Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008

AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - August 02, 2007)

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Maryland is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. HOYER. My friend from Arizona is having a good time. I don't blame him, but this is something that is good for the country. It is good for literally millions of people who have grown tobacco.

Let me say to my friend from Arizona: A, I don't smoke; B, I have never smoked. And when redistricting occurred and I got most of the tobacco-growing areas of Maryland, I went down and met with the Farm Bureau. I said, Look, I'm new to you. You don't know me. Actually, they did know me because I had been in office for some time. But I said, I want to tell you something right out front; I think smoking is bad for people's health, and I am not for it.

About eight of the 10 to 15 tobacco farmers that were there said to me after the meeting, they came up to me and said, You know what, we don't smoke and we don't want our kids to smoke.

That aside, Maryland has had one of the most successful tobacco buyout programs in America. In my district, the tobacco-growing area of Maryland, 90-plus percent, almost 95 percent of

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the farmers have taken the buyout, which means they can no longer ever on the property they own have tobacco grown for the purposes of smoking tobacco.

There were literally, as you can imagine, hundreds, and across the country there are thousands and thousands of farmers so situated, families who have been involved in this process for most of their lives and who produce a product, used alternatively, can have extraordinary value. But the problem is the research has not been done on it. Why has it not been done on it? Because the tobacco product was a very valuable product for a bad purpose; that is, smoking. Harmful to health and a destroyer of life.

Very frankly, some of the Farm Bureau came to me and said, Do you think we can find an alternative use, because we have a lot of expertise in growing this product, and we have facilities to do so. We think it can have some beneficial effect. My good friend said he thought that was the case. He is correct. There are a lot of good things in life that can happen, and his proposition is why this money, why here?

Well, because I represent my district. But I also believe this has national implications that if we can get a product from tobacco that is useful, and I want to discuss some of them, that will be good for our country, good for our economy, good for jobs, and good for people who have been displaced from the very lucrative but harmful vocation and who are now put to perhaps not having nearly the livelihood they expected to have.

The amendment seeks to eliminate funding for an important research project being undertaken at the University of Maryland. One of America's extraordinary research institutions, a land grant college established in the mid part of the 19th century, it seeks to develop safe and beneficial nonsmoking uses for tobacco.

The Alternative Uses of Tobacco Project has several very important objectives. First, we are seeking to take advantage of the many beneficial nonsmoking uses of tobacco. Most people would not think of the tobacco plant as having a use beyond smoking. They would be wrong. I didn't know that either, frankly.

Tobacco naturally produces high-nutrition proteins, one of the highest of any product, industrial raw materials and large amounts of biomass which can be used for renewable energy. Think of it. We talk about corn, we talk about other things, and we want to talk about cellulosic to produce energy. We just passed a farm bill seeking to do that. Think if all of the tobacco farms in America could be turned into energy producers, an extraordinarily positive contribution to the economy of our country.

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Secondly, we're trying to revitalize tobacco-producing communities across the southeastern United States by shifting their focus away from the traditional use of the crop and generating new markets and new industries for beneficial new nonsmoking purposes.

Unlike Maryland, the Federal buyout, as you know, didn't eliminate the growing of tobacco; and in many States that have buyout programs they didn't eliminate the use of tobacco for smoking purposes. Maryland did. So that if we could give alternative uses for a product and get it out of the sale of use for smoking products, what a health benefit that would be for America.

So I suggest that this $400,000 is an extraordinarily good investment in health care, in the economy for our people.

Third, we are attempting to develop new technologies for producing leaf proteins. Leaf proteins are as nutritious as milk protein, but, unlike other protein sources, they are generally nonallergenic. Tobacco may be the largest producer of leaf proteins of any agricultural crop, but its historically inadequate processing technologies have limited their development.

Now, let me tell you something. The tobacco companies do not grow tobacco. They sell cigarettes. So they do not have an incentive to do this. The people who have an incentive to do it are the tobacco farmers, but, guess what, the tobacco farmers don't have a lot of money. It's the tobacco companies that have a lot of money.

So the tobacco companies rely on, I'm sure in your State as they do in mine, land grant institutions who have focused on agricultural research, as does the University of Maryland, as does the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.

So I have some other things to say, but I think you get the point.

Mr. Flake is a friend of mine. I have great respect for Mr. Flake. Not only that, I think he offers his amendments in a very positive way. I've never seen him get mad at anybody. I've never seen him criticize anybody. I've never seen him say a cross word to anybody. He sets forth what is a correct proposition, that, look, we could save a lot of money by not having any of these earmarks and we wouldn't do this research or maybe the State could do it or maybe somehow the farmers could get together in a cooperative and do it. But they haven't done it and the Federal Government has historically invested in long-term progress.

Now, very frankly, the best example is the space program. The space program has made an extraordinary contribution in the creation of jobs outside of the space program, and agricultural research colleges have done the same for farming and feeding the world. We honored with a gold medal a university professor who fed the world, billions.

So I ask my friends, this is $400,000. We will spend $400,000 in Baghdad in the next hour or so. I don't know what the Citizens Against Government Waste think of that, and I frankly don't think they think of this particular item. I understand that. They think generally we ought to stop wasting government money. I agree absolutely.

And if you think research in a product to turn it to pharmaceutical use, if you think that research in a product to turn it to better energy production, if you think research in a product that may be available to give us better protein production, then I think, my friends, Mr. Obey has said, we get the point. So I say this, and I'm laughing, this is a serious investment in good things for all people.

I hope that, notwithstanding the fact that he is my friend, that you will reject the gentleman's amendment, and I thank you for the time.

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