Providing for Congressional Disapproval of the Rule Submitted By the Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers, Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency

Floor Speech

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, I am a third-generation hop and grape farmer from the State of Washington. Being a good steward of the environment has always been important to me, my family, and my neighbors.

For generations, farmers and ranchers across the United States have understood that in order to continue their important job of feeding the world, we must work together to protect our clean water and conserve our most precious natural resources.

And it has been to the great success. Our Nation's agricultural community has voluntarily innovated over the years, finding ways to use significantly less pesticides and fertilizers to grow even more food.

Yet, the administration has ignored all those facts and instead is coming after our private property rights with their waters of the United States rule.

WOTUS is nothing more than a power grab which would impose tighter controls over the waters the Clean Water Act never intended to regulate.

Let's be clear: WOTUS isn't just a logistical nightmare that has plagued landowners, businesses, farmers, ranchers, and rural communities across the country for years; it controls what people can build or plant in and around streams, ponds, and irrigation ditches in the middle of cropland giving the EPA unprecedented say over what people can do or can't do with their land, and it calls into question whether farmers could even begin to work their land.

This impacts our food supply, our housing industry, and many aspects that have already been severely challenged by the administration's overreaching policies.

This rule is not about clean water. Rural communities in the West and across the country like central Washington are dedicated to clean water, and they are the ones being punished by the continuing legal uncertainty that this new final rule brings.

As chairman of the Congressional Western Caucus, a bipartisan group of nearly 100 Members who advocate for property rights and clean water, I have consistently called on the administration to provide that certainty that we all want.

In fact, we have led over 200 Members in a letter urging the administration to do just that.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this resolution, push back on this administration's egregious overreach, and fight for our food supply.

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