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The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor today to discuss a very pressing and most distressing issue in the Great Plains States and much of the mountain West; and as can be seen by the map here, the drought map, we are currently experiencing a drought across the United States that affects roughly 45 percent of the land mass of the country.
In a normal year we can expect drought in maybe 10 percent or 15 percent of the country. And you can see by the severe brown marks and the red marks that the drought is not only extensive, it is extreme.
These are areas where essentially all the pastures are gone. The cattlemen have no feed left for the winter. They have had to sell off their herd in many cases because there is no way that they can feed their cattle. And as we have had the glut on the cattle markets, prices have declined and a great many cattlemen have taken huge losses, so we are seeing tremendous distress in the livestock industry, particularly in the cattle industry.
Also, what we have found is those who have raised crops have experienced a similar difficulty. The dry land crops are totally gone in all of those areas that are red and brown. And, of course, this has caused huge economic distress. Even those areas that are irrigated have lost substantially because one cannot run a center pivot fast enough to keep up with the drought. In many areas they have lost their ditch water. The water has been cut off because the rivers are dry. There is no water available. So even irrigated crops are severely impacted.
So some have said, well, what we have to do is take the money out of the new farm bill because there is a huge amount of money in there and just take it out of there. We have not been able to figure out how we can get enough money out of the farm bill without destroying the farm bill that will undo this huge problem. So as a result, the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Thune), the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moran) and myself have introduced legislation that we think addresses this problem.
At the present time we are estimated to lose $1.4 billion in the State of Nebraska alone. Kansas also is roughly $1.4 billion and the other States that we see here will have similar losses, so it is a huge loss. The thing that we are concerned about is if there were a hurricane that affected that amount of land mass in the United States, or if we had a wildfire that burned up that much area in the United States, or if we had a tornado that affected that much, or a flood or whatever, we would immediately have assistance. But a drought occurs slowly over time and it is not quite as visible, but the economic devastation is every bit as great as what these other disasters might have.
So we need help and we need it now. We cannot take the money out of the farm bill because there simply is not that much there. So what we have proposed is another solution, and that is that we look at this, at the spending currently in the farm bill.
We will see in the heavy blue line here what has been budgeted for the farm bill in the year 2002, roughly $19 billion. Yet, recent projections by CBO indicate that roughly $13 billion will be spent this year. So it is a $6 billion shortfall. And, you say, why is that? Well, the reason is because the drought, the drought has reduced production of corn, soybeans, milo, sorghum, rye, many other crops by 10 to 15 percent. Therefore, the price has risen. So as the price has risen, there is no need for government payments, no countercyclical payment, no loan deficiency payments. So as a result we will see a savings, so to speak, of roughly $6 billion, and the reason for the saving, if you want to call it that, is simply because we have had a drought. And those people who have been affected most by the drought, who have been hurt by the drought, will not receive any payments.
What we are proposing is we take this shortfall, this $5 billion or whatever, and allocate it to emergency drought assistance. It does not break the budget. It falls within what has already been budgeted. This contrasts sharply with what the other body has proposed. They want to add roughly $6 billion of new spending. We think this is fiscally responsible. We think it certainly addresses the issue that is going on in the West and other parts of the country, even in the southeastern part of the country. But the main thing we are trying to drive home is this is critical and this is not emergency spending. It is not because of low prices. It is because of natural disaster. It is disaster spending which we need badly.
Mr. Speaker, I urge careful consideration of my colleagues to this dilemma that we are now facing.
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