November 6, 2009
M. Speaker:
This week the House passed HR 3548 that extends unemployment benefits in states with unemployment rates over 8 ½ percent for an additional 13 weeks. The measure also continues the popular $8,000 tax credit for first time homebuyers and adds a new $6,500 tax credit for homebuyers who are currently homeowners.
M. 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 that I believe is actually making the recession worse. By raising taxes to help the unemployed, it makes more unemployed. And by paying people to buy homes, it is creating yet another housing bubble that will continue to drain the resources of our nation until it bursts.
Let me walk through both of these concerns.
Under this bill, unemployed workers in states like my home state of California can draw up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits – almost two full years. I realize the quiet panic that accompanies every waking and sleeping moment of unemployed families as they wonder from one day to the next how they’re going to get by. But the only way out of that nightmare is genuine employment.
There’s 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 they create flee such hostile environments and seek out less expensive and less burdensome harbors. One need only watch the domestic migration within our own nation to see this happening right now.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill imposes a net tax increase of $2 ½ billion on our economy at a time when it can least afford it. That means higher unemployment.
Family breadwinners can see the additional unemployment checks in their hands, and that’s why this bill is so popular. But what they can’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 the bill have already tacitly acknowledged when they admitted that they’ll have to return before the end of the year to extend the bill yet again.
Simply stated, we cannot help the unemployed by creating more of them.
The second part of this bill is equally popular and it is equally delusional. It extends and expands tax credits for homebuyers to buy homes they otherwise couldn’t afford.
Have we learned nothing from the past year of economic hardship? The catalyst for the current recession was a housing bubble created when government policies encouraged housing lenders and borrowers to make and take loans to buy homes that everybody knew those borrowers couldn’t afford.
What’s our response? It is to provide additional tax money to encourage homebuyers to purchase homes that they otherwise couldn’t afford. And we’re doing this just weeks after watching how the “Cash for Clunkers” program created the same artificial bubble in the automobile market that came crashing down as soon as that program ended.
A society in which billions of dollars are extracted from its economy by its government 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.
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M. Speaker:
What do Americans lose if Nancy Pelosi succeeds in taking over health care?
We’ll lose the freedom to shop around for the policy that best meets our own needs.
Under her bill, we’re forced to purchase our insurance through a government run exchange. We’re forced to purchase only those policies that meet all the requirements set by the new health czar or be fined for failing to do so. And we’re forced to pay for all the cost overruns through higher premiums or higher future taxes.
Where does all this lead? In 1993, the government started 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 your health care unless 40 “Blue Dog” Democrats decide to stop them. You need to call them today.
]]>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 the 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 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 obediently in line. And that is a frightening prospect.
Ronald Reagan responded by cutting taxes and reducing regulatory burdens on the economy, producing the biggest peacetime economic expansion in the nation’s history.
Today, President Obama is doing exactly the opposite. Obamacare and Cap and Trade and many other bills promise the biggest tax increases and heaviest regulations our country has ever seen.
Over the last 100 years, three presidents responded to recessions by reducing taxes and regulations: Warren Harding, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan – and all produced rapid and dramatic economic recoveries.
Two presidents reacted to recessions by doing the opposite.
One was Herbert Hoover in the early 1930’s, who radically increased taxes and spending and 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.
October 27, 2009
Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Today’s hearing is described as an oversight hearing on “water management and climate variability.” That’s an interesting concept, insofar as the only constant in earth’s climatology is change. Just within the brief period of recorded human history, we know of periods when the earth’s climate has been much warmer than it is today and others when it has been much cooler. We know, for example, during the Medieval Warm Period from 900 to 1300 AD, that wine grapes were grown in Northern Britain and Newfoundland and that the temperature in Greenland was warm enough to support a prosperous agricultural economy for nearly five hundred years. We also know that during the Roman Warm Period from 200 to 600 AD, North Africa was wet enough to support bountiful grain production. In the second century AD, Ptolemy recorded year-round precipitation throughout the Mediterranean.
We also know that there were other periods when the earth’s climate was much cooler than it is today. During the Little Ice Age, from 1300 through 1850, the Thames River and New York Harbor regularly froze over. Indeed, during the Little Ice Age, a wave of religious zealotry swept Europe blaming witchcraft for the dramatic climate changes of the era.
Given the constant variability of the earth’s climate, proper water management requires accurate and abundant data, and I certainly applaud any effort to assure that in planning for our future needs we do so with the scientific data necessary to make informed decisions.
I just want to be sure that it is science and not ideology that is driving the effort.
That’s why I get a little nervous watching, for example, how the Secure Water Act was rushed through this house. Without any debate or dialogue or hearings on this side, it was dropped into a 1,216 page omnibus bill that could not even be amended.
Under the guise of the Secure Water Act, the Bureau of Reclamation recently announced a new “River Basin Study Program” that will – quote – “better define options for future water management of Western river basins…”
The use of the term, “future water management” has raised concerns by many western water users that this is a program whose purpose is not to produce reliable data but rather to search for ways to justify increasingly Draconian restrictions on water usage. What we need is an open assessment of the most viable, economical and certain options of assuring an abundance of water for the people of these regions from the natural resources that we enjoy.
If the warming trend that began in 1850 and peaked in 1998 resumes, then the need for more dams and aqueducts will become acute. I submitted a series of questions to the Bureau of Reclamation to clarify the intent of these studies and I have yet to receive answers. The Bureau’s silence heightens concerns that this is a solution in search of data to support it rather than a search for data that will illuminate a solution.
Madam Chairwoman, I have mentioned before that the minority party believes that it should be the principal object of the federal government’s water policy to assure abundance. The purpose of data collection and management should serve this objective – and not to justify cutting off water to users, rationing water shortages, or imposing wildly expensive recycling or desalination projects at a time when a renewed commitment to public works would produce a new abundance of clean cheap and abundant water.
And that brings me to the fine point of it. The House Sub-committee on Water and Power can make time for a hearing on water data management, while 40,000 families remain unemployed in the Central Valley of California due to the deliberate diversion of some 200 billion gallons of water by this government.
I must tell the Subcommittee that I’m disappointed that we are not focusing on the plight of these families, or that 250,000 of the most fertile agricultural acres in the entire hemisphere have been fallowed. I know there are some who believe that government can control the weather. There is some skepticism over that point. But no one can question that we can control the pumps in the Sacramento Delta.
As you know, Madam Chairman, I sent a letter to you on Monday asking for a hearing to resolve these matters and hope that the Subcommittee will act on my request. There’s no time to waste on reversing the plight of the San Joaquin Valley because what is happening there can happen anywhere else in the West and is entirely within our power to solve. To ignore their pleas continues to give the impression that this Subcommittee lets the San Joaquin Valley burn while the committee fiddles with lower priority matters like water data management.
Let’s begin with history and two important years: 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.”
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. (view newspaper headlines)
Billions of dollars were poured into research and development for solar technology, and an entire solar industry solely supported by massive subsidies arose to grab those dollars.
And what was the result of all of this plunder of taxpayers and ratepayers? 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 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 generating 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 various forms of electricity generation.
And here is what they reported:
The cheapest form of electricity generation is hydroelectric. It ranges from a quarter cent to 2.7 cents per kilowatt hour – average around 1.5 cents.
Then comes nuclear power, with a midrange around 1.7 cents.
After that, coal, about 1.9 cents.
Then wind at 4.6 cents and then natural gas at 10.6 cents. And finally, we get to the most expensive way to produce electricity, solar, between 13.5 cents and 42.7 cents per kilowatt hour, with a mid-range of 28.1 cents.
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. 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 – or 34 square miles. By comparison, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant sits on one square mile.
So this technology, after 170 years and countless billions of dollars of research and development, is roughly 17 times more expensive than nuclear power and consumes 32 times the land area of a comparable nuclear facility.
But don’t worry, say the proponents of this bill. It just needs a few billion dollars more to become competitive. I’m sorry, but we’ve 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, pumping billions of dollars into subsidized loans, credits to consumers who buy solar panels and, of course, 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. It is now clambering for billions of dollars more. And if this rule is passed and the bill is taken up, they’re going to get it – directly out of the shrinking savings accounts of American taxpayers.
The Solar Technology Roadmap Act of 2009. You’ve heard of the bridge to nowhere. This is the roadmap that will get us there.
His best friend was his father, Joe. A high school friend, Josh Rodgers was asked when Jeremiah was happiest. He replied, “Whenever he was doing anything with his dad.” When Jeremiah was four years old, his Dad took him to Twentynine Palms to welcome the triumphant return of American soldiers from the first Gulf War. As Shakespeare wrote, “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 McCleery moved their family to the little town of Portola in 1996, where they built their home themselves – as a family. And 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 bullies at school – not in his own defense, but in 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 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 in trouble. It didn't matter if a bully was twice his size- he wouldn't back down.”
Jeremiah was a Boy Scout, he joined the Civil Air Patrol and 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. He stayed until she died. Then in 2007, he enlisted.
When his sister, Chastity, begged him not to go, he said that he felt by going into the military, he was protecting his family.
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.
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 30th.
But on May 2nd, 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.
On May 14th – the day before he was supposed to return to a happy homecoming and impending marriage – Jeremiah McCleery returned to his hometown to be buried beside his mother. The local paper described the scene with these words, which speak volumes about the community which helped to mold this American hero:
“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. Shop owners left their stores to join in, temporarily suspending business as usual.”
M. Speaker, I wanted to share a little of what I’ve learned about Jeremiah McCleery, because it helps to answer the question that James Michener first asked: “Where do we get such men?”
We get them from the heart and soul of America. 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 – is legendary.
I asked them why they do 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, and the entire California Congressional Delegation and the 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 gratitude that humanity has within itself a small band of brothers like Jeremiah McCleery who step forward not for treasure or profit nor 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 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 keep their sacrifice always in mind – those who gave up everything “To proclaim liberty throughout all the land, and unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
M. Speaker:
I rise today to pay tribute to U.S. Army Sergeant Joshua M. Hardt of Applegate, California. He is one of the fallen heroes of the Battle of Kamdesh -- the remote outpost that was besieged and surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by more than 300 Taliban insurgents on October 3rd. No soldiers in the history of our nation have fought more valiantly or bravely than the defenders of Combat Outpost Keating that day. In the end, they held their ground, they defended their flag and the honor of their country.
But most importantly, they defended something fundamental and sacred and eternal that defines humanity itself. They defended something that can never be abandoned as long as humanity exists. They defended right against wrong – good against evil – freedom against tyranny – in its most stark and defining form.
During the terrible winter of 1776, Thomas Paine, having watched many brave young men like Josh Hardt fall in defense of these same eternal truths, offered these words to try to make some sense of it: “Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
Josh Hardt knew that. And his family knew that. Through tears, his mother told a local newspaper “He was a very giving son. He went into the Army wanting to make a difference … wanting us to be safe…He expressed his desire to do more; to take more action and to make a difference. He didn’t know a better way than to go into the military and to fight for everybody.”
And that’s exactly what he did. He fought for his nation. He fought for its values. And he fought for the freedom of a people half a world away. And he paid for Heaven’s most expensive celestial article with his life -- not for himself, but for others.
I attended a Gold Star dinner recently and admitted to one of the hosts that I still didn’t know what to say to the families. She said, “just ask them about their sons.” So let me tell you about Josh Hardt. He was 24 years old. He’s remembered at Placer High School as an extraordinary athlete. He did his school so proud on the football field that they retired his helmet when he graduated.
He was one of those big hulking kids who stand up for whoever’s being picked on. I spoke with his wife and mother today who both told me exactly the same thing: that he was first and foremost a family man – willing to do anything for his family. And his friends. And his country.
He joined the Army just three years ago. He had already risen to the rank of sergeant and carried a chest of ribbons including the Bronze Star. Perhaps the most eloquent testimonies to his service are the remembrances from younger soldiers he had taken under his wing to help. In fact, that was his next assignment: to come back to the states and help returning veterans.
His football coach, Mark Sabins, remembered seeing him back home last year after his first tour of duty in Iraq and tells how excited he was to be marrying a remarkable young lady, Olivia, and how energized he was about his work in the Army and his plans for a family and how he looked forward to a full and promising life ahead.
Instead, he will return home tomorrow for the last time. His family and friends and neighbors will come to mourn him and to honor him and to remember him. His community will hold him up as an example of all that is heroic and virtuous. His nation will record his name onto its most hallowed rolls that he never be forgotten. Centuries from now, flags will be placed on his grave every year as future generations gather to consider the cost of their freedom.
And perhaps in Kamdesh, they will gather around a monument where Outpost Keating once stood and consider the measure of the men who paid everything to purchase for them so celestial an article as freedom.
Those who blame the drought for the tragedy unfolding in California’s Central Valley ignore the fact that this is a very mild drought by historical standards and that in far worse droughts in the past, far more water was delivered to the Central Valley. I wonder if the proponents seriously deny that 200 billion gallons of water have been diverted to meet various environmental regulations.
It is 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 want to address the basic economics of these programs.
A generation ago, the principal objective of our water policy was to create abundance. It was an era when vast reservoirs produced a cornucopia of clean and plentiful water on a scale so vast that many communities didn’t even bother to meter it.
That clean, cheap and abundant water also made America the bread basket of the world – and the Central Valley the bread basket of California.
But the majority party has abandoned this policy, and 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 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 the 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 even bothered to prioritize them – let alone 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, and increases the maximum federal cost share for two others.
The total cost to American taxpayers is $38 million in order to produce 2.6 billion gallons, according to the sponsor, or 8,000 acre feet.
Let’s do the math here. $38 million for 8,000 acre feet of water. That comes to $4,500 per acre foot – and that’s just the federal share. The total cost is four times that amount, or $18,000 per acre foot.
Let’s compare that to the capital cost of the nearby Oroville Dam. That was roughly $600 million in 1968 – or $3.5 billion in today’s dollars. That dam produces 3 ½ 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 $1,000 per acre foot. The projects in this bill cost $18,000 per acre foot, including a $4,500 per acre foot cost to the national treasury, which, in case you haven’t noticed, is empty.
I raised these issues in committee, but didn’t actively oppose this bill because the House has yet to set standards for recycling measures like this one.
But I must also concur with Ranking Member Hastings, Congressman Nunes and others that it is a travesty that we should vote for 2 ½ 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 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 unconscionable 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.
And 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 Californians without costing the treasury a dime.
For all of these reasons, I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill.
Not only can we do much better – we could not possibly do any worse.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to comment on the three Water and Power Subcommittee bills before us today.
These are all bills to settle water rights claims made against the federal government by various Indian tribes. These come with a hefty price tag: $577 million, with assignment of rights to over 110,000 acre feet of water. There are hundreds of such claims that are likely to follow.
It is important that these claims be settled. They involve some of the oldest standing litigation in the federal court system. They establish something that the people of their regions – both on and off reservation – have lacked, and that is a certainty about future water rights and apportionments.
But here is what has troubled me in my brief tenure as Ranking Member of your Water and Power subcommittee.
These are settlements of outstanding litigation involving the United States Government. It seems to me that the only relevant question is whether these settlements are advantageous to the government compared to its likely liability under current law.
If we were the board of directors of a private corporation deciding whether to approve a negotiated legal settlement, we would be guilty of breaching our fiduciary responsibility to stockholders if we made that decision without consulting legal counsel.
The administration has expressed reservations about all of these bills, and that should be a warning to us. What troubles me most is that we have been unable to get a straight answer to the most important question at issue, and that is, “Do these settlements exceed the likely liability of the government if these claims went to court?”
Or to be more blunt, are we cutting our losses or are we giving away the store? I can’t get a straight answer to that question.
The three well-intentioned bills before us today are prime examples of what’s gone wrong. This Administration – and I might add, the last Administration – have repeatedly testified that they cannot support funding levels in these settlements, yet they fail to provide Congress basic answers or consistency when we ask for alternative funding amounts or whether the bills are beneficial to the American taxpayer.
As a result, Congress is being forced to choose a funding amount in the dark and without an informed opinion from our legal counsel. In essence, we are a blind-folded arbitrator.
I’m new around here, but I spent 22 years in the California legislature, many of them on the relevant committees that heard settlement bills. The central testimony in all of those settlements was from the Attorney General’s office – as our legal counsel. They would appear before us and testify that in their professional legal judgment the settlements were justified under current law and that the state’s liability and legal costs could potentially exceed the settlement if the matter went to trial.
This is the one critical issue that has not been addressed for these bills.
I asked this question in committee and didn’t get an answer. Last week I sent a letter asking the Departments of Justice and the Interior asking for their assessment of the government’s liability and haven’t received an answer.
I think this is a reasonable request and one that should be answered to the satisfaction of this committee and the House before these bills are acted upon.
There is precedent for such opinions, based upon the Department of Justice testimony in 1994 before this Committee on the Colville settlement. There, Peter Steenland, a Clinton Justice Department official testified: “the Federal government is not that well postured for a victory on this claim which has been pending for over 40 years. Absent the settlement, we could well litigate it for another 10 years and the outcome could easily be a significant cost to the taxpayers and the public.”
If the Clinton Administration could give Congress a straight answer, then there’s no reason why the current one can’t.
There’s a simple word for this. Transparency. We’re assured this is a guiding principle of the administration. We truly need some in this case if we are to do our jobs competently, and do justice to both sides in these claims.
Before these bills come to the House floor, I hope that we will get the answers everyone deserves.
In 1993, the government created the Direct Loan Program under the pretext that it was just another option to increase consumer choice. There was only one problem: consumers never warmed to it. At its peak, the government Direct Loan Program only attracted 34 percent of loan volume. Today, even with the financial difficulties in the private sector, it has only earned 27 percent of the market.
The rest is ably administered by 1,500 active lenders, servicers and guarantee agencies that employ more than 30,000 private sector workers.
This bill literally shuts down 40 years of successful private sector involvement with student loans and hands the government monopoly control.
As the bumper sticker warns: the government hates competition.
We’re told this is to save money. Pardon my skepticism, but I seriously doubt the same government that runs FEMA will bring efficiency to the student loan program.
It is precisely the fierce competition among loan providers that has produced lower prices for students and universities and that produces innovations in loan delivery, processing and servicing – not to mention broader benefits, such as college planning services, financial literacy education, default aversion and FAFSA assistance.
One of those providers is the California EdFund, near my district.
Last year alone the Ed Fund helped nearly 420,000 borrowers to avoid default, saving taxpayers $4.2 billion in default claims. That’s ONE provider: $4.2 billion in savings for American taxpayers.
Before the government took over our auto manufacturers, Will and Ariel Durant asked, “What makes Ford a good car? Chevrolet.”
Competition. That creative and innovative force is snuffed out in the student loan industry by this bill. And mark my words, if this bill becomes law, we will be back here within a few years to address growing cost overruns and inefficiencies in yet another government monopoly program.
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We have six Water and Power subcommittee bills before us today. They are bi-partisan and well intentioned and seek to stretch scarce water supplies throughout the Southwest. But I do have some serious concerns that need to be addressed in the near future.
A generation ago, the principal objective of our water and power policy was to create an abundance of both. It was an era when vast reservoirs and hydro-electric facilities produced a cornucopia of clean and plentiful water and electricity on a scale so vast that many communities didn’t even bother to meter.
But the last generation seems to have abandoned this objective, and to replace it with a very different philosophy that now dominates public policy: that the government’s principal focus is not to produce abundant water and power, but rather to ration shortages that government has caused by abandoning abundance as its primary objective.
The result is increasingly expensive water and power that is now affecting our prosperity as a nation. We’re no longer looking at cost-benefit analyses of which projects make economic sense and which do not. Instead, practicality has been replaced by an entirely new ideological filter: those projects that ration or manage shortages are considered worthy regardless of their feasibility or cost – and projects that produce abundance are to be discouraged regardless of their economic benefits or simple common sense.
Which brings me to the fine point of the matter. Four of these bills deal with water recycling – trying to stretch dwindling supplies rather than create new ones. The administration opposed these bills and was honest and candid in pointing out that we have already authorized 53 such projects without the funds to finance them, producing a $624 million backlog. The bills before us today add another four projects to the waiting list and another $110 million to the backlog. And yet still there’s no process for prioritizing.
My biggest concern is that these four recycling bills will cost from a low of $980 per acre foot to a high of $5,400 per acre foot and this is simply not fiscally rational or fiscally sustainable.
I don’t believe it is fair to oppose these bills today since there hasn’t been a standardized framework with which to judge them. These bills have been in the process for some time and there aren’t any similar bills behind them.
But I do want to ask that after this batch of projects is added to a growing backlog of unfunded and fiscally questionable recycling projects that we establish a rational standard for cost-benefit analysis for all future measures. I believe it can be as simple as requiring the Bureau of Reclamation to certify that the project is the least expensive alternative before federal funds may be released.
Since we are approving these bills on a bi-partisan basis today I would hope that we can work together in a bi-partisan manner to assure that we’re not mandating cost-prohibitive water recycling programs just because we like the general idea with no concern about the actual cost.
Finally, we have two non-related bills introduced by Mr. Matheson of Utah which I whole-heartedly support. One, HR 2008 clears the way for a 50 megawatt hydropower project. The other, HR 2950 allows the Uintah Water District to prepay its obligations to the federal treasury. This is in the interest of the District that can be relieved of interest costs and regulatory burdens. It is also in the interest of the nation, at a time when it is running a catastrophic deficit.
My only concern is this should take an act of Congress. I would hope that the law can be broadened to allow any district in similar circumstances to prepay federal loans or other obligations without having to beg Congress for special approval to do so.
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It is an honor to be here today in the presence of such Titans as Senators Feinstein and Ensign and Governor Gibbons, who have done so much for the environment and the economy of Lake Tahoe. And it is, after all a dual mission that we have: first, to preserve and protect this beautiful resource for the enjoyment of future generations and second, within these parameters, to maximize its use for the enjoyment of the present generation.
These two goals are not mutually exclusive.
No one understands this better than the communities of Lake Tahoe, who recognize the importance of this Lake and its surrounding landscape to the quality of life of the people who live here and to an economy built in part on those who come here to share that experience.
A generation ago, we honored and promoted the natural union between the environment and the economy. I believe the future of the Lake depends upon restoring that balance.
One example is the ongoing work to prevent the infestation of invasive species of mussels into the Lake, which would devastate both the Lake and the economy built upon its health and beauty. I salute the proactive efforts undertaken to address this threat.
Another example of the natural union between the environment and the economy is fire suppression. It should be obvious to all that there is nothing more environmentally devastating to a forest than a forest fire. A generation ago, we managed our forests wisely, removing the overgrowth and overpopulation that fuels fires and facilitates disease and infestation. This practice not only promoted healthy forests and reduced the severity and frequency of fires, but it also contributed to the prosperity of the community.
The Angora Fire of 2007 was the result of abandoning this balance and stands as damning testimony of what happens when this balance is lost.
The economy took an estimated hit of about $1 billion dollars and increased erosion and plumes of ash threatened the clarity of the lake and made a mockery of our air quality laws.
Many bi-partisan efforts have been undertaken to restore that balance, the Herger-Feinstein Forest Recovery Act being a stellar example. Yet, as we have seen, endless litigation now threatens the fruits of these endeavors.
We have seen many positive steps in the environmental recovery of the region. The Lake’s clarity measurement is now in the range where it has been for about the past eight years and is beginning to level off.
But what is not recovering is the Tahoe economy. Unemployment stands at 13.8%. Declining enrollment has led to the closure of two schools and an economy that is not able to provide services and products for local residents.
Economic recovery is just as important as environmental recovery. In fact, they go hand-in-hand. I hope today we can agree that restoring the proper balance between the environment and the economy is not only the prudent thing to do, but also the right the thing to do.
In this respect, I need to take a moment to speak for many of my constituents who feel that their property rights have been abused by decisions made by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.
I have heard many complaints by citizens who have been thwarted in their attempts to protect their property from fire danger, or to make minor and harmless improvements to their homes, or have been assessed exorbitant fees, or who have been denied simple permits by a board that they can’t even elect.
I believe that these complaints are undermining public support for the legitimate objectives that both states and the federal government had when they established TRPA. Structural reforms need to be entertained, including stronger local participation in decision-making, and reform of a vote process that can deny needed permits with as few as just three votes out of 14 on the board.
Preserving and protecting Lake Tahoe for the enjoyment of future generations should not preclude the enjoyment of Lake Tahoe by the current generation. I am looking forward to working with my colleagues and my constituents toward restoring and improving both the environment and the economy of the Lake Tahoe Basin. And that begins with restoring a balanced approach that will maintain public support for the vital work remaining before us.
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