Jim Costa

This is another Band-Aid approach that has about as much chance to solve the dairy price crisis as taking an aspirin would have to cure cancer.

Mr. Chairman, we need to get a handle on this as we move forward on whatever long-term solutions we find...

I think we need to sit down and consider what else could be done to help address this situation.

I have had two suicides in the San Joaquin Valley and areas among dairymen that Congressman Cardoza, Nunes and I represent, and we have no outlook for how it can improve.

I mean, we could lose 20 or 25 percent of the dairy industry in California--I don't know what the estimates would be nationwide--if we are not able to respond in the short term and in the longer term, in my view.

I would like to see California join the Federal Order if the incentives are put in place.

the worst I have ever seen it, in our family, in my family's generation

I think we have to restructure the entire Federal Order.

Clearly, the tools that they have at hand are not working.

Someone is lying about this surplus thing or maybe it has something to do with the record amount of protein concentrates being imported and made into garbage cheese.

if we are going to try to change this cycle, these boom-and-bust cycles continuing to be narrow, it seems to me that the industry has to come together

The problem is simply stated: We have too many farms with too many cows producing too much milk for the markets that we have at this time.

this Subcommittee has provided in the full Committee as it relates to what has been the meltdown of the dairy industry nationwide

Dairy producers have to get together.

Milk prices have been so low for so long that we must act quickly, or in a few short months there will be a massive exit of dairy farmers like you can't possibly imagine.

In my county alone, there are 25 dairies that have either filed, or are on the edge of filing, for bankruptcy.

We have a very serious, serious problem, a critical one.

What it does add up to is a lot of greed and corruption.

We are committed to helping the dairy farmers and to bring some price stabilization.

The impact will be huge if we do not change something in the very near future.

We have moved from deep recession in the communities that Congressman Cardoza and I represent to depression unemployment numbers.

I am not here to defend the California Air Resources Board. Let's make that clear.

I want to thank you and the Ranking Member for allowing me to make comments that I think are critical.

Thank you very much, Madame Chairwoman, for hosting this important hearing on the economic stimulus and its impact on water conditions as it affects our entire country and the potential for the stimulus package to try to assist in those…

This is a crisis that we are facing again in the Valley.