Doug LaMalfa Claims Washington's 'Obsession With Overregulation' Makes Life 'Harder' For Americans

3/31/2025

During remarks on the House floor Wednesday, Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) spoke about congressional regulations that 'make life harder' for Americans.

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00:00Thank you, Mr. Moore. Thank you for leading us in these efforts to help enlighten folks

00:05on what we're doing here in the Congress to give people more choice, more options and

00:10have them be more reasonably priced and available for them. As we are coming out of the Biden

00:16administration, we saw a lot of devastation to the economic conditions for families, for

00:21homes, for small businesses, etc. So, you know, in Washington, there seems to be an

00:26obsession with over-regulation and it does make life harder for everyday Americans. Under

00:31that Biden administration, the energy efficiency standards became weapons of control, driving

00:35up costs, limiting choices, strangling economic growth. Under the anti-energy agenda President

00:42Biden had, American families felt the pinch every day, every time they turned on a light,

00:47heat their home, power their appliance or drive their car. The so-called efficiency

00:51standards didn't lower costs, they shifted the burden onto local level wallets and bank

00:57accounts. Back in my home state of California, we'd see the impact firsthand as these ideas

01:02seem to start there first. Between skyrocketing energy bills and blackouts caused by misguided

01:07policies, public safety power shutoffs is what they call them, okay? When the wind is

01:13blowing and they haven't trimmed the trees in the forested areas around power lines,

01:17they have to shut off the power rather than doing the work out in the forest that's needed. But

01:22that's another issue. All of this causes families to have to pay more for less reliability in their

01:29needs. So this is the future that our Democrat colleagues seem to want for the rest of America,

01:34one where energy is not affordable nor dependable. As the conversions keep pushing more towards wind

01:40and solar, which are fine in and of themselves, but they're a tiny part of the grid, they're not

01:45a 24-7 available source of power anyway, such as we would get from nuclear energy, hydroelectric,

01:53natural gas, coal. Those can be counted on at any time. You can turn them on, you can use them

02:00anytime. Obviously with the wind or solar, you have to wait for the sun to come up, the clouds

02:05to go away, to stop raining, or the wind to blow, as long as the wind doesn't blow too hard, which

02:09in case they have to slow down and shut off the windmill because the wind might spin it off of

02:14its hinges there. So with Washington bureaucrats now trying to dictate what kind of refrigerator

02:19you can have, what kind of stove you can use, and even how long your dishwasher should take to run.

02:25I mean, most folks in their homes want to see that the dishwasher runs long enough to get things

02:30clean and dry. Same with your dryer, same with your clothes washer. What it takes to get the job

02:35done, not some arbitrary, you know, shutdown of when a bureaucrat decides, oh that's, you've used

02:42enough energy. So really it's just limiting options and you being told what's good enough

02:48for you, rather than what you actually need. Californians have already been through a lot of

02:53this, has been forced to live with policies that prioritize these whims of regulators over the

02:58needs of families. Indeed we've seen the elimination of many outdoor tools, gas-powered lawn mowers,

03:06weed eaters, leaf blowers, and I'll come back to even, they're trying to take away generators. Now

03:13how do you take away a gas or diesel-powered generator when the electricity goes off and you

03:20need something to replace that, at least temporarily. What do you power that generating

03:25vehicle with? It isn't going to be other electricity. Now some will argue like, well we need

03:30to have batteries where this power is saved up. Okay, well there's a lot of issues with batteries

03:35on what it takes to make them, what do you do with the metals and the materials from a battery

03:42that is now no longer useful, it has to be discarded, versus just having something that works

03:47at the flick of a switch or the pull of a cord. You can start your generator using gasoline or

03:53diesel and have great success like we've had for generations. But they want to take all these

03:58ideas away from, they want to take all these options away from us. And indeed they do many

04:04things for inconvenience and families, small businesses, and they also strangle our economy.

04:08It's amazing to go out to a tractor supplier someplace like that and the whole lineup of

04:12these outdoor appliances are all electric, it just happened overnight. And I don't know how

04:20well they're selling or how well people like them, but we've got to get to a point where we can

04:24overcome these mandates, at least not have them at the federal level for the other 49 states or

04:30whatever amount of states that are not following California. There's more and more of them seeing

04:34one to get forward with California's craziness. Manufacturers are forced to spend millions trying

04:41to comply with these rules, changing the dynamics, changing the makeup of how their equipment works.

04:48And so just take the electric car industry for example. I remember back in California

04:53in about 1990 the California Air Resources Board, known as CARB, pretty famous now,

04:58I believe it was 1990 they wanted to mandate that 10% of all vehicles by the year 2000 had

05:03to be zero emissions vehicles. And at the time all that would mean is like, well you've got to

05:08use batteries instead of fuel. So they were, manufacturers were standing on their head,

05:14the auto manufacturers, trying to figure out how are we going to meet this mandate in 10 years for

05:1810% production. And so you ended up with these basically glorified golf carts with batteries

05:25on them, using the same old battery technology we had, and finding out that you can't just slap a

05:31license plate on a golf cart and have a practical vehicle for people. So they actually had to relent

05:36on that mandate before 2000 occurred. But you still saw these little, you know, golf carts

05:44running around dealerships with license plates on them pretending to be automobiles that people

05:47would buy. They don't always know by making a mandate. See many in those institutions believe

05:54that well if we force the mandate then they will come up with the technology. Well battery

05:59technology still hasn't made a quantum leap into the future yet to where it can be

06:07such an incredible source and for long extended periods as really the previous generation. You

06:13know, I mean they got more experimental materials, they have different more exotic materials actually

06:18using now, but the battery life hasn't extended that much more than what batteries of 20 years

06:23ago were doing. So the more we hamstring the energy production and force business to

06:31form with out-of-touch mandates, the more time these businesses have to wait, excuse me, waste

06:38on developing technology which really isn't going to go anywhere. The further refinement of

06:44internal combustion engines has so far achieved amazing results with how clean gasoline and diesel

06:51engines are running these days as you know they have put the filtration systems and the fuel

06:57ladders on there and make a diesel engine run pretty darn clean. So why don't we allow those

07:02manufacturers to continue in the direction of making them even better instead of saying nope

07:07we're going to force you to stop selling like electric vehicles, gasoline powered vehicles

07:11in California I think by 2030 and you can't sell any new ones and let's take away diesel

07:16powered trucks. We're going to run into a real reckoning in California when these mandates kick

07:22in and there's nothing to deliver the goods that people expect to take the raw materials from a

07:27mine or from a farm or wherever to the mill, the manufacturer, and then bring a finished product

07:33to the store shelf and you go pick it up and bring it home. What's taking away these options

07:38it's going to be a real strangle on the economy of California and any other state foolish enough

07:43to follow what we do out there. So it really isn't about saving energy it seems to be a lot more

07:51about controlling what people do. The ideals of putting people in stacked communities and these

07:56walkable communities, transit communities, instead of letting them live how they would like to or what's

08:02needed. In my rural district I have in northern California the people that produce things that

08:07other people need whether it's timber and the products that come from timber, wood, lumber, paper,

08:14etc. That has to come from a rural area you need rural people living there that can do that and

08:19they need to have the vehicles and the wherewithal and the tools to do it. That all seems to be taken

08:23away instead they'd rather burn down those forests. So what kind of choice is that? People would

08:30like people would like to have choices where they can live as well as what we're talking about

08:34previously with energy choices and the energy using apparatus choices and those.

08:43So Americans deserve a little bit better than that a government that prioritizes really green

08:47ideology over their own quality of life because what you get right down to is that when these

08:54choices are taken away you don't really get much that much greener of a life of a lifestyle

09:01because there's an offset for taking away the power plants that we have. There's an offset of

09:06replacing them with solar panels that cover many many acres especially of prime ag ground like

09:11they're trying to do in central California in what's some of the richest ag ground anywhere

09:15in the world and products there that so many Americans have come to expect that come from

09:20California with these amazing vegetable crops, fruit crops, nut crops that 90 to 99 to even 100%

09:27of them are grown in California. We want to cover those areas with solar panels because the areas

09:31those areas have had their water rights and their water taken away because of more green things and

09:38more environmental policies that put fish over the needs of people. So instead we need to go

09:45the direction that puts energy policies that would actually lower prices, expand the consumer choices

09:52and create opportunities for American jobs and American economy, American prosperity and not have

10:00the continued stranglehold we saw in the Biden administration. So the work we're doing here

10:04along with President Trump is extremely important to bring these things back to the forefront of

10:09families having choices and the basics like their appliances, their automobiles, their ability to

10:17heat or cool their homes and just enjoy their life. So we will continue and I look forward to

10:23being part of the battle here pushing back against that out of touch agenda whether you want to call

10:28it green new deal or green ideology or what have you and move towards a future where families

10:34and not bureaucrats get to decide what works best for them. So with that I'd like to yield

10:39back to my friend from Utah. Thank you Mr. Moore for the time.

Doug LaMalfa Claims Washington's 'Obsession With Overregulation' Makes Life 'Harder' For Americans

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