[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 77 (Thursday, May 4, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2763-S2765]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Northeast Colorado Fires

  Mr. GARDNER. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about 
the recent impact of prairie fires in northeastern Colorado. A lot of 
times when you turn on the national news in the spring, summer, or 
fall, you might see fires in Colorado, but most of the time those fires 
are located in western Colorado in the mountains.
  We have had some horrible fires in recent years. The past decade has 
been littered with far too many fires of great consequence to our 
environment, to families, and to homes--and the damage they have 
caused. Oftentimes we don't see as much in the news about fires in 
other parts of the State, including the Eastern Plains of Colorado, the 
Great Plains and prairies.
  At the end of March, Logan and Phillips Counties saw a blaze that 
burned 32,000 acres, destroying homes, harming cattle and farm 
operations, and shutting down a key interstate corridor. To put 32,000 
acres into perspective, in 2016, the largest fire in Colorado was the 
Beaver Creek fire near

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Walden, burning tens of thousands of acres over the course of 3 months. 
The fire burned about 38,000 acres. The fire burning 32,000 acres in 
northeastern Colorado took only about 24 hours of time. So we had 
38,000 acres burn in 3 months, and 32,000 acres in northeastern 
Colorado burned in 24 hours. In both cases, these were incredibly 
dangerous situations to land, people, and those around them.
  These images from the Denver Post paint a frightening picture of the 
devastation the area faced. We can look at these pictures here. You can 
see what happened with the dirt, debris, smoke, and weather that was 
created by the fire, and you can see the damage and what happened. You 
can see the damage to property here.
  I want to go back to the earlier picture and talk about some of the 
other impacts we saw. You can see the firemen from eastern Colorado 
working to protect property, trying to stop the fire before it reached 
the homestead.
  You can see someone with a tractor, and they are trying to disc up 
the ground, trying to create a firebreak. People from around eastern 
Colorado, northeastern Colorado were getting into their tractors, 
getting their tillage equipment, their chisels, discs, and sweeps to 
try to break up the ground to create a firebreak so that maybe they 
could stop the fire. I commend the first responders for containing this 
fire and preventing any loss of life while also preventing other fire 
hotspots from breaking out into larger, devastating blazes because of 
the work they did.
  In the middle of these fires, I remember talking to a county 
commissioner from Logan County, and he described the situation where 
they had tried to create a firebreak with their road graders and the 
farmers in the field trying to disc up the ground to stop the fire from 
moving.
  I remember vividly when the county commissioner told me that at a 
certain time of the day he had to make a phone call that he would never 
forget in his life. He called the county commissioners from the 
neighboring county and said that the fire was moving that way. He said: 
Hey, I want you to know, Logan County is unable to stop the fire. It is 
coming your way. I am sorry; it is in your hands now.
  Imagine that phone call. This horrible thing that has happened in 
your county is also spreading to the next county, and you can't do 
anything about it, despite the incredible efforts and acts of heroism 
to try to stop it.
  Fire departments from across Colorado came to northeastern Colorado 
in that part of the State to stand alongside local firefighters to get 
this fire under control. Dozens of agencies and departments responded.
  Being from Yuma County, south of where this fire took place, I know 
how alarming and unforgiving these fast-moving prairie fires can be on 
the farmers, ranchers, and communities in their path. I fought prairie 
fires as well in northeastern Colorado and know how fast they move and 
how indiscriminate they are in their destruction.
  I also know the challenges people now face in Phillips and Logan 
Counties as they try to recover in the spring, but I can confidently 
say that the community is recovering. According to local agronomist, 
Dave Gibson:

       Within six days of the fire, 85 percent of the cropland was 
     planted with oats to prevent soil erosion with neighbors 
     volunteering to help and donate. It was an amazing effort.

  My office has been in communication with State and Federal officials, 
along with those impacted, to ensure we are doing everything possible 
to assist in this process.
  Those from northeastern Colorado are dependent upon agriculture for 
their way of life. Two-thirds of Colorado's agricultural production 
comes from the South Platte River valley, those areas considered to be 
in northeastern Colorado. I have spoken on the Senate floor about the 
difficult times these farmers are facing outside of the context of 
national disasters. When times are already tough, seeing your land and 
cattle operation burned up in a prairie fire makes things even worse. 
It is during these challenging times in agriculture, whether it is the 
impact of fire or low commodity prices, that we are reminded of the 
need for effective leadership.
  I was pleased this last week when the Chamber came together in a 
bipartisan fashion to confirm Governor Sonny Perdue of Georgia as our 
Secretary of Agriculture. Senators on both sides of the aisle 
recognized that supporting our Nation's farmers and ranchers is not a 
partisan issue.
  It is my hope that we can support Secretary Perdue to expeditiously 
confirm the rest of his team at USDA because we need it in agriculture. 
Whether it is the FSA or a crop insurance issue as a result of a fire 
or a situation relating to trade and how we are going to address low 
commodity prices, the Secretary of Agriculture needs a team around him. 
Congress must work with Secretary Perdue to address this crisis in 
agriculture.
  In Colorado, we have seen net farm incomes drop 80 percent since the 
record highs of 2011. If you look at this headline, this was in the 
Wall Street Journal some weeks ago. The headline says: ``The Next 
American Farm Bust Is Upon Us.'' That is because if you look at just 
the State of Colorado alone, there has been a drop of 80 percent in 
farm income from the record highs of 2011. That is net farm income down 
80 percent.
  I believe this Congress needs to act with a four-pronged approach.
  First, we need a long-term farm policy in place. With the farm bill 
expiring in September of 2018, Congress must begin negotiating about 
how we are going to move forward in a responsible fashion. I commend 
the Senate and House Agriculture Committees for holding hearings on the 
next farm bill, and I look forward to conducting our own roundtables 
and listening sessions to talk about and to learn about and to listen 
to how we can make a difference. Federal policy certainty with a long-
term farm policy is essential for farmers and ranchers.
  The second thing we must do is to provide regulatory relief. We have 
already repealed about $85 billion worth of regulations over the last 3 
months. That is an incredible feat to relieve the American economy from 
the harm and pressure of $85 billion worth of regulatory overreach. By 
relieving the American business community of that $85 billion worth of 
regulations and relieving the American family of that pressure as well, 
it also means we have been able to reduce paperwork by 54 million 
hours.
  Imagine that: $85 billion worth of regulatory reductions means there 
is 54 million hours of paperwork that no longer has to be completed. 
Instead, that money, time, and effort can be invested in growing 
opportunities and following up on sales leads and making that money 
work for the business and family instead of just for the government.
  When it comes to agriculture, the regulatory relief to address this 
next American farm crisis--some of that regulatory relief, the $85 
billion, includes measures such as repealing the Bureau of Land 
Management 2.0 rule or finally getting the waters of the United States 
regulation out of the way. That is the kind of regulatory relief we 
have to continue to pursue.
  To those who may not know what waters of the United States regulation 
did, let's take an example in Colorado. Under the EPA's own study, two-
thirds of Colorado waterways are described or defined as intermittent 
flow. Intermittent flow means they don't have water in them year-round. 
But according to the government, they would be considered navigable 
waterways. I don't know how you get anything to float down a dry river, 
but apparently the EPA can. That $85 billion of regulatory relief 
includes stopping the waters of the United States rule. We have to 
continue to peel back the burdensome regulations on American 
agriculture.
  The third thing we have to address is access to finance. Finance is 
critical to any farmer. There is an old joke, an old saying that if you 
go out to a farmer--and they may know this already--and ask: How do you 
make a small fortune in agriculture? The answer is that you start with 
a large one. I think it is time we fixed that.
  Wouldn't it be nice if people weren't just relying on the bank, but 
they could actually produce enough money to help them into the future, 
to help them thrive, prosper, grow, and bring in new generations of 
family? During difficult economic times, when we are facing incredible 
challenges and low commodity prices, we do need to have

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access to financing. Whether it is through the community bank or banks 
on Wall Street or the Farm Credit Union or farm credit system, farmers, 
ranchers, and those in agriculture need access to financing to get 
through this difficult time.
  That production loan, that operating loan is how they make it from 
season to season, harvest to harvest, and planting to planting to make 
sure they have the ability to stay on the farm. Right now we have a 
system that I am worried about--a financial regulatory system in place 
that perhaps a farmer walks into a bank one day, a bank they have been 
doing business with for 100 years, and they have never missed a 
payment, but all of a sudden, based on some Washington, DC, formulary, 
they can no longer get the loan they need to keep them into the next 
year, even though that bank in their hometown on Main Street knows they 
will be able to make that payment.
  What we have created is a system and financial regulations that are 
going to make it impossible for some of these farmers to work out the 
crisis that is upon them. I sent a letter 2 weeks ago to the Consumer 
Financial Protection Bureau, requesting a review of all regulations 
potentially inhibiting rural access to finance.
  The fourth thing we have to get right is trade opportunity for 
American agriculture. With corn and wheat prices near 10-year lows, the 
most obvious solution is to open up more international markets for 
agriculture to continue to look for new opportunities to export 
American agricultural products overseas. The price of commodities for a 
bushel of corn is about the same price today as it was back when I was 
born in 1974. Opening up trade opportunities, opening new markets will 
give us the value-added opportunity to help get more for that bushel of 
corn.
  Some of the greatest opportunities lie in Asia--50 percent of global 
population, 50 percent of GDP in the near future. Those are markets we 
have to open up in U.S. agriculture. Those are markets that already 
have access in many cases to U.S. markets, but if we want to sell 
products there, sometimes we are hit with tariffs. That is not fair. We 
have to make sure we are reducing the tariffs we face when we go into 
their markets because they seem to have unfettered access into ours 
much of the time.
  Those are all measures we can address. The four things are long-term 
farm policies, regulatory relief, access to financing, trade 
opportunities that work for the American farmers and ranchers.
  Those recent fires in northeast Colorado, as well as fires in past 
years in Colorado and across the West, are another reminder of the need 
to address wildfire borrowing. Wildfire borrowing is a process where 
the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service spends money that it has 
budgeted for the fires. It runs out of money because it didn't budget 
enough money to fight the fires, and it turns around and starts 
cannibalizing other areas of spending that could actually have been 
used to help reduce the next forest fire. We have to end the practice 
of fire borrowing, and we have to work with Secretary Perdue as head of 
the U.S. Forest Service within the Department of Agriculture to end 
wildfire borrowing and to improve forest and land management to prevent 
these uncontrollable fires that we have seen.
  Supporting those impacted by fires, whether it is in the forest or 
around the prairie, is something we should all be able to get behind. 
In Logan and Phillips Counties, neighbors banded together. They worked 
to recover and rebuild from the devastation shown on these images. It 
has happened for generations in eastern Colorado and across this 
country. When there is a crisis, when there is a tragedy, neighbors 
help their neighbors. You can see it in these pictures. But we can also 
help our neighbors here in Washington, DC, and across our country's 
vast farmlands by doing what is right in addressing these challenges. 
Just as Logan County and Phillips County banded together, we should 
band together with American agriculture.
  It is my hope that Congress can learn from the lessons taught in the 
aftermath of these difficult situations to come together, support rural 
communities, support agriculture, and make sure we support our fire 
response efforts, importantly, to prevent that next catastrophic fire.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.