House floor remarks in opposition to Klamath dam removal.  September 22, 2011.   Read Remarks.

House Floor Remarks in Opposition to Klamth Dam Removal.  Mr. Speaker:
  This generation is facing spiraling electricity prices and increasingly scarce supplies.  Californians have had to cut back to the point that their per capita electricity consumption is now lower than that of Guam, Luxembourg and Aruba. 

What is the administration’s solution?

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced yesterday that the administration is moving forward with a plan to destroy four perfectly good hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River capable of producing 155 megawatts of the cleanest and cheapest electricity on the planet – enough for 155,000 homes.

Why would the administration pursue such a ludicrous policy?

They say it’s is necessary to help increase the salmon population.  We did that a long time ago by building the Iron Gate Fish Hatchery.  The Iron Gate Fish Hatchery produces five million salmon smolts each year – 17,000 of which return annually as fully grown adults to spawn.  The problem is, they don’t include them in the population count!

And to add insult to insanity, when they tear down the Iron Gate Dam, we will lose the Iron Gate Fish Hatchery and the five million salmon smolts it produces every year.

Declining salmon runs are not unique to the Klamath.  We have seen them up and down the Northwest Pacific Coast over the last ten years as the result of the naturally occurring Pacific Decadal Oscillation – cold water currents that fluctuate over a ten year cycle between the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.  During the same decade that salmon runs have declined in the Pacific Northwest, they have exploded in Alaska.  We’re at the end of that cycle.

The cost of this madness is currently pegged at a staggering $290 million – all at the expense of ratepayers and taxpayers.  But that’s just the cost of removing the dams.  Consumers will face permanently higher prices for replacement power, which, we’re told, will be wind and solar.

Not only are wind and solar some three times more expensive, but wind and solar require equal amounts of reliable stand-by power – which is precisely what the dams provide.

We’re told that yes, this is expensive, but it will cost less than retro-fitting the dams to meet cost-prohibitive environmental requirements.  If that is the case, then maybe we should re-think those requirements, not squander more than a quarter billion dollars to destroy existing hydro-electric dams.  Or here’s a modest suggestion to address the salmon population: count the hatchery fish!

We’re told this is the result of a local agreement between farmers and other stakeholders.  Mr. Speaker, everybody knows that the Klamath Agreement was the result of local farmers succumbing to extortion by environmental groups that threatened lawsuits to shut off their water.  And obviously the so-called stakeholders don’t include the ratepayers and taxpayers who would pay dearly for the loss of these dams.  Indeed, local voters have repeatedly and overwhelmingly repudiated the agreement and the politicians responsible it.  The locally-elected Siskiyou Board of Supervisors vigorously opposes it.

Finally, the administration boasts of 1,400 short-term jobs that will be created to tear down these dams.  Just imagine how many jobs we could create if we tore down the Hoover Dam.  Or Duluth, Minnesota.    

Mr. Speaker, amidst a spending spree that threatens to bankrupt this nation, amidst spiraling electricity prices and chronic electricity shortages – to tear down four perfectly good hydro-electric dams at enormous cost is insane.  And to claim that this is good for the economy gives us chilling insight into the breathtakingly bad judgment that is misguiding our nation from the White House.  

The President was right about one thing when he spoke here several weeks ago.  Fourteen months is a long time to wait to correct the problem.

Fortunately, the President will need congressional approval to move forward with this lunacy, and that will require action by this House.  Earlier this year, the House voted to put a stop to this nonsense.  I trust it will exercise that same good judgment as this administration proceeds with its folly.

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Congressman Tom McClintock, Opening Statement:

  Gifford Pinchot, the founder of the U.S. Forest Service, gave a series of lectures at the Yale School of Forestry from 1910 to 1915, in which he propounded maxims for the (quote) “Behavior of Foresters in Public Office.”  Among them:

• A public official is there to serve the public and not run them.

• Public support of acts affecting public rights is absolutely required.

• It is more trouble to consult the public than to ignore them, but that is what you are hired for.

• Find out in advance what the public will stand for.  If it is right and they won’t stand for it, postpone action and educate them.

• Get rid of an attitude of personal arrogance or pride of attainment or superior knowledge.

Since taking office, I have been inundated with citizen complaints over conduct amounting to the very opposite of Pinchot’s maxims.  I want to thank Chairman Bishop and the sub-committee for responding to these complaints and coming to Sacramento to hear firsthand from the people directly victimized.  

We will hear about a multitude of exclusionary policies adopted by the current administration including:

• Imposing inflated fees that are forcing the abandonment of family cabins held for generations;

• Shutting down long-established community events upon which many small and struggling mountain towns depend for tourism;

• Expelling long-standing grazing operations on specious grounds – causing damage both to the local economy and the federal government’s revenues;

• Closing long-used roads, many of which are parts of county road systems essential to local residents and even obstructing county efforts to provide maintenance from local budgets to keep those roads open.

• Obstructing the sound management of our forests, creating both severe fire dangers and chronic unemployment. For example, the Forest Service has dramatically reduced its Timber Harvest Target and then boasts they’re going to achieve 90 percent of their reduced target. 

During this hearing, we will also hear the usual excuses by activist political groups supporting these policies.  It is important to understand the context of their assurances.

For example, after doing everything possible to discourage motorized access to our forests, the activists now cite decreased motorized use of our forests as evidence the public has lost interest and they are merely responding to changing demand.

After imposing punitive new conditions on routine events with the obvious intention of shutting them down, the activists tell us that they’re merely trying to assure the victims of these punitive conditions pay for them.

After driving out cabin owners and grazing operations with cost-prohibitive fees, we’re told they’re just trying to reflect market conditions, raising the question, if these are market rates, why aren’t the cabin sites and grazing lands being re-leased? 

    We’re told they have to shut down forest roads for lack of funds, yet as we will hear, their policies are to actively obstruct local communities seeking to use their own funds to maintain these vital roads.

Frankly, I believe the sophistries in the written testimonies submitted to this subcommittee by the administration and these so-called environmental advocacy groups border on intellectual dishonesty.

I do want to acknowledge that there have been some improvements over the last few months and I want to thank Randy Moore for what he has done to produce them. 

For example, the Forest Service has removed inflammatory leftist anti-grazing propaganda from official Forest Service plaques within the Tahoe National Forest and local officials are reporting that consultation by the Forest Service has improved to a limited extent.

However, these are exceptions.  The sum total of these policies clearly seems more in line with the radical leftist agenda to drastically limit any human presence from vast tracts of public land, an objective antithetical to the original aims of the U.S. Forest Service and hostile to the values and principles of any free society.

The preservation of our forests for future generations does not mean closing them to the current generation.

I believe that the vast timber, land and recreational assets administered by the U. S. Forest Service represent a limitless and renewable source of prosperity for our nation and for our local economies, a portion of which can then be redirected to assure the maintenance and preservation of the national forest lands for the use, enjoyment and prosperity of the American people in perpetuity.  But, that will require a significant change in policy within the current administration. 

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September 11, 2011.  Cal Expo, Sacramento, California.

  The attack against our nation ten years ago today was our generation’s Pearl Harbor.  Indeed, in many ways it was far more infamous.  More Americans died on September 11th than in the attack on Pearl Harbor.  It was an attack not upon some distant outpost but upon our nation’s greatest city and our nation’s capital city. It was an attack not upon heavily armed warships, but upon defenseless Americans peacefully going about their business.

There were differences, of course.

But there is one constant we can observe today that has always defined us as a people and that guarantees that ultimately things will be set right.  I speak of something that can only be described as the Spirit of America.  Anyone who lived through that day knows exactly what I mean: during those days that spirit was real – even palpable. 

That spirit produced a pantheon of heroes that day – Americans who had gone about their business one peaceful morning, and in a few brief moments found themselves facing well prepared, intractable and barbaric adversaries.

At that fateful moment, they rose to the occasion.  They resisted with everything they had.  On December 7th, cooks became gunners and nurses passed the ammunition.  On September 11th, office workers became rescue workers and businessmen laid down their cell phones and took up hand-to-hand combat in the skies over Pennsylvania.

Centuries from now, Americans will proudly remember the story of the men and women aboard Flight 93 as it headed for our nation’s Capitol: how they responded instantly to their country’s peril -- and armed only with their bare hands stopped cold those who would destroy our nation. 
 
The memory of firefighters and police officers rushing into the burning buildings as everyone else rushed out personified duty and honor for an entire generation.

That day, these heroic deeds testified that the American spirit is still very much alive and that Americans still stand ready at a moment’s notice to step forward when our nation is attacked and to marshal every resource and make every sacrifice necessary to defend our country, and all that our country stands for.

When I think back to the spirit of our nation in the weeks following that fateful day, I remember a nation that was outraged, united, defiant, awakened and determined to respond to that attack just as their grandparents had responded. 

And let us never forget that for the last ten years, the most selfless generation in our history – the young men and women in uniform today -- has stepped into the breach.  For a decade, these young Americans have volunteered to take and keep the battle away from our shores.  They have not had the full resources or resolve of our country behind them.  They have often lacked the equipment and armor they desperately need.  They have operated under politically correct constraints that add greatly to their difficulty and danger.   

Yet they volunteer to go back again and again – knowing the danger – knowing the difficulties -- and yet resolved to stand in the breach even at the cost of their own lives.  We have lost 4,000 of these remarkable young Americans and seen 35,000 of them maimed or crippled. 

These are the unsung heroes whose sacrifices continue to this very hour.  Let us never forget what we owe them.  There have been fewer terrorist attacks against Americans in the ten years following 9/11 than in the ten years that preceded it.  That is solely because of the heroism of our men and women in uniform.

James Michener’s haunting question thunders at us, “Where do we get such men and women?”  

It is not for us to see the future, but occasionally the past casts a flicker of light forward.  And if the past tells us anything, it is that the American Spirit, which animated past generations to heroic deeds in defense of liberty and honor and justice still burns brightly in the hearts of this generation of Americans. 

We saw that spirit ignite on Flight 93.  We saw it in the grim faces of the rescue workers as they rushed into the inferno. We saw it in the sense of purpose and patriotism that united every American in the days after September 11th.   We still see it in the faithful and heroic deeds of tens of thousands of American servicemen and servicewomen who alone have borne the burdens of our defense.

And we see it at gatherings like this across America ten years later.  It is here where the world can see the true fiber of the American character.  It is not in our leaders – it is in our people. 

A generation ago, monstrous tyrannies misjudged the resolve and determination of free men and women to defend their families and their liberties and their way of life.  For many years, one provocation after another was met with only half-measures, political correctness, irresolution and ineptitude from the leaders of the great democracies. 

Those tyrants forgot that the American spirit beats in the heart of every citizen and can be summoned instantly when America is endangered.

Let the word go out today – not from our leaders, but from our people – from every gathering of American citizens across this continent and from every candle lit tonight in memory of these honored dead – that we have not forgotten – and that the indescribable outrage and indestructible resolve -- that each of us felt ten years ago – still simmers just below the surface of daily life. 

From this gathering and others like it today we can take with us this certainty:  There will come an anniversary of September 11th when there are no armed guards at airports; no Homeland Security scares; no fears over ports or planes or bombs in crowded places.  That day will come to pass because President Kennedy was right: Americans “we will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty.”      

Remarks by Congressman Tom McClintock delivered at the "Remembering 9/11 Heroes" event, September 11, 2011.  Cal Expo, Sacramento, California.