On the recordJuly 12, 2017
I thank Mr. McClintock for yielding me the time and for his kind words. Mr. Chairman, I am not going to respond to the other side of the aisle because some things that are said on this floor are so ridiculous that they don't deserve a response. So I just want to talk today, Mr. Chairman, about the facts that we face in the San Joaquin Valley. So in the southern and central San Joaquin Valley, we have about 3 million acres of farm ground, land that is the most fertile farmland in the world--not just in the United States, in the world. We are in danger of losing about a third of that farmland largely because the leftwing government in California has overreached so far that they are now taking away people's private property rights. So I want to talk first about our water shortage. So this is the shortage of water that we have in the valley. So it is about 2.6 million acre feet are what we need on average to farm all of the land that we have historically farmed in our area. Now, these are farms that provide food for not only the people of the United States and all over the world but also for the families that work on these farms. So we hear a lot about drought, and we have had supposedly a severe drought, and it was no question a severe drought, but what the left continues to not want to talk about is all the water that gets dumped out into the ocean every year.…
