Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Agencies Appropriation Act, 2005
AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005 -- (House of Representatives - July 12, 2004)
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 710 and rule XVIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 4766.
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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I wish to thank the chairman of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bonilla), for a very good working relationship this year and the type of hearings that help us all build a better Nation.
This fiscal 2005 agriculture appropriation bill has been put together under some of the most trying budget circumstances that we have ever seen. And even though this is an appropriation bill, and I guess people refer to it as one of those green-eyeshade bills, it is important for the American people to know that what this bill is really all about is that no child in our country should go hungry; that American agriculture begins to regain some global market edge internationally; and that we keep winning more markets rather than losing markets, and taking actions that can help that.
This bill affects every American consumer in whether or not the meat that we eat is safe. It involves new research into the new plants, many of them undergirding new medicines of the future. Really, the best agriculture and food and drug research in the world. This bill touches every single person in our country and so many people around the world.
So I want to thank the gentleman from Texas (Chairman BONILLA) for all his efforts, as well as the majority staff, under the direction of our new majority clerk, Martin Delgado, who is joined by Maureen Holohan, Leslie Barrack, Joanne Perdue, and our detailees Tom O'Brien and Mike Gregoire. I also want to thank our minority clerk, who is with us here tonight, Martha Foley, for her efforts not only on behalf of our membership but of our entire country, for her very, very hard and largely unrecognized work.
Last year, I described this bill as a size 7 shoe for a size 10 foot. Well, it is a new year now. We have 293 million Americans in our country, more than last year. But, unfortunately, the bill this year has an even smaller shoe size but a bigger foot. Our needs are increasing as a country, but our resources are increasing. So we now have a size 6 shoe for a size 11 foot. And if you think the bunions are starting to pinch now, new stories regarding the early steps in preparing for next year's bill suggests matters will only be getting worse. Much more difficult.
The bill before us today provides a total of slightly more than $83 billion, that is no small change, with nearly $66 billion, or 80 percent, four-fifths of the bill, that we are mandated to spend. That means that programs, such as our Food Stamp program, we must spend those dollars to meet growing needs in the country. And in this year's bill that totals about $33 billion.
If you think the economy is improving, you will not find evidence of that claim in this bill. In fact, this bill contains $16.772 billion in what we call discretionary spending. That is the part of the bill where we can really try to direct resources to very important needs in the country, but this year we have a $67 million reduction over the prior year. And, in fact, it is a 6 percent reduction compared to 2 years ago for the fiscal 2003 budget. In fact, it is $1.100 billion below that.
So this bill is not going up by any measure. And with more mandatory spending necessary to meet unmet economic needs, that cuts into the discretionary spending that we have so many draws upon all over this country.
The people who live in agricultural America and our small towns have the same needs and concerns as their friends in big cities. They need jobs, and more often than not are experiencing plant shutdowns. There are huge job washouts in many small towns in this country. And, in fact, there are no new employers that are readily seen on the horizon. We have offshoring of so much of our work and higher unemployment in many, many corners of rural America. People there need health care, but often have fewer hospitals, or much longer distances to travel to secure care. And the accounts in this bill dealing with telemedicine for rural America are severely underfunded.
People in rural America want economic development, but they find the services available to them are so oversubscribed or heavily weighted towards loan, that they often cannot get the assistance they need. People in rural America want community services, but they find that their smaller population base and smaller economic base make it even harder to finance the water and sewer systems, clean water systems, the power utility systems, and the telecommunication systems that so many other Americans, frankly, take for granted.
So the fiscal 2005 agriculture appropriation bill is a classic exercise in the futility of a budget process that has effectively obligated the bulk of Federal funds before we have really had a fair opportunity to address all the needs of our Nation here at home. Decisions made in recent years by some in this Congress on taxes and on foreign policy are sapping our ability to meet real domestic obligations.
To date, our country has spent over $100 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that number grows every day. Imagine if
we could take that money and divide it, $2 billion for each of our 50 States to share with their local towns and cities, what an incredible difference that would make.
But that is not the choice that we will make tonight.
I know that while the gentleman from Texas worked to provide funding within our restrictive allocation, there are a number of shortcomings that we need to recognize. Because of these budget limitations, the bill before us will cut the community facilities program by $36 million, so all the Members that asked us for more help for their particular communities, we could not do that.
In the rural water and sewer grant program, we are $86 million underfunded. That is just to meet where we were last year, because the needs are so much greater.
It looks as though we are going to be at least $150 million short in the women, infants and children's food program, WIC, and nearly $15 million short in the commodity supplemental food program under this bill, despite appreciated increases. I want to thank the gentleman from Texas for his efforts there.
At the same time, we are also in this bill forced to debate tomorrow cutting renewable energy programs. We are also not funding needed market development tools. And we have a Department of Agriculture that may be preparing to extend additional credits to Iraq, but meanwhile forgiving $4 billion in accumulated principal and interest owed by the Rafidain Bank of Iraq. We want to make sure that whatever is done relative to Iraq upholds existing law and does not permit the type of fraud that occurred during the 1980s and 1990s and the misuse of the Commodity Credit Corporation programs in arming Saddam Hussein and strengthening his power. That was done during the Reagan-Bush administrations and the Bush-Quayle administrations, over the strong objections of this Congress.
They say that we cannot expand the senior farmers market program to all States so that needy seniors can purchase locally grown fruit and vegetables from farmers who earn from the market, not transfer payments. Yet we know that over half the States in the Union still do not even have beginning funds to bring that important program on-line to really help farmers who are diversified close to our cities.
In international trade, there continues a downward trend as the U.S. moves for the first time in its history toward becoming a net food importer. Meanwhile, the Department of Agriculture cannot give us effective solutions for controlling and assessing liability for invasive species that are a huge and rising cost to the American taxpayer due to misapplied free trade policies, mismanaged, misapplied, misguided.
In this bill, there are hundreds of millions of dollars of tax money that has to be diverted to take care of the Asian longhorn beetle in New York, Chicago and many other places and the emerald ash borer in places like Michigan and Ohio. Those bills should not come to rest at the foot of the American taxpayer. They should be paid for by the commercial interests that bring those critters into this country, and they should not be getting off Scott free for the damage that they are causing. Nonetheless, we have to fund those remediation programs in this bill. Those costs have been rising exponentially during this decade of the 1990s and into this new millennium.
Officials that are charged with ensuring the safety of our food supply cannot answer basic questions about how many cattle have been tested to ensure public health and safety or tell us when procedures for dealing with this national need will at long last be satisfied. It is amazing that the Department of Agriculture cannot do that. What a shame.
Meanwhile, export markets remain closed even to producers who are willing to pay themselves for the testing so that our export customers can reopen their markets. America's family farmers and ranchers have always had a vision for America's future. They daily demonstrate a willingness to work harder and smarter than their competitors. They possess a keen appreciation for the fact that their accomplishments provide a safe and bountiful food supply which allows most Americans to expend their energies in other industries and business endeavors. We need to support the efforts of these productive Americans by providing them with the tools for continued success, fair prices, fair trade policies, fair access to new technologies, and fair and consistent standards imposed on imported products that do not place economic burdens on domestic producers.
Mr. Chairman, in closing my more formal remarks this evening, let me just say that it has been a great pleasure to work on both sides of the aisle to complete the bill that we will bring to the floor tomorrow for amendment. We look forward to working with our colleagues on completing it tomorrow.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr), a very respected and extraordinarily hard-working member of our subcommittee.
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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
As we close this evening, I just want to say that the gentlewoman from South Dakota (Ms. Herseth) and I intend to offer a biofuels amendment tomorrow to the bill with great hope that we can help push America into a new energy age, a new renewable energy age, starting right in rural America; and I wanted to acknowledge that while she is still on the floor with us tonight.
I did also want to, for the record, thank deeply Roger Szemraj of our own staff for the tremendous work that he does and for the time he takes away from his own family to be with us even tonight on this floor as we move this important bill for fiscal year 2005 agriculture appropriations.