self-defeating paradox: higher unemployment in order to help the unemployed. Yet we all know that the only antidote to unemployment is a genuine job.

It's true. Family breadwinners can see the additional unemployment checks in their hands, and they feel the immediate relief. That's why this bill is so popular. What they don't see are the jobs that could have ended their agony but that have now disappeared in order to pay the higher taxes to support those unemployment checks. It is a vicious, downward spiral that the supporters of this bill have already tacitly acknowledged when they admitted that they will have to return before the end of the year to extend the program yet again.

Simply stated, we cannot help the unemployed by creating more of them, yet that's exactly what programs like this are doing. We can see it in the steadily increasing unemployment figures despite record amounts of government spending and borrowing.

The second part of this bill is equally popular, and it is equally delusional. It extends and expands tax credits for home buyers to buy homes that they otherwise could not afford. Have we learned nothing from the past year of economic hardship? We all know that the catalyst for the current recession was a housing bubble that was created by government policies that encouraged lenders to make loans and borrowers to take loans to buy homes that everybody knew they couldn't afford.

What's our response now? We are going right back into that same market and are creating another bubble by, once again, encouraging home buyers to purchase homes that they otherwise couldn't afford. We're doing this just weeks after watching how the Cash for Clunkers program created the same artificial bubble in the automobile market, a bubble that came crashing down as soon as that program ended.

A society in which the government extracts billions of dollars from its economy in order to pay people to buy stuff they can't afford has a rendezvous with a grim accounting, and the longer these programs continue, the grimmer that accounting will be.

Mr. Speaker, Congress is about to make a decision that will impact every American for the rest of their lives. Simply stated, what's at stake is the freedom to make our own decisions about our own health care. Pelosi's bill forces every American to purchase our insurance through a government-run exchange. It forces us to purchase only those policies that meet all of the requirements set by the new health czar or be fined for failing to do so. And it forces us to pay for all the cost overruns through higher premiums or higher taxes.

Where does it all lead? In 1993, the government introduced a public option for student loans, but only a fraction of the public opted in. So last month, the House voted to give the government monopoly control over all student loans. That's about to happen to our health care unless 40 Blue Dog Democrats decide to stop them. Please, call them today.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor The Sierra Booster, published in Sierra County, California. The newspaper was first published in October 1949 by Hal Wright and his wife Allene. For over 50 years, Mr. Wright served his community through the continued publication of the Sierra Booster. Following her father's passing in July of 2000, Hal's daughter, Jan, took over the newspaper. For the past decade, Jan has continued her family's legacy as well as The Sierra Booster's commitment to serve the eastern Sierras.

Madam Speaker, The Sierra Booster exemplifies the ideal of a free press, one of this nation's greatest freedoms. Today, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing the Sierra Booster for its 60 years of continued service and wishing the newspaper continued success in the future.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in defense of dissent.

It is a sad milestone when it becomes necessary to do so, but the ferocity with which this administration is pursuing its critics in business and journalism is becoming alarming.

This isn't the first time Presidents have lashed out at dissenters. But when a government has seized the power to commandeer companies, dictate salaries for private citizens, establish government monopolies covering entire sectors of our economy, threaten companies with official retribution for merely communicating with their customers, and, as of yesterday, to punish thought itself, it evinces a design and an intent that transcends robust debate and becomes deeply threatening to the freedom of expression that our Constitution protects.

If they can intimidate institutions like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Fox News, they know that others will fall silently into line. And that, Madam Speaker is a disturbing prospect.

Mr. Speaker, today's unemployment rate of 9.8 percent last reached that level in 1983. President Ronald Reagan responded by cutting taxes and by reducing regulatory burdens on the economy, and he produced the biggest peacetime economic expansion in our Nation's history.

Today, President Obama is doing exactly the opposite. ObamaCare, cap- and-trade and the other measures promise the biggest tax increases and the heaviest regulations that we've ever seen.

Three Presidents within the last 100 years have responded to recessions by reducing taxes and regulations. Warren Harding, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan all produced rapid and dramatic economic recoveries.

We've had two Presidents in those 100 years who reacted to recessions by doing the opposite--Herbert Hoover in the early 1930s, who radically increased taxes and spending and who imposed unprecedented burdens on trade, and the other is Barack Obama.

As they say, those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

I thank very much the gentlelady for yielding.

I rise in opposition to this rule and in opposition to the underlying bill; and to explain why, I would like to walk through a little history and a little math.

Let's begin with history and two very important dates: 1978 and 1839. In 1978, The Wall Street Journal carried this headline: ``Solar Power Seen Meeting 20 Percent of Needs By 2000; Carter May Seek Outlay Boost.''

Well, oddly the same paper carried a headline in 2006 making the same promise, this time for all renewable fuels, only this time by 2025, but I digress.

Billions of dollars were poured into research and development for solar technology as a result of that, and an entire solar industry solely supported by NASA subsidies arose in order to grab those dollars. And what was the result of all of this plunder of taxpayers and rate payers? More than 30 years after that promise was made in 1978, solar power accounts for just one percent of electricity generation. That's not for lack of subsidies; it's because despite all of the billions of dollars of subsidies, the technology remains immensely inefficient and expensive.

And that brings me to the second year, 1839. This is not a new technology. Photovoltaic electricity was first discovered by French physicist Alexandre Edmond Becquerel in the year 1839. This technology has existed for 170 years, and in those 170 years of scientific discovery and progress and despite billions of dollars of subsidies to the solar industry, we have yet to discover a more expensive way of producing electricity.

When the State of California was squandering its wealth on subsidizing this industry a few years ago, I asked the California Energy Commission: what is the price range of all of the various forms of electricity generation that we can choose from?

Here is what they reported: the cheapest form of electricity generation is hydroelectric. It ranges from a quarter of a cent to 2.7 cents per kilowatt hour, so the mid-range average is around 1.5 cents. Then comes nuclear power, with a mid-range of around 1.7 cents. After that is coal at about 1.9 cents, then wind at 4.6 cents, and gas at 10.6 cents. Finally, we get to the most expensive way to produce electricity, solar, which is between a low of 13.5 cents and a high of 42.7 cents per kilowatt hour, with a mid-range of about 28.1 cents. But it gets worse.

In a day, a solid acre of state-of-the-art solar panels can produce 2.2 megawatt hours of electricity, assuming an average of 5 hours of peak sunlight--2.2 megawatt hours per day. Now compare that to the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant that produces 49,000 megawatt hours of electricity each day. In order to duplicate that single nuclear power plant, it would require 22,000 acres of solid solar panels--34 square miles of solid solar panels. By comparison, the Diablo Canyon power site sits on just 1 square mile.

So this technology, after 170 years and after countless billions of dollars of research and development, is roughly 17 times more expensive than nuclear power, and it consumes 32 times the land area of a comparable nuclear facility. But don't worry, say the proponents, we just need a few billion dollars more to become competitive. Well, I'm sorry, but we have heard that song before. I suppose hope springs eternal.

For decades, the Federal Government and gullible States like California have kept the solar industry afloat by pumping billions of dollars into subsidized

loans, by crediting consumers who buy solar panels and, of course, through research and development--$166 million last year and $175 million this year by the Department of Energy alone.

This is an industry that exists solely of the dole, by the dole and for the dole, and it is now clamoring for billions of dollars more. If this rule is passed and if the bill is taken up, they are going to get it.

If they get this rule and get this bill, they are going to get those billions of dollars more taken directly out of the shrinking bank accounts of American taxpayers. This is called the Solar Technology Roadmap Act. We have heard of the ``bridge to nowhere.'' This is the road map that's going to get us there.

Madam Speaker, I rise to acknowledge Paula Campbell, the out-going president of the California School Boards Association, for her continuous efforts on behalf of education throughout her community of Nevada County as well as my district and the entire state of California.

Mrs. Campbell began her career with the Nevada County School Board in 1992 where she served as president for five terms. Her success at the local level was rewarded in 2003 with her election to the state Board of Directors. And yet again her dedication and commitment to success were well recognized; Paula Campbell was elected president of the California School Boards Association.

Paula's service has been instrumental to the advancement of education in California. Thank you Paula.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor Timothy Smith of South Lake Tahoe, CA, who was killed in the line of duty on April 7, 2008. Tim is survived by his wife Shayna Richard-Smith, their son Riley, his parents, Patricia and Michael, his brother Tom, and his sister Jackie.

Tim graduated from South Tahoe High School in 2001 and joined the Army in April 2004. He will always be remembered for his sense of humor, his warmth, and his great courage. Senator Harry Reid, on the floor of the United States Senate, called Tim Smith ``a hero--a real- life American hero--who gave his life so that others might be safe.''

Timothy Smith gave the ultimate sacrifice, may we never forget.

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

I want to thank my colleague from Massachusetts for his tribute to Army Specialist Jeremiah Paul McCleery and to urge support of H.R. 3319 that names the United States Post Office in Portola in his memory. Miah McCleery grew up in that town, and to that town he returned as a fallen hero at the age of 24.

Let me tell you a little bit more about him. His best friend was his father, Joe. A high school friend, Josh Rogers, was asked when Jeremiah was the happiest. Josh replied, He was happiest whenever he was doing anything with his dad.

As my friend from Massachusetts said, when Jeremiah was 4 years old, his dad took him out to see the returning American soldiers from the first Gulf War; as Shakespeare said, ``This story shall the good man teach his son.'' It was from that moment in 1991 that Jeremiah wanted, more than anything, to serve his country.

Joe and Collette moved their family to the little town of Portola in 1996, where they built their home themselves as a family. It was in Portola where Miah McCleery grew up.

If you want a sense of the character of this young man, just spend a few minutes with those who knew him. His older sister, Lynette Flanagan, tells of how Miah would take on much older boys at school-- not in his own defense, but in the defense of others. She said, ``He once got sent to the principal's office for getting into a fight. When my mother arrived at school, Jeremiah was not sorry for his actions. He explained with pride that he had stood up to a bully who had slapped a little girl. Jeremiah was never afraid to stand up for what he believed in, even if that would get him into trouble. It didn't matter if the bully was twice his size, he wouldn't back down.''

Jeremiah was a Boy Scout, he joined the Civil Air Patrol, and he planned to enlist in the Army as soon as he graduated from Portola High School in 2004, but that year his mother, Collette, was diagnosed with cancer and he stayed there with his family until she died. In 2007, he finally enlisted. When his sister, Chastity, begged him not to go, he said that he felt that by going into the military he was protecting his family.

By all accounts, he was an exemplary soldier who commanded the friendship and respect of his colleagues. While at Fort Hood, he became close friends with another Californian, Jake Velloza, and they shipped out to Iraq together. Before that, he had fallen in love with Amanda Harazin while stationed at Fort Hood. Amanda is known as ``A-J'' to her friends, but Jeremiah called her the ``love of his life.'' They were to have been married on May 30, but on May 2, outside of Mosul, Iraq, at a combat outpost in Hammam Alil, American soldiers were attacked by two gunmen wearing Iraqi police uniforms. Two U.S. soldiers--Jeremiah McCleery and his best friend, Jake Velloza--were killed in that attack and three others were wounded. So on May 14, the day before he was supposed to return to a happy homecoming and an impending marriage, Jeremiah McCleery returned to his hometown to be buried beside his mother in Portola.

The local paper described his return with these words, which speak volumes about the community which helped to mold this American hero. They reported, ``Across the Sierra Valley people lined the highway, some with their hands over their hearts as a mark of respect. In Portola, streets were lined with flag-waving citizens. Shopowners left their stores to join in, temporarily suspending business as usual.''

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to share a little of what I have learned about Jeremiah McCleery because it helps to answer the question that James Michener first asked, ``Where do we get such men?'' Well, we get them from the heart and soul of America. We get them from good and decent families like the McCleerys. We get them from little towns like Portola, California.

Over the summer, I had the honor to visit the men and women who guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. The painstaking care and the meticulous precision with which these young men and women discharge their duties in withering heat and in freezing cold 24 hours a day, 365 days a year is legendary. I asked them why they did it, and one of them told me, ``We do it to tell our country that we will never forget.''

For that reason, I bring this bill to the House today with the unanimous support of the Portola City Council, the entire California congressional delegation, and the entire community that watched Jeremiah McCleery grow from a boy to a man and, ultimately, to return as a hero. We ask that the Congress name the local post office in honor of Army Specialist Jeremiah Paul McCleery to tell our countrymen that we will never forget, and also to express our awe and our gratitude that humanity has, within itself, a small band of brothers like Jeremiah McCleery who step forward not for treasure or profit or even to defend their own freedom, but, rather, to win the freedom of a people half a world away. And they do it because their country asks them to and because it is virtuous and noble.

We owe these men and their grieving families a debt that we can never repay, except to honor their memory and to keep their sacrifice always in mind, those who gave up everything to proclaim liberty throughout all the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof.

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

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, those who blame the drought for our problems ignore the fact that this is a very mild drought by historical standards. In fact, during much more severe droughts than the one we are currently experiencing, far more water flowed to the Central Valley than it does right now.

I wonder if the proponents would seriously deny that 200 billion gallons of water have been diverted from the Central Valley by these regulations. It's morally unconscionable that water recycling bills to benefit the pampered and privileged communities of San Francisco can sail through the House while 40,000 families have lost their jobs in the San Joaquin Valley because this government has diverted 200 billion gallons of water in order to indulge one of the environmental left's pet causes, the delta smelt.

But I would like to address some of the basic economics of these recycling bills. A generation ago the principal objective of our water policy was to create abundance. That was an era when vast reservoirs produced a cornucopia of clean and plentiful water on a scale so vast that many communities didn't bother to meter it. That clean, cheap, and abundant water also made America the breadbasket of the world and the Central Valley of California the breadbasket of that State.

But the majority party has abandoned that policy. It has replaced it with a very different philosophy that the government's principal focus should not be to produce abundant water, but rather to ration and recycle water shortages that government has caused by abandoning abundance as its primary objective.

The result is increasingly expensive water that now affects our prosperity as a Nation. By its own admission, this administration is no longer analyzing the costs and benefits of projects in the bill now before us. In committee, the administration admitted that it faces a $600 million backlog of 53 water recycling projects like these and still hasn't bothered to prioritize them, let alone to figure out how to pay for them.

This bill provides a 25 percent Federal match for six local water recycling projects in the San Francisco Bay Area. It increases the maximum Federal cost share for two others.

The total cost to American taxpayers for this bill is $38 million. According to sponsors, it will produce 2.6 billion gallons of water. That comes to about 8,000 acre feet.

Now, let's do the math here, $38 million for 8,000 acre feet. That comes to $4,500 per acre foot. That's just the Federal share. The total cost of these projects is four times that amount, or more than $18,000 per acre foot.

Now, let's compare that to the capital cost of the nearby Oroville Dam. That was roughly $600 million in 1968, due to the inflation adjustment. It's $3.5 billion in today's money. That dam produces 3.5 million acre feet of water.

In other words, the modern-day inflation-adjusted cost of the Oroville Dam, including its massive power plant, comes to about $1,000 per acre foot. The projects in this bill cost more than $18,000 per acre foot overall, including $4,500 per acre foot directly from the national Treasury, which, in case you haven't noticed, is empty.

I raised these issues in committee. I did not actively oppose the bill, because the House has yet to set fiscal standards for recycling measures like this one. It needs to.

But I also must agree with Ranking Member Hastings and Congressman Nunes and others that it's a travesty that we should vote for 2.5 billion more gallons of water for San Francisco while taking away 200 billion gallons of water from the Central Valley of California.

At the same time that the Central Valley taxpayers are struggling with up to 40 percent unemployment rates, at the same time that all taxpayers are paying higher grocery bills as a result of these heartless water diversions, those same taxpayers are being asked to pay a super-premium subsidy to Bay Area water users, whose Representatives have endorsed this folly.

To add insult to injury, Mr. Nunes is not even allowed to offer amendments to restore water deliveries that would mean jobs for 40,000 unemployed California families without costing our Treasury a dime.

For all of those reasons I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill. Not only can we do much better; we could not possibly do any worse.