House Chamber, Washington, D.C., November 30, 2010.  Full Text.

Mr. Speaker:  Titles 3 through 6 of the bill purport to settle four water rights claims against the United States by signing away the public’s right to nearly 300 BILLION gallons of water annually AND in perpetuity -- in addition to spending more than $1.2 billion.

          The proponents of the bill are correct that if taxpayers will end up paying more if the claims go to trial, then we should settle out of court.  But I sincerely doubt this is the case.

          For the better part of a year, I asked for a legal opinion from the Attorney General on this question -- to no avail -- until a day before the issue was first brought to the House floor. What we received was not a legal opinion assessing the validity of the claims or the extent of the taxpayers’ liability.  It was a general statement of their preference for settling claims rather than litigating them.

          And it is undermined by many specific objections raised by the Administration.  For example, with respect to the White Mountain Apache settlement, the Department of Interior wrote on November 15: “This authorizes federal appropriations for numerous tribal projects that are extraneous to settlement,” and urged “these projects should be considered on their own merits in separate authorizing legislation.”  Last year, it warned that funding would “be excessive if it were viewed as settlement consideration.”

          They also warned of language – still in the bill – which waives the sovereign immunity of the United States for future litigation.  They warned, “this provision will engender additional litigation – and likely in competing state and federal forums – rather than resolving the water rights disputes…”

“Extraneous to the settlement.” “Engender additional litigation.”  “Excessive if … viewed as settlement consideration.”   

Those aren’t my words – they’re this administration’s words.  In fact, the administration expressed so many reservations about aspects of these settlements that we can only conclude that these are not settlements negotiated by the Attorney General and presented to Congress, but rather a grab-bag written by Congress itself and now rubber-stamped by the Administration on political and not legal grounds.

We were initially told that the Attorney General never comments on the validity of claims, but we found this to be false.  For example, in the Colville case in 1994 involving a similar water rights settlement, when the Attorney General’s office believed we had a weak case and should settle, they warned us that we are “not that well postured for a victory on this claim” and that “the outcome could easily be a significant cost to the taxpayers and the public.”

That’s not what they’re saying in this case.

          Mr. Speaker, we have many more Indian Water settlements pending for vast quantities of water and substantial sums of money.  We need to get our act together on this.

I believe Congress needs to demand that the administration be candid and forthcoming in all claims for settlement, and that Congress insist that before it begins deliberating on a settlement, that the Attorney General has conducted and completed the negotiations, determined all the details, certified that the settlement is within the legal liability of the government and only then submits that settlement for consideration by Congress. 

          Anything less is breaching the fiduciary responsibility that we hold to the people of the United States. 

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By Congressman Tom McClintock

  More than a year ago, Pollster Frank Luntz stood before a group of about 40 House Republicans in a cramped conference room.  “I need to tell you something,” he said.  “I’ve been looking at polling data from Congressional districts across America for the last three months.  I’m convinced that you are going to be in the majority next year.”  After a long pause, he added, “This time, please don’t screw it up again.”

 I don’t think we will. 

The message of the last two elections could not be louder or clearer.  Great parties are built upon great principles and they are judged by their devotion to those principles.  From its inception, the core principles of the Republican Party have been individual freedom and constitutionally limited government.  The closer it has hewn to these principles, the better it has done.  The further it has strayed from them…well, my God!

In the aftermath of the Bush debacle, House Republican leaders resolved to restore traditional Republican principles as the policy and political focus of the party and they achieved something no one at the time thought possible: they united House Republicans as a determined voice of opposition to the Left and rallied the American people.  Republicans rediscovered why they were Republicans, and Republican leaders rediscovered Reagan’s advice to paint our positions in bold colors and not hide them in pale pastels.

(Ironically, in Reagan’s home state, Republicans tried to campaign to the left of the Democrats and the result was disastrous.  While the rest of the country was celebrating historic Republican gains (including a shift of at least 61 U.S. House Seats, 6 U.S. Senate Seats, 680 state legislative seats, 19 state legislatures and six governors), the statewide Republican ticket in California imploded.   Republicans nationally now hold more state legislative seats than in any year since 1928.  In California, they hold fewer than at any time since 1978!)

House Republicans were unfairly criticized as the party of “No.”  When somebody is driving you off a cliff, “no” is a handy word to have in your vocabulary.  But it can’t be the only word in the national debate over the future of the country and Republicans know it.

Over the last two years, House Republicans laid out detailed plans to revive the finances of our government and the prosperity of our economy, to return freedom of choice, competition and affordability to health care, to restore the integrity of our borders, and to return to our states their rightful powers and prerogatives. 

A Republican House cannot alone enact such laws, but it no longer must labor in the obscurity of minority irrelevance.  It now has the opportunity to elevate the national debate by putting forward these plans at a time when Americans are alert to the danger facing the nation and eager for an adult discussion about the fundamental mechanics of freedom – how freedom works and how we can put it back to work.  

In 1858, Lincoln warned the nation that two antithetical philosophies, freedom and slavery, competed for the future and reminded us that a house divided against itself cannot stand.  “I do not believe the house will fall,” he said, “but I do believe that it will cease to be divided.”  Today two incompatible philosophies, freedom and socialism, compete for our future and the stage is set for one of the greatest debates in the history of the American Republic.

Upon the outcome of that debate rests the question of whether the United States of America will fade inexorably into history or whether it will begin its next great era of expansion, prosperity and influence.

 
Tom McClintock was first elected to the California 4th Congressional District by a margin of 1,800 votes in 2008 and re-elected by a margin of 70,000 votes in 2010.