[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 99 (Tuesday, July 25, 2006)]
[House]
[Page H5819]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             DROUGHT RELIEF

  Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time 
of the gentleman.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from 
Nebraska is recognized for 5 minutes.
  There was no objection.
  Mr. OSBORNE. During the month of August, most Members of Congress 
will be in their districts, and the thing that those of us in the 
middle part of the country will see is what is reflected on this map 
which deals with the drought. We see some brown areas, some red areas. 
And what this represents is not just 1 year of drought, but rather, we 
are in the eighth year of a drought that has exceeded, in many cases, 
the drought of the 1930s, the Dust Bowl years.
  Now, you don't see clouds of dust blowing around. You don't see dust 
3 or 4 inches high on window sills because of conservation practices. 
We no longer plow up our fields like we once did. But the drought, in 
most cases in this area, is actually more extreme over a longer period 
of time than what we saw in the most extreme drought of the last 
century.
  There are parts of Nebraska where we are now 40 inches short of 
moisture, and in many of these areas the total rain fall in an average 
year is only 15 inches, so over that period of 7 or 8 years, 40 inches 
of shortage is a tremendous hit to take.
  To make matters even worse, we have had extremely high temperatures. 
Normally, in the Dakotas and Nebraska you might see one or two days in 
the 100-degree range, 102, 103. But this summer we have had numerous 
days between 110, 115 degrees of temperature. And of course, these are 
records. So the heat and the drought compounded has led to a disastrous 
situation.
  Dry land crops are either totally wiped out at this point or barely 
hanging on. And probably the most immediate, most pressing problem 
deals with our pastures, because if you have livestock and you have no 
grass pasture, there is nothing you can do but sell off your livestock, 
and so that has been happening rather rapidly.
  Reservoirs in this area are down by 50 to 75 percent. And so the 
irrigation water in these reservoirs is pretty much nonexistent.
  One other thing that many times people will mention, they say, well, 
you have got crop insurance, so why won't that take care of you? Well, 
the problem is this, that each year that you have a drought and you 
have less production means that the next year you can purchase less 
crop insurance because of the loss that you had the year before. So 
after 7 or 8 successive years, the amount of crop insurance that you 
can purchase has been reduced by 50, 60 percent, so you don't even 
really get the amount of money back that your inputs, your seed and 
your fertilizer cost you in the first place. So, as a result, obviously 
we have a very difficult situation.
  In 2002, we had a very similar, very disastrous drought, and we did 
get some drought relief. And the thing that happened at that point was 
those who showed loss, who absolutely needed the help, got some. And 
then in 2003, we found people, lawmakers from other States said, well, 
so and so is getting some help, so we need to get some help too. And 
pretty soon we were expanding drought relief to areas that had no 
drought, who had no crop loss. And as a result, the series of articles 
we have seen in The Washington Post are accurate. And it was certainly 
our fault, those of us in Congress, for letting this get out of hand.
  And of course, this is going to make it even more difficult at this 
point to do anything about the current drought. But we are hoping that 
people will understand that it is possible to administer a drought 
relief program responsibly, to get the money to people who really are 
hurting, because we are probably going to lose some farmers and 
ranchers this year in great numbers. And we hope that we do get some 
help.
  And sometimes people say, well, you have got to have an offset. And 
so we are starting to look for offsets. We are trying to look for 
someplace where we can get this drought relief money from. But the way 
the Federal budget is at the present time, it is very, very difficult 
to find an offset.
  So we have seen disaster relief go to many areas of the country. We 
just want to make people aware of what is going on. And we hope that, 
as people come back from the August break, they will bear this in mind 
and possibly have some disaster relief.

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