Political Quotes

“I am pleased to yield the balance of the time to a member of the committee and somebody who has worked on this legislation, Mr. McClintock. The Acting CHAIR. The gentleman from California is recognized for 2 minutes. Mr. McCLINTOCK. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would allow the Interior Secretary to suspend this bill if he finds that one job is lost north of the delta. Well, this is the same Interior Secretary who appeared before the Natural Resources Committee in 2009. At the time, thousands of farmworkers were thrown into unemployment by the water diversions. Hundreds of thousands of acres of productive farmland were turned into a dust bowl. And in the midst of the crisis, he admitted that as Interior Secretary, he had the authority to stop the diversions and end the agony of the Central Valley, but he chose not to do so because, in his words, ``It would be like admitting defeat.'' And this is the man that the gentleman from California would give the power--upon finding a single lost job in northern California--to plunge our State into another government-created dust bowl? I don't think so. The Northern California Water Association represents the farms and communities of northern California and they write of this bill: The bill, if enacted, would provide an unprecedented Federal statutory express recognition of and commitment to California's State water rights priority system and area of origin protections.…”