George Miller: “I appreciate the remarks. I think he makes a good point. I appreciate that this is in contract law, but let us remember…”

“I appreciate the remarks. I think he makes a good point. I appreciate that this is in contract law, but let us remember what we are talking about. In parts of Arizona, and a good portion of California, we are talking about people who have received hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies from the Federal taxpayers, in some cases to grow subsidized crops. Kind of an insanity. These same people have spent millions and millions of dollars to prevent any change from taking place in the reclamation law in this Congress. Finally, 2 years ago, we were able to defeat that effort and pass reclamation reform. These are the same people now who are suing the Government, suing the State, suing everybody to hold onto their rights, and what is their allegation? Their allegation is everything we want to do is in violation of their contractual rights. They have a compensatory action if in fact they can show it is a violation of their rights. But basically what these people have done is sought to delay the implementation of any reforms in the California water system. Just as recently as a couple of months ago where all of the cities got together, all of the environmental groups got together, many of the agricultural groups got together, all of the economic community in our State said that we have to change the way that we allocate and use water in the State of California.”