Calvin M. Dooley

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the accomplishments of Mr. Loron Hodge, the Executive Director of the Kern County Farm Bureau. Mr. Hodge will be retiring this fall after 25 years of advocating on behalf of the agricultural community in Kern County.

Loron Hodge was born in Arkansas in 1939, where he lived until his father accepted a job as a foreman on a ranch in Tulare County, California. It was here that Mr. Hodge first learned about farming by working on a family farm with his brother. After working in the Central Valley's agricultural economy, Mr. Hodge worked in sales in Porterville, California until 1970. In 1970, Mr. Hodge moved from Porterville to accept a job as the Assistant Manager at the Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Hodge was promoted to Manager of the Chamber of Commerce.

In 1979, Mr. Hodge became the Executive Director of the Kern County Farm Bureau. Since that time, his hard work and dedication have made him a valuable advocate for farmers and ranchers in Kern County, California. In his 25 years as Executive Director, Mr. Hodge made many contributions that improved the Farm Bureau's operations and expanded its activities. Mr. Hodge played a vital role in the acquisition of the former Chamber of Commerce building, which is now the current home of the Kern County Farm Bureau. In addition to helping to improve the infrastructure of the Farm Bureau, Mr. Hodge helped to expand the Farm Bureau's agricultural education programs, including Farm Day in the City and the Teacher's Ag Seminar, which educates students and teachers throughout Kern County and America about the importance of the agriculture industry. As a result of his hard work, the Farm Bureau's membership reached an all-time high in 2001.

In addition to his role on the Kern County Farm Bureau, Mr. Hodge is a manager of the Water Association of Kern County and member of the Kern Taxpayers Association, the San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution Control District and the Committee of Industries. In the past, Mr. Hodge has served on the boards of the Kern Historical Society, Project Clean Air and is former secretary of the Coalition to Protect Private Property Rights.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that you and my distinguished colleagues join me in thanking Mr. Loron Hodge for his dedicated service to the San Joaquin Valley and wishing him well upon his retirement from the Kern County Farm Bureau.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 3242, the Specialty Crops Competitiveness Act of 2004, albeit with reservations about the scaled down version of the substitute bill that comes before us today.

When I joined Representative Doug Ose last year in introducing H.R. 3242, it was a natural reflection of my longstanding interest in a prosperous and competitive specialty crops sector.

U.S. farm policy has long overlooked the importance of specialty crops, despite the fact that these non-subsidized crops account for the majority of crop production in this country. Instead, U.S. farm policy has tended to focus on so-called ``program'' crops, such as cotton, rice, sugar, peanuts, wheat, corn, oilseeds, feed grains, and others, which account for less than half of domestic production.

H.R. 3242 was introduced not to bring fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, and other horticultural products into the category of ``program commodities'' but instead to focus federal attention and resources on the problems facing this segment of U.S. agriculture. The bill as introduced included various regulatory reforms as well as a modest level of federal dollars to invest in non-market-distorting ways in the competitiveness of the U.S. specialty crop sector.

As the lead Democrat sponsor of H.R. 3242, however, I am very disappointed that the version of the bill that moved out of the House Agriculture Committee and is before us today is significantly scaled down from the original bill. In particular, the federal funding provided by this substitute bill has gone from a mandatory spending level of $508 million per year for five years, to a discretionary authorization of only $54 million per year that is further subject to annual appropriations.

This is a far cry from the level of federal commitment to the specialty crop sector that is warranted.

Specialty crops have an annual farm-gate value of $52 billion and receive no federal subsidies. Program crops, on the other hand, have a farm-gate value of only $48 billion. Yet the program commodities received federal subsidies in the amount of $12-13 billion, the equivalent of 27 percent of their farm-gate value.

This bill does not change the fact that producers of specialty crops receive no federal subsidy payments, and instead rely solely on the market for their income. No new federal price supports, direct payments, marketing loans, or counter-cyclical payments are created in this bill.

A serious federal commitment to this sector, however, requires a serious level of federal dollars.

The bulk of federal expenditures under H.R. 3242 would go to a block grant program that would distribute federal dollars to interested states for research, marketing, promotion, and other competitiveness- enhancing programs for their specialty crop industries. These funds are designed to increase consumer awareness and demand for specialty crop products and

otherwise strengthen U.S. producers' ability to supply a safe, nutritious and quality product to both domestic and foreign markets.

Unfortunately, the bill as amended drastically reduced the federal commitment to this block grant proposal, from $470 million in mandatory spending down to $44.5 million in discretionary spending.

During the Agriculture Committee's markup of this bill, I attempted to restore merely half of the mandatory funds provided under the original bill for the block grant program. In order to keep the legislation revenue-neutral from a budgetary standpoint, I offered two separate alternative offsets--one based on a small, pro rata reduction in direct fixed payments to program commodity producers, and the other based on a bipartisan payment limitations proposal pending in the Senate (S. 667).

My amendment to finance the cost of a mandatory $220 million per year block grant program for specialty crops would have reduced the annual federal subsidies received by program crops by merely 1.7 percent. As a percent of program crop gross income, this represents a 0.36 percent reduction. Yet even this minuscule reduction encountered strong resistance by those farm and commodity organizations benefiting from these federal subsidies today.

The inequitable distribution of federal expenditures between program commodities and non-subsidized specialty crops must be changed. The United States can no longer afford to short-change the majority of its crop producers who rely on market forces--not federal program payments--to drive their income. The fact that the current farm bill, enacted in 2002, does not expire until 2007 is no excuse for not reallocating a small portion of federal expenditures by less than 2 percent.

Some of my colleagues seek to support the specialty crop sector without simultaneously disturbing the enormous benefits enjoyed by the program commodities. However, federal dollars are scarce resources and a more equitable distribution of these limited resources is long overdue. I hope my colleagues will eventually agree.

In the meantime, I urge adoption of this legislation today and hope that it will lay an effective foundation for a stronger federal investment in our specialty crop sector in future years.

Mr. Speaker, first off, I want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), and the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), as well as Senator Feinstein, for really puttingtogether a bipartisan product that is in the interest of all Californians.

All too often in the past, during my tenure at Congress, when we had a California water bill on the floor, a lot of our colleagues would shudder because oftentimes that would end up in almost a civil war among the Californians because California water issues have been difficult to solve. It has been difficult to strike that balance between providing for enhancement of the environment and still meeting the economic needs of our State through our agriculture sector as well as our municipal sector.

That is what is important about this bill, because it is a rare occasion, I hope marking a turning point, where we are solving our problems by coming together, understanding that we can provide greater certainty in the delivery of water to enhance the environment as well as to expand our economy by finding ways in which we can provide for greater conservation, greater storage, and more efficient management of our water supplies.

I think that this, hopefully, is a turning point because all too often in the past we have seen too many of the interests in California water that have retreated to the courts, that have relied on the courts to try to solve some of the difficult choices that we have to make. And I think the leadership that was demonstrated by the parties that I mentioned earlier hopefully is a call to action among all the interests impacted by California water, that they need to come together in a cooperative and a constructive manner to try to build upon this effort to ensure that we are going to have that balanced approach in utilizing the water in the State of California that could enhance our environment and, once again, ensure that we are providing the economic future which is so important to the citizens of our State.

I rise in strong support of the Senate amendments to H.R. 2828, the Calfed Bay-Delta Authorization Act.

Passage today will finally enable this vitally important legislation, long in the making, to be sent to the President for signature.

The Senate-passed version we have now before us merges many of the provisions in the House bill with a handful of changes negotiated after the House passed its version on July 9 of this year. It reflects a careful balance and set of compromises that represent our best chance for this bill becoming law this year.

The successful evolution of this bill is a credit to the leadership of many of my colleagues in the California delegation. I want to give special recognition, however, to Senators Feinstein and Boxer, and Representatives Pombo, Calvert, Napolitano and Cardoza for their steadfast stewardship and commitment.

On a bipartisan basis, these and other Members worked long and hard to bring parties together. We consulted a wide range of affected stakeholders, both regional and national. We tried to bring a visionary yet pragmatic approach to the management of California's water resources. During each step of the legislative process, we tried to improve on the bill and strengthen its base of support.

This bill authorizes $389 million for water projects in the CALFED program over the six-year-period FY 2005 through 2010. It creates new water supplies, improves water quality and reliability, and ensures ecosystem restoration. It evenhandedly provides for California's different water interests, implementing the CALFED program in a balanced manner.

One area of difference between the House and Senate-passed bills focused on the House provision that would have pre-authorized certain water storage projects, subject only to a Congressional disapproval resolution. I appreciate the interest of certain House Members to expedite the very lengthy process now involved in getting water storage projects from design to implementation. Nevertheless, the preauthorization provision of the House bill was met in the Senate with objections on both sides of the aisle and threatens to stand in the way of this bill becoming law this year.

Instead of a pre-authorized provision, the Senate amendments explicitly authorize groundwater storage and feasibility studies for major new off-stream and expanded reservoirs, including the enlargement of Los Vaqueros reservoir, the raise of Shasta Dam, Upper San Joaquin surface storage, and Sites Reservoir. With these four storage projects, California could acquire an additional 3.2 million acre feet of storage.

In addition, the Senate amendments include new procedures and safeguards if Congress fails to approve a storage project by the end of the Congressional session following the submission to Congress of a federal feasibility study. In such a case, the Secretary of Interior must, within 180 days, make a finding of ``imbalance'' and report to Congress on revised schedules and alternatives to rebalance the CALFED Program.

Although the Senate amendment does not expedite the storage authorization process as directly as the House bill attempted to do, it is an improvement over the status quo. Moreover, an even larger point must not be lost in this discussion.

Any water storage project, whether currently in the pipeline or subject to the new authority in this bill, requires appropriated funds. Due to the fact that Federal authorization for the CALFED program has lapsed, federal appropriations are not currently being approved for CALFED. This fact is disadvantaging water users and water projects throughout California.

The time has come for Congress to reauthorize the CALFED program, and allow

projects--for water quality, water supply, and fisheries protection--to move forward.

I urge my colleagues to vote today in support of the Senate amendments to H.R. 2828.