[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19608]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                DROUGHT

  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 show three drought monitors 
that have occurred in recent years. The first one actually is a drought 
monitor for August of 2002, and of course the brown and the red areas 
show extreme drought; yellow is fairly severe.
  You see most of the western United States was engulfed in a drought 
in 2002. Now we look fast forward to September of 2006, this month, and 
we see much the same picture: many of the same States, Texas, Oklahoma, 
Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota, New Mexico, Arizona on up into 
North Dakota. So, Mr. Speaker, what we are looking at now is the sixth 
year of severe drought in essentially the same parts of the United 
States.
  So this cumulative drought, in many cases by most estimates surpasses 
the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s in terms of its severity. We don't 
have top soil blowing away like we had in 1930s because we put in some 
conservation practices, we don't have as much exposed ground. But by 
the same token, the impact on agriculture has been much the same as it 
was during that devastating period in the 1930s.
  The precipitation levels over the last several years have been 
remarkable. These are some cities in the State of Nebraska, and the 
precipitation you see here, Grand Island, Nebraska minus 27 inches, 
Hastings minus 27, Carney minus 27, and on and on. And this is true not 
just of Nebraska, but all of the cities and communities in this area.
  So we have seen the ground water levels in many cases declining. 
Reservoirs are now 15 to 25 percent full where they normally would be 
this time of year 50, 60, 70, sometimes 80 times full. Our pastures are 
burned up, so right now in the feed lots we have 15 to 20 percent more 
cattle than we normally would have at this time of year because there 
are no pastures to graze so the ranchers have had to put their cattle 
in feed lots so they can be fed and not have to graze out on those 
pastures already burned up.
  Many would say, well, you have crop insurance, so why don't you rely 
on that? Well, the problem is that for each year of drought, it reduces 
the amount of production that a farmer has, and each year that 
production goes down means that they can purchase less crop insurance. 
So after 5 or 6 straight years, you are now able to purchase much less 
crop insurance than you could 5 or 6 years ago. So as a result, the 
insurance is not adequate. And of course everyone understands, most 
people know that most livestock producers have no crop insurance, they 
have no safety net. So the livestock people are truly suffering at this 
point.
  So we had some drought assistance in the years 2002, 2004, we had 
some offsets, we were able to get it from the Conservation Security 
Program. That offset is no longer available. So we are in really tough 
shape. We are scratching and looking for someplace to get some drought 
assistance.
  Mr. Speaker, I think everyone realizes that for natural disasters, 
whether it be a wildfire, whether it be a Hurricane Katrina, hundreds 
of millions of dollars, billions of dollars actually, floods, 
tornadoes, earthquakes, we as a Nation respond very quickly. But a 
drought is something that is ongoing. It is slow, it is assumed that it 
is not quite a natural disaster, and yet these people are suffering 
every bit as much as those who have suffered an earthquake, a fire, a 
flood.
  So we urge that the House take a look at this. We think that this is 
important, we think that time is running out, and we urge close 
scrutiny by Members of the House and the Senate as well to see if we 
can't do something before this year is out to help this situation that 
is in extremely severe drought.

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