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Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to start my remarks today by thanking President Trump, Secretary Rollins, Secretary Rubio, and Deputy Secretary of State Landau for their efforts in securing a new agreement with the country of Mexico to send much needed water to South Texas.
This has been a longstanding problem. I remember years ago being in Mexico City when I was attorney general of Texas talking about getting the Mexican Government to live up to their responsibilities under this treaty, which requires them to deliver water to the United States on a regular basis. But their habit has been to delay the delivery of that water until the end of the 5-year period of the treaty. Obviously, in the interim, Mexican farmers have the water they need to grow the crops they need to grow and leave Texas agriculture high and dry.
But it is important that we get this water flowing again because Mexico has repeatedly refused to comply with the terms of the treaty in a timely manner.
We worked with the Biden administration. I remember talking to Secretary Blinken and introducing legislation, talking to my colleagues across the aisle about coming up with some carrots and sticks that we might be able to use to get Mexico to live up to its responsibilities, but the Biden administration really wasn't particularly interested in solving the problem.
I have been working here in the Congress, as have my colleagues both in the Senate and the House, particularly our Texas delegation in the House of Representatives, to get them to live up to their responsibilities, and I think we have come to realize that the current treaty, which was signed back in 1944, has become obsolete; that we need some interim measures and metrics to ensure that there are regular annual water deliveries for Texas and our agricultural industry. But yesterday's announcement was an important step forward doing just that. And, again, I thank the President, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Deputy Secretary of State, and the Secretary of State for their efforts to secure this important and long-overdue payment of water to south Texas.
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