[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 18436]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             DROUGHT RELIEF

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to indulge in a little change 
of pace here. This is an issue that is completely nonpartisan, which, 
hopefully, my friends on the other side will appreciate.
  What we are looking at here is a drought map. As most people know, 
Florida has been hit by two hurricanes recently, and we have a third 
one that may hit them and may hit Alabama. This is an unbelievable set 
of circumstances.

                              {time}  2300

  The Congress quickly sent $2 billion in relief to Florida which is 
certainly appropriate, and we have a request for another $3 billion.
  What I would like to do is to call attention to another disaster 
which has occurred and this is the drought. This is the drought monitor 
map which was drawn up in 2002, and you can see that the eastern 
seaboard had considerable drought. Most all of the western States were 
badly impacted. We will take another look now, 2 years later and we see 
a very similar picture. The eastern seaboard is certainly improved but 
most of the West is still gripped by a drought that is one of the worst 
in history, and that has been going on now for 5 years.
  So what has happened is that any dry land crops in these areas in 
here have been relatively nonexistent now for 5 years. And so these 
farmers' equity has been eaten up to the point where many of them now 
are being driven off the land. Many of their ranchers have had their 
pastures destroyed, sometimes for 4, 5 years in a row. We have had some 
livestock feed assistance which has been very helpful, but, again, some 
of them have had to sell some of their herd, some have had to sell all 
of their herd, and some have been driven out of business.
  The other thing that is pretty dire at this point is that most of the 
reservoirs in the West are anywhere from 15 to 25 percent full which 
means the irrigators have been receiving half, some of them none of 
their water for the last couple of years. And in most of these 
reservoirs they will simply run out of water in the next couple of 
years. So it is a very difficult situation. And many have said, well, a 
drought is not quite like a hurricane. It is not quite like a fire. It 
is not quite like a flood or a tornado because those things come very 
quickly but a drought takes time to develop and, therefore, you have 
time to adjust and, therefore, we really should not give any emergency 
aid for this type of activity that we see on this map.
  But actually if you plant your crop in May and you do not get any 
rain for the next 3 or 4 weeks you do not have a crop. Now 2 or 3 or 4 
weeks is pretty quick, so many of these people have been suffering from 
a drought that has not been of their own doing and has certainly come 
on relatively quickly.
  I would like to call attention to one other chart here. Many people 
have said, well, it is unreasonable to ask for any drought assistance 
with this situation here because of the slowness of the oncoming of the 
drought. The thing that I would like to call attention here is what has 
happened with the farm bill. The farm bill was supposed to cost roughly 
$50 billion over the first 3 years of its existence, and we can see 
that in 2002 the projected cost was $14.3 billion. Actually it cost 
$13.2 billion. In 2003, a year ago it was supposed to cost 18.6. It 
actually cost 12.1, and the projection for this year which we are about 
through the fiscal year was $17.5, and the actual cost will be about 
10.1. So what this means is the projected cost was to be $50 billion. 
In actuality it will be about $35 billion. So this is one of the few 
government programs that I know of where the cost is considerably less 
than what it was supposed to cost.
  And so you say, where did that $15 billion come from? What happened 
here? Well, part of it is the drought. And here is the logic. The 
drought has reduced production. When you have reduced production it 
causes prices to go up. When prices go up, you have fewer farm payments 
because you have no LDP's. You have no countercyclical payment. So much 
of this $15 billion difference is due to the drought. And so my 
suggestion is that Congress think about this a little bit as we think 
about Florida, and we should, as we think about wildfires, and we 
should. Let us think a little bit about what is going on in the West, 
those 6 or 7 or 8 western states which have been hit so hard.
  It is my understanding that the other body has acted this evening and 
have appropriated or have added on roughly $2.9 billion for the 
drought. I am hopeful that this body that the House will follow suit 
and will consider this.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to call my colleagues' attention to the 
situation that we think is fairly serious in the western part of the 
United States and something that has been ongoing for the last 5 years.

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