House Chamber, Washington, D.C. July 31, 2009. Mr. Speaker: I rise to pay tribute to a young man who gave his life last week while fighting the Backbone Fire in the Trinity Alps Wilderness. Thomas Marovich, Jr. was just 20 years old. He was in his second year with the U.S. Forest Service assigned to the Modoc National Forest. He was training with the Chester Helitack Crew assigned to the Backbone Fire when a training accident claimed his life.
July 2009 Archives
July 31, 2009. Mr. Speaker: I rise to pay tribute to a young man who gave his life last week while fighting the Backbone Fire in the Trinity Alps Wilderness.
Thomas Marovich, Jr. was just 20 years old. He was in his second year with the U.S. Forest Service assigned to the Modoc National Forest. He was training with the Chester Helitack Crew assigned to the Backbone Fire when a training accident claimed his life.
He was born and raised in Hayward, but had come to Northeastern California to protect our forests, our communities and our citizens from the ravages of fire.
He had wanted to be a fire-fighter since he was a little boy and by all accounts had an exemplary life ahead of him. He was only able to live 20 years of that life, sacrificing the rest of it for the safety of our community, and for that, we owe him – and his grieving family -- our eternal gratitude.
House Chamber, Washington, D.C. July 28, 2009. Mr. Speaker: In order to support the Democrats’ healthcare plan, we are asked to accept three arguments that are fundamentally absurd: First, that the same government that pioneered $400 hammers and $600 toilet seats is somehow going to control healthcare costs; Second, that the same government that runs FEMA is going to make our health care system more efficient and responsive; Third, that the same government that runs the IRS is going to make our healthcare more compassionate and understanding.
July 28, 2009, House Chamber, Washington, D.C. Mr. Speaker: In order to support the Democrats’ healthcare plan, we are asked to accept three arguments that are fundamentally absurd:
First, that the same government that pioneered $400 hammers and $600 toilet seats is somehow going to control healthcare costs;
Second, that the same government that runs FEMA is going to make our health care system more efficient and responsive;
Third, that the same government that runs the IRS is going to make our healthcare more compassionate and understanding.
Frankly, I doubt it.
Instead of putting government in charge of our health care decisions, let’s put patients back in charge. We can do that by using tax credits to bring within the reach of every family a basic health plan that they can choose, that they can own, and that they can change if it fails to meet their needs.
That’s what Republicans are proposing. And it’s a much better way.
House Chamber, Washington, D.C. July 21, 2009. Special order discussion about Quincy, California and forest management practices. Part II of discussion.
House Chamber, Washington, D.C. July 21, 2009. Cogressional debate remarks on healthcare and the economy.
July 21, 2009. House Chamber, Washington, D.C. M. Speaker: I want to thank my colleague from Utah, Mr. Bishop, for organizing this special order for the House tonight, and for the attention he has devoted to the suffering in my district caused by the lunatic fringe of the environmental movement that seems to be so firmly in control of our national policy on public lands.
A generation ago, we recognized the importance of proper wild lands management. We recognized that nothing is more devastating to the ecology of a forest than a forest fire. And we recognized that public lands should be managed for the benefit of the public. We recognized that in any living community – including forests – dense over-population is unhealthy.
And so we carefully groomed our public lands, removed excessive vegetation and gave timber the room it needed to grow. Surplus timber and undergrowth were sold for the benefit of our communities. Our forests prospered and our economy prospered. And forest fires were far less numerous and far less intense than we see today.
But that was before a radical ideology was introduced into public policy – that we should abandon our public lands to overpopulation, overgrowth, and in essence, benign neglect.
We are now living with the result of that ideology. Forest fires, fueled by decades of pent up overgrowth are now increasing in their frequency and intensity and destruction.
One victim of this wrong-headed policy is the environment itself. Recent forest fires in my region make a mockery of all of our clean-air regulations. Anyone who has seen a forest after one of these fires knows that the environmental devastation could not possibly be more complete.
These policies also carry a serious economic price. Timber is a renewable resource – if properly managed it is literally in inexhaustible source of prosperity. And yet, a region blessed with the most bountiful resource in the state has been rendered economically prostrate. A region that once prospered from its surplus timber now is ravaged by fires that are fueled by that surplus timber.
Which brings me to the story of the townspeople of Quincy and Camino, both little towns in the northeast corner of California.
Two months ago, 150 families in each of those little towns received notice that the saw mills that employ them must close. The company made it very clear in its announcement that although the economic downturn was the catalyst, the underlying cause was the fact that 2/3 of the timber they depended upon was held up by environmental litigation.
Despite the recession, they still had enough business to keep the mills open --– and to keep these families employed – if the environmental Left had not cut off the timber those mills depended upon.
Now bear in mind that the population of the town of Quincy is about 400 families – the greater Quincy area about 1,250 families. And it’s not just the 150 families who have lost their incomes. Many more lost jobs indirectly – the folks who drive the trucks and sell the supplies – all lost their jobs as well.
This occurred despite the ground-breaking work of a local coalition called the Quincy Library Group that forged a model compromise between environmental, business and forest management advocates a decade ago. Their work culminated in legislation titled, the Herger Feinstein Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act. It was adopted 11 years ago in this very room by a vote of 429 to 1.
This consensus agreement provided for sound and sustainable forest management practices that in turn would support both local jobs and healthier forests.
As Sen. Feinstein pointed out at the time, every single environmental law, including the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act, will be followed as this proposal is implemented.”
Yet despite a model compromise that produced a model law, the will of the Congress, the livelihoods of hundreds of innocent families, and the fire safety of scores of mountain communities is being challenged and undermined by a constant stream of litigation from groups purporting to support the environment.
I say “purporting,” because, as the website of one of these groups declares, their number one policy goal is to – quote – “eliminate commercial logging on all public lands in California.” Their policy is not to protect the environment, but to destroy commercial enterprise.
We held an informal hearing in Quincy after the mill closures. And the stories we heard at that hearing were heart-breaking.
It is a story of how, despite the law, this constant litigation – which is ultimately rejected by the courts – has nevertheless delayed implementation of the Forest Recovery Act until the mills collapse. And that’s what we’re dealing with today.
We then held a formal hearing here in Washington. And from that hearing, Congressman Herger has introduced a bill, HR 2899, to prevent frivolous litigation from continuing to destroy these jobs and continuing to impede the fire-safety measures so vital to the preservation of these forests. And I am in the final stages of preparing legislation to at least grant litigation relief for the land within the Quincy Library Group territory.
And this legislation is already being attacked by the same radical groups responsible for the litigation and regulation that is destroying our forests.
These extremists even oppose the salvaging of timber that’s already been destroyed by forest fires or disease. Think about this – trees that are already dead – cannot be salvaged because of lawsuits filed by these extremist groups. They know that if they can delay salvage for two years, the trees decay to the point that they can’t be recovered.
And they would rather let those trees rot on the ground than to be removed and salvaged to provide jobs for families and lumber for homes across America.
The economic suffering this is now causing is immediate and acute. But an even more ominous effect is placing at risk our mountain communities and our national forests to intense wildfires made possible because overgrowth is no longer being removed. And as one forester told me, the overgrowth will come out of the forest one way or the other – it will either be carried out or burned out.
When it was carried out, we had a thriving lumber industry that put food on the tables and clothes on the children of thousands of working families throughout Northern California. More importantly, we also had much healthier forests and far fewer and milder forest fires than we suffer today.
This is not environmentalism. True environmentalists recognize the damage done by overgrowth and overpopulation and recognize the role of sound forest management practices in maintaining healthy forests.
We are watching them systematically shut down our public land for public use and public benefit.
And every time a little town like Quincy or Camino is strangled to death by these policies, it has a ripple effect throughout the nation. Our nation loses tax revenues, commerce withers, the price of raw materials rise, public resources are diverted to provide economic relief. And our forests suffer as well.
But there’s an infinitely higher cost as well, and that brings me to the tragic news I must impart to the House tonight. There is a raging fire in the Shasta/Trinity National Forest as we speak right now. It is called the “Backbone Fire.” About an hour ago, we received word that a young man, Thomas Marovich, Jr. – 20 years old – from the little town of Adin in my district, was killed this afternoon fighting that fire.
And every time a little town like Adin mourns the loss of a promising young man like Thomas Marovich, Jr. it is not only a tragedy – if preventable it is an outrage.
Mr. Speaker, the time has come for the great silent majority of Americans to rise up against the most radical elements of the environmental movement that now seem to control so much of our public policy, and to demand that we restore our public land for public use and public benefit, and that we restore the sound forest management practices that once minimized the forest fires that are now again destroying communities and taking lives.
July 16, 2009. Representative McClintock debates healthcare legislation issues in the Education and Labor Committee.
July 15, 2009. Mr. Chairman: As we begin deliberations on this measure, we need to be mindful that the law of unintended consequences is beyond the jurisdiction of the Congress, and needs to be considered carefully.
This proposal affects the lives of every American, and ought to be approached with a high degree of humility and caution.
As imperfect as the current system is, it is well within our power to make it a great deal worse.
A mistake here could place burdens on employers at a particularly vulnerable time for our economy, resulting in millions more Americans without health insurance – or jobs.
A mistake here could result in the loss of health coverage for millions of Americans who currently have it and are satisfied with it as private insurers are unable to compete with the heavily subsidized public plan and go out of business.
A mistake here could produce a further implosion of the economy as high taxes send more investors and capital offshore. That was one of the critical mistakes that Herbert Hoover made by boosting upper income taxes in the Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932.
Even the Washington Post – hardly a bastion of conservatism – warned today that quote “There is no case to be made for the House Democratic majority’s proposal to fund healthcare legislation through an ad hoc income tax surcharge for top-earning households.”
The supporters of this legislation are correct that health care costs have skyrocketed and need to be brought under control. No one doubts that. But I hope the majority will understand that many of us are skeptical that the same government that pioneered $500 hammers and $1,000 toilet seats is somehow going to keep our health care costs down.
We all know from our own experience that a hallmark of bureaucracy is the waiting list. Waiting lists at the post office and the DMV are merely annoying and inconvenient. Waiting lists at our doctor’s offices and hospitals can be fatal.
I hope the majority will give sincere consideration to the alternative offered by Republicans to take the same tax advantages that we currently give to businesses to provide health care for their employees, and extend those same benefits to the employees themselves – so that every family through tax credits and vouchers – on a sliding income scale – can have within their reach a basic health plan that they can choose according to their own needs, that they can own regardless of their employer, and that they can change if it fails to meet their needs.
By restoring control to families over their own healthcare choices – we can preserve the best of our current system and avoid the tragedy of socialist regimes while at the same time bringing genuine, consumer-choice-driven competition that will keep costs down, choices plentiful, and quality high.
July 10, 2009. Competitive Enterprise Institute. I know that everybody likes to poke fun at California – but I can tell you right now that despite all of its problems, California remains one of the best places in the world to build a successful small business.
All you have to do is start with a successful large business.
Laugh if you will, but let me remind you that when these policies finish wrecking California, there are still 49 other states we can all move to – and yours is one of them.
I should also warn you of the strange sense of déjà-vu that I have every day on the House floor as I watch the same folly and blunders that wrecked California now being passed with reckless abandon in this Congress.
We passed a “Cash-for-Clunkers” bill the other day – we did that years ago in California.
Doubling the entire debt every five years? Been there.
Increasing spending at unsustainable rates? Done that.
Save-the-Planet-Carbon-Dioxide restrictions? Got the T-Shirt.
To understand how these policies can utterly destroy an economy and bankrupt a government, you have to remember the Golden State in its Golden Age.
A generation ago, California spent about half what it does today AFTER adjusting for both inflation and population growth.
And yet, we had the finest highway system in the world and the finest public school system in the country. California offered a FREE university education to every Californian who wanted one. We produced water and electricity so cheaply that many communities didn’t bother to measure the stuff. Our unemployment rate consistently ran well below the national rate and its diversified economy was nearly recession-proof.
One thing – and one thing only – has changed in those years: public policy. The political Left gradually gained dominance over California’s government and has imposed a disastrous agenda of radical and retrograde policies that have destroyed the quality of life that Californians once took for granted.
The Census Bureau reports that in the last two years 2/3 of a million more people have moved out of California than have moved it. Many are leaving for the garden spots of Nevada, Arizona and Texas.
Think about that. California is blessed with the most equitable climate in the entire Western Hemisphere; it has the most bountiful resources anywhere in the continental United States; it is poised on the Pacific Rim in a position to dominate world trade for the next century, and yet people are finding a better place to live and work and raise their families in the middle of the Nevada and Arizona and Texas deserts.
I submit to you that no conceivable act of God could wreak such devastation as to turn California into a less desirable place to live than the middle of the Nevada Nuclear Test Range. Only Acts of Government can do that. And they have.
You can trace the collapse of California’s economy to several critical events: the rise of environmental Ludditism beginning in 1974; the abandonment of constitutional checks and balances that once constrained spending and borrowing; and the rise of rule by public employee unions . There are other factors as well: litigation, taxation, illegal immigration – but for the sake of time let me concentrate on the big three.
The first was the rise of environmental Ludditism with the election of a radical new-age leftist named Jerry Brown as governor of the state – an election that also produced overwhelming liberal majorities in both legislative houses.
Like Obama today, Brown lost little time in pursuing his vision of California – an incoherent combination of pastoral simplicity, European socialism and centralized planning. At the center of this world view was a backward ideology that he called his “era of limits” -- the naïve notion that public works were growth inducing and polluting and that stopping the expansion of infrastructure somehow excused government from meeting the needs of an expanding population.
Conservation replaced abundance as the chief aim of California’s public works, and public policy was redirected to developing irresistible incentives for the population to concentrate in dense urban cores rather than to settle in suburban communities.
Brown infused his vision into every aspect of public policy, and it is a testament to his thoroughness and tenacity that its basic tenets have dominated the direction of California through both Republican and Democratic administrations.
He cancelled the state’s highway construction program, abandoning many routes in mid-construction. He cancelled long-planned water projects, conveyance facilities and dams. He established the California Energy Commission that blocked approval of any significant new generating capacity. He enacted volumes of environmental regulations that created severe impediments to home and commercial construction,
empowering an incipient no-growth movement that began on the most extreme fringe of the environmental cause and quickly spread.
This movement reached its zenith with Arnold Schwarzenegger and the enactment of AB 32 and companion legislation in 2006. This measure gives virtually unchecked authority to the California Air Resources Board to force Draconian reductions in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020.
This has dire implications to entire segments of California’s economy: agriculture, baking, distilling, cargo and passenger transportation, cement production, manufacturing, construction and energy production, to name a few.
We, too, were promised an explosion of “green jobs,” but exactly the opposite has happened.
Up until that bill took effect, California’s unemployment numbers tracked very closely with the national unemployment rate. But since then, California’s unemployment rate began a steady upward divergence from the national jobless figures. Today, California’s unemployment rate is more than two points above the national rate, and at its highest point since 1941.
The second problem is structural: the collapse of the checks and balances and other constitutional and traditional constraints on government spending and borrowing.
Let me mention a few of them.
The State Supreme Court decision in Serrano v. Priest severed the use of local revenue for local schools and invited the state take-over of public education. AB 8 of 1979 – the legislature’s response to Proposition 13 – essentially did the same thing to local governments generally.
This means that vast bureaucracies have grown up over the service delivery level, wasting more and more resources while hamstringing teachers in their classrooms, wardens in their prisons and city councils in their towns.
Next, constitutional constraints on fiscal excesses began to fall. In 1983, Gov. George Deukmejian approved legislation to remove the governor’s ability to make mid-year budget corrections without having to return to the legislature. The loss of this provision exposed the state to chronic deficit spending by removing any ability of the governor to rapidly respond to changing economic conditions.
In 1989, Deukmejian sponsored Proposition 111 that destroyed the Gann Spending Limit that had held increases in state spending to inflation and population growth. If that limit had remained intact, California would be enjoying a budget surplus today.
The disastrous tax increases by Pete Wilson in 1991 and Arnold Schwarzenegger this year were made possible by this tragic blunder.
Finally, we’ve watched the constitutional budget process that had produced relatively punctual and relatively balanced budgets for nearly 150 years collapse in favor of an extra-constitutional abomination called the big five.
That new process, that began under Pete Wilson and has culminated under Arnold Schwarzenegger bypasses the entire legislative deliberative process in favor of an annual deal struck between the governor and legislative leaders behind closed doors and handed to the legislature as a fait accompli.
This short-circuits the separation of powers that is designed to discipline fiscal excess and it literally bargains away the line-item veto authority of the governor. It is a process that allows legislative leaders to extract concessions from the executive that would not be possible if the separation of powers were maintained.
With the checks against excessive spending broken down, borrowing became the preferred method of public finance. The Constitutional requirement that all taxpayer-supported debt be approved by voters began to erode in the 1930’s, when a depression-era Supreme Court decision allowed the state to run a temporary deficit in the event of an economic down-turn -- as long as the shortfall was addressed in the following fiscal year. This practice was narrowly construed until the Wilson administration began using it to justify spreading out a single year’s budget deficit over several years.
During the 1980’s, Gov. Deukmejian began employing a legal fiction called a “lease revenue bond,” to circumvent constitutionally required voter approval.
Although Proposition 13 still protects property owners from unsustainable increases in their property taxes, most of the other fiscal constraints are now gone, and California has entered a period of unprecedented public debt to finance an unprecedented expansion of state government.
The third factor that also can be traced back to the 1970’s was the
radical transformation that took place in the nature and power of the state’s public employee unions. Until that time, state law prohibited public employee strikes against the public and prohibited collective bargaining or closed shops.
During the Jerry Brown era, a series of collective bargaining acts handed to public sector unions all the rights and powers of private sector unions – but without any of the natural constraints on private sector unions. The unions soon brought these newly-won powers to bear to elect hand-picked officials to state and local office.
Today, political expenditures by public employee unions exceed all other special interest groups, while they hold compliant majorities in the state legislature and most local agencies.
The result has been radically escalating personnel costs and radically deteriorating performance.
The impact on governmental services has been devastating. Despite exploding budgets, service delivery is collapsing. Firing incompetent teachers has become a virtual impossibility, adding to the deterioration of educational quality. Essential services can no longer be performed because labor costs have made it impossible to sustain those services.
Today, California is like the shopkeeper who leased out too much space, ordered too much inventory, hired too many people and paid them too much. Every month the shopkeeper covers his shortfalls with borrowing and bookkeeping tricks. Ultimately, he will reach a tipping point where anything he does makes his situation worse. Borrowing costs are eating him alive and he’s running out of credit. Raising prices causes his sales to decline. And there’s only so much discretionary spending he can cut.
That’s the state’s predicament in a nutshell. California’s borrowing costs now exceed the budget of the entire University of California and it is increasingly likely that it will fail to find lenders when it must borrow billions to pay its bills at the end of this month.
Ignoring dire warnings, Gov. Schwarzenegger and legislators from both parties earlier this year imposed the biggest state tax increase in American history.
And I can assure you that the Laffer curve is alive and well. In the first two months after the tax increase took effect, state revenues have plunged 33 percent.
Although there are many obsolete, duplicative or low priority programs and expenditures that the state can – and should – do without, there aren’t enough of them to come anywhere close to closing California’s deficit.
Sadly, California has reached the terminal stage of a bureaucratic state, where government has become so large and so tangled that it can no longer perform even basic functions.
Fortunately, we have a model that we know works. A generation ago, it produced a high quality of public service at a much lower cost. It maximized management flexibility and it required accountability at the service delivery level. It recognized that only when commerce and enterprise flourish can we finance the basic responsibilities of government.
Restoring this efficiency will require a governor and a legislature with the political will to wrestle control from the public employee unions, dismantle the enormous bureaucracies that have grown up over the service delivery level, decentralize administration and decision making, contract out services that the private sector can provide more efficiently, rescind the recent tax increases that are costing the state money and roll back the regulatory obstacles to productive enterprise.
Alas, we don’t have such leaders and even if we did, the systemic reorganization of the state government can’t be accomplished overnight. Restructuring the public schools would take at least a year; prisons at least two; and health and welfare three to five years before serious savings could be realized.
This brings us to the fine point of the matter. What Churchill called history’s “terrible, chilling words” are about to be pronounced on California’s failed leadership: “too late.”
A federal loan guarantee or bailout may be the only way to buy time for the restructuring of California’s bureaucracies to take effect, but the discussion remains academic until and unless the state actually adopts the replacement structures, unburdens its shrinking productive sector and presents a credible plan to redeem the state’s crushing debt and looming obligations.
Without these actions, federal intervention will only make California’s problems worse by postponing reform, continuing unsustainable spending and piling up still more debt.
In short, if California won’t help itself, the federal government cannot, should not and must not.
And before anyone gets too smug at California’s agony, remember this: Congress is now enacting the same policies at the national level that have caused the collapse of California. So whistle past this cemetery if you must, but remember the medieval epitaph: “Remember man as you walk by, as you are now so once was I; as I am now so you will be.”
The good news is there is still time for the nation to avoid California’s fate. If anything, the collapse of California can at least serve as a morality play for the rest of the nation – unfortunately in the form of a Greek tragedy.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Doc Hastings (WA-04) today named Rep. Tom McClintock (CA-04) as the new Ranking Member of the Water and Power Subcommittee. McClintock will take over the position from Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05) who was recently selected to serve as Ranking Member of the Workforce Protections Subcommittee on the Education and Labor Committee.
“Rep. McClintock has shown tremendous dedication and leadership on a number of natural resources issues,” said Ranking Member Hastings. “As California faces a severe water crisis, it is more important than ever to have leaders in Congress, like McClintock, who understand the importance of having access to a stable and abundant water supply, especially for our agriculture and rural communities. I’m confident that McClintock will be a strong advocate for water users in California and throughout the West.”
“I’m honored to have been named as the ranking Republican on the Water and Power sub-committee of the House Natural Resources Committee,” said Rep. McClintock. “There is now a great debate in Congress over whether government will merely ration shortages that it has created or whether it will return to its traditional goal of promoting abundance through the development of our nation’s vast water and hydroelectric resources. This debate is of critical importance to the quality of life and prosperity of our nation and I am looking forward to taking an active role in it.
“I’m also grateful for Rep. McMorris Rodgers’ service on this Subcommittee,” continued Hastings. “As a senior Member of our Committee, she will continue advancing issues important to Eastern Washington and the Pacific Northwest.”
The Subcommittee on Water and Power is responsible for matters concerning America’s water resources, generation of electric power from federal water projects and interstate water issues. Republicans on the Subcommittee are devoted to promoting low-cost, clean, renewable and emissions-free hydroelectricity generated by federal dams and reservoirs. Republicans are also working to improve federal government regulations to ensure projects are less expensive, more transparent and not delayed by unnecessary red tape.
CONTACT: Emily Lawrimore or Jill Strait, Resources Committee
202-226-2311
Bill George or Jennifer Cressy, Congressman Tom McClintock's Office 916-786-5560
# # #
July 7, 2009. Cap and Trade radio interview, WBAL Baltimore, Ron Smith Show.
Connect with Tom