Mr. Tipton's bill simply prohibits the Federal Government from using what should be a routine permitting process to extract long-held water rights from private users.

I request that you provide written comments on the bill no later than November 1, 2013.

As you know, I invited you to testify on H.R. 3176 at the Water and Power Subcommittee's October 10, 2013 hearing.

So with that, Mr. Chair, I yield back.

It seems that the U.S. Forest Service is going out of its way to make life difficult for people, to inconvenience people, and almost seem to be reversing the entire original purpose of the Forest Service.

Are we seeing an adversarial relationship begin to develop between this Government and the people, and particularly between the U.S. Forest Service and the users of our public lands?

While you unfortunately chose not to attend, it is your agency's responsibility to provide the Administration's views on H.R. 3176.

We must stop fiddling while Rome burns. The answers we need for this hearing demand that the government be reopened.

So hopefully we won't move forward until we have an opportunity with a restored government to have the Forest Service come in and explain its new directive and see if that doesn't do what we think it needs to do, then take more targeted…

We will also hear H.R. 3176, the Drought Relief Act, offered by Mr. DeFazio.

This amounts to an uncompensated taking and is a violation of both the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.