Barbara Boxer: “I am going to speak for a little while and then reserve the remainder. I say to Senator Wyden, thank you for your words.…”

“I am going to speak for a little while and then reserve the remainder. I say to Senator Wyden, thank you for your words. I also wish to explain why it was important to take the time at this late hour. We are all exhausted. We must make this case, and I will tell you why--not only for the history books, but for the courthouse. There is no way that this position is not going to be litigated. That is the tragedy of it, because as my friends know and has been said by all of us, when it comes to water, you need to have everybody around the table. This provision doesn't do a thing to end the doubt. Let's be clear. All it does is take water away from the fishermen and give it to agribusiness. You know, that doesn't help add any water. My colleague from California who has worked so hard on this has had some very good language in there about desalinization and about water recharging, but we have that in the base bill. It is already in the base bill. For the first time, Senator Inhofe and I--and, oh, how I will miss him--made sure we had provisions in the bill that dealt with the drought. We reauthorized the desal program in the United States of America. We have a new program to give funds for new technologies. We have talked about conservation, water recharging, and underground storage, which my friend Maria talked about. It is in the base bill. So to call this rider about the drought is a misnomer.…”