Tom McClintock

I don't think that is an intelligent energy policy.

So we are pouring untold billions of dollars, certainly hundreds of millions of dollars, into subsidies for the most expensive way that we have yet invented to produce electricity.

Actually, photovoltaic technology was invented 175 years ago in 1836, and in 175 years of technological research and advancement have we yet invented a more expensive way of generating electricity?

Wind and solar are not reliable sources of power and we have to keep a megawatt of back up power for every megawatt of wind and solar.

I would not sit here and admit failure. I would just submit our goal is to continue to improve water supply reliability.

I would hope that you can get information to us at some point in the very near future.

In Northern Arizona, 1,000 megawatts of hydroelectricity, enough to power roughly a million homes, has been sacrificed in the name of the humpback chub.

We are going to have to find balance here. If we are going to achieve abundance, it is going to have to be done in a balanced way.

Only a policy of abundance can do that.

We will seek to inventory all of our potential water and power resources.

California's Central Valley, where 200 billion gallons of water were deliberately diverted away from vital agriculture for the enjoyment and amusement of the two-inch Delta Smelt is a case in point.

With today's hearing, the Water and Power Subcommittee will begin the process of restoring abundance.

Water knows no political affiliation and I look forward to working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle in finding solutions to our water problems.

I understand Congresswoman Noem has an opening statement.

We can afford to waste no more of either.

Funds that ought to be going to water and power development are instead being squandered on subsidizing low-flow toilets, salmon festivals, tiger salamander studies.

I look at this budget and it seems to be exactly the opposite: record increases in spending, biggest peacetime deficit in American history.

We are planning to do that anyway.

I don't understand how you make it work with growth and still raising taxes.

Mr. Van Hollen earlier today said that we must not jeopardize the full faith and credit of the United States Government, and we all agree with that.

If higher and higher spending and bigger and bigger deficits and massive government stimulus spending was the root to prosperity, I would have thought that the George Bush administration would have ended with a new golden era for the…

In 1945, Harry Truman abolished the excess profits tax. He slashed Federal income tax rates.

Those tax cuts won't pay for themselves, that they will add significantly to the deficit.

So Harry Truman slashed taxes, slashed spending, slashed Federal employees, and the economy grew out of a debt comparable to the one we have now?

After the Commission concluded its work and issued this report, we still don't know why that blowout preventer failed.