The House of Representatives voted to axe California’s planned retirement savings program, throwing the future of it and similar efforts around the country into serious doubt.

“Despite a plea from California Gov. Jerry Brown, the state’s GOP representatives voted unanimously [last week] on a resolution to block California and other states from setting up 401-K-type plans for private-sector workers who lack retirement benefits – a measure that sailed through the U.S. House of Representatives on a party-line vote,” the San Jose Mercury News reported.

Because the Labor Department enacted rules designed to enable those plans to be formed late in former President Obama’s last term, lawmakers are able to act to undo them. “The House passed the resolutions largely along party lines under a legislative mechanism known as the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to kill regulations rolled out during the final months of the previous administration,” as the Wall Street Journal explained. 

California pleading

In a letter to the California congressional delegation, Gov. Brown had admitted the plan would direct money away from the financial services industry, but pled for the broader menu of retirement options he said it would provide. “Brown, who signed legislation last year establishing the ‘Secure Choice’ program, called the retirement savings opportunity modest, but important,” according to the Sacramento Bee. “He said the labor department issued its rule to ensure the retirement schemes were financially and legally sound. Efforts to wipe away the Obama administration regulations could spur legal challenges to state programs like the one in California, and imperil future moves to enact the benefit in other states.”

Secure Choice promised to offer “automatic payroll deductions for as many as 7 million low- and middle-income workers whose employers don’t offer 401-k plans or other benefits,” the Mercury news noted. “Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland and Oregon have passed similar initiatives.”

Risky choices

The party-line split on the controversy has sharpened a debate over the distribution of retirement costs fueled by challenges on both sides. Republican lawmakers oppose the prospect of even greater public pension problems nationwide, while Democrats argue that private-sector pensions no longer cover the needs of retired workers to the degree they did in a different economic era. “Studies show that employees are 15 times more likely to save for retirement if they have a plan at work. But roughly half of American workers, many of whom are employed by small businesses, don’t have access to one,” AARP noted in a review critical of the Republican position.

Some state governments, already troubled by the prospect of public pensions crises, have found themselves torn between risking a private sector retirement crisis on the one hand and a funding crisis for private sector employee pensions on the other. The posture of many state officials has suggested that struggling with the latter may seem to them to be the safer political bet. “Fifteen state treasurers, including Republicans in Indiana, Idaho, Utah and Louisiana, wrote Congress on Tuesday opposing the effort to roll back the Obama-era rule, which they said ‘provides important flexibility to states and large municipalities as they seek to address the growing retirement crisis facing this country,'” according to The Hill. “The National Conference of State Legislatures also urged Congress to keep the rule in place.” 

At the same time, powerful private-sector interests have lined up an in-depth defense against supporters of the state pension plans, driven not only by self-interest but a concern that states’ track records on public pensions do not inspire confidence in their ability to successfully manage a broad new expansion of retiree benefit management into the private sector. “If Congress rolls back the rule, it would likely open retirement programs run by states to legal challenges,” The Hill added. 

GOP lawmakers from California and their supporters are accused of offering solutions that abandon responsible policies that follow federal law in protecting the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay-Delta Estuary’s ecosystem and its endangered species.

Democratic lawmakers from California and their supporters are accused of being too concerned about preserving the Delta at any cost, and in doing so showing indifference to the fate of poor people in the Central Valley who need agricultural jobs.

Both parties in Congress have been knocked for their inability to work together on a crucially important issue.

But recent media coverage has had a third focus of criticism: the Obama administration, which has been depicted as distracted and detached when it comes to helping California deal with its mass water shortage.

No ‘dynamic federal leadership’

Perhaps the toughest assessment yet came last week from the McClatchy newspaper chain’s Washington bureau. McClatchy’s Sacramento Bee and Fresno Bee papers gave it prominent play. Here’s a sampling:

With more than 70 percent of California now classified in a state of “exceptional” or “extreme” drought, Uncle Sam is floundering.

 

“We need leadership from the federal government,” pleaded Cannon Michael, a politically engaged farmer from Los Banos in California’s acutely dry San Joaquin Valley.

 

But so far, dynamic federal leadership has been lacking. Some of that is inevitable. Western water use poses too many inherent conflicts to unify all factions. Some people refuse to be led, and the drought is, at bottom, a state matter. Certain federal shortcomings, though, seem like self-inflicted wounds. …

 

The Obama administration lacks confirmed leaders in key positions. Four top water-related jobs at the Interior Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Council on Environmental Quality have remained vacant for months, at least in part because of resistance from Senate Republicans. …

 

President Barack Obama has not used his bully pulpit to persistently drive a Western water agenda. He has visited California 28 times during his presidency, but his lone trip to the state’s San Joaquin Valley, ground zero for the drought, occurred 18 months ago.

 

“I think the Obama administration is missing a golden opportunity to provide leadership,” Dan Beard, a Democrat and former Bureau of Reclamation commissioner, said in an interview. “So far, we’ve had nothing but radio silence from them on the drought.”

Congress setting a bad precedent?

But the White House rejects the narrative that it has done little. And CQ Weekly’s most recent analysis of Washington’s response to the drought depicted the most consequential federal failure in the drought response to lie with Congress. It noted the Obama administration had ordered $110 million in emergency drought relief measures to help Western states with most going to California. CQ Weekly said the inability of Congress to respond was particularly ominous for the future of federal environmental policies:

For the most part, the debate is not bogged down by partisanship — in fact, some Democrats are sounding like Republicans on select issues. Members of both parties want to help quench California’s thirst by directing more pumping from two massive government water projects and boosting water storage for times of need.

 

But divisions over states’ rights, the environment and the role of agriculture have left many in Washington at odds, and attempts to tackle the problem in previous years have foundered. Still, how Congress deals with drought in California could set a standard for policy reforms across the United States, as droughts affect more regions and science suggests such environmental disruptions could become increasingly common as the Earth’s climate warms.

The CQ Weekly piece praised Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is cited by virtually all Washington reporters who write about the federal response to California’s drought as being the adult in the room. Her reputation for centrism has often been boosted by her environmental moderation.

But after more than nine months of stop-and-start negotiations, Feinstein still hasn’t hit on a deal that both House Republicans and a majority of the Senate will accept.

Last year, hopes were raised after Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat who is California’s senior senator, and House Republicans reached agreement on a drought-amelioration package that included pushing for more water storage projects and increasing water exports south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. A bill introduced by freshman Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, passed the House in December, but some of its details relating to the relaxing of environmental regulations led Feinstein to oppose the measure, and it failed in the Senate.

Six months later, the California drought has gotten far more attention because of Gov. Jerry Brown’s April order of massive cutbacks in use by residents and most businesses. But as McClatchy is reporting, the House-Senate split over what to do remains intact:

WASHINGTON — Five months into a new Congress, and deep into a lasting drought, California water legislation still stymies and splits the state’s lawmakers.

 

Draft copies are tightly held, as if stamped Top Secret. Myriad details are in flux. The legislative timing, though a June 2 Senate hearing could yet happen, remains unsettled. Democrats are divided; some are distinctly unhappy.

 

It all sounds so familiar, and yet there’s still no telling how this movie ends.

 

“Right now, I don’t know,” a gloomy sounding California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Thursday, when asked about the prospects for a bill. “It’s very difficult to put something together. Obviously change is controversial, so to propose something and then not to be able to do it makes no sense.”

Fellow Dems accuse Feinstein of ‘secret jam job’

A bloc of Northern California House Democrats, meanwhile, has pressured the senator to be given a role in negotiations over a compromise.

That led to unusual on-the-record criticism directly from Feinstein: “It doesn’t do any good to say, ‘Let us see your language so we can rip it apart.’”

On water, she appears to have more agreements with Republicans than Democrats on some key issues — and they’ve noticed, as McClatchy has reported:

“We certainly hear about it, involving a sub-group of stakeholders working on drafts that we haven’t been allowed to see,” Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said in an interview. “Far from a transparent regular order, it feels like we’re right back to secrecy and exclusion, and that’s very disappointing.”

 

Complaints about secrecy and exclusion helped undermine legislation last year. Huffman and six other Northern California Democrats subsequently met with Feinstein in January.

 

That was their high-water mark. Since then, the lawmakers who represent the Delta say they’ve effectively been shut out even though they’ve been asked what they want.

 

“It’s a terrible way to do a bill,” Huffman said. “Instead of trying to do this right, which is inclusive, deliberate and transparent, this is a secret jam job.”

Brown administration not in the mix

None of recent coverage of water legislation maneuvering indicates the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown is trying to shape the congressional legislation.

In December, however, one of his Cabinet members issued a statement objecting to House Republicans’ approach and its focus on changing federal environmental policies in the Delta. “Our collective energies should be devoted to a long-term solution for California’s water needs in a way that rewards working together, as opposed to dividing interests,” said John Laird, secretary of the California Department of Natural Resources.

Last year 19 of California’s 55 members of the U.S. Congress drew pensions from a state-backed public retirement plan, according to a CalWatchdog.com analysis of financial disclosures for the year 2013.

Payments from 2013 – the last reported year available – came from municipal, education and state pension funds and ranged from annual payouts of $3,800 to $70,000. Four members take payments from two or more public pension funds.

The top recipient was Rep. Lois Capps, who collected a total of $70,049 in 2013 – $20,615 from the California State Teachers Retirement System and $49,434 from the University of California Retirement System.

The 77-year-old lawmaker from Santa Barbara is a former instructor at Santa Barbara City College. Capps has been receiving the dual pensions since 1998, when she first was elected.

Members of Congress receive a salary of $174,000. They are not prohibited from taking their taxpayer-subsidized retirement while serving in Washington.

Taking a state pension while serving in Congress is hardly noticed “because it happens in so many different layers that people aren’t tracking it,” said Steve Ellis, vice president for the Washington D.C.-based Taxpayers for Common Sense.

“And besides, the people who are getting this kind of information are the people who would be getting these payments in the future.”

He added that the system has no rules prohibiting what detractors call “double-dipping.”

“All of us are paying two sets of employees, one working and one retired,” Ellis said.

Executive benefits

But pensions are part of the compensation package, like any job in the private sector, insists Steve Maviglio, a California political consultant who represents unions that back public pensions.

“It’s like an executive who hops from one job to another,” Maviglio said. “Should they have to give up the benefits from a previous job?”

Besides, he said, “We’re trying to attract the best and the brightest to be public servants and if they are forced to give up the benefits they’ve earned at a previous job, it would kill that incentive [to serve].”

In addition to the 19 pensioners in the state’s Washington delegation, nine members note on their disclosures that they hold an interest in a public pension but are not yet taking the money.

The pension funds tapped include the County of San Mateo, which paid Rep. Anna Eshoo $12,020 for her time on the board of supervisors from 1982 to 1992; and Marin County, where Sen. Barbara Boxer drew $4,456 for serving on the county board of supervisors from 1976 to 1982. Boxer has announced her retirement beginning in Jan. 2017.

Rep. Scott Peters, 56, who served on the San Diego City Council from 2000 to 2008, noted on his disclosure that he received a $20,703 annual pension from the San Diego City Employees’ Retirement System, but donated it to the San Diego Library Department.

CalPERS and CalSTRS

The majority of the pension draws came from the state’s California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which administers the Legislators’ Retirement System. CalPERS covers members of the statehouse first elected prior to Nov. 1990, when voters passed Proposition 140. The initiative canceled pensions for future legislators and imposed term limits. The California Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act of 2013 took effect in January 2013 and greatly altered the plan, as well as major educator pension arrangements.

The California State Teachers Retirement System also is a major provider of pension income for U.S. lawmakers. And some, such as Rep. Michael Honda, get something from both sources.

Honda, 73, reported income of $38,135 from CalSTRS and $13,393 from CalPERS, plus $12,754 from the teacher system as part of a deceased-spouse family allowance.

Still others have not yet tapped their pension funds and report the accrued benefits as unearned income or an asset. Those funds are allowed to be reported in a broad range as the asset is seen with the potential for growth or reduction.

Rep. Judy Chu reports her pension with CalSTRS has a value of between $100,001 and $250,000 and her CalPERS fund between $1,001 and $15,000.

Chu, 61, served on the Monterey Park City Council and taught in the Los Angeles Community College District.

Rep. Tony Cardenas reported he will receive a pension from the city of Los Angeles when he turns 55, in 2018. His payout, he noted, is an “undetermined amount.”

Some members of the California delegation have seen their payments grow over the years at a rate outpacing standard interest returns for their funds.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s $55,690 pension payout in 2013 from her days as a member of the Board of Supervisors and mayor of San Francisco has grown 36 percent since 2002, when she collected $40,929. Her draw is based on 18 years of work ending in 1988. Her 2002 pension pay was equal to between $53,000 and $62,500 in 2013, according to a relative-worth calculation.

Feinstein, 81, first was elected to San Francisco city office in 1969.

Then there are the benefits that are too good to give up.

Even though federal lawmakers are privy to some generous health insurance, including dental care, former Rep. Lynn Woolsey, who retired in 2013 after 20 years in Congress, reported she still carried her vision and dental care from her days as a member of the Petaluma City Council from 1984 to 1993.

Steve Miller can be reached at: 517-775-9952 and avalanche50@hotmail.com. His website is: http://avalanche50.com/.

That’s actually up a little, from the 10 percent to 13 percent approval given Congress from 2010 to 2014.

Approval for Democrats in Congress clocks at 35 percent, which one would expect in a state with much larger Democratic voting registration than Republican. GOP members of Congress get just 23 percent approval.

Indeed, the approval numbers here are similar to party registration, with 43 percent registered Democrats and 28 percent registered Republican. Knock five to eight points off the registration numbers for each party to get the approval for Congress.

As to Republicans taking control of the U.S. Senate last November, giving them majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time since 2006, California Democrats are especially disapproving; 71 percent view it negatively. State Republicans take the opposite view, with 73 percent approving.

Overall — including Democrats, Republicans and those of other parties or no party — 49 percent don’t like GOP control of Congress, with 37 percent approving. That, too, represents the general Democratic leanings of Californians.

The poll was conducted Jan. 26 to Feb. 16, so it only reflects the preliminary jousting in Congress between the parties; and between the GOP leadership and Democratic President Obama. As wrangling over the federal budget and other controversies progresses, the numbers may change.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer’s retirement announcement earlier this month kicks off a major demographic shift in California’s congressional delegation, as aging Democratic women move closer to retirement. Democratic women are the oldest group in California’s congressional delegation from both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

California’s Congressional Delegation: Democratic women oldest group

The 104 women in the 114th Congress make up 19 percent of the members. In California, that percentage doubles — with women claiming 21 of 55 slots, or 38 percent.

Those numbers don’t tell the full story. There’s only one Republican woman from California in Congress, Rep. Mimi Walters of Orange County. Twenty Democratic women represent California in Washington, D.C. — near parity with their 21 Democratic male counterparts. Yet that parity is likely in jeopardy due to one factor: age.

At 81 years old, Dianne Feinstein is the oldest member of the United States Senate. She isn’t alone. Of the 15 members of California’s congressional delegation that are 68 years old or older, Democratic women take up 11 slots. The average age of California’s representatives in the 114th Congress, including both U.S. Senators, is 59 years old. For Democratic women, that figure jumps nearly a decade to 67 years old.

Even when you exclude Boxer and Feinstein from the tally and just go with House members, Democrats from California bring up the average age of the delegation. Five of the six oldest members of California’s congressional delegation are Democratic women:

• Rep Grace Napolitano of El Monte, age 78;
• Lois Capps of Santa Barbara, age 77;
• Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, age 76;
• House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, age 74;
• Lucille Roybal-Allard of Commerce, age 73.

Rep. Alan Lowenthal of Long Beach, another 73-year-old California Democrat, is a few months older than Roybal-Allard.

1992 Year of the Woman

Many of California’s Democratic women first claimed a spot in Congress in 1992’s “Year of the Woman.” While the history books highlight the record number of women elected to the U.S. Senate, California also sent Lynn Schenk, Jane Harman, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Anna Eshoo and Lynn Woolsey to the House of Representatives.

Robin Swanson, a California political strategist who has worked for the state’s top Democratic politicians, is optimistic that California is ready for another wave of women.

“We’re long overdue for another Year of the Woman,” she said.

More Democratic retirements around the corner

The remaining members of the class of 1992 are now among the oldest members of Congress and are, obviously, more likely to retire.

When asked about a possible retirement in 2016, Napolitano’s office was unambiguous. “Congresswoman Napolitano is not retiring,” said Jerry O’Donnell, her press secretary. “She plans to run for re-election.”  Despite her advancing years, Napolitano isn’t slowing down. Last week, she reintroduced H.R. 291, “W21: Water in the 21st Century,” a plan to provide “new incentives and investments to help local water agencies, residents and businesses to conserve, recycle and manage limited water supplies.”

A spokesperson for Capps was less emphatic, saying it was still too early to know whether the eight-term Central Coast congresswoman would call it quits this term.

“It’s been less than two weeks since the 114th Congress began, so her focus isn’t on 2016 yet,” said Capps’ spokesperson Chris Meagher. Her focus is “on representing the people of the Central Coast and fighting for the issues they care about.”

Intra-party challengers not waiting for retirements

Even if Capps and Napolitano decide to seek reelection, they could face upstart intra-party challengers —  thanks to California’s Top Two primary system. Older House Democrats have faced spirited challengers from younger politicians in the last two election cycles.

In 2012, then 80-year-old Rep. Pete Stark was unseated by fellow Democrat and 31-year-old challenger Eric Swalwell. Last November, Ro Khanna came within a few points of knocking off 73-year-old Rep. Mike Honda.

Age was a clear factor in both races, where the younger challengers portrayed the seasoned veterans as out-of-touch, especially on technological issues. Honda, according to emails obtained by San Jose Inside, needed his government staff’s help to “set up his personal Netflix account.”

In 2016, state-level politicians eager to move up California’s political food chain could get impatient, knowing un-elected Democratic challengers, such as Swalwell and Khanna, have cut in line.

Shift in Congressional demographics: 113th to 114th Congress

The 113th Congress, according to the Congressional Research Service:

• An overwhelming majority of Members of Congress with a college education.
• The dominant professions of Members are public service/politics, business and law.
• Most Members identify as Christians, and Protestants collectively constitute the majority religious affiliation.
• Roman Catholics account for the largest single religious denomination, and numerous other affiliations are represented.

In the 114th Congress, according to The Hill:

• There is a record number of female lawmakers at 104, alongside 430 men, following the departure of former Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.).
• Lawmakers have an average age of 57. The Senate is older than the House, with an average age of 61 to the lower chamber’s 57.
• Democrats on average are older than Republicans in both chambers, at 62 to 60 in the Senate and 59 to 54 in the House.

For years, leading GOP lawmakers have wanted to change the way that the nonpartisan congressional staff calculates — or, in Washington parlance, scores — the budgetary cost of changes to the tax code.

Budget scoring now is fairly straightforward: Just figure out how much more money a tax increase would produce for the Treasury or how much a tax cut would cost in lost revenue.

Republicans, however, want two key congressional offices to use complex models to try to predict the broader effect of hikes and cuts on the economy. The process is called dynamic scoring.

The reasoning behind this is obvious: When you tax more of something, you get less of it. Conversely, if you tax something less, you get more of it.

So if tax rates go up 10 percent, actual tax receipts won’t go up that much — maybe only 8 percent.

Sometimes a tax rate increase can be so high it reduces actual tax receipts. How can that be? Well, for example, if a tax rate rises to 100 percent, nobody would pay it. People or businesses would just stop working or producing.

It’s just like in your own life. Suppose you work 40 hours a week. If you double that, to 80 hours a week, will you get double the output? Maybe for a couple days, or even weeks. But not for long. And the reduction in output-per-hour will decrease faster the older you are.

The change in Congress also is important as a change in mentality. It’s a subtle shift that emphasizes increasing private production, instead of trying to squeeze as much as possible out of taxpayers.

And if the U.S. economy grows faster because of this, so will California’s economy.

I know some folks will disagree with me on this. OK. Explain how, if you increase taxes from 50 percent to 100 percent, revenues will double. (Instead of, as reality, dropping to zero.)

President Obama’s White House just released 3,415 new regulations, making 330 millions Americans into turkeys just before Thanksgiving. The Daily Caller reported:

While Americans are focused on what delicious foods they’re going to eat for Thanksgiving, the White House is focused on releasing its massive regulatory agenda — marking the fifth time the Obama administration has released its regulatory road map on the eve of a major holiday.

The federal Unified Agenda is the Obama administration’s regulatory road map, and it lays out thousands of regulations being finalized in the coming months. Under President Barack Obama, there has been a tradition of releasing the agenda late on Friday — and right before a major holiday.

Remember, if you violate even one of these intricate, indecipherable regulations, you can land in a federal prison for a long, long time.

It’s also rather sadistic for the Obama administration to release these regulations just as we settle down with friends and family for a good holiday dinner.

Among the regulations are more assaults on the coal industry, supposedly to fight a “global warming” that doesn’t exist — as shown by the record cold and snow blanketing much of the country.

But the alternative-energy profits must continue to be shoveled to enviro-billionaires such as Al Gore.

It doesn’t matter that Congress didn’t approve the new regulations; nor that American voters dumped Obama’s fellow Democrats from power in the U.S. Senate less than a month ago.

As we saw with his immigration amnesty edict, he just does what he wants, the Constitution be damned — just like any autocrat.

Anyway … Happy Thanksgiving!

That’s still pretty low for this expensive state. So Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., is proposing $26 an hour.

That still seems pretty chintsy. Members of Congress make $174,000 a year. Assuming a 40 hour work week (not including schmoozing at parties, campaigning, calling donors for cash, etc.), that’s $181 an hour.

A local burger flipper adds more to the economy than any member of Congress — especially the “small government” Republicans who keep increasing government.

So let’s boost the minimum wage to $181 an hour.

H.R. 3964 by California Congressmen David G. Valadao, CA-21, Devin Nunes, CA-22, and Kevin McCarthy, CA-23, is a comprehensive bill to resolve the water crisis in California, according to the congressmen.

“H.R. 3964 is an unwelcome and divisive intrusion into California’s efforts to manage this severe crisis,” Brown wrote in a letter to the Congressmen. “It would override state laws and protections, and mandate that certain water interests come out ahead of others. It falsely suggests the promise of water relief when that is simply not possible given the scarcity of water supplies.”

H.R. 3964 would undo years of environmental dominance in California’s water priorities.

Brown said the bill would “re-open old water wounds undermining years of progress toward reaching a collaborative long-term solution to our water needs.”

Valadeo, Nunes and McCarthy say the bill would undo a San Joaquin River restoration program, would improve water access for Valley farms. The San Joaquin restoration program to restore flows to the San Joaquin River from Friant Dam to the confluence of Merced River and restore a self-sustaining Chinook salmon fishery.

What Brown could be angry about is the California Department of Water Resources announced in November that the Central Valley would only get five percent of the water it needs in 2014. Valadeo’s office reported Thursday, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Michael Connor upheld Valadao’s position, along with other Central Valley lawmakers, regarding rescheduled water deliveries for Central Valley Project water contractors. The letter to the Bureau urged the Administration to reconsider halting rescheduled water deliveries to San Joaquin Valley farmers. The letter stated strong opposition to the use of rescheduled water to meet other Central Valley Project water delivery needs at the expense of farmers and contractors in the Valley.

In an interview I did in November with Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford, he explained:

“California has had two dry years, the Central Valley is suffering under the San Joaquin River Restoration Program, a federal program to restore flows to the San Joaquin River from Friant Dam to the confluence of Merced River, in order to restore Chinook salmon in the river. “Billions are being spent on dry salmon runs,” Vidak said. “We’re spending $2 million to $3 million per fish!”

“H.R. 3964, the Sacramento–San Joaquin Valley Emergency Water Delivery Act restores water reliability to California communities by codifying the bipartisan Bay-Delta Accord,” Valadeo’s website says. “It also reforms onerous federal laws – such as the Central Valley Project Improvement Act and the San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement Act – that have severely curtailed water deliveries and resulted in hundreds of billions of gallons of badly needed water being flushed into the ocean.” Valadeo represents Kings County and portions of Fresno, Tulare, and Kern Counties, three of the hardest-hit counties in the recession and drought.

“The current California drought is a crisis exacerbated by the failure of government to ensure water flows to our communities and farms,” said Rep. McCarthy. “Today, led by my good friend Rep. David Valadao, the entire California Republican delegation in the House introduced legislation to put families before fish. One more day cannot go by without addressing the shortage of a resource so precious to our economy and wellbeing. It is time, as representatives for the entire state, that Senator Boxer and Senator Feinstein support drought stricken Californians and get behind this legislation.”

Valadeo’s website recently reported House Republicans passed comprehensive water policy reform legislation for California (H.R. 1837) in February 2012. The bill would have mitigated the water crisis now going on in the Central Valley. However, the bill died in the Senate “due to the opposition of California’s Democratic Senators,” Valadeo’s website reported. “No Senate hearings were held, nor were any amendments offered or alternatives proposed. Furthermore, the Senate recently prevented the addition of emergency drought relief provisions for California in the Farm Bill,” the website said.