Congressman Kevin McCarthy proudly serves California’s 23rd district and is currently the Republican Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives. Kevin was first elected to Congress in 2006 and is a native of Bakersfield and a fourth-generation Kern County resident. The grandson of a cattle rancher and the son of a firefighter, Kevin grew up a working-class family and is committed to preserving and promoting the American dream for hardworking Americans.
We need a forward looking agriculture policy that is both fiscally responsible with hard working American taxpayers' money and accountable to our country's need to level the playing field for American agricultural products in the global marketplace. California's 23rd Congressional District represents America's fruit, vegetable, and dairy “breadbasket” for our state, country, and even the world, producing many of the healthy produce and dairy products that contribute to a healthy diet. As a former member of the House Agriculture Committee, I continue to work hard to promote the diverse agriculture products that our hardworking farmers, ranchers, and workers grow, along with opening overseas markets to give the world the opportunity to know that "Californian Grown" means high-quality agriculture products. While labor and water regulations and policy remain important concerns to our local agriculture, we must also remain cognizant and support research against different plant and animal diseases and pests that continue to pose a threat to this multi-billion dollar industry.
The spirit and ingenuity of America’s entrepreneurs, business owners, and workers have always been the most important factor in global commerce, and it starts here at home. While the coronavirus pandemic has hit our local communities hard, I am confident that good smart economic policies can help support a robust recovery for our community—and our country—once we’ve defeated this virus. As we work to safely reopen the economy, we must continue to promote more opportunities for our neighbors and our small businesses and their workforce, encourage growth and investments in our neighborhoods, and support those on the frontlines, while responsibly spending precious taxpayer dollars.
We must ensure our next generation have the opportunities to obtain their dreams and realize their full potential, as well as help ensure they have the education and skills to compete in the global economy with their peers in China, India, and the European Union. The pandemic and lockdowns have hurt many in our communities, but especially our young children struggling to learn in remote settings. Since the pandemic, billions of Federal dollars have been allocated to our local schools across the nation to supplement State and local education dollars to help reopen schools and keep our students and teachers and families safe and healthy. And we must do more to support our teachers and administrators, who remain committed to helping our students maintain a daily routine and consistency, despite the challenge of everchanging local, state, and Federal social distancing and health guidelines and regulations. Parents should also be empowered so their children can go to the best schools, and the government can help, in certain instances, that pursuit with more opportunities for high school, middle school, and elementary school children. Additionally, as someone who paid his way through college, I believe that American children who work hard and get results should receive the assistance they need to reach their goal of going to college.
Kern County is one of the country’s leaders in oil and natural gas production and advanced energy innovation. In order to reduce our dependence on foreign fuel, I will continue to fight for common sense solutions to meet our energy needs. Such solutions require that the United States promote economic growth by continuing to invest in domestic energy sources, especially those in California and the jobs our energy economy creates. Simultaneously, we must continue to push the envelope for more affordable and reliable alternative energy production that will support new jobs and growth for the 21st Century, including the wind energy in Tehachapi, the solar production in Mojave and throughout the Central Valley, the geothermal resources in the Indian Wells Valley, and cleaner diesel, electric, and natural gas-powered engines.
The United States faces many challenges in the world today. Congress must contribute to helping craft an effective foreign policy agenda that defends our nation’s values, allies, and interests while remaining accountable to the American people. This includes ensuring that our nation maintains its competitive advantage with nations like China and Russia, holding them to account when they infringe fundamental values of freedom, liberty, and democracy and when they compete unfairly in global commerce.
American families, businesses, and economy have reached unsurpassed levels of prosperity through ingenuity and innovation. However, Washington continues to operate under the faulty policy of expanding the scope and power of government and throwing more taxpayer money at inefficient programs. We must continue to push Washington for more accountability, transparency, and leadership to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely and our children and grandchildren do not carry the burden of having to pay our national debt. Specifically, with trillions of dollars being spent to help Americans through this pandemic and through lockdowns, we must ensure that those taxpayer dollars are spent correctly and that any mismanagement is dealt with swiftly to protect fiscal accountability and integrity.
American families should be able to make their own decisions regarding their health care. Policies that encourage decisions made by patients and doctors instead of Washington bureaucratic fiat, and more choice empowering individuals with a variety of affordable options to suit somebody's specific needs, would expand access and affordability for all patients. Especially with this pandemic, billions of dollars have been approved to help our frontline health care workers with resources and personal protective equipment, and emergency spending has helped to ensure that Americans can get access to COVID-19 testing, treatments, and now a vaccine.
With more funding constraints in the short and long terms, we must ensure that the Medicare program can continue to deliver for older Americans who depend on it, ensuring they have access and choices to receive the health care they need, including lower prescription drug costs and affordable premiums for Medicare health plan options.
As a nation founded by immigrants, we should continue to embrace the hardworking individuals who come to the United States looking to start a better life and to contribute to our society. However, we are a nation that respects the rule of law - we should not reward those who break our laws with amnesty. We must enforce existing immigration laws while simultaneously securing our borders and addressing our broken visa system.
Congress must uphold one of its primary functions which is to provide for the common defense. But the importance of investing in advanced military technologies is only surpassed by the obligation we have to our volunteer servicemembers that devote their lives to protecting our country and our freedoms. We must ensure that they receive the resources they need to successfully complete their mission in service to our country.
Locally, great work is being done, especially in research, development and testing, by the hardworking men and women at China Lake and Edwards. Our district remains heavily engaged in protecting our nation and ensuring that our national defense remains on the cutting edge, and I have been working with our defense community to strengthen, modernize, and advance priorities that will help our region lead our nation’s defense capabilities for decades to come.
Congress must keep the promise made to current retirees and those nearing retirement, as Social Security has been one of the primary pillars of retirement support for millions of older Americans for the past eight decades. However, under current estimates, Social Security financial solvency will be threatened in the next decade. Reforms must be made to strengthen the long-term fiscal health of the program so that our children and grandchildren can have a bright future for retirement.
America has been at the forefront of space travel since the first man stepped on the moon. Americans have never been afraid to tackle a challenge, no matter how many millions of miles away. Our district bore witness to incredible achievements in flight, including Captain Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier. Today, the Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center celebrates one of the first pioneers of space travel and is a symbol to the next generation of space explorers and aeronautics research.
Through NASA Armstrong and the Mojave Air and Space Port, our communities remain actively involved in these enterprises. Federal resources continue to support the NASA mission, and since the SPACE Act of 2015 that I authored, I remain a strong advocate of additional resources, opportunities, and regulatory frameworks for commercial space that allow our scientists and entrepreneurs to push the envelope and develop cutting-edge spacecraft technology and commercial space ventures.
The antidote for deficit spending and ballooning debt is not increased taxation for you and your family. Rather, Washington must be more accountable in its spending so that the American people can keep more of their hard earned money. We need a tax system that does not burden the middle class and allows businesses and workers to grow the economy.
We must reinvest in our country’s infrastructure today to support the cars, planes, and railroads of tomorrow that move goods and services, and most importantly Americans. Improvements made to our roads and infrastructure not only increase safety, but provide jobs to our growing community. When taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly on transportation projects and are financed in part with our fair share of Federal support, our community's potential grows.
Valley Fever is a terrible disease that affects many in our community and is continuing to spread throughout the western parts of the country. As the co-chair of the Congressional Valley Fever Task Force, I am committed to increasing awareness, improving treatments, and eventually finding a cure for Valley Fever. After organizing a Valley Fever Symposium with Federal and local partners, we have made some progress through collaborations of research and clinical trials through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, which have helped further fungal disease research through the establishment of Valley Fever Research Centers. With the continued leadership of our local Valley Fever advocates, we have continued to meet and learn more from research and awareness activities, which has led to over $20 million in Federal support to address this disease.
A growing number of communities across the West have become impacted by severe drought conditions. These conditions hurt our farmers, negatively impact the environment, and make it harder for communities to get the water they contract and pay for. Although this these challenges is are not new to the arid West, it is they are compounded by a complex and often contradictory system of laws, court decisions, and regulations, at the state and federal level, that are failing the needs of both people and species.
A significant source of water for our community comes from northern California, which is pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to central and southern California through two different conveyance systems, the Federal Central Valley Project (CVP) and the California State Water Project (SWP). To help ensure water reliability, the Federal government was able to implement a new plan in 2020 to move more water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to the Central Valley using provisions of the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation (WIIN) Act, a bipartisan law I championed that was enacted in 2016. In addition, I was able to secure $206 million to repair subsidence on the Friant-Kern Canal, which will help bring more water from Millerton Lake to the eastern side of the Central Valley and all the farmland in that region.
Water storage and developing more water infrastructure is also an important issue. Ensuring that our community has access to water—especially during times of extreme drought—is critical for our farmers and families. To help create dependable water sources, I was able to secure $134 million for water storage projects in California and the West. Additionally, in 2019, I led a bipartisan group of Members of Congress to support the State of California’s appeal to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to grant reimbursement funding for repairs at Oroville Dam, after a storm in February of 2017 damaged certain features to the structure. Following the appeal, FEMA awarded $307.8 million in reimbursement funding to California for the repair costs at Oroville Dam which would otherwise have been passed on to the families, farms, and businesses that receive water from the SWP. In addition, I have long advocated and pushed for important dam storage improvements locally at Isabella Dam at Lake Isabella and Schaefer Dam at Lake Success, securing hundreds of millions of dollars to make important safety repairs and enlargement additions so we can store more water locally.
Since the founding of our nation, we have relied on the strength of the men and women who have served as courageous Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen. These millions of volunteers have answered the call of duty so that we may live in freedom. We must honor their courage, dedication, and sacrifice by providing the resources necessary to take care of our veterans who return home from battle.