Jim Costa: “I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me 2 minutes. I strongly urge my colleagues to support the Western…”

“I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me 2 minutes. I strongly urge my colleagues to support the Western Water and American Food Security Act that we are debating here today. Yes, we are debating this issue, and this is not new. What you have exhibited here and seen this morning is where the water fault lines lie in California, and it also is reflective of many of the Western States. This 4 years of historic drought has pointed out clearly that we have a broken water system in California. Here we are on the floor, having another debate over whether or not we are going to pass a bill to help people because, at the end of the day, these are people problems, people problems in every region of California. Nowhere have those people been more impacted than in the San Joaquin Valley, which much of us represent. These are families where parents have lost their jobs, whose children are not able to attend school. These are farmworkers, these are farm communities that have felt the most severe impact of this drought and the water constraints that we now are dealing with. My colleagues on the Democratic side argue that this is simply a cause of 4 continuous dry years, and while that is partially true, it ignores that that talking point doesn't recognize that, in fact, we have a broken water system designed for 20 million people.…”