Commemorating the 25th anniversary of the construction and dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 387, I call up the bill (H.R. 2207) making supplemental appropriations for agricultural and other emergency assistance for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2007, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may

have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 8 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, in the bill which the President vetoed last week, in addition to funding for the troops in Iraq, we provided funding for a number of other high-priority purposes. We provided additional funding above the President's request for veterans' health care, something which the President did not want. We added additional funding to defend the country against a potential epidemic from the pandemic flu virus that our scientists are concerned about. The President asked for that money 3 years ago, but this time around said he didn't want it in the bill. The President said he did not want to see the money that we put in the bill for homeland security and a variety of other programs.

It seemed to me the administration took special pleasure in also objecting to the fact that we had agricultural disaster funding in the bill and that we had the funding in the bill to respond to the court decision on western salmon and we also had funding in the bill to deal with Western school programs that had been allowed to lapse by the previous Congress and several other provisions like that. The President said that those programs didn't belong in this bill because they weren't emergencies.

Well, in fact, I think the President had it backwards because what the President seemed to suggest is that the only legitimate funding for an emergency appropriation would be for the war in Iraq. In fact, the war in Iraq should not be funded at all as an emergency appropriation. After all, it has been around for more than 4 years, despite the President's landing on that aircraft carrier. And the fact is that the President, in order to hide the full cost of the war, asked for that war to be funded in 11 different slices. Those funds should have been provided in regular appropriation bills, not in supplementals. So it is the President who has the usual practice figured out just backwards. We didn't object to dealing with the Iraqi problem, and we would appreciate it if he would not object to dealing with other legitimate emergency problems.

The President seemed to suggest, in his veto message, that we didn't have the courage to deal with the agriculture and other related issues alone, that we had to slip them in, so to speak, in the Iraq bill. And, frankly, that got my dander up. And so now that we are back in the second bill, I have insisted that when the House votes on this matter tonight that we vote on it separately to demonstrate to the President that there is support in both parties, I believe, for dealing with some of these issues, especially with the agriculture problem.

Now, I didn't declare 70 percent of the counties in this country to be disaster areas. The President did. The Congress has an obligation not to ignore those declarations and act accordingly, and that is what we are trying to do. So very simply, we are going to have these votes tonight, and I am glad that we are.

There are two items that are not in the bill that should be in the bill. One is spinach. When the President vetoed the bill, his administration made a lot of fun of the fact that we had funding for spinach in the bill. Well, there is no spinach in my district, but let me tell you why we had that funding. Nobody was laughing a year ago when people were deathly sick because they had consumed spinach that was contaminated with E. coli, and then the Federal Government went to spinach growers and asked that they take their products off the shelf voluntarily, and when they did that, that cost those spinach growers a lot of money. Now, I have heard a lot of conservatives and liberals alike in this House complain and cry and whine all over the floor when the government engages in an uncompensated taking from a private citizen. Well, if you tell an industry that they can't collect for their product after they have been asked by the government to take it off the market even though 99 percent of that spinach was perfectly safe, then what have you done? You have engaged in an uncompensated taking. Now, that may not bother many people in a city like Washington, D.C., where a lot of people look down their noses at anything rural, but the fact is that farmers are entitled and spinach growers are entitled to the same kind of consideration any other economic group would have in this country.

The second thing that isn't in here is funding for Great Lakes fishery problems. We had several Members of the minority party make fun of the bill 2 weeks ago because they claimed we had money in the bill for tropical fish. Well, I want to tell you what we had in the bill. The Federal Government discovered last year that fisheries in the Great Lakes, especially in Lake Michigan, that fish were being found with a disease called viral hemorrhagic septicemia. It does to fish what ebola does to human beings. It is a bloody problem. And that problem, if left unchecked, has the potential to destroy the entire Great Lakes fisheries. That is an 8 to $9 billion annual business. So what we tried to do was to simply recognize the plight of a few commercial fish growers who were told by the government they could not ship their product across State lines because it would endanger the entire fisheries, and so they complied. The irony was under the law if the fish produced by those farmers had been diseased, they could have collected from the government, but because those fish were healthy, they couldn't. So they were stuck in a catch-22 situation.

We tried to fund that, and we got laughed off the screen because the demogogues in this institution and demogogues on the other end of the avenue made fun of a problem that is a very serious environmental problem. We have taken that item out of the bill, too, simply because there is only so much bowl gravy that you can counter in a political debate. So we are left with the bare bones proposition that deals with legitimate problems faced by farmers and faced by Western States with respect to wildfires and the other problems funded in this bill.

So I am happy we finally are going to have an opportunity to vote on these items standing alone. I urge an ``aye'' vote.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished chairwoman of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, Ms. DeLauro.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Let me keep it short and sweet, Mr. Speaker. Let me simply point out that the items contained in this bill are not new add-ons. They are essentially items that clean up and finish last year's unfinished business. That is certainly the case with agriculture disaster. It is certainly the case with rural schools, a program which the previous Congress allowed to lapse. It is certainly the case with western wildfire, and it is certainly the case with the western fisheries' issues which the Congress of last year should have dealt with but didn't.

I ask for an ``aye'' vote on the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, this motion is really quite interesting. What it says is that the same folks who want to spend $57 billion on tax cuts on millionaires this year, all paid for with borrowed money, the same folks who are comfortable with the idea that we have got over a trillion dollars in unfunded tax cuts, all paid for with borrowed money, the same folks that want us to spend, no questions asked, at least $600 billion in a sad, sad war in Iraq, these folks have suddenly gotten religion, and they now have a motion that says they would like to see this bill be deficit neutral.

What that mean is they are going to ask the farmers of America to bear the full weight of deficit reduction in this bill. This is simply a device to kill the bill because instead of asking that the bill be reported forthwith, it asks that the bill be reported promptly. That, as you know, is code language for killing the bill. I don't think I need to say anything further.

If you want to provide the funding in this bill, you will vote against this motion to recommit. If you care about the farmers, if you care about the western wildfire problem, if you want to meet our obligation to the parts of the country that generally get stiffed and ignored, then you vote against the motion to recommit. If you care about these folks, you will vote against the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

I appreciate the gentleman yielding time, and I appreciate the leadership of the ranking member from California on this committee.

Mr. Speaker, one of the difficulties we often have is you are tasked if you are a member of the party of the administration to sometimes defend the administration. But sometimes the administration, quite frankly, does things that are undefendable. If you read the statement of administration policy and what they would do and why they would veto this bill, I have got to tell you, I believe it is undefendable.

I want to thank Chairman Obey for recognizing that even in a time of war, not all emergencies are war-related, that unanticipated circumstances occur that require our attention. Unanticipated floods and droughts and hurricanes occur that require our attention. Unanticipated wildfires occur that require our attention. Unanticipated actions that are taken that

would impact our county schools and road budgets need to be taken into account.

If you read the administration's statement of administration policy, I want to read from it, if I could.

The Office of Management and Budget, Statement of Administration Policy.

The administration strongly supports efforts to increase opportunities for America's farmers and ranchers in rural communities. However, H.R. 2207 would allow almost $7 billion in unrequested spending that is unjustified and not appropriate for an emergency spending bill.

Mr. Speaker, I will tell you that if you look at the funding in this bill, it is exactly what emergency spending is for. As an example, if you look at what we have done in the agricultural section of this bill; we have had droughts, we have had problems in the agricultural community. And while the administration talks about how good the ag economy is and how good the 2001 farm bill worked, and that the ag economy is up like $16 billion in income this year, the fact is that, in isolated cases and in isolated situations, you have disasters, you have floods, you have droughts. We have a responsibility to help those people. That's what an emergency is. I don't think the administration recognizes that.

When you have wildfires that occur throughout this country that are more than we anticipate, and if you will look at the news any given night, wildfires are occurring now in California and other places, we have to put out those wildfires. If we don't, the costs grow and become enormous.

If you look at the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self- Determination Act, I don't know if most people understand what that is. Counties used to get a part of the timber sales to help fund their roads and their schools. Timber sales were being reduced so much that those funds were drying up and it was affecting those counties that were predominantly rural counties and had many public lands in them. Mr. Thompson said he has one that is 80 percent Federal land. I've got one that is 96 percent Federal land.

What we did was we put this into place 10 years ago. The problem was it said that we will wean the schools off of this and find a way to replace those funds. How do you replace those funds if you are a county that is 96 percent Federal land? You have no private land for taxes. How are they going to find the resources to replace that funding?

So we did it in the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self- Determination Act. Now, the administration says they have come up with a perfectly reasonable alternative to fund this, an offset, if you will. They want to sell public lands. They proposed that last year, selling nearly 250,000 acres in Idaho. The people of this country stood up and rejected that idea. The people of this country do not want to willy-nilly sell public lands.

We have a responsibility, when the Federal Government owns an overwhelmingly majority of public lands in a lot of the western States, 64 percent in Idaho, we have a responsibility to help those counties with some of the funds where they don't have the tax base to address these needs themselves. Otherwise, you are going to have schools that, quite frankly, don't have a budget next year. Is it an emergency? Can we wait until 2008? I don't think so. They start school before that, and we have to address it.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the fact that the administration is trying to address the deficit, but to suggest that these needs are nonemergency, that we should be able to anticipate them, I think is just wrong.

I hope my colleagues will vote for this bill. And again, I thank the chairman of the committee. I thank the ranking member of the committee for the work that they do. It is always difficult when you are trying to address both the deficit and the needs of this country, and they do a very, very good job of it.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I wanted to say, Mr. Speaker, as I listen to this debate tonight, I am reminded of my old alley cat, Hercules. When I was growing up in Athens, Georgia, I had a mean, tough cat. He was an alley cat who basically adopted me. You know, we humans don't really adopt cats. Athens, Georgia, kind of a hilly, foothills Appalachian town with ivy bank. In the ivy bank, we had lots of cute little chipmunks.

Hercules, being tough and could be the bully, could be somewhat like the majority party in some respects in that he was the alpha cat of the neighborhood. He would catch chipmunks at will. He would usually kill them and

eat them, dispensing of them quickly. But every now and then, and it is an interesting thing about cats, it is not unique to my cat, but he would catch a chipmunk and he would toy with it awhile. He would just play with it.

You would think: Did he have a change of heart? Is he going to let this chipmunk go? No, he would just play with it awhile.

Well, that is what is going on tonight. We are hearing a lot of discussion, a lot of administration bashing about how cruel the White House is and a lot of lamenting about the Republican Party, and a lot of talk about compassion for the farmers and the rural communities and schools. There has been talk about the horrors of fire, drought and windstorm.

And yet as we look at the rule that is governing this bill, which would be known as H. Res. 387 in the House Calendar No. 59, introduced by Ms. Slaughter, of New York, if we turn to page 3, section 4, we read the fine print. And it says: ``Sec. 4.(a) In the engrossment of H.R. 2206, the Clerk shall--

``(1) await the disposition of H.R. 2237 and H.R. 2207;

``(2) add the respective texts of H.R. 2237 and H.R. 2207, as passed by the House, as new matter at the end of H.R. 2206;

``(3) confirm the title of H.R. 2206 to reflect the addition of H.R. 2237 and H.R. 2207, as passed by the House, to the engrossment,'' which as the Speaker knows and followed very closely, what this means is this is Hercules toying with the chipmunk.

It means there is not a disaster bill at all. It just means the majority party is toying with a disaster bill, because what happens, this goes right back to the President attached to the war funding bill.

Here is my point, Mr. Speaker. If all these things are true, why is the majority party toying with a disaster? We are right back where we started from. We have just jumped out from the war funding bill only temporarily for I guess some purpose of voting here, and I understand politics, you can't remove that from the House of Representatives, but the reality is we are toying with a disaster bill because we already know two things: All the gobbledygook on page 4 that the Clerk shall do means this bill gets rejoined with the military funding bill. That is a fact.

Number two, the President has already said he is going to veto the military funding bill, and one of the reasons is because of the extracurricular, nonmilitary items that are being added to it.

So what I would say to Hercules, if you were worried about that little old chipmunk, you really would let it go. And I would say to the majority party, if you really were sincere about disaster relief, you would separate it from this rule, this H. Res. 367 introduced by Ms. Slaughter of New York and say, you know, we are going to have an up-or- down vote on a straight, freestanding separate disaster bill so that the farmers and ranchers and people out west can get the relief that we have heard over and over again on a bipartisan basis that they need so badly.

Mr. Speaker, with this supplemental appropriations bill, we continue to confront urgent business which the 109th Congress left unfinished last year and which the President continues to want to leave unfinished. Today, that includes an important relief package for agricultural disasters which occurred in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

I do not have to remind my colleagues about so many instances of devastation that have struck every corner of our Nation. And the President's response to these disasters is, ``You are on your own.'' With severe drought in the Midwest, wildfire in the Southwest and floods in the Upper Plains, the United States Department of Agriculture designated nearly three-quarters of all U.S. counties as primary or contiguous disaster areas over the past 2 years. Hardworking farmers struggling just to get by, struggling to deal with each disaster's painful consequences, struggling to understand their deeply felt impact on our businesses, our communities, on our everyday lives. What is the President's response? ``You are on your own.''

These events are described by many as ``slow-motion disasters,'' but they are disasters nonetheless. And we cannot turn our backs on those who are hit hardest. Indeed, we have a responsibility to look honestly at all of the hard choices which have been put off far too long by this Congress and our President.

Outside the gulf region, there has been no disaster assistance in the past 2 years, even though natural disasters hit our farmers hard. In 2000 and 2001, we had disaster assistance bills that cost over $11 billion in one year and $14 billion in the other. Our proposal is a fraction of those.

While some time has passed since these natural disasters occurred, it does not mean that they have ceased to be emergencies, and it does not mean that we no longer have an obligation to help those in need.

What the Democrats tonight are telling those who are struggling in the face of these disasters is that you are not alone. We are on your side. I urge my colleagues to support the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to control the remaining time.

I would like to recognize the gentleman from Minnesota, the Chair of the Agriculture Committee (Mr. Peterson) for 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Montana's words are eloquent.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\3/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from South Dakota (Ms. Herseth Sandlin).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we are continuing our debate on the emergency supplemental with a discussion of a separate measure that includes billions of dollars of spending completely unrelated to the global war on terror or legitimate emergencies in the gulf coast region.

This is an extraordinary amount of unauthorized spending, spending that is not offset in any way, contained under the emergency designation. As the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, and the committee's former chairman, I believe the House must firmly hold the line and reject this unnecessary spending.

Members on both sides of the aisle can, and will, argue that some of this spending is justified. Members can correctly point out the need for additional funds to address wildfire suppression or agricultural assistance in various regions of the United States. However, I would urge that many of the needs addressed in this bill could, and they should, be addressed in regular order through the fiscal year 2008 funding bills.

Sadly, many items are being designated as emergencies for no other reason than to make more room for additional spending under the fiscal year 2008 caps, which, incidentally, we still do not have.

When the new majority assumed power earlier this year, it committed to restoring pay-as-you-go, the practice of offsetting spending increases with spending decreases. As I mentioned earlier, none of the proposed spending included in this package has been offset in any way.

Lastly, Mr. Speaker, our colleagues should be aware that the President has indicated that he will veto this legislation due to the excessive nonemergency spending it contains. I urge our colleagues to show spending restraint by opposing this package.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, because he is constantly talking to me about the challenges of rural schools, it is my pleasure to recognize Greg Walden of Oregon for 3 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to yield 5 minutes to my colleague from the committee, Mike Simpson.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Rehberg), a member of our committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

I am opposed to the bill.

Mr. Speaker, this is a simple motion to recommit that sends the bill back to committee and instructs the committee to find offsets.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.