Farm, Nutrition, and Bioenergy Act of 2007

Floor Speech

FARM, NUTRITION, AND BIOENERGY ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - July 26, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. RANGEL. Madam Chairman, it's an honor for me to be here. I wish that we didn't have to mark up the SCHIP bill so that I could be here for the rest of the theater.

I have been overly impressed with the remarkable bipartisan work that Mr. Goodlatte and Chairman Peterson have been doing on a very complicated piece of legislation. And I was very surprised that, with their ability to, so-call, offset the expenditures of the bill, that they came to the conclusion that when it came to food stamps they ran out of money.

Ran out of money to such an extent that I was really completely taken off guard when they told me that the Ways and Means Committee should provide $4 billion to pay for the food stamps. And I admit I don't follow the Agriculture Committee's work as closely as I should have. But knowing that Republicans as well as Democrats wanted to make certain that 26 million people will continue to have food stamps, I said, where would you expect the tax-writing committee to get the money that is necessary to keep this bipartisan agreement to? I assume if you went to the Energy and Commerce Committee, you would be going there for energy. If you went to the Transportation Committee, you would go there for transportation. And I assume that we talk the same language, and the Ways and Means Committee is the tax-writing committee.

And when you said it was important to maintain this bipartisan agreement, I looked over the jurisdiction of the Ways and Means Committee. It wasn't $4 billion in Social Security. It wasn't $4 billion in Medicare. It wasn't $4 billion in training, though we were working hard to make certain to break down the barriers so that our farmers could go overseas.

So there is not one living person on the Agriculture Committee that didn't ask me to get it out of what? Taxes. Sorry to use that word, and I don't know who is offended. But we felt that we weren't going to raise individual taxes. We weren't going to increase corporate taxes. So I thought that common sense and political sense would mean that we would find out who is not paying taxes and bring that revenue in so that we can have a bipartisan agreement in the House and the Senate in order to do this.

Now, strange things can happen, and it appears as though it has. But I just want you to know that you can call it offset. You can call it revenue enhancement. And we call it fraud and evasion and equity and fair play. And it is coming out of the tax-writing committee.

I just hope you never come to the tax-writing committee and ask for relief and, when you get it, say you don't want tax increases.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source