Providing for Congressional Disapproval of the Rule Submitted By the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Relating to ``Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Endangered Species Status for the San Francisco Bay-Delta Distinct Population Segment of the Longfin Smelt''

Floor Speech

This resolution, H.J. Res. 78, continues a very familiar pattern that we are seeing from this Republican majority: distractions and scapegoats instead of dealing with real crises, real problems, and solutions to the challenges that are facing working families, including American farmers and rural communities all over this country.

Today, they are bringing us a resolution that tries to blame an endangered fish, the bay-delta longfin smelt, for California's water problems and shortages. They are doing that instead of addressing major problems that are actually impacting farmers in rural communities.

Let's be clear. Removing protections for the longfin smelt will not make it rain. It will not rebuild California's snowpack. It won't refill our reservoirs, not even the reservoir that President Trump recently drained in a public relations stunt that had nothing to do with fighting fires or water supply.

California's water shortage is driven by climate change and also prolonged drought, aging and outdated infrastructure, and overallocation. It is not the fault of some tiny fish.

Meanwhile, farmers, including those in my district, are grappling with worsening droughts, wildfires, floods, extreme weather, and now the fallout from President Trump's disastrous trade policies for agriculture.

All the while, Republicans won't talk about any of those things. Instead, they bring us here to debate whether a small fish should be allowed to go extinct or be protected under the Endangered Species Act. All the while, the significant damage that their policies are causing continue to pile up in rural America, including President Trump's tariffs.

Trump is treating not just our adversaries, but some of our neighbors and our best friends in the world, like they are enemies. He is turning them into adversaries. Tariffs on key trading partners have already cost farmers tens of billions of dollars in lost exports. Markets are shrinking. Input costs are soaring, making it hard for farms to stay in business.

We see the sweeping budget cuts and mass layoffs at critical agencies like NOAA and the Bureau of Reclamation, threatening the services that farmers depend on: water deliveries, weather forecasting, climate data, and much more. Farmers need that stuff. They don't want to go back to the ``Farmers' Almanac'' in order to make key business decisions.

We see hundreds of millions of dollars in water supply infrastructure projects suddenly in limbo because of DOGE, while our colleagues across the aisle say nothing.

We see the entire rural healthcare safety net, including nursing home care, including services that anyone who has a person with disabilities in their family, depend on. All of that is in limbo as we brace for catastrophic cuts from Republicans as they try to fund their tax cuts for billionaires.

If this Republican majority were serious about helping farmers and rural communities, they would be working to reverse these harmful policies. They would be standing up for rural America right now. Instead, they are wasting our time. Just because we are debating a 3- inch fish today doesn't mean we need to think like one.

Now, about the impacts of these policies that my friends don't want to talk about. You don't have to take my word for it, you can listen to farmers across America.

Here is Caleb Ragland, president of the American Soybean Association, who says: ``Our grave concern is we could permanently lose another big chunk of our export market that we are dependent on for our production. . . . And the U.S. farm economy is in a tough spot, and we just don't have any room for error right now.''

Here is Chris Harner, owner of Harner Farm in Centre County, Pennsylvania: ``We did get a letter from our one supplier that once the tariffs kick in, they will be passing on the costs.''

Paul Krueger, a corn and soybean farmer from Bladen, Nebraska, says: ``Any time our country gets involved with any sort of tariffs that affect the agriculture industry, every farmer just kind of groans about that. We're powerless to do anything except take what comes out in the wash.''

Here is Travis Johnson, who farms cotton, sorghum, and corn in Texas' Rio Grande Valley. He says: ``There's a lot of uncertainty around, and I hate to be used as a bargaining chip. I am definitely worried.''

Moving to California, here is Ryan Talley, vice president of Talley Farms in San Luis Obispo: ``We don't have months to wait something out. We have to continue our operations at the intensity that we currently farm. We're going to have to take those rising prices and deal with it the best we can.''

This is what Republican agriculture policy is doing right now: losing export markets, raising costs, telling farmers to just deal with it. They are complicit in the dismantling of rural healthcare, in the freezing of funding for rural infrastructure, in the threat to programs like SNAP that many families across rural America depend on.

It gets worse. President Trump, Elon Musk, and their enablers are gutting critical Federal services that include scientists. They are hollowing out NOAA and weakening the Bureau of Reclamation. They should listen to the people that these decisions are actually hurting.

I know I am quoting a lot right now, Mr. Speaker, but I want to make sure my colleagues across the aisle are listening, since they are not having any townhalls these days. They need to hear from farmers and the folks in these rural communities that their policies are hurting.

In response to mass firings at NOAA and the National Weather Service, Andrea Young of Hidden Creek Farm in Fauquier County, Virginia, said this: ``I cannot bring the animals to safety. I cannot cover up those tender plants. I cannot know that a rainstorm is coming and so I shouldn't water. I cannot function as a farmer in an indoor environment.''

The general manager of 14 California Central Valley Project irrigation districts, in a recent letter to the President about layoffs at the Bureau of Reclamation, said this: ``That elimination of Reclamation staff will not further the goal of achieving significant cost savings to the American people.''

In other words, they are harming the agency that these irrigators depend on, and they are not even saving money for the budget.

Mr. Speaker, the damage from all of this is real. There are real farmers, real communities, and this is real harm caused by failed leadership. While all that is happening, we are here debating whether to strip protections from an endangered fish. They are turning a small fish into a very large scapegoat, pretending it will somehow provide real support to farmers.

The truth is, the listing of the bay-delta longfin under the ESA is both scientifically and legally sound. The longfin population has declined over 99 percent since the 1980s. Think about that. In just a few decades, only about 1 percent of the population is left. That is like the number of environmentalists left in the Republican Party these days.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service followed the law, the data, and the science, just as a bipartisan Congress intended when they passed the ESA back in the 1970s, just as Republican President Richard Nixon intended when he signed it into law. The system is supposed to work that way.

Protecting species like the longfin is not just about a single fish, but it is about protecting the ecological health of the entire bay- delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas. This delta is the heart of California's water system. Its health underpins clean drinking water for millions, healthy soil for agriculture, and waterfowl populations that hunters depend on.

It is so important, and it requires a broad ecological balance to sustain the farms, fisheries, entire ecosystems, and so many communities and millions of people that depend on it. You can't destroy an ecosystem and expect farms, cities, and wildlife to just thrive. These things rise or fall together.

This resolution takes us in the wrong direction. Let's actually do something real for farmers instead of deflecting and debating distractions. Let's repeal the mindless tariffs on our allies and top trading partners. Let's protect the Bureau of Reclamation and NOAA from these disastrous sabotage cuts. Let's protect rural families and communities by opposing cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reject this resolution that merely distracts and deflects and scapegoats instead of solving the pressing challenges facing farmers and the rest of rural America.

Mr. Speaker, the question has been posed about whether this ESA listing of the longfin smelt is supported by science. I guess this Congress, in all of its infinite mastery of science, has decided to superimpose itself over the scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service who went through a very public and deliberative process to reach this determination. We are going to now get, I guess, a different scientific interpretation from the great minds across the aisle.

Mr. Speaker, the first Trump administration, back when there was still at least a few people around who followed the law and told the truth, agreed that the longfin smelt was a candidate species for listing under the Endangered Species Act.

Mr. Speaker, Republicans slow walked that listing because of politics. That is why the administration was sued. That is why the Biden administration had to comply with the law and follow through with that science-based process. That is how we got a listing.

Let's not pretend that there is no scientific foundation for this listing. Even my friends across the aisle know better than that.

Mr. Speaker, my friend from the Sacramento Valley has suggested that we live in parallel universes. If that is the case, I will choose the universe where Members of Congress face their constituents and answer hard questions instead of running off to Mar-a-Lago or other people's districts or having distractions about fish in the delta and scapegoating them as the cause for all of our problems.

Answer some hard questions from constituents. Talk about facts and reality of California water instead of all of this scapegoating.

With California water, it is always a challenge not to break the fact-check machine across the aisle. It has been suggested that all of this water is wasted out to the ocean for fish, and you have to explain again how the delta system works. That water that flows out to the ocean, almost all of it, the vast majority of it, is for one reason: to make sure that the saltwater in the Pacific Ocean does not intrude far enough into the estuary that the whole system that tens of millions of Californians depend on and that all the farmers in my friend's district depend on doesn't salt up and cease to function.

The Speaker doesn't have to believe me about it or choose between two parallel universes. Ask any California water manager how this works. This is basic stuff, but we have to explain it over and over again because of the fog of political theater that we always hear across the aisle.

It is a little bit like the President of the United States right now who says that there is a magic spigot in the northwest and in Canada that, if we could get past all of the radical environmentalists and just open up this spigot, unlimited water would flow to southern California, and they would always be able to fight fires.

It is absolute nonsense. Then he pretended to open a magic spigot, and he dumped and wasted a bunch of water a couple of months ago into a dry lakebed.

Our friends across the aisle retweeted all of these totally fake narratives, and now half the world, the world in that other parallel universe, believes this stuff.

It is a constant challenge just to bring the subject back to facts and reality. Talk to water managers. Do a little bit of basic research. This is how the California water system, especially the delta estuary, actually works. Politics is a poor substitute for understanding basic hydrology and facts.

Mr. Speaker, President Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE continue dismantling Federal agencies, shredding constitutional norms. Meanwhile, House Republicans refuse to lift a finger to rein in rogue actors or defend the rule of law.

In the face of all of this, American farmers and rural America are paying the price for all of this chaos.

Right now, the real threats to rural America and to water security and the livelihoods of America's farmers are trade wars that are hammering agricultural exports. It is not this endangered fish.

They face a shrinking Federal workforce hollowed out. The very agencies responsible for permitting and delivering water to farmers and communities are being dismantled.

Congressional Republicans are threatening to rescind critical Inflation Reduction Act investments in drought resilience and water delivery.

We also are facing this administration's efforts to block and cancel key funding that Congress has already approved to support drought resilience and repair vital water infrastructure, support that rural America needs right now in the face of extreme heat and weather from the climate crisis and the burning of fossil fuels.

These are the urgent challenges that farmers and communities are actually facing. Instead of confronting them, House Republican leadership devoted this entire week to voting on performative Congressional Review Act resolutions that are meant to deflect and distract from the real problems created by this administration and the complicity of this Congress.

Passing a rule to actually abdicate Congress' own oversight powers when it comes to our Article I trade authority all the way through the rest of this fiscal year is shameful.

Let's be honest. The longfin smelt didn't cause California's water challenges. This resolution won't solve them. It won't improve drought conditions. It won't help farmers one bit.

Yet, here we are, debating a symbolic resolution that is designed to distract, deflect, and scapegoat rather than talking about and trying to solve real problems affecting farmers and rural communities.

This isn't legislating. It is grievance politics.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reject this resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

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