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.

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.

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

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.

Only a policy of abundance can do that.

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 can afford to waste no more of either.

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

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.

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.

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.