On the recordFebruary 10, 2011
I know I speak for all of my Republican colleagues on the Water and Power Subcommittee when I say that we are excited and eager to undertake the mission outlined in House Resolution 72 to identify the Federal regulations in this field that are impeding job creation and that are slowing the economy. The only problem we have got is deciding where to start. A generation ago, the principal objective of our water and power policy was to create an abundance of both. It was an era when vast reservoirs and hydroelectric facilities produced a cornucopia of clean and plentiful water and electricity, on a scale so vast that many communities didn't even bother to measure the stuff. But that objective of abundance has been abandoned in favor of the rationing of shortages that have been caused by government. The result is increasingly scarce and expensive water and power that now undermines our prosperity as a Nation. Nowhere is that more evident than in the Central Valley of California. This last Congress sat idly by as this administration deliberately diverted 200 billion gallons of water away from the most abundant agricultural region of our Nation, all to satisfy the environmental left and its pet cause, a 3-inch minnow called the delta smelt.
