House Chamber, Washington, D.C. July 22, 2010.  Full Text.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Representative Tom McClintock (CA-04) made the following remarks during a debate in the House of Representatives today about H.R. 3534 (Clear Act).  In his remarks the Congressman discussed the response to the oil spill in the Gulf:

“Before we add more bureaucracies to the equation, shouldn’t we ask how the existing ones did?

“The administration ignored the contingency plan that NOAA’s former Oil Spill Response Coordinator says could have burned off 95 percent of the oil spill from day one.  It took them eight days to do a test burn.

“In the two weeks after the spill, 13 countries offered the assistance of their surface oil skimmers.  The administration told them “thanks but no thanks.”

“As the oil approached shore, the Administration shut down oil skimming barges for lack of life jackets.  It never occurred to them to simply bring out more life jackets.

“Skimmers that could have removed 95 percent of surface oil were forbidden by the EPA for a month because they didn’t remove 99.9985 percent.

“For more than a month, the governors of the states begged the administration for permission to take emergency action to protect their shorelines, to no avail.

“And now we want more bureaucrats?

“The problem is not a lack of bureaucracy.  The problem is a tangled mess of rigid regulations, political posturing, contradictory edicts and administrative incompetence that produced an emergency response worthy of the Keystone Cops.  More of the same is not the answer. 

            “My advice to this administration and its Congressional majority is this: if you can’t lead and won’t follow – then get out of the way.”

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - Representative Tom McClintock (CA – 04), Ranking Member of the House Water and Power Subcommittee, today made the following opening statement at a hearing about low-impact hydropower:

“I applaud this hearing on expanding small hydropower development to augment our hydroelectric capacity.  We will hear testimony today on the bureaucratic obstacles that federal agencies have placed in the way of the placement and construction of these hydro-electric generators, and I believe that Congress must make a concerted effort to identify and remove these obstacles that discourage development and drive up the price of electricity for consumers. 

“I am concerned, however, with an attempt to use the promise of small hydroelectricity projects as an excuse to delay, impede -- and among certain extremist groups, to destroy -- existing large-scale hydroelectric facilities.

“One of the lamentable tendencies I have noticed in this Congress is to heavily subsidize those forms of water and power generation that are ideologically pleasing to the environmental Left while obstructing or even dismantling water and power generation frowned upon by the same extremist groups.

“At these hearings, I have often reflected on the cornucopia of water and power that the federal government made possible when it maintained “abundance” as its central objective.  The legendary multi-purpose dams and reservoirs of the last generation turned deserts into farmlands, created vast new recreational areas, tamed the environmentally devastating cycle of floods and droughts, and produced clean and abundant hydropower that provided a foundation for unprecedented prosperity throughout the western United States.   As the legendary Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, Floyd Dominy, once pointed out, a “Colorado River without dams is useless to anyone.”

“We must also beware of squandering our vast hydroelectric capacity by subordinating it to staggeringly more expensive and unreliable energy systems that the government is currently promoting.  We will hear of the significant costs that are being incurred to supplement wind’s notoriously unreliable nature.  And we must also beware of unreasonable environmental requirements that are being imposed without any concern for costs or benefits.

“For example, a concerted effort is being undertaken by this administration to destroy four hydro-electric dams on the Klamath River in the name of restoring salmon populations.  This effort is estimated to cost well over a half-billion dollars and will require consumers to purchase much more expensive replacement power for 155 megawatts of generating capacity – enough for over 150,000 homes.

“One group that was invited by the majority to testify today has called this insanity a “model” for their next objective, the destruction of the four lower Snake River Dams.

‘The justification we hear is declining salmon populations.  I asked why someone didn’t just build a fish hatchery.  I was informed there was a major fish hatchery just below the dams called Iron Gate that produces over 5 million Chinook smolts each year that results in over 17,000 adults returning to spawn.  But this abundant population is simply ignored in the salmon count.

“This is utter lunacy.

“On both large scale and small scale hydroelectric projects, we absolutely must restore some modicum of rationality and commonsense to our public policy. 

“We cannot continue to ignore our ability to restore endangered species populations through aquaculture, hydroponics and husbandry at a fraction of the cost, and on a vastly greater scale, than those measures now being imposed by current laws. 

“We cannot continue to allow endless litigation and regulation to inflate the price of water and power to the point that it is breaking our economy.

“We cannot continue to indulge political ideologies while ignoring simple cost-benefit analyses in evaluating energy technologies and regulatory frameworks.

“We cannot continue to impose increasingly Draconian rationing schemes on our besieged economy while ignoring our ability and our responsibility to produce a new era of abundance and plenty from our nation’s vast and renewable natural resources.

“I applaud low-impact hydro-electricity where it offers cost-effective generating capacity and I believe we must identify bureaucratic impediments that are discouraging its use or inflating its costs. 

“But this should not be used as an excuse to impose additional impediments or costs on our large-scale hydroelectricity. 

“In short, we need to return to the time-tested policies that produced the era of abundant water and power that this generation has foolishly abandoned in favor of staggering costs, chronic shortages and bureaucratic rationing.  I certainly hope that we do so before we completely wreck our economy.”

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House Chamber, Washington, D.C. 
July 22, 2010

 M. Speaker: 

Anyone who has experienced firsthand the quiet panic that stalks every waking hour of an unemployed family knows how frightening and debilitating is chronic unemployment.  You watch your savings evaporate, you see your children going without the material things their friends enjoy, and you count down the months or even weeks until you won’t be able to make that crucial rent or house payment.

That unemployment check is a lifeline in such times, and I fully appreciate and understand how desperately an unemployed family is looking to the security of getting 99 weeks of such checks.

But I can’t go along with this for a simple reason: The only way out of this nightmare of unemployment for these families is a job. 

Speaker Pelosi has said that the most important thing we could do to create jobs is to extend unemployment benefits to 99 weeks, because the unemployed would spend this money and stimulate the economy.

This analysis completely ignores the harsh and glaring fact that before this money can be put back into the economy, it must first be taken out of that same economy.  We will have to take $34 billion more out of the economy in order to finance these extra benefits through November.  In fact, this is the eighth such extension, totalling $120 billion – meaning over $1,600 from the pocket of an average family of four.

And since we don’t have that money, we’ll have to borrow it from exactly the same capital pool that would otherwise have been loaned to businesses seeking to expand jobs or to homebuyers seeking to re-enter the housing market or to consumers seeking to make consumer purchases – and remember that 2/3 of economic growth depends upon consumer spending. 

But that money now won’t be there to loan for jobs and homes and economic growth. 

This is $34 billion of relief to the unemployed that they desperately need and that I desperately wish we could responsibly extend.  But to do so would also mean $34 billion of fewer jobs.  It means perpetuating this never-ending nightmare of unemployment for these families and, indeed, throwing more families into that nightmare.

We’ve been told for several years now – by both Presidents Bush and Obama – that stimulus spending would help the economy.  But it hasn’t.  And there’s a reason it hasn’t: Government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy that it first hasn’t taken out of that same economy.  Government cannot provide a dollar of temporary relief to the unemployed without first removing a dollar of permanent relief for the unemployed – a job.

The talking point du jour from the other side is, “Republicans have no problems giving tax breaks to the wealthy but won’t extend a lifeline to the unemployed.”  Once again, they just don’t get it.  Milton Friedman once observed that spending IS the effective level of taxation.  Spending can only be paid for in two ways – current taxes or future taxes.  High taxes and deficits are just the symptoms.  The problem is the spending – and this is a spending bill.

On May 9, 1939 – after nearly a decade of unemployment checks and stimulus spending – and with unemployment at 17.2 percent – Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, made this stunning admission during a meeting with Democratic Members of the House Ways and Means Committee.   He said: “No gentlemen, we have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong as far as I am concerned, somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises ... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... And an enormous debt to boot!"

M. Speaker, let us heed the lessons of history before we totally destroy our economy.  Perpetual unemployment checks put these desperate families farther and farther away from the only thing that can truly end their suffering – a real job.  That’s a fact nobody wants to face around here – but until we do, chronic unemployment will continue to stalk the land, and God forbid that a few years from now another Democratic Secretary of Treasury will have to make the same admission as Henry Morgenthau did 71 years ago.
 

House Chamber, Washington, D.C. July 22, 2010.  Full Text.. 

House Chamber, Washington, D.C. July 20, 2010.  Full Text.

Repeating the Lesson
House Chamber, Washington, D.C.
July 20, 2010

Mr. Speaker:

When the stimulus bill became law, unemployment stood at 8.2 percent.  Today, eighteen months and hundreds of billions of dollars later, unemployment is 9.5 percent.

This spending binge hasn’t made things better – it has made things demonstrably worse – because before government can put money into the economy, it first takes that money out of the economy.  We see the job created when government puts the money back, but we don’t see the jobs that are lost because government first took that money out of the economy. 

When we borrow trillions of dollars, we crowd out the same capital pool that would otherwise have been available for businesses to create jobs.  And so those jobs don’t get created and the ranks of the unemployed grow. 

These are the same policies that turned the recession of 1929 into the depression of the 1930’s.  Do we really want to repeat this lesson?
 

Representative Tom McClintock (R - CA) made the following opening statement at the House Water and Power Subcommittee hearing on the Bureau of Reclamation and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  Testifying at the hearing was the Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, Michael Connor.

Opening Statement
Water and Power Sub-Committee
July 15, 2010

When the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed into law in February of 2009 – with the stated purpose of reducing unemployment -- the unemployment rate stood at 8.2 percent.  Seventeen months and hundreds of billions of dollars later, the unemployment rate has grown to 9.5 percent.  It would be even higher except for the millions of unemployed who have simply dropped out of the labor force and are no longer counted.

The Commissioner will note that by spending nearly a billion dollars, his Bureau has created over 10,000 jobs.  What he doesn’t note is how many jobs were lost because that billion dollars had first to be removed from the economy before his bureau could put it back into the economy. 

This is the fundamental failing of the Administration’s stimulus spending.  Government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy that it has not first taken out of the same economy.  It is true that if I take a dollar from Peter and give it to Paul – or in this case, Mike – Mike has an extra dollar to spend and he’ll come here and tell us all the good he did with it.  But what is completely ignored is that Peter now has one less dollar to spend in that very same economy.    Mike has a billion dollars more, but the taxpayers now have a billion dollars less.  On paper, this strategy nets to zero.  In practice, it nets to much less than zero, because we have transferred huge amounts of capital from investments that would have been made on economic considerations to investments that are being made on political considerations, as we are about to hear.

The fact is that the best way to stimulate the economy is to get the government out of the business of creating shortages.  For more than a year, this committee sat idly while the Central Valley of California was economically devastated by the willful diversion of over 200 billion gallons of water for the amusement of the Delta Smelt.  This year, despite precipitation 160 percent of normal, the Central Valley is receiving only 45 percent of its water allotments.  A similar story is told across the country.

But most tragic is the fact that this Administration, through the Bureau of Reclamation, is spending $11 million of stimulus money in an effort to willfully destroy four perfectly good hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River that generate 155 megawatts of the cheapest and cleanest electricity that our technology can produce. 

At a time when Californians pay the highest electricity prices in the continental United States; at a time when Californians’ per capita electricity usage is not only the lowest in the nation but is lower that Guam, Aruba and Luxemburg; at a time when we can’t guarantee enough electricity to keep people’s air conditioners running this summer, the Bureau of Reclamation is using stimulus money on a conclusion driven process to tear down four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath that generate the cheapest and cleanest electricity within our power to produce – enough electricity for more than 150,000 households – with no plans to replace that power. 

This is insane.  And it is doing enormous harm to our economy.

And it invites the question of what other extraordinarily poor judgment is being used in spending these funds.  For that reason, I am sending an official request today that asks the Bureau of Reclamation to disclose all of its grants over the past five years.  My staff has found examples from the past where the agency helped fund the World Fisheries Congress meeting in Athens, Greece and directed grants to environmental organizations that in turn sue our government.  At a time when family budgets have been cut to the bone to finance this unprecedented spending, the American people deserve to know where their money is going.

Under this administration and this Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation has become the Bureau of Water Shortage and Dam Destruction.  And that’s a shame.

We have it within our ability to produce clean, cheap and abundant water and power from our nation’s vast resources and by so doing to restore the foundation of prosperity for our nation.  All that is required is a fundamental change in the policies of this government and the political will to do so.

Washington, D.C. – Representative Tom McClintock (R-CA) has recruited 17 members of the House of Representatives to become party to an amicus brief in support of Arizona’s new immigration law.  The brief has been filed by the Washington Legal Foundation in support of Arizona in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU. 

The Washington Legal Foundation’s amicus brief argues that the Arizona immigration law does not preempt the federal government’s exclusive authority to regulate immigration.  In May the ACLU filed suit to enjoin the Arizona immigration law on the grounds that it unconstitutionally encroaches on the federal government’s exclusive authority to regulate immigration.  The brief argues that Arizona does not seek to control admissions, removals or conditions upon which legal status may granted.  Instead, it points out that Arizona simply seeks to assist in enforcing existing federal law.

“Arizona has not adopted a new immigration law,” said Congressman McClintock.  “All it has done is to enforce existing law.  America’s immigration law is not designed 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.  Our nation embraces immigration and what makes that possible is assimilation.  That is the broad meaning of our nation’s motto, “E Pluribus Unum” – from many people, one people, the American people.”

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WASHINGTON D.C. – During a full committee markup of the CLEAR Act (H.R. 3534) in the Natural Resources Committee Representative Tom McClintock (R-CA) introduced an amendment to strike section 238 of the legislation.

Representative McClintock’s Statement on the Amendment to HR 3534 is attached below:

Statement on Amendment to HR 3534
House Natural Resources Committee
July 14, 2010

Mr. Chairman:

My amendment would strike Section 238 of the bill.  Specifically, it stops the attempt to use this bill to piggy-back an unrelated measure, HR 2807, America’s Wildlife Heritage Act.  That act was going nowhere in its own right, but apparently is trying to hitch a ride on a bill purporting to deal with the oil spill in the Gulf.

Despite the fact that America’s Wildlife Heritage Act was proposed more than 13 months ago, neither the Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife nor the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands have held a hearing on this measure.  More recently, the Subcommittee on Insular Affairs conducted three comprehensive oversight hearings on the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill accident.  They obtained the views of nearly 30 witnesses.  Not a word was spoken concerning this measure.

And yet, magically this forgotten bill that was going nowhere suddenly appears as section 238 of this bill.  This is exactly the kind of abuse of process by this Congress that the American people are growing increasingly disgusted with.

This section does not stop the oil leak in the Gulf, it does not clean up the oil in the Gulf, it does not address the needs of Gulf state communities, and it does not hold BP accountable for the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  Rather, the majority is attempting to use that disaster as an excuse for enacting a Christmas-tree full of unrelated bills that can’t stand on their own merit and wouldn’t withstand scrutiny if taken up in their own right.  The sponsor tacitly admits this by sneaking his bill into this one.

Why is the majority trying to avoid scrutiny?

Perhaps it is because it is unclear how much these provisions will cost and what, if any, benefits will be derived.

For example, this measure protects so-called “Desired non-native species.”  I would expect the sports fishermen in California will argue that the Striped Bass is a desired non-native species, given the popularity and economic impact of the industry in California and many other states around the country.  However, the striped bass has devastated the populations of several native species that are now listed on the Endangered Species Act, including the notorious Delta smelt. 

The measure also conflicts with the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act – because it limits the Forest Service’s ability to give “due consideration” to resource values other than species conservation.  And by doing so, it removes cost-benefit consideration – including economic impact – read, JOBS – from decision making.

It sets up standards that are contrary to established science on the subject.  For example, it requires sustainable populations at the planning unit level – which is frequently a biologically inappropriate scale for a wide-ranging species.

Simply stated, this ill-considered section places federal law in conflict with itself – because we are using a single crisis – the Gulf oil spill – to enact unrelated legislation without hearings, without serious consideration and without due process.

The Gulf oil spill has done immense economic damage to the Gulf region.  Why would we want to compound that damage by enacting a measure that ignores any cost-benefit issues and can only result in locking up vast additional natural resources that could be providing jobs for our people, revenues for our government and prosperity for our economy?

Mr. Chairman, the majority is either serious about addressing the Gulf oil spill, or it is not.  If it is serious, then it should report out a bill singularly focused on this issue that would command broad, bi-partisan support.  If it is NOT serious about addressing the Gulf oil spill, it should reject my amendment and continue down the road it is on.  But I warn you, that road may lead you to a place you won’t like.