The Free Lance sits down with U.S. Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, for
a Q
&
amp;A. In the video, listen as Farr talks about off-shore
drilling and the Iraq war.
Free Lance:
To start off, what program or programs has your office been most focused on this past year and why?
Sam Farr:
Everything. I sit on the appropriations committee and I’m one of 435 members of Congress, and that’s the best committee to sit on because it deals with all the money that’s spent. And my interest has been trying to make sure that the federal programs that are in this county, San Benito County, are adequately addressed. Then you have some unique federal properties like Pinnacles National Monument that I kind of shepherd because no one else is going to take a look at them.
And some of the things, specifically in San Benito County, what I’ve been very interested in working with this county over a number of years is really building up, because it’s a freebie, is tourism. In a sense that we really need to, the rural California in which Hollister is sitting in the middle of, the big metropolis to the north and the bigger metropolis to the way south, what Californians are interested in is scenery and open space, and that’s what you raise here. …
How do you get people into it, and the condors are a huge draw. You couldn’t even invent that kind of draw that watchable wildlife brings. … Where do they go? What do they need? They are going to spend a night, where are they going to sleep – what are they going to eat? …
I think the best attack against a failing economy is going back to your roots. Historical town, well-locationed, beautiful assets around like the Pinnacles, Silver Creek in other areas – how do we build on that?
And that’s not necessarily a congressional issue, but I’ve served as a county supervisor and so I really know local county issues. I’ve served 13 years in the California Legislature, and in California Legislature I created a tourism caucus and when I got to Congress I realized that I needed something similar there, so we’ve created the tourism caucus. And I’ve been working with San Benito County to upgrade the Pinnacles, which is a national monument title, to a national park model. I’ve been working with your chamber and historical groups – we’ve had several meetings to try to figure, how do we market San Benito County?
Essentially, what are all the different things we can do here in developing day schedules with the idea in making those appealable to people who may be staying on the Monterey Peninsula or in Santa Cruz, and I’m trying to work on these tourism issues to make it a little regional thing. My take on it … I haven’t seen all of the United States, but I’ve certainly heard a lot of people talk about parts of the United States … I don’t think there’s any geographical region in the United States that has more to offer than our three counties.
FL:
A national problem amplified in San Benito County is the foreclosure crisis. How close have you watched the situation? What have you done to combat it, if anything.
Farr:
Well again, it’s a question of, what is the federal responsibility? How we got into it was a good example of why we want people licensed, and you know, a lot of people say, ‘Hey, we don’t want to be a licenser in our profession, the mortgage brokers have never been licensed.’ So you have a lot of shoddy people that rushed in because they weren’t licensed and they used non-conventional ways of placing loans that weren’t in convention … and nobody was keeping track of this stuff because people were going behind the scenes, behind the traditional measurements using the big investments, the high-risk investments, and it just got out of hand.
What the Realtors were complaining about prior to this, and still complaining, is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack limits, low limits, were at $370,000 and that was really impacting buying houses in California. So we’ve just raised those to $750,000 and that is really going to help.
When these properties become attractive again, when the economy picks up again, it’ll really help the lending business … The government wasn’t the cause of these foreclosures – it was essentially the private sector running amok. We’ve tried to clean up the licenser practice and tried to work with the lending industry and tighten and yet expand … The best thing to do is try to get the economy back in shape.
FL
Being an opponent of the Iraq war, how do you feel on the military’s current standing there and what are your thoughts about the perceived success of the surge?
Farr
I’ve never supported this war, so if you can argue the months of this and that but the bigger picture is, I think that is a diversionary tactic to take us away from the amount of money we’ve spent, which has been more than we’ve spent on the entire state of California.
So Iraq has less people than the state of California, and as such we’re spending all these national assets. If we spent the same amount of money in California, we wouldn’t be sitting here today worried about working on the margins with this crazy state budget. I think it’s in our national interest, and that means it’s international interest as well, to get out of Iraq ASAP. And I don’t believe these surges – and surge doesn’t mean anything if these Iraqis don’t want to take over their government.
This is about Iraqis, not about whether or not there is more or less American troops in Iraq. We have got to get the hell out of there, no matter what the number is, and Iraqis need to take over … There has to be an global investment in Iraq, not just an American investment.
FL
While you’re an advocate for ocean preservation and while talk nationally has shifted toward the notion of drilling for oil off shore as gas prices have affected just about every level of the economy, where do you stand on the idea to drill off the coast of CA and what are you doing to get involved in the issue?
Farr
We’ll, I’m doing everything I can to oppose drilling off the coast of California because Californians don’t want it. And Californians don’t owe anything to anybody when it comes to energy use because even though we are a big state full of hot tubs and gas-guzzling cars, we still have achieved the lowest per-capita energy use in the United States. So if the rest of the country would own up to the responsibility that California has shown in developing alternative energy in solar, wind, bio-mass, geothermal, hydro and even a nuclear plant, if the rest of nation would invest like we have in those things and reduce their consumption, we wouldn’t have this problem.
And secondly, the most importantly, is that all the oil that is being imported is going into American cars. That’s where the oil fuels go, they go into a transportation structure. Our energy plants are run on coal, natural gas, as Moss Landing is and some nuclear, some hydro, and what we’re doing now is generating solar and wind in California. So if the transportation mode is the problem for our consumption of gasoline, it seems to me that the answer isn’t, ‘Hey, just give us more so we can continue around driving around cars that get four miles to the gallon.’ It’s get a car that gets twice as much. I mean gas prices would, for you and me, if we bought a vehicle that got double mileage, our gas costs would be cut in half. Because you’re paying the same amount for a tank of gas, you’re just going to get twice as much value out of it. So the no-brainer here is not just to think that, oh, drill for more oil. Even with the infrastructure in California, it wouldn’t be in your car for at least 10 years.
