Ami Bera: “Here we go again. Today, we are debating a bill that many of my California colleagues and I have opposed time and time…”

“Here we go again. Today, we are debating a bill that many of my California colleagues and I have opposed time and time again on this House floor. This bill allows Washington, D.C., politicians to pick winners and losers when it comes to California's water. Now, that is not right. This is a partisan bill that is opposed by both California Senators as well as our Governor. Now, California water is complicated. It is a lot more complicated than healthcare. But it should be up to Californians to kind of decide how to use our water, what we ought to do with that water. Water is incredibly critical to our State. This isn't about picking winners and losers. When we think about water, we have certainly got to have storage, we certainly know we are going to have conveyance, but we have got to do this in a California way. Unfortunately, H.R. 23 is going to pit northern California against southern California while overriding California's own State laws. The bill is also going to gut environmental protections and threaten the critical Bay-Delta ecosystem. I fish on the Sacramento River, and salmon fishing is incredibly important to the State of California as well as the States to the north of us. This bill is not going to be a good bill. It is going to devastate the fishing industry. We also have to think about drinking water for northern California. Folsom Dam is in my district and Folsom Lake is in my district.…”