National Integrated Drought Information System Reauthorization Act of 2014

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 2431, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in support of H.R. 2431, the National Integrated Drought Information System Reauthorization Act of 2013. This vital program, known as NIDIS, was originated by my friend and former committee chair, Mr. Ralph Hall, in 2006. The program provides critical drought information to communities all across our Nation.

Over the past three decades, it is estimated that droughts have cost our country hundreds of billions of dollars in economic impacts. Loss estimates from the 2012 drought alone run upwards of $70 billion. Moreover, the effects of climate change are anticipated to exacerbate this problem in many parts of the country, including my home State of Texas.

Right now, California is experiencing its driest period in recorded history. Sixty-seven percent of the State of California is experiencing extreme or exceptional drought conditions. We all know that farmers and ranchers bear the brunt of these dry conditions. That hits the pocketbooks of every American as food prices do go up, but the damage is not limited to agriculture.

For instance, in the West, conditions are again ripe for extreme wildfires that scarred more than 9 million acres last year, putting homes and properties in jeopardy.

Tourism is suffering as water levels in lakes and rivers plummet and snow packs languish, leaving boats on dry land and skis in the attic. Communities are imposing water restrictions, and power plants and grid operators are taking a serious look at the emergency plans should water for cooling towers and hydroelectric dams fall short.

If you look at the top five most expensive disasters in the United States since 1980, three of those are due to drought. The NIDIS program is intended to help alleviate some of the economic impacts of drought.

Notably, one of the program's goals is to improve drought early warning. Advanced warning of impending droughts would allow States, localities, and farmers to better plan their activities so that the economic costs associated with droughts could be reduced or mitigated.

In light of the scope of the economic impacts of drought, and the potential of the NIDIS program to lessen these impacts, I remain concerned about the authorization levels in H.R. 2431. My Democratic colleagues and I tried to modestly increase the authorization levels during committee consideration of the bill, but we were not successful.

Every witness who has ever testified or spoken to our committee about this program has highlighted the need to improve the program's early warning capability. This isn't a goal that can be accomplished for free. It will take a sustained investment of additional funds to achieve results we desperately need.

While I wish the authorization numbers in the bill before us today were higher, they are much better than the numbers in the Senate bill, which locks the program into a funding cap that is below current spending for the next 5 years.

When the Federal Government is spending tens of billions of dollars per year to mitigate the effects of drought, I think it makes sense to spend a couple million extra dollars to try to reduce those massive costs to our taxpayers in our communities. It is pretty clear that in this instance an ounce of prevention will get us a pound of cure.

In spite of these concerns, however, I support H.R. 2431 and the reauthorization of NIDIS, a program which provides crucial information to help our farmers and communities prepare for and mitigate the impacts of drought.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I would simply urge support for H.R. 2431, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize passage this week of three important pieces of legislation: H.R. 2431, the National Integrated Drought Information System Reauthorization Act of 2013; S. 25, the vehicle which included the military retiree COLA fix and SGR bill; and H.R. 3448, the Small Cap Liquidity Reform Act. Additionally, I would like to make clear that I would have opposed S. 540, the Debt Limit Extension. Unfortunately, I was not able to vote on final passage of these important bills because of much needed hip replacement surgery. I guess I'm finally being paid back for playing rugby all through college and dental school.

H.R. 2431, National Integrated Drought Information System Reauthorization Act of 2013, is important legislation that will provide critical benefits for ranchers, waters users and local communities allowing them to better prepare and respond to extreme drought conditions that are continuing to plague the West as well as rural communities.

S. 25 reverses the cost of living adjustment (COLA) cuts for working- age military retirees that was found in the Bipartisan Budget Act. I voted against the flawed Bipartisan Budget Act because it increased spending levels by $45 billion in one year and $63 billion over the course of two years. To pay for those increases, the Bipartisan Budget Act erased various, if not all, spending cuts from the Budget Control Act which passed back in 2011. Additionally, the Bipartisan Budget Act reduced the annual retirement COLA for working age military retirees by one full percentage point. I found this provision to be completely unacceptable and don't believe we should be balancing our budget on the backs of our veterans. As S. 25 repeals this provision that penalizes our military retirees and includes a payfor, I would have supported this legislation.

H.R. 3448, the Small Cap Liquidity Reform Act of 2013 is important legislation that establishes an optional liquidity pilot program which will benefit the securities of small emerging growth companies.

Finally, I want to reiterate that I would have opposed S. 540, the Debt Limit Extension. Back in 2011, we reached an understanding that if we're going to raise the debt ceiling and not jeopardize the nation's credit, then we need to attach reforms to each debt ceiling increase so that we reduce the need to constantly raise the debt ceiling and we start living within our means. This increase violates those principles. Although some like to call this a ``clean'' debt ceiling increase, there is nothing clean about borrowing another trillion dollars; this is as messy as it gets and the term ``clean'' is propaganda as far as I'm concerned. The bottom line is that our nation has a spending addiction--it's past the point of a problem--when we must continually raise the debt ceiling to accommodate our dangerous spending habits. At what point does it stop? How is it possible that we couldn't include a single reform in this legislation? I don't want our country to default but I wouldn't have voted to give the President a blank check. The federal government will collect an estimated $3 trillion in taxes from October 1, 2013 until September 30, 2014. We do have the ability to live within our means and it's time we make the hard decisions necessary to make that happen.

Had I been present for these votes, I would have voted in support of these three important bills with a ``yea'' vote on rollcall Numbers 55, 60 and 62. I would have opposed increasing the debt ceiling and voted ``nay'' on rollcall Numbers 61.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2431) to reauthorize the National Integrated Drought Information System as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 2431, the bill now under consideration.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 2431, a bill to reauthorize the National Integrated Drought Information System.

I want to thank Chairman Smith for his good work in bringing this bill to the House floor and for his bipartisan support. I also want to thank the gentleman and Representative Ben Lujan of New Mexico for joining me as an original sponsor. In 1998, Congress passed the National Drought Policy Act, establishing a Commission to provide recommendations on Federal drought policies.

The concept of creating a national drought monitoring and information system was proposed by the Commission in its 2000 report and promoted by various stakeholders, including the Western Governors' Association and in the 2004 report, ``Creating a Drought Early Warning System for the 21st Century.''

I was pleased to become involved in this effort with former Congressman and now-Senator Mark Udall and to introduce the NIDIS Act of 2006, which Congress passed and became public law.

NIDIS is administered within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NIDIS established the U.S. Drought Portal, which has become a very valuable resource for decisionmakers at the Federal, State, and local levels, and for farmers, businessmen, and individuals.

This Web site provides current data for weather observations, early warnings about droughts, and support services for managing droughts. The Web site includes the U.S. Drought Monitor map, another valuable feature that is updated weekly. For example, according to the most recent Drought Monitor map, about 21 percent of the U.S. is experiencing severe to exceptional drought conditions. More than 56 percent of the country has abnormally dry to exceptional drought conditions.

Madam Speaker, NIDIS is an example of a program that is working effectively and that has broad support. Rather than creating a new government bureaucracy, NIDIS represents a collaborative framework between Federal, states, and academic partners.

The NIDIS reauthorization will improve interagency coordination, early warnings, critical data sharing, and decision services related to drought. The bill encourages further research, monitoring, and forecasting, along with further development of regional early warning systems.

Madam Speaker, reauthorizing NIDIS will strengthen this important program and will help our State, it will help the local, and it will help the Federal officials, farmers, and water managers better prepare for and respond to drought.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith), the chairman of the full committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert).

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the former chairman of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee for yielding me time.

H.R. 2431, the National Integrated Drought Information System Reauthorization Act of 2013, makes minor improvements to the NIDIS program and helps establish better drought forecasting and coordination.

I am glad that the Science, Space, and Technology Committee's chairman emeritus, Congressman Ralph Hall of Texas, is the lead sponsor of this bill and the original author of the NIDIS authorization in 2006. I thank the gentleman for his persistent leadership over the years on this issue.

Recent droughts in Texas and around the country have been severe. The NIDIS program has helped State and local governments, farmers, ranchers, and others both monitor and predict drought conditions.

More than one-third of the United States is currently experiencing moderate to severe drought conditions. By some estimates, the historic drought in 2012 cost our national economy as much as $70 billion.

NIDIS is a good program that has a history of bipartisan support. It represents the kind of interagency and intergovernmental cooperation that we need to reauthorize in this difficult fiscal environment.

As a success story, the NIDIS program currently operates the U.S. Drought Portal, a Web site that features a range of services related to drought. This includes historical data on past droughts, current data from climate observations, early warnings about emerging and potential droughts, decision support services for managing droughts, and a forum for stakeholders to discuss drought-related issues.

These services have been vital to our efforts to better forecast as well as understand the conditions that lead to drought. This bill reauthorizes an important program that provides early warnings about potential droughts. It also supports services for local and State decisionmakers to better manage and prepare for drought conditions.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas, though at this moment I feel like I am surrounded by Texans in this particular discussion.

I am from Arizona. I am actually from the desert part of Arizona in the desert Southwest. So why is a bill such as H.R. 2431 so important to us?

The data collection and the management of the data models for those of us

who are in an arid region of the country is really, really important to us. We have come so far in the last couple of decades. The ability for my water management authorities in our reservoirs to know what is happening in the snowpacks all the way up into Colorado and on this side of the Continental Divide and learning whether we are moving into a ``La Nina'' or ``El Nino'' year--which actually makes huge differences to the expected rainfall, particularly in the winter months, in the desert Southwest--is important to us because we are getting better and better at forecasting even a year out in our expectations.

And so I have great appreciation for the gentlewoman from Texas, the chairman emeritus, and the other chairman from Texas, one more time-- remember, as Texans, you are easterners to those of us in Arizona-- because this bill is appreciated.

I know there is always a discussion about funding. But one of my great interests in this is the continued movement of the data-sharing as our universities across the country, particularly in the Southwest, build better and better and healthier and more robust models and the ability for that data to help States like mine manage our water resources into the future.