Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Mrs. FISCHBACH. Mr. Chair, I rise in support of my amendment to prohibit funds from being used by the SEC to regulate or require the disclosure of data regarding agricultural emissions.

Mr. Chairman, the SEC under Chair Gensler has been marked by a radical and tyrannical enforcement agenda that stretches the bounds of the SEC's jurisdiction and buries hardworking men and women in bureaucratic busywork.

Look no further than the SEC's climate-related disclosure rule, which would require public companies to disclose the emissions data of their supply chains. For food companies and agribusinesses that rely on farmers and ranchers, that means collecting emissions data at the farm level.

Let me be clear, Mr. Chairman, the SEC has no authority to regulate farmers and ranchers. Yet, that is exactly what the Chair is attempting to do.

The SEC is charged with protecting investors and facilitating financial market activity, not policing the tens of thousands of family farms in my district. Yet, the proposed rule would burden my constituents with mountains of paperwork and regulatory burdens if they want to do business with a public company.

These are farmers that, unlike their publicly traded counterparts, do not have the compliance, legal, and scientific departments to satisfy the requirements under this rule.

Production agriculture is already regulated by the EPA, the USDA, and State and local governments. As a result, farmers and ranchers are climate champions, not villains. The last thing they need is more unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., who have never set foot on a farm telling them how to do their jobs.

Mr. Chair, this amendment eliminates the duplicative, unnecessary, burdensome, and ultimately inappropriate regulatory effort and allows farmers in my district and throughout the country to do what they do best: feed and fuel the world.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mrs. FISCHBACH. Mr. Chairman, I feel that there is no issue in being duplicative and very clear on what we are trying to accomplish with this amendment because it is important to make sure that we are protecting the farmers, those people, like I said before, who feed and fuel the world.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Womack).

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Mrs. FISCHBACH. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire how much time is remaining.

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Mrs. FISCHBACH. Mr. Chairman, let me echo some of the things that the chairman said regarding protecting the farmers.

We have to protect the farmers. It is a national security issue. It is a food issue. It is a fuel issue.

It is important that we make sure that we get the legislation and the bills right, the language right, in order to protect them.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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