Angie Craig: “I agree totally and I agree for all the reasons the Senator from California put forward--and a couple more. One of the…”

“I agree totally and I agree for all the reasons the Senator from California put forward--and a couple more. One of the things the Congress is committed to--both the Senators on the floor at this moment have voted for it--is to secure our Southwest border. We are investing heavily on that at this moment, and we should be. There is no question about that. We may argue about how many miles of fence, but we all recognize an unsecured border is a very problematic thing. It is closing. It is becoming secure and we are going to continue to invest in it. As we are doing that, all of these other problems are beginning to happen because that workforce is moving around and they are not staying with agriculture. The Senator lost a tremendous amount this year in the San Joaquin, in the greater agricultural area of California. I spoke with young farmers and ranchers of the Idaho Farm Bureau this weekend. We have lost hundreds of millions--nowhere near what the Senator from California has lost, but we have a different kind of agriculture. The intensity of ours, the hand labor of ours is simply not as great as the Senator's. But there is a real problem and that problem is quite simple. If we don't get this corrected, we may well be looking at $5 billion worth of agricultural loss this year, and half of that or more will come from California alone, let alone all the other areas, and I may even be conservative in my guesstimate. So the Senator is absolutely right.”