Our water disaster

Policies pushed by environmental extremists have now taken deep root in the Central Valley, especially due to the Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1992 (the George Miller/Bill Bradley bill), destructive court rulings based on the Endangered Species Act, and the San Joaquin River Settlement of 2009. The devastating results of these policies are now undeniable – the Valley is suffering from a permanent government-made drought.

A bill that would have rectified this situation – the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act (H.R. 1837) – was approved by the House of Representatives in 2012 but did not pass the Senate due to opposition from both California senators and from Governor Brown.

The current impasse on water is the result of a deliberate campaign to pit water districts and local officials against one another, and to create a giant, impenetrable bureaucracy around the issue that insulates our senators and governor from the political consequences of this disaster.

In light of the dire threat the drought poses to Valley agriculture and to Valley life in general, our senators and Governor Brown must either work to pass the reforms from H.R. 1837 or explain to Californians how they intend to mitigate this calamity. Ultimately, it will take federal law to fix the problem; without Senate support for a comprehensive water bill that gains President Obama’s signature, there will be no relief from current conditions outside of flood-level rainfall. 

For further information, please see the letter I recently sent to Friant farmers on this topic here, and a letter I sent out in 2008 here.

In support of fast-track

This week a bill was introduced in Congress to approve fast-track procedures for several new trade pacts. These agreements would have immense benefits for California and the entire country. I wrote in support of the bill here.  

Separately, the Nunes Digest is updated for your weekend reading here.

Benghazi investigation continues

I spoke to Fox News this week about the ongoing investigation into the Benghazi attack. You can read the article and watch a video clip here.

Separately, the Nunes Digest is updated for your weekend reading here.

Talking ObamaCare, Benghazi, and Iran

I’d like to share links with you to some of my recent media appearances: 

·         TV interview with Sean Hannity on ObamaCare: here

·         TV interview with Jake Tapper on ObamaCare: here

·         TV interview with Megyn Kelly on the Benghazi attack: here

·         Radio interview with Ray Appleton and John Batchelor on the Iran nuclear deal: here

You can find links to other interviews as well as this week’s updated Nunes Digest on my website here.

Talking Benghazi with Chris Daniel today at 3:00 PST

I will be on the Chris Daniel radio show today at 3:00 pm PST to discuss the investigation into the Benghazi attack. You can listen on KMJ 580 AM here. I also discussed this issue on Fox and Friends here, and before that on Special Report here.

There is no fixing ObamaCare

Yesterday President Obama announced yet another major change to ObamaCare, allowing insurance companies to reinstate policies that ObamaCare itself forced them to cancel. This adds to a fast-growing list of ObamaCare “fixes” that were unilaterally decreed by the Obama administration, including the delay of the employer mandate and a slew of short-term exemptions to various ObamaCare rules that were awarded to select companies and unions.

Consider the current situation: millions of people who were told they could keep their healthcare plans have had those plans cancelled; millions more are unable to sign up for new plans on the malfunctioning website of the ObamaCare exchanges even though they will soon be fined if they don’t somehow get a plan; those who do manage to access the exchanges are realizing they must get coverage for unnecessary services such as maternity care for men; and businesses have downgraded workers from full-time to part-time status in order to avoid ObamaCare mandates.   

My friends, this is no way to run a government. The president cannot purport to remake one-sixth of the U.S. economy, throw people off their healthcare plans, drown businesses in a sea of impossible regulations, and then assume the authority to enforce, not enforce, or change the law at will. This does grievous harm to individual Americans, to the healthcare system, and to our tradition of governance based on the rule of law. We live in a constitutional republic, not an autocracy where the law is whatever the monarch says it is.  

The Obama administration’s mania for controlling the healthcare sector has created a crisis so profound that even convinced ObamaCare supporters in the president’s own party are speaking out. But the damage cannot be repaired by more administrative fixes. Democrats can still protect ObamaCare in Congress, but their willingness to do so is weakening with every new ObamaCare disaster. We must continue to chip away at this overreaching, ill-conceived law until it is repealed entirely and replaced with free-market reforms that work. For reform ideas that some colleagues and I have proposed, see here.

Separately, I appeared on Fox News’ Special Report yesterday to discuss the investigation into the attack on Benghazi. You can watch the video here.