This week, I was proud to introduce my first bill of the 118^th Congress, the WATER for California Act. This bill focuses on streamlining operations, expanding water storage infrastructure, and increasing accountability to bring more water to the Valley. I look forward to working with my colleagues to advance this critical legislation.

Read more about the WATER for California Act here.

The extreme storms, rainfall, and flooding impacting California right now highlight the importance of increasing water storage to capture this rainfall. This week I sent a letter to President Biden and Governor Newsom urging them to waive impediments to Delta pump operations to ensure none of the current storm flows in California go to waste.

Read my full letter to President Biden and Governor Newsom here. 

Families and businesses across the Central Valley are struggling to keep up with rising gas prices and electricity bills. During the past year, President Biden has released a record amount of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) to foreign countries, with no plan in place to ramp up production to replenish them.

Last year, I offered an amendment on the House floor that would prohibit the sale of these reserves to China. This week, I was proud to vote for H.R. 22 – a bill I'm an original co-sponsor of that prevents the President from implementing this dangerous and irresponsible strategy in the future. Read more.

Watch my speech from the House floor on protecting our SPR here.

Last year I heard from many of you who were concerned about Democrats’ plans to hire 87,000 new enforcement agents at the IRS, a plan that would have increased audit rates for all taxpayers.

This week, House Republicans passed our first piece of legislation in the 118^th Congress - H.R. 23, the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act. This bill would repeal the funding to hire 87,000 new IRS agents while preserving funding for customer service and technology modernization. I was proud to vote yes on this bill to shield hardworking Americans and small businesses from government overreach.

Our question this week comes from Christina in Bakersfield. She asks:

“I don't understand why Republicans are not united in voting for Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. Can you explain why this is happening?

Thanks for the question Christina. While I was proud to support my friend and colleague Kevin McCarthy from the time he became our nominee for Speaker, a small group of members were withholding their vote for McCarthy for varying reasons. Some of these “holdouts” were clearly doing so to further their own political stardom. Some of these members wanted changes to the House Rules Package, which are the rules that determine how the House of Representatives operates. In the fall, the Republican Conference debated this package and came to a consensus agreement about these rules. That was the time to hash out these discussions but these members at the eleventh hour decided they were going to withhold their vote for McCarthy until changes were made.  

While this was a frustrating process for many of us, the Republican conference was able to unite around Speaker McCarthy, and since Monday we have hit the ground running for the American people. I look forward to working closely with my friend Speaker McCarthy to better the lives of Central Valley families. 

Do you have a question about my position on an issue? How the Congress operates? My thoughts on the news of the day?

Send your first name, town, and question to AskDavid@mail.house.gov and I might answer yours right here in one of my weekly newsletters. Make sure to subscribe to my weekly email updates to see if your question was answered!

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