Congressman Tom McClintock

An old forester in my district summed up the problem we are here to assess when he said, "The excess timber is going to come out of the forest one way or another. Either it will be carried out or it will be burned out. But it will come out." A generation ago, we carried it out and the result was a thriving economy and a healthy forest. But in the last twenty years, a radical and retrograde ideology has replaced sound forest management practices with what I can only describe as a policy of benign neglect.

The good news about our economy is that it hasn't been struck down by some mysterious act of God. Acts of Government plague our nation -- and acts of Government are entirely within our power to change.

The delisting of MEK as a terrorist organization recognizes the crucial role it is playing in opposition to the fascist regime of Iran. It is long overdue.

It seems that in the last few years, America's thoughts are returning to that remarkable man and searching him for answers to the questions that now perplex us in our own times.

This bill ends the Title 17 loan guarantees that produced Solyndra and so many other alternate energy scams that cost working Americans hundreds of millions of dollars, while the politically connected perpetrators of these scams walked away as wealthy men and women. But this measure would still put taxpayers on the hook to loan out billions of dollars more to at least 50 additional shady alternative energy schemes that were submitted before January 1st.