David Valadao

We are at a crossroads, and it is time to choose between two very different visions of water policy.

If anything good comes of this drought, it will be that the public is finally awakening to the enormous economic and environmental damage that these policies have done.

This is obviously a very important hearing, and this issue has been something that a lot of Members have been fighting before my time in Congress.

We have to continue this fight. We have to continue to move forward.

Thank you, Chairman Hastings. Thank you for taking the time to come out and visit us here in the valley.

It is just interesting for me because when you were making those comments earlier...

the moratorium was set in 2008, and little has changed since then.

Do you think that our overburdened regulation such as rules treating milk spills like oil spills... were also to blame?

WIC is obviously something that is important to a lot of those people in the area.

Through science, we have seen many breakthroughs in agriculture that improve crop yields, dairy productivity, and feed-to-grain ratios.

Well, one of the things that I see, because I am a dairy farmer myself, and I do farm a little bit of row crops as well, we see a lot of product come out onto the marketplace, and we struggle to get either released or approved by whatever…

In my region of southern eastern Kentucky, these regulatory attacks have resulted in some 8,000 miners laid off in just the last several months.

Unquestionably, the U.S. must send a strong signal and demonstrate leadership in the international community that such acts of aggression in violation of Ukraine's territorial sovereignty are unacceptable.

I would even go far as to say these policies show that this Administration is in denial about the reality of expanding energy access to the poorest nations.

Reclaiming my time, the most important thing I have noticed over time with the studies and the reports is that the food prices do not affect the people in this room. We all know from all the news articles, at least half of the people in…

As someone who farms myself, I understand the value of water, and when the State Water Resources Control Board issues a cease and desist order in the gentleman's district for illegally diverting water--that was something when I spent some…

The reason we are here today is we have heard talk for long enough. We have seen negotiation after negotiation, and the last one that we are asking to go back to happened in the mid- nineties. There was an agreement made that allowed water…

As a farmer in the Central Valley, I grew up there--born and raised--on my own personal farm with my family. We have struggled with this water fight for years, even before I was born. This isn't a new issue. It is something that has been…

We are coming to an end here and this bill is about to get voted on. What we have got going on here, and we have all figured it out from all the colorful presentations and all the pictures on both sides, we are in a drought. We know that…

What we are asking for here is a little understanding of the situation we have got. This graph here shows how much water was in storage at the end of 2013. There was quite a bit of water, but the allocation was this much. What this…

I thank the gentleman rice farmer from northern California for the opportunity to speak here today. Where do you start with something like this? I grew up a dairy farmer in Kings County and continue to be a dairy farmer in Kings County to…

Like I mentioned earlier, when this project was started, it was started as a long-term project; but then $3 billion showed up from the Federal Government and the project managers basically said put this thing in high gear, start breaking…

Well, when we look at a company that wants to invest in the Valley, if they are in agriculture, obviously they are attracted to the area for those reasons. But if they are looking for an affordable place that makes sense between L.A. and…

We have a rendering plant that is right in the middle of the alignment as the alignment is today. Obviously, the alignment moves on a weekly basis, but the rendering plant has been in the alignment twice now. The first time, and we are…

Over the years, there have been a lot of things built in the valley--freeways, just different things that obviously needed to be built for the good of the State. Farmers, and constituents in general, if they understand why it is being…