Political Quotes

“I want to be very, very clear with my colleagues. California water issues go back to the very beginning of the State, the Gold Rush, and as they have said, whiskey's for drinking, water's for fighting. Unfortunately, this bill does nothing to solve the current crisis in California. What it does, it sets in motion a series of pieces of legislation that will unravel 150 years of California water law and set in place extraordinary chaos. It does deliver water from one area to another area, literally stealing that water and giving it to others. It does override the California State Constitution and what we call the Public Trust Doctrine, that is, the water of California belongs to all the people of California. It is allocated by law, by precedent, and by water rights that are allocated. This overrides that. We don't want the Federal Government to go there if you care anything about your State, about the water in your State, and about your community. We need a long-term and short-term solution. Fortunately, in the omnibus bill, we did reinstate the Federal drought protection drought response act. We have many of the tools in place to deal with the drought today. What we don't have is money. I would ask the majority to put up a bill that delivers the money to carry out what is already in the law, which we did just 2 weeks ago.…”