September 28, 2012

MEK - Statement
 
Statement by Congressman Tom McClintock:  "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."

The Export-Import Boondoggle
House Chamber, Washington, D.C.
May 9, 2012

Mr. Speaker:

    The Export-Import Bank dragoons American taxpayers into subsidizing loans to foreign companies, making it cheaper for them to buy products from politically-favored American companies which in turn use those products to compete against less-favored American companies.

    Past beneficiaries include such upstanding enterprises as Solyndra and Enron.  Since 2007, almost half of its money has gone to support that plucky little start-up called Boeing.  Air India got $5 billion to purchase Boeing aircraft allowing them to undercut American carriers like Delta with their own tax money.

    We’re told we need to compete with other nations that do the same thing.   If other nations want to impoverish themselves in this manner – we don’t need to imitate them.

    We’re told this doesn’t cost taxpayers – that in the last several years it’s actually turned a profit.  That what they used to say about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – until they blew up in our face.

    Legitimate companies have plenty of access to private capital and don’t need these subsidies.  The illegitimate ones shouldn’t be propped up with the hard-earned dollars of working taxpaying Americans.

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Congressman Tom McClintock will hold a town hall meeting on Monday, April 30th in Pollock Pines.

The meeting will be held at the Pollock Pines-Camino Community Center, 2675 Sanders Drive, Pollock Pines.  The meeting will begin at 6:00 PM.

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Town Hall Meeting in Foresthill

          Congressman Tom McClintock will hold a town hall meeting in Foresthill on Wednesday, April 11th.  The meeting will begin at 6:00 PM and will be held at the Foresthill Veterans Memorial Hall, 24601 Harrison Street, Foresthill.

# # #

I have submitted a shorter letter responding to the Chronicle’s front-page article by Carolyn Lochhead (“Central Valley reps bill would upend water rights,” February 17, 2012), but believe the inaccuracies and omissions in it are so stark that it deserves a more detailed reply.

“Representatives from the Central Valley pushed legislation through a House committee Thursday that would upend the state's system of water rights, deploying the federal government to extract water from Northern California farms, fisheries and cities to send to farmers in the valley.”

Title IV of the measure specifically reaffirms and guarantees the state’s system of water rights and brings the full force of federal law to protect those rights.
 
Indeed, the Northern California Water Association, representing the very water users Ms. Lochhead contends would have their rights “upended” and their water “extracted” strongly supports the bill.  It writes:

 “The bill, if enacted, now contains provisions that would not only protect the interests of senior water rights holders in the Sacramento Valley, but would also provide significant, material water policy improvements to current federal law.  The bill, if enacted, would provide an unprecedented federal statutory express recognition of, and commitment to, California’s state water rights priority system and area of origin protections.  This is important for the region to provide sustainable water supplies for productive farmlands, wildlife refuges, and managed wetlands, cities and rural communities, recreation, and meandering rivers that support important fisheries.”

 Additionally, Title I, Section 105 of the bill permits Delta and Bay Area districts to re-use environmental water once it has served its purpose, increasing the amount of water available to Northern California communities. 

 Finally, the vote was bi-partisan, with Democrats Jim Costa (D-California) and Dan Boren (D-Oklahoma) joining Republicans in adopting the bill 27 to 17.

“The legislation would halt restoration of the San Joaquin River, leaving as much as 40 miles of the river dry, restore irrigation contracts and override fish and wildlife protections in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.”

This charge, which was also made in the Chronicle’s editorial of February 16, 2012, is categorically false.  In fact, Title II merely replaces the coldwater fishery established under the San Joaquin River Settlement Act of 2009 with a warm water fishery more conducive to the Central Valley habitat, guaranteeing year round flows.   During my opening statement, I said:

“(The bill) replaces the San Joaquin River Settlement Act that was imposed in 2009 with a workable and vastly less expensive alternative.

“Let me put the current San Joaquin River Settlement Act in perspective.  It will spend more than one billion dollars to achieve the stated goal of establishing a population of 500 salmon below the Friant dam.  That comes to two million dollars per fish. And that’s without accounting for the costs that will be incurred by Central Valley farmers as water that is already in critically short supply is diverted to this project that are estimated to increase the actual cost ten-fold.”

During committee discussion, I went on to say, “The San Joaquin River is on the hot valley floor – the only time it has been a cold-water fishery was during very wet years and then only sporadically.”

“McClintock negotiated an agreement from fellow Republicans to preserve local water rights to protect his Sacramento district from the original bill.”

 In fact, I said in my opening statement that my office had conducted “a laborious eight-month process of consulting more than 60 northern California water agencies – in both Democratic and Republican congressional districts -- and the result is an unprecedented consensus reflected in the amendment.” During the committee debate, I read a list of 11 water districts in Democratic Congressman Garamendi’s district alone that we worked with on amendments to protect their water rights. 

Whatever our personal biases and opinions, we should at least be able to agree that readers are entitled to the truth, particularly in a story appearing on the front page of a major metropolitan newspaper over a matter of significant public importance.  All of the facts and statements cited above were made during the public meeting and should have been known to all those who attended it.  I believe that this article clearly crossed the line into demonstrable falsehood and I challenge the management of the Chronicle to set the record straight.

Sincerely,

Tom McClintock
Chairman, Sub-Committee on Water and Power, House Natural Resources Committee

After President Clinton took a drubbing from voters in the 1994 Congressional election, he realized his policies weren't working.  He promptly declared, "The era of big government is over," and he then went about making good on that declaration:
• He reduced spending by a miraculous 3 1/2 percent of GDP.
• He attacked entitlement spending and abolished the ballooning open-ended welfare system.
• He signed what amounted to the biggest capital gains tax cut in American history.
• He delivered the only four budget surpluses in four decades.
• And he produced a period of prolonged economic expansion.

President Obama faced a similar cross-road as he delivered his fourth State of the Union Address to Congress.  If he had followed the example of his successful Democratic predecessor, he could have redeemed his presidency, revived the economy and rallied the country. 

Instead, he succumbed to the basic ingredient of hubris: that the more we invest in our mistakes, the less willing we are to correct them.

Instead, his fourth State of the Union Address was indistinguishable from the three before it – the same big government bromides that have utterly failed to revive the economy while squandering trillions of dollars of the nation’s wealth.

For two full years, lopsided Democratic majorities in Congress responded to eerily similar addresses by giving him everything he asked for, including the biggest single spending bill in history that he promised would keep the unemployment rate under eight percent. 

His fourth State of the Union speech came on the 35th consecutive month of unemployment rates over eight percent -- unemployment rates that would be still higher except that millions of Americans have simply given up looking for work and therefore are no longer counted among the unemployed.  Indeed, fewer Americans are working today than on Inauguration day, 2009. 

In pursuing these policies, he has piled up as much debt in three years as the nation acquired from the first day of the George Washington administration to the last day of the George H. W. Bush administration and destroyed America's Triple-A credit rating.

True, Mr. Obama inherited a terrible mess caused by his predecessor.  George W. Bush went on his own spending and borrowing binge to "stimulate" the economy.  He approved the biggest expansion of entitlement spending since the Great Society.  He intervened in the housing market by guaranteeing that struggling taxpayers would bail out banks from their bad decisions.  He ran up crippling budget deficits (that now seem quaint by today's standards).  

Yet instead of reversing these disastrous policies, Barack Obama has spent the last three years doubling down on them, and he showed no interest in changing course in the final year of his term. 

 Ronald Reagan inherited an economy plagued by double-digit unemployment, double-digit inflation, mile-long lines around gas stations and interest rates at 21 ½ percent.  He told the country, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem -- government IS the problem."

Reagan reduced the tax and regulatory burdens that were crushing the economy and produced a period of prolonged economic expansion and prosperity.  Former Senator Phil Gramm recently estimated that if the economy under Obama tracked as it had under Reagan, 15.7 million more Americans would be working today and per capita income would be over $4,000 higher than it is today. 

Nor was Reagan a pioneer.  Warren Harding, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy, pursued similar policies and produced similar results.

If Barack Obama had presented a comparable vision, he would have had the enthusiastic support of the Republican majority in the House and a year from now could claim the mantle of leadership in putting the nation back on the road to prosperity.  Instead, what he prescribed is guaranteed to produce gridlock, finger-pointing and sniping, as his combative tone clearly signaled is his intention. 

That’s a tragic waste of an entire crucial year when we could be implementing policies to relieve our economy of the burdens that are crushing it – just as a Democratic President working with a Republican Congress did during the Clinton years. 

 Whittier’s words haunt the country in the aftermath of this lost opportunity: “Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘it might have been.'”

# # #
 

Congressman Tom McClintock will hold a town hall meeting in Truckee on Tuesday, January 10 at 6:00 PM.

The meeting will be held in the Truckee Donner Public Utility District Conference Room, 11570 Donner Pass Road, Truckee.
 

Viewed in isolation, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012 reduces total discretionary spending authority (those expenditures that don’t require statutory changes, including war and emergency spending) from $1.209 trillion in FY 2011 to $1.181 trillion in FY 2012), or $28 billion (2.3 percent).  Viewed over the past five years, however, this still constitutes an increase of $144 billion, in discretionary spending (13.5 percent).  

This may constitute an improvement over the past year, but begs the question, “Does it put the nation back on the path to fiscal solvency?”

The overarching issue is what impact does this bill have in conjunction with total spending levels.  Are we reducing spending enough to avert the fiscal collapse of the United States Government?   The Ryan budget was only supportable because it included significant reform of mandatory spending that, together with a discretionary spending cap of $1.019 trillion, put us on a trajectory that balanced the federal budget by the mid-2030’s and paid off the national debt by the mid-2050’s.  H.R. 3671 would take our annual discretionary spending (in conjunction with all other bills) to $1.181 trillion without any reform of mandatory spending. 

All told, this bill cements total authorized federal spending for FY 2012 at $3.693 trillion with revenue of only $2.635 trillion, assuring another one trillion dollar-plus budget deficit.  That means roughly $13,000 of additional debt on every family of four (per capita x 4), which they will be required to repay through their future taxes.

Last year (FY 2011), total authorized spending amounted to $3.650 trillion meaning that total federal spending has increased by $43 billion, or about $550 per family (per capita x 4) in the past year.

Proportionally, this is the same as a family earning $26,350 that plans to spend $36,930 next year, putting another $10,580 on a credit card that already carries a balance of more than $150,000.  Rather than cutting its overall spending, it has increased it by $43, while cutting only $28 from its “discretionary” choices.   

The question on HR 2055 comes down to this: “Is that family acting responsibly?”

Vote Note by Congressman Tom McClintock on HR 2055 — Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012.

HR 3630 – Payroll Tax Cut Extension: NO.  Although the temporary payroll tax cut doesn’t produce lasting economic growth, I support its continuation because it allows working families to keep more of their earnings at a time of declining incomes, shriveling assets and rising prices.  But since the payroll tax funds Social Security, which is already in permanent deficit, these funds must be made up by other means.  The healthy way to do so is HR 3551, which I cosponsored, to give every American the choice to receive the year of tax relief in exchange for delaying retirement by a month.  HR 3630, however, adds $167 billion to this year’s already crushing deficit, purporting to repay it over the next ten years (in part) by tacking on additional fees to mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  This shifts the burden to new homebuyers, who will end up paying far more in new taxes (hidden in their mortgages) than they will get from the tax cut.  The average family will save $1,000 in payroll taxes, but pay an extra $2,000 for every $100,000 of mortgage principal they incur in the next ten years.    
 

Congressman McClintock has introduced H.R. 3544.  The legislation offers litigatory reforms for local communities.  The Congressman discussed the legislation in a House floor speech on December 1, 2011:

The Plunder of Colfax

In the Sierra Foothills in northeastern California lies the little town of Colfax, population 1,800, with a median household income of about $35,000.

Over the past several years, this little town has been utterly plundered by regulatory and litigatory excesses that have pushed the town to the edge of bankruptcy and ravaged families already struggling to make ends meet.

Colfax operates a small wastewater treatment plant for its residents that discharges into the Smuthers Ravine.  Because it does so, it operates within the provisions of the Clean Water Act, a measure adopted in 1972 and rooted in legitimate concerns to protect our vital water resources.

The problem is that predatory environmental law firms have discovered how to take unconscionable advantage of that law to reap windfall profits at the expense of working-class families like the townspeople of Colfax.

In the case of Colfax, an environmental law firm demanded every document pertaining to the water treatment plant from the date of its inception.  It then poured over those documents looking for any possible violation – including mere paperwork errors.  By law, those documents include self-monitoring reports by the water agency itself, and any violation, no matter how minor, establishes a cause of action for which the law provides for no affirmative defense – even if the violation is due to factors completely outside of the local community’s control, including acts of God or acts by unrelated and uncontrollable third parties.

Prove one such violation – and remember, the law allows for no affirmative defense – and you have just guaranteed the attorneys all of their fees, which in this case were billed at $550 per hour.

As a result of this predatory activity, the town of Colfax is facing legal fees alone that exceed the town’s entire annual budget.  Families that are struggling just to keep afloat are fleeced by attorneys charging $550 per hour.

But that’s just part of the problem.

The law requires constant upgrading of the facilities to meet ever-changing state-of-the-art regulations that have nothing to do with health and safety and with absolutely no concern for their prohibitive costs.  In fact, Colfax is now required to discharge water certifiably cleaner than the natural stream water into which it is discharged.  In Colfax’s case, this required a $15 million expenditure divided among 1,800 working-class residents who are now paying $2,500 per year just for their water connections.

And once the town has met this standard, there’s no guarantee that in five years it won’t be told, “Sorry, the rules have changed and you’ll need to start over.”

It is time to restore some form of rationality back to this law, and to stop the plunder of small towns like Colfax.  And Colfax isn’t alone – any community that operates a wastewater treatment plant is in the same jeopardy.

No one disputes that we need to maintain and enforce sensible and cost-effective protections of our precious water resources.  But legitimate environmental protections must no longer be used as an excuse for regulatory extremism and litigatory plundering of our local communities.
           
Today, I am introducing legislation to offer six reforms to protect other communities from going through the same nightmare as the people of Colfax:

First, to limit private-party lawsuits to issues of significant non-compliance rather than harmless paperwork errors;

Second, to shield local agencies from liability for acts beyond their control;

Third, to give local agencies 60 days to cure a violation before legal action can be initiated;

Fourth, to allow communities to amortize the cost of new facilities over a period of 15 years before new requirements can be heaped on them;

Fifth, to require a cost-benefit analysis before new regulations can be imposed;

And sixth, to limit attorney fees to the prevailing fees in the community.

Like many movements, the impetus for stronger environmental protection of our air and water was firmly rooted in legitimate concerns to protect these vital resources.  But like many movements, as it succeeded in its legitimate ends, it also attracted a self-interested constituency that has driven far past the borders of commonsense and into the realms of political extremism and outright plunder and I am hopeful that we are now entering an era when common sense can be restored to the Clean Water Act in this session of the Congress.

Congressman Tom McClintock, House Chamber Remarks, Washington, D.C.
December 1, 2011.

http://mcclintock.house.gov/2011/12/the-plunder-of-colfax.shtml