Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. SALMON. Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer an amendment to cut all funding for the National Science Foundation's program to study the climate effects on tea quality and socioeconomic responses in China and other locations. In fact, I find it deeply troubling that while our country is facing fiscal challenges of gigantic proportions, staring down over $17.5 trillion in debt, that I can quickly find programs such as this that are being funded on the back of the American taxpayer.

To date, this program has already received about $1 million in funding. Regardless of whether or not you believe that we must get our national debt under control, I believe we can all agree that these are difficult times for American families. With this in mind, how can we seriously look our constituents in the face and assure them we are looking out for their best interest when we allow their money to be spent like this?

While I certainly understand the value of predicting agricultural trends for tea, I believe that that is a task that ought to be left to the private sector, the ones that benefit from this kind of information.

Now, amendments like this are a high watermark. If we can't make the easy choices to eliminate these kinds of programs, how are we going to do the tough cuts? In a time where things are tough enough for the average American family, we certainly don't need to add another burden such as programs like this. And I might just say, finally, that our history has shown us that government getting involved in tea policy, as Great Britain did, can lead to a very, very slippery slope. I think government needs to stay out of tea policy.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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